Believe it or not... this video was taken from the 2014 Bologna Fest & Winter Carnival. You haven't lived until you play a gig for bologna!! Lebanon, PA even drops a 100 pound bologna for New Year's Eve!!!

I got a Roland BK-9 for Christmas from a fellow SZer, Ron Johnson. Thanks, Ron! This was the first time out with the new board. I got the BK9 for the 20 lbs... 76 keys... and playlist capability using MIDI, WAV and MP3s.

Tossin' and Turnin' was a WAV file from another keyboard. I use a Sonar (Roland) VS-100 mixer for the mics and effects... then run that into a BBE 882i and then to the Yamaha DXR-10 speakers in stereo.

Since the track was sequenced on another keyboard in my studio... Can anyone guess the source?!?

Sounds Good Johnathan you two sound good together good Luck with the BK 9 . Ron

Great performance Johnathan. You both have a great chemistry together.

Love it!

Jon did you record the backing track on the BK 9 or use a commercial SMF...nice job!

Jon also how do you like your new BK-9 on stage performing....
I forgot to ask in my last post. Good luck with it.

I recorded/sequenced this on the Yamaha Motif XF6. I did all my own drums... no loops or presets were used. I then transferred it to PreSonus Studio One 2.6 and ran the track through Izotope Ozone 5. Mixed it down to a WAV file and moved it over to the BK9 thumb drive.

Once on the drive, I created a performance list and assigned a piano sound to come up when the Tossin' and Turnin' WAV is selected. So, it works flawlessly LIVE in the way I use it. Picking sounds quickly is not its forte unless you set up the favorite sounds or one touch settings. So far so good for me! My back thanks me... 20 pounds!!

Jon thanx for the info.....do you think in the future you could create backing tracks without the MOxf6 just by using the BK9 styles & sounds, drums etc..alone and then PreSonus Studio One 2.6 and through Izotope Ozone 5.

It's something I want to try. I've used workstations my whole life...
1989 - Korg M1 with an Alesis DataDisk SQ for storage
1993 - Korg O1/Wfd
1999 - The original Korg Triton
2004 - Yamaha Motif ES7
2011 - Yamaha Motif XF6

The Roland BK-9 is my 4th good arranger...
Yamaha PSR-3000
Yamaha Tyros 2
Yamaha PSR-S900

I only ever used them for the sounds and for fun. Never really used them to sequence. If I need to get a song done quickly, I can see myself using the BK9's styles to create a chord structure arrangement. Otherwise, I'd just play the tracks myself. It takes me 45min to 3 hours to "polish" a track from start to finish. I really enjoy the process and get a great feeling of accomplishment when I finish a song.

So, I will still experiment with the BK9's recording capability and use it if it works for my process.

Good performance, Jonathon. You two really work well together. I'm surprised, though, that you're not using laptops for the lyrics and music.

Gary

Laura and Jonathan ... nice job ... it must be great that you both have the passion for music and entertaining ... it is no wonder that you are successful ...



... maybe because sheet music might cost less than two laptops ???

This is not a criticism, but I was more surprised by the lack of a vocal processor - which obviously is not needed when they sing together - but might have enhanced Laura's back up singing by adding a couple of harmony voices ...

Tony, I just purchased a backup laptop for $195, which translates to about 75 songs in sheet music form, and that's if you find that cheap. The average sheet here goes for anywhere from $2.99 to $4.99 in the music stores, and not much less from online sources. However, there are still lots of great sites where you can download the sheets for free and you can easily learn a song by listening to it on YouTube. I do that a lot these days. The laptop is a great tool for working pros.

Gary

... obviously it is, Gary ... that's why I had the wink at the end of the sentence ...

Johnathan, just curious. I thought I remembered you having a VP770. Did you get rid of it in favor of the VP7? I love my VP770 as it had a lot of features ie. Audio Key, Supernatural Brass, etc., long before they showed up on the BK9.

chas

As for the vocal processor... We still have the Roland VP770 and the VP7. We only use them for bigger shows. My wife and I have been doing a few smaller gigs and some non-pay gigs. The Bologna Fest was a non-pay show without much set-up time built in... no extra harmonizer for them!!

We use mostly lyric sheets or chord charts that we create. I have the sheets in front of me in the order of the show that we planned out. BUT we are currently turning those sheets into PDF files in order to load them into our iPads. We play in church every Sunday for a contemporary service but our gigs only number 8-14 per year without advertising. So, paper is fine for us right now and will always be our backup.

I must admit, I'm kind of leaning a bit towards using .WAV's a lot more for my shows...

Then I can run my SMF's through ALL my gear at home for the best sound (including VSTi's, the K2500S and Triton's etc.), and simply take the .WAV to the gig.

About the only thing I would miss is the Mark/Jump capability, and I think I have a workaround for that using the Audio Keys feature, so I can add extra sections to the song if the floor packs late or wants to dance longer than the regular structure...

Even when I'm working with WS's, I usually like to START with an arranger 'capture' as an SMF, primarily to get the drums and any guitar parts down first. I can create those from scratch, but I usually find, if there's a style that works well for the song, getting the drums down with the BK saves me a bunch of time, and I can still edit it afterwards in a DAW to add little change-ups and mess with the fills so they aren't always the same, stuff like that. Then I'll replace out the bassline, and anything else that lacks good voice leading.

But for WS only SMF's, sounds like you haver a great handle on it all, Johnathan. That little BK-9 is a sleeper, isn't it? LOL