Great player, BUT,......I didn't like the way the style backing sits so far behind the Piano playing in the mix, a problem I hear alot listening to people play arrangers, Accomp vs RH sounds.......you can hardly hear it....not a good mix IMO.

I thought the same about the mix. RH Voice too forward and backing too low. BK-9 sounds very nice.

Donny, if I hadn't seen your name, I would have thought Diki wrote that ... ... but you are correct ... on my 5.1 PC system it almost sounded like just piano and bass ...
Piano does sound very nice ...

The bk 9 is a very capable instrument and the piano did sound authentic . The player is not a natural arranger player and you can hear that he had some real timing issues but the more he plays the better he will get .

He intended it to be a piano piece..The bass and brush kit volumes werre fine...I would have muted "ALL" the other parts in the style..If all the style was louder it would have sounded worse..

Bass, piano and drums is all the two songs need..

If the backing were louder, perhaps he would have STAYED in time..? LOL

Agreed ... but IMHO the drums could have been more up front ...

There really is something to be said for playing with a REAL band, at least for a few years at the start of your career...

Thing is, an arranger is NEVER going to come up to you after the gig and go 'Hey man! I think you are rushing a bit on those slow tunes!'. It will happily sit there and let you murder the time, or the changes, or the structure, and you'll never KNOW you are doing it!

Why live in the past? I probably played more bar gigs then most in my life 25+ yrs with a band and dont miss it one bit the last 18 yrs solo.
I had good times but I moved on and never looked back to the past ...it's a different world out there to make a steady living as a giggin musician. Your not getting any younger...enjoy life every day I say as long as you can. Forget about the past live for the future I say....every day.
Next time you walk into a bar and the bartender says to you "You here to pick up your grandkid" ....
just smile and think of the old days..

I had 3 great band (more than 2 people) experiences..My first band as a teenager (18-19), The Hi-Fiv band..these guys were all "old"..late 40's and 50's. We were a "hit parade" house band at the Golden Horse..

The second band was my duo partner Cheryl, and Jerry the drummer from Innocents..Emil (guitar)from Mixed Company and myself..from Aria with Cheryl..

The third was my 11 years with "Just in Time"...

Would I want to go back into the past..and play with those old guys...You bet I would..they were real pros, that I took for granted, until I seen other performers..Bass(upright) , drums, guitar, sax, and accordion.

Would I want to play with that throw together band with Cheryl (a pretty black girl that is in my top 5 female vocalist that I have worked with..)..Emil and Jerry..In a heartbeat..Maybe the most fun I ever had in a band..Personalities galore..

Even Just in Time, after this 4 month absence..I am considering rejoining..
Playing Classy venues (bars), has it's rewards..Stage chemistry makes the difference..

Maybe you didn't play with the right people.
How can you tell if they were the right people?..You would play for the fun of it...if it was only about money...you were with the wrong people.

Shame He's NOT an arranger player, not used to working with an electronic drummer and it shows, good free time player and may be good with live backing band who can bend the feel to match. good sound though.
John.

Electronic drummer, real drummer... no difference. If you can't play in time with one, you can't play in time with the other.

You won't find many drummers who get their time from the piano player!

i think he was just struggling to understand that his left hand has to lead the chord changes. many classically trained pianists struggle with timing issues and certainly it takes a while to adapt to an arranger and to stop fighting the way the chords need to be triggered.

He's fantastic piano player He's not an arranger player!

Roland's new Pianostyle system works better than anything else I've played at following pretty normal piano playing, but yes, there's still a fair bit of adjusting you need to do to get accurate chord triggering.

Pianostyle USED to be simply that you needed THREE held notes before the chord would change, but the new system is, it takes three notes if you aren't holding the sustain, but if sustain is down, you need to actually PLAY five notes simultaneously, you can play anything up to four and the chord won't change.

So, play a big arpeggio on the piano with the sustain held down, the chord will not go crazy trying to follow...

Combine it with the Dynamic Arranger making the rhythm section follow your dynamics, and it's quite amazing how little you have to change to get a good result. But yes, you can't play ANYTHING and it figures it out, yet!