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CONTENTS COMMUNITY 10
Special Edition: PHISH’s $1.2M Benefit for Hurricane Irene Relief.
KEYNOTES Hot players, news, and reviews from the keyboard world. 12 Kevin Roth on Making Children’s Music Interesting 14 Dan Tepfer: Variations on Variations 16 Editors’ Playlist: CD Reviews
LESSONS 26 30 34
THE CHORD DOCTOR: David Cook on Comping ORGAN: Radam Schwartz on Better B-3 Bass Lines JAZZ BASICS: Shelly Berg on Melodic Development
ARTISTS 38
DEREK SHERINIAN From Alice Cooper and Billy Idol, to an early stint with Dream Theater, to jamming with Eddie Van Halen and Zakk Wylde, to supergroup Black Country Communion, Derek Sherinian has one purpose in life: To prove that keyboards rock every bit as hard as guitars. Learn how you can, too.
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JESSE KEELER The producer and synthesist extraordinaire may be half of critically acclaimed electronic duos MSTRKRFT and Death From Above 1979, but in this interview, he provides insight into a project of his own: Producing the soundtrack for the latest installment of the Mortal Kombat video game.
SOLUTIONS 50 52 54
DANCE Create Harmonic Interest with Sideband Morphing STEAL THIS SOUND Daft Punk’s “Derezzed” from Tron: Legacy PRODUCERS’ ROUNDTABLE Problem Solving
GEAR 18 56 60 66 72 76
Page 56
NEW GEAR Moog Music MINIMOOG VOYAGER XL Hammond SK1 Steinberg CUBASE 6 Mobile App of the Month MORPHWIZ Roland RD-300NX
KEYBOARD (ISSN 0730-0158) is published monthly by NewBay Media, LLC 1111 Bayhill Drive, Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066. All material published in KEYBOARD is copyrighted © 2011 by NewBay Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in KEYBOARD is forbidden without permission. KEYBOARD is a registered trademark of NewBay Media. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Bruno, CA and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KEYBOARD P.O. Box 9158, Lowell, MA 01853. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
TIME MACHINE 82
Clonewheel Organs we’ve known and loved. . . .
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Exclusive interview with the Flaming Lips! 6
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Evan Bogart talks songwriting, keyboards, and production.
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Vol. 37, No. 11 #428 NOVEMBER 2011 EDITOR: Stephen Fortner
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COMMUNITY From the Editor “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.” —President Calvin Coolidge, September 21, 1928 “It was amazing and inspiring to see so many people come together through music to aid the great state of Vermont. We’re so grateful to the businesses and individuals that helped us raise as much money as possible for the recovery process.” —Trey Anastasio of Phish, September 14, 2011
BANDS DOING GOOD
The last time I wrote about my home state of Vermont in these pages, I was poking fun at Christopher Kimball’s editorials in Cook’s Illustrated. This time, the reason is serious, though thanks to the power of music, there are the makings of a happy ending. What the two quotations above have in common is that they were both spoken about natural disasters that devastated Vermont’s people, transportation, and economy. Coolidge, a Vermont native, had been touring the state to assess recovery about a year after the worst flooding in Vermont’s history. The President everyone called “Silent Cal” was moved to words by the way people pulled together to help each other. Anastasio was speaking just after a concert that he and his bandmates in storied jam-
On September 14, 2011, the band Phish played their first live show in their native state of Vermont in seven years, with all proceeds benefitting people affected by hurricane Irene. The concert raised over $1.2 million, and the band sent us these photos to share. —Ed.
Page McConnell mans his Yamaha C7 piano topped with a Clavinet D6. Between him and guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio is a Moog Little Phatty atop a Hammond B-3 organ, and behind him sits a Yamaha CS-60 atop a Rhodes.
