I have close to perfect pitch, and, if I am hired to play a house piano that is even slightly out, it literally makes me sick.

Dave, if you ever were able to come back, I'd clear the schedule for a week. We just touched the surface of the instruments last time. I'd take the week to visit all the places in town I played years ago...haven't been in some of them for years. We'd visit Louisville, where I'm now involved in a 2nd guitar club in a school with disadvantaged kids.

Teaching is such a noble thing to do, and teaching music is even better.

And old "heart on the sleeve" Dave is the perfect guy to do it!


Best regards, all,


russ

Andrea, one of my greatest regrets is, I worked for years as a commercial photographer; mostly taking photos of circuit breakers, metal boxes, banks, magazine illustrations, etc.

All work was on deadline. Half was done with large format (4"x5" or 8"x10"view cameras. Still use them with digital backs).

I traveled to 4 locations (Dallas, Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Lexington) where I had complete audio, still photo, print and video production set-ups.

Thing is, I NEVER did photography for fun. Sadly, I never even took lots of photos of my kids.

Today, I'm still cranking out illustrations. This week I have done images of storage buildings from a client in Australia,
staircase kits from a client in Italy, floor coverings from a client in Israel, horse farm photos for a magazine and more. In the end, I do copy, design and production for packaging or the final print piece.

Wish I could stop and enjoy the art form the way I should, and you obviously do.

Sadly, the most boring photography pays the most, as does the most boring or uninspired music.

Sometimes, I feel like I have sold out.


Russ

I know what you are feeling, exactly, Andrea, because you could have been describing me ...
The best part comes when we are playing for others and we KNOW they are fully enjoying it - whether it be in a NH/assisted living facility/ fancy restaurant/whatever ... this past Wednesday I played a gig in NJ with the guitar player from our NY band days ... while singing a particular song I caught the faces of a few people who - to me - apparently were conversing about how good it sounded ... there is no other feeling like it for an entertainer ... now perhaps they were discussing how good the dinner was, but I have no idea why they would be looking at me while doing so ...

Exactly, Tony. That's what I was getting at when I said think about all the pleasure you've given people over the years. Very worthwhile.

I was a serious photographer also. As advertising manager for a large oil company, I was able to use the latest gear and dark room. Even had a black and white darkroom in my house for years.
We had some neat cameras including Hasselblad, Speed Graphic, some Nikon 35s, etc.
My favorite personal camera for years was a Mamiyaflex twin lenses 2 1/4. Not terribly expensive but a great camera!
I still have some pretty good cameras in the closet somewhere, but of course digital is so much easier now.

For me, Marty Harris has a real nice combination of musicianship and technical savvy...he was heavily involved in design and content of Tyros models, but the man can play pretty darn good too.

Here he is on the "old" Tyros4...Boo and Russ should like this one.

Yes, and the thing that impressed me most was the way he changed his phrasing going from the saxophone to the organ, then to the electric guitar; this is the mark of a good demonstrator and shows that he spent hours analyzing the way each instrument has to be played to sound authentic.

WOW !!!

I'm a firm believer that if you enjoy music and it makes you happy that's all that matters. I do hold paid performers to a certain standard though. Some people have great chops but lack showmanship, others the polar opposite. There can be a happy medium that pleases a broad based audience and is worthy of getting paid. However, what I've generally encountered in the real world are performers lacking technical ability, musicianship, and stage presence. To have all three is an anomaly but even having two of these traits will serve you well.

It's damned disappointing to go to see and hear live music only to feel cheated hearing so called pro's getting paid to propagate mediocrity. How these performers can't hear just how bad they truly are is beyond me.

I'm not what I would classify a great musician but I was given near perfect pitch and the ability to play most anything by ear. Even then if I felt I couldn't do a song justice no way in he'll would I play it for anyone else to hear let alone expect to get paid to play it. If only others could hold themselves to a similar standard.

The biggest eye opener in our abilities as a musician or performer, or lack thereof, is meeting those with innate talent given from a higher power. Until you've witnessed such a thing in person, you can't imagine the awe of it.

Thanks for the shout out, Russ.