Photos by David Vann
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rock group Phish had quickly organized in the aftermath of hurricane Irene—which unleashed most of her destructive force on Vermont even as all eyes were on New York City. The benefit concert drew over 12,000 attendees to the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds—some driving cross-country in hopes of scoring a ticket outside the gates. When all receipts were tallied, the take was over $1.2 million. Phish’s office tells us that because major donors underwrote concert expenses, all of that will go to flood relief via the Vermont Community Foundation and Phish’s own charitable organization, WaterWheel. Phish weren’t alone in their efforts. Vermont Public Radio raised $610,000 for Irene relief in a single day. At press time, Grace Potter (our May 2011 cover artist) had a benefit concert scheduled for October 9. All across the state, musicians, artists, and media folks have been stepping up, which I got to see for myself on a recent visit. I’d like to thank Phish for putting the show together and for sending us the photos below. Whether you’re a Vermonter or part of a different community that needs help in the wake of Irene, remember that as a musician, you have both the means and the spirit to bring people together and do something awesome. High-profile acts like Phish and Grace Potter may do it on a larger scale, but the example that they set for the rest of us is every bit as important as the dollar amount raised.
11.2011
The
Poll
After your keyboard instruments and computer, what’s the next most important piece of gear in your studio?
Audio interface
40%
Monitor speakers Mics and front-end gear Analog or digital mixer Acoustical treatment
39% 10% 8% 3% To catch up on previous episodes of the Packrat and his time-traveling keytar, visit keyboardmag.com/packrat.
Left to right: PageMcConnell, Trey Anastasio, Mike Gordon, and Jon Fishman take the stage at Vermont’s Champlain Valley Fairgrounds.
Over 12,000 fans came from as far away as California and Colorado to be a part of Phish’s benefit concert for hurricane relief. 11.2011
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KEYNOTES
KEYNOTES
KEVIN ROTH On Making Children’s Music Interesting Think children’s music is all about purple dinosaurs and insipid ear-worm melodies? Think again, says keyboardist, dulcimerist, singer, and composer Kevin Roth, who has released more than 40 children’s and adult albums on labels such as Sony, PBS, and Random House as well as his own label, My Quiet Times. Rather, Roth says, the kids’ music game is won via equal parts creativity and honesty, with a healthy dose of business persistence thrown in. Rather than digging into children’s music from day one, Roth first established his name in the world of folk music. “I made my first album on the dulcimer and started to become known for playing that instrument and singing,” he says. “Smithsonian Folkways was looking for a new dulcimer player to record and I came along. I was this precocious 14-year-old who was playing unusual pop repertoire at live concerts, and they took me.” His big break in the world of children’s music came courtesy of a fortunate PBS gig. “I had made a handful of children’s records, and my Lullabies for Little Dreamers album caught the ear of a producer at PBS,” he says. “He hired me to sing the theme song for the show Shining Time Station, and it grew from there. I was lucky to catch the wave of children’s music that was happening at the time, so when people like Raffi began selling lots of records, I came along and started working with Sony and Random House as well.” As a children’s music composer, Roth has won awards from the American Library Association and Parent’s Choice, while Parents magazine described one of his albums as “everything children’s music should be.” His current children’s projects include a series of book-and-CD sets called Tales of Wabby. With music written on piano and recorded with voice, piano, and dulcimer, Wabby tells stories that captivate children and packages Roth’s music in an intriguingly business-friendly form (more on that later). Based on Roth’s business and creative experience, here are some tips to help you make your own children’s music—or any sort of music, for that matter.
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Use unique instruments, or playing styles, to develop your signature sound. Roth was 13 when he first saw a lap dulcimer performed live, though he’d heard the sound before on Joni Mitchell’s Blue. “It was modal and I understood it technically, based on what I’d learned about playing piano,” he says. “I fell in love and it became my portable piano.” Roth started adapting Joni Mitchell tunes, as well as songs like “Over the Rainbow” and “Amazing Grace,” to the new instrument the only way he knew how. “I played dulcimer like I play piano,” he says. “I imagined a full piano accompaniment. Since most dulcimer playing is relatively simple, traditional repertoire, nobody had heard it played like that before. People thought I was a genius, but I just didn’t know any better.” [Laughs.] These days, Roth uses both instruments to create his unique sound in the studio. “I often track with dulcimer then overdub piano to sweeten everything,” he says. “Piano is always in there, in one form or another.” Experiment with writing on one instrument and performing on another. “Piano is the first instrument I ever played,” Roth says. “I used to come home from elementary school and just try to figure out melodies. I couldn’t read or write music in traditional notation, so I used to take my mother’s lipstick and write numbers on the keys—1, 2, 3, 4—and then write them on paper in order. That was my notation.” Decades later, Kevin still writes at the piano (albeit with no lipstick on the keys)—but given his fluency on both instruments, he often performs those same songs live on dulcimer, especially when pianos aren’t available. “When I was young, I remember hearing McCoy Tyner play dulcimer,” he adds. “He used it in a modal way. It was very inspiring.” [To hear McCoy on dulcimer, check out “Mode for Dulcimer” off of his 1976 album Focal Point. —Ed.] Make kids’ music that parents will like. When it comes to creating music that you can sell, keep your prospective customers in mind. “Twoyear-olds don’t have credit cards,” Roth says. “So if your music isn’t tolerable to parents, they’re not going to buy it for their kids. There’s a lot of horrible music for kids out there that parents just can’t stand.” Make kids’ music that you like. “A lot of children’s music sounds the same because people try to make it sound like every commercial kids’ song they hear,” Roth says. “I write for preschoolers, and the kids are really honest. If they don’t like you, they tell you, so I try to keep everything honest and original. If it isn’t amusing to me, I don’t do it.” Consider using a theme. If you’re having trouble getting started writing children’s music, a good place to begin can be with a character, or set of characters, à la Roth’s Wabby. A second strategy is to focus on a unifying theme rather than a fuzzy critter. Another of Roth’s current projects, for example, features a combination of nursery rhyme instrumentals mixed with relaxing nature sounds. “It’s hard to listen to all 22 tracks in a row,” Roth says of the lullaby-branded disc. [Laughs.] “It really makes you fall asleep.” Create a physical product. “You can’t autograph a download,” Roth says. “Especially at live shows, people still want to buy an artist’s product. That’s the nice thing about children’s books with CDs attached to them, like the Tales of Wabby series.” He further asserts that CDs
Though he often plays acoustic pianos at live shows, Roth composes primarily on a Yamaha Arius digital piano at home. “It’s got a nice touch, and the ability to record demos in it is really useful,” he says. Though he’s owned vintage, rebuilt Steinways and Baldwin acoustic grands before, Roth currently appreciates the portability—and small physical footprint—of the Arius above all else. In addition to his acoustic piano work, Roth plays the diatonically tuned mountain dulcimer and the hammer dulcimer, bringing a distinctly pianistic aesthetic to both instruments. As the name implies, strings on the hammer dulcimer are struck rather than plucked, making it a unique “forerunner for the piano,” Roth says. Like the piano, strings are grouped in sets of two or more, each group tuned to unison, to help the instrument sound with more volume. Pictured at bottom is the “guitarcimer,” a more portable, custom instrument that Roth helped design for his live gigs. remain an important tool for networking and self-promotion: “CDs are essentially the new business cards.” Play live for kids. Not only will you quickly learn what kids like and don’t like, you’ll also get more gigs and, hopefully, make more money. “You can get a million hits on YouTube these days and not really know if it means anything,” he says. “I’m going back to what I did years and years ago—playing at libraries and schools, as well as concert halls, when budgets exist for that. It’s a very down-to-earth thing to do.” Use social media with a long-term view. “When I used to make records, it was a big deal: ‘Wow, he’s a recording artist!’” Roth says. “Now, anybody can record anything, get a Facebook page, and in a week, be a ‘star.’” The problem is, such notoriety doesn’t necessarily last once the initial ego boost wears off—and Internet fame doesn’t necessarily make for a solid career foundation. “Keeping a useful, visible presence on the Internet takes maintenance and stamina, and most people just don’t want to put in the work after a while,” he says. “If you are willing to put in the time and attention to keep things going, it can be a very useful tool for children’s music and beyond.” Michael Gallant Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary talks about Kevin Roth.
11.2011
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KEYNOTES
VINCENT SOYEZ
DAN TEPFER Variations on Variations “I’ve always thought that it was kind of a Holy Grail to be able to squeeze the maximum amount of music out of the minimum amount of material,” says renowned New York jazz pianist Dan Tepfer, who was voted one of the best new artists of 2010 in the JazzTimes annual Critics’ Poll. With Tepfer’s newest release, Goldberg Variations/Variations, the pianist puts his theory into action, playing the original, revered variations by Bach and alternating them with his own improvised interpretations. Based on Tepfer’s experience recording the highly creative Goldberg Variations/Variations, here are some tips to help you build your own original variations on a theme—and make classic pieces of music truly your own. Play through a creative filter. “Fred Hersch once asked me to play Thelonious Monk’s ‘Pannonica’ several different times while thinking of various words, like ‘regal,’ ‘pointy,’ and ‘drunk,’” Tepfer says. “That was kind of a revelation to me—how the same material could turn into dramatically different things.” When creating your own variations, the same strategy can push you in new directions. “Try using various words, moods, or images when you play the same piece,” Tepfer says. He recommends playing a tune like “All the Things You Are” while imagining a car race, a sunset in the mountains, a politician’s speech, or something equally rich in emotion. “Try thinking of evocative words like ‘sarcasm,’ ‘beaming,’ or ‘cathartic,’” he continues. “All of those should lead you to play a specific variation of a song.” Do your homework. When it comes time to create variations on a theme, deep knowledge of the subject matter can be a blessing. “Take the time to really get to know the piece,” Tepfer says. “Don’t just learn the notes; learn the performance history. Read about the composer. Get a feel for what the work is about.” Change a musical element. To push a piece of music into a new orbit, Tepfer recommends making choices that will be structurally disruptive—make all of the chords in a song augmented, repeat every line you play once, jam with a specific groove in mind, or play everything with two contrapuntal lines at all times. “Any idea that is strict while leaving you a good amount of freedom will generate its own variation,” he says. Go with the flow. As with many things creative, becoming fixated on a concrete end point can stifle some of your most original impulses.
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Instead, see where your fingers take you. “In my case, I didn’t set out to update a classic work,” Tepfer says. “It happened organically. I was studying the Goldberg Variations because I love them and, after a while, it just seemed natural to improvise on them.” Mix it up and think big. When you’re creating variations, try thinking of them in terms of an overall composition. “If you played two short variations of “Solar” [a standard by Miles Davis] that are each exciting and fast-moving, it might be time to play an ultra-slow, dirge-like variation next,” Tepfer says. He recommends studying classic theme-and-variation sets by Mozart and Beethoven as expert examples. “Notice how intelligently the variations follow each other. If done right, each variation calls for the next. By the end, we feel like we’ve checked out every possibility contained in the theme.” Keep it fresh. If you’re improvising your variations as Tepfer did on Goldberg Variations/Variations, stay in the moment as much as possible. “Most of [my variations] were first takes, the way they first came out,” he says. “If I start planning this stuff out too much, I find that it becomes less and less alive.” Take your time. Making a great work your own can take years. “Don’t force it,” Tepfer says. “A work of art is like a person. If you’re too forceful, it’ll turn away.” Michael Gallant Dan talks at further length about adapting the Goldberg Variations.
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KEYNOTES
EDITORS’ PLAYLIST
Stephen Fortner
Lori Kennedy
MIKE GARSON The Bowie Variations One of the most preternatural talents of our time returns with this 11-cut set of solo piano improvisations on the classic songs of his lifelong bandmate David Bowie. The familiar melodies and chord changes make Garson’s note-dense style more accessible to the as-yet-uninitiated, and the stylistic ground traversed in every tune will have you nudging your playback cursor to the left as you exclaim, “Wait, you missed the good part!” Only it’s all the good part. Highly recommended. (Reference Recordings | mikegarson.com) TEDDYBEARS Devil’s Music I’ve always thought of these enigmatic Swedes as sort of a Daft Punk with a broader musical base and a more whimsical sensibility. From the crunchy, distorted Wurly chords that kick off the hooky opener “Rocket Scientist,” you’re in for a party. Other highlights include the Flaming Lips joining in on the MGMT-esque anthem “Crystal Meth Christian,” and Cee-Lo rapping affectionately about a housecat as the B-52s sing backup on “Cho Cha.” At once danceable, cerebral, and fun, fun, fun. Devil’s Music could be “hipster” if it weren’t so damned good. (Big Beat | teddybearsrock.com) HEIDECKER & WOOD Starting From Nowhere Taking a break from the nonsequitur humor of Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Tim Heidecker and show composer Davin Wood serve up sometimes funny, sometimes serious, always memorable pop originals. While the bouncy “Right or Wrong” could be Joe Jackson backed by Barenaked Ladies, tracks like “Right to the Minute” draw expertly on ’70s soft rock (think Little River Band or Orleans), without sounding clichéd. This is impeccable pop songcraft cleverly disguised as a novelty album, and the most pleasant surprise to grace my CD player all year. Great job! (Little Record Company | heideckerandwood.com)
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Sebastian Fotouhi
BALAM ACAB Wander/Wonder Swirling synth textures, sparse percussion, vinyl crackles, and hushed bubbles splash and wash over all the tracks on Wander/Wonder. Listen to this one loud so you don’t miss any of the gorgeous sounds gracing the debut from 20-yearold Alec Koone. The album has a dream-like quality, with touches of recognizable sounds and echo-y voices fading in and out throughout. There’s also an underlying buzzy-synth that drifts into most tracks, making Wander/Wonder an aural tease. I’m eager for Koone’s next project. (Tri Angle | myspace.com/thebalamacab)
SOFT METALS Psychic Driving Soft Metals is Patricia Hall and Ian Hicks, and with this debut album, the duo draws listeners in with a mellow, spacey synth fronted by Hall’s siren-like singing. Each song has an ’80s dance beat supporting haunting synth sounds, creating an irresistible draw to move with the music. The soundscapes on tracks like “Psychic Driving” are quite out of the ordinary for today’s artists; if I’d initially heard this song on the radio, I’d think it came straight out of the ’80s. (Captured Tracks | myspace.com/softmetals)
DJ SHADOW The Less You Know, the Better It’s been five years since his last album, but instrumental hip-hop king DJ Shadow has hit the decks smoking again with TLYK, TB—created entirely in the box with samples but sporting analog sounds. “Sad and Lonely” features vinyl hiss, pops, and cracks in all the right places; “Warning Call” sounds like Shadow recorded an indie-rock band in the studio; “Back to Front” features Shadow’s signature swagger-laden beats; and “Circular Logic” is heavy on expert scratches. A warm, scratchy, bass-y delight. (Verve | djshadow.com)
DARK LOFT Dark Loft These five friends are onto something great with their blues/rock debut. “Rose and Gold” is a standout track, with its enticing guitar and keyboard riffs that rise to the fore with a confident jump from rhythm to lead. The smooth and unassuming keys are rhythmically tight and deft during solos. Keyboards are present throughout the disc, lending the rhythm section a hand. Tonality of the keys focuses on gospel-like organ or open-top acoustic piano, giving each song a full, wide feel. Nicely done. (myspace.com/jcdarkloft)
HAIL MARY MALLON Are You Gonna Eat That? Quintessential underground MC Aesop Rock joins fellow basement-dwelling comrades Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz to form Hail Mary Mallon. Rock and Sonic engage in a battle of insane rapping while Wiz provides skillful scratches and samples. Don’t be fooled by the good-time vibe—there’s nothing “silly” about this album. These three are serious pros and excellent at their craft. “Church Pants,” “Meter Feeder,” and the ultra-fun “Breakdance Beach” are must-listens. (Rhymesayers | rhymesayers.com/hailmarymallon)
MOCEAN WORKER Candygram for Mowo! Adam Dorn (a.k.a. Mocean Worker) lays down sweet beats on his latest jazzed-out endeavor, Candygram for Mowo! With jazz horns and drums, this upbeat album inspires serious bouts of foot-tapping. The uplifting keyboard riffs throughout are all catchy and fun. The light high end of the keys and swinging beat give the song “Sistas and Bruthas” a superhappy vibe. I don’t listen to a lot of jazz, but this album is definitely going on my music player. (!K7 | moceanworker.com)
11.2011
WK-7500: 76 Keys CTK-7000: 61 Keys
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Drawbar and mixer control. Use the nine sliders to finish your mix and create killer organ tones.
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©2011 CASIO AMERICA, INC.
NEW GEAR
by Lori Kennedy
NOVATION IMPULSE Concept: MIDI controllers with Automap and drum pads. Big deal: Aftertouch. Endless knobs. Full transport control. Nine assignable buttons and 55mm faders. Comes with Automap 4, Ableton Live Lite, Novation BassStation, and 1.5GB of samples. We think: These offer a lot of what we like about the SL Mk. II—and better pads—in a simpler, more affordable form. List (25/49/61 keys): $329.99/$449.99/$499.99 | Approx. street: $250/$350/$400 | novationmusic.com
M-AUDIO KEYSTATION MINI 32 Concept: Ultra-portable USB MIDI keyboard controller. Big deal: Low-profile mini-keys. Knob and buttons are assignable. Plug-and-play iPad compatibility. Selectable velocity curves, including one for drum programming. We think: With half an octave more keys than an Akai LPK25 and half an octave less than a Korg MicroKey, it seems there’s a mini controller to fit any laptop bag. List: $99.99 | Approx. street: $80 | m-audio.com
RADIAL ENGINEERING PHAZEQ Concept: Phase correction module for the Workhorse 500 system. Big deal: Both a phase-correcting tool and a summing equalizer. Phase-align any two signals for proper tone, or create insane EQ curves. Discreet analog, Class-A circuitry. We think: The Workhorse is the best value going in a customizable “lunchbox” of recording gear, and this makes it even more flexible. List: $350 | Approx. street: $300 | radialeng.com
DLQ KEYB EXPANDER Concept: Self-contained clonewheel organ module. Big deal: Reproduces all nuances of a tonewheel organ, including crosstalk, tonewheel flutter, voltage robbing, and foldback. Great rotary simulation. Upper, lower, and pedal parts, each with its own drawbars. We think: This is effectively a KeyB Duo (what Joey DeFrancesco tours with) sans keys—perfect if you need full organ but don’t have room for more slabs. List: $1,999 | Approx. street: $1,700 | keyborgan.com
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CINEMATIQUE INSTRUMENTS DRUMBOXES Concept: Drum modules for Kontakt. Big deal: Each sound in a kit has four layers, each with adjustable volume and duration. Built-in 16-step sequencer. We think: Currently, two Drumboxes are available: Rude Boy and Electro Partner. Those names alone make us want to rock out with our . . . well, you get the picture. Direct: $49 each | $70 bundled | bettermusicdistribution.com
ALTO PROFESSIONAL LIVE 88 Concept: Full-length, semi-weighted MIDI controller. Big deal: Keyboard is a great-feeling middle ground if your duties involve both piano and synth. Sustain pedal input. Solid construction aimed at being on the road. We think: This looks almost identical to the Z-Key from CME