I've always kind of loved BOTH sides of the coin. From when I was in high school and a friend and I built a pretty decent sized kit modular synthesizer, with patch cords (might have been a matrix pinboard, come to think of it), I've always loved synths. Grew up to Stevie Wonder and Keith Emerson's synth stuff, Yes and Genesis, so the technical side of things back then were absolute necessities, there were no keyboards with presets designed to sound like your favorite patches... you had to PROGRAM the patches, on stage or at home, while the band played (often with your LH while your RH was playing!).

No shortcuts back then.

But... if you wanted to play Rick Wakeman, or Keith Emerson, there also weren't any sequencers, and just getting the sound close wasn't going to get it done, you HAD to learn to play it! So, the other side of the coin is at least as important, too. In fact, TBH, you can play your heiney off an some pretty sub-par gear, and impress most anyone, but you nail the sound and then suck on the notes, you might as well not have bothered!

So I always tell anyone who asks, get the MUSIC part down first. Then worry about the gear. But worry about it you should!

Particularly when doing emulative playing, nothing beats LISTENING first. Don't even TRY to play like a guitarist, or a sax, or a string section, or a vibraphone player etc., until you have listened to so much of your target instrument that you instinctively know what's right and wrong. That way, you don't spend much time on licks and phrases that the real thing just wouldn't play. In fact, TBH, it really isn't that important to be able to play ANYTHING that the real thing can... but it's REAL important to NOT play anything the real thing wouldn't!

You'll impress the heck out of someone with just a few well shaped licks and phrases, but you'll ruin it by just ONE unauthentic lick. So, all in all, it's probably better to know what NOT to play than what to play...!

In my experience, there have been few keyboards I've ever played that the factory stuff couldn't use improving. Maybe just a filter tweak, or an EQ change, or just dialing in the velocity response so it fits how YOU play, rather than the guy who programmed it, but it's rare that something is just perfect OOTB. This is perhaps the finbal step. You got the chops, you got the gear, now make it YOURS. I get the heebies just thinking that someone else might sound just like me! Hopefully, you do too! Go make your OWN sound...

The thing about new capabilities in our arrangers and workstations is, hopefully, it's something that helps create better realism from the playing we already do. I'm not a big fan of tricks that require you to change already learned and ingrained techniques for voicing, etc., just things that take what you already do well, and make it sound more realistic.

A lot of the new SA2 and SN or DNC type patches, if you ALREADY can voice like guitars or horn sections etc., simply make what you do more realistic. I'm not a big fan of the triggered sampled phrases (the gliss licks upwards, or the auto-hammer ons, etc.), I've already spent a fair bit of time learning how to get those tricks simply by playing them, but the better gear now is capable of recognizing that you just PLAYED a hammer-on, and now switches to samples that actually do it, or that you just went from an octave tutti brass phrase to a full chord, and it splits out the component brass instruments and has each one play just ONE of the notes. That stuff is fantastic!

But all in all, I think it's better to learn how to do that stuff properly first, THEN get the gear that helps it out. I heard a T5 demo here recently that showcased the new Ensemble stuff, but TBH, it fared very poorly (compared to some pro stuff that I'd heard use the feature) because the guy simply wasn't voicing it right in the first place.

Playing emulative keyboards, I guess, you really do need the full package. The gear without the chops won't get it right. And the chops without the gear won't sound QUITE as good. But of the two, the chops is the thing to have..!

Truth of the matter is, if all the time many of us spent obsessing and posting about gear here were simply spent PRACTICING, methodically, patiently, purposefully, I'm sure that you would be amazed at what more you can dig out of the gear you already have. But hoping that new gear without all the practicing is somehow going to be a magic bullet for you is just unreasonable. TBH, I don't think I have ever heard anyone here sound significantly better simply by buying the latest arranger. If they sounded mediocre on the old gear, they sound mediocre on the new. If they sounded great on the old gear, they seldom sound THAT much better...

But if you can find the time to practice, to find a musical goal (let's say you want to do better guitar solos, or better sax solos) and dedicate yourself to it for a few months (you're easily spending that much time simply talking about gear here!), you'll hear a huge improvement.

THEN maybe it's time to talk gear...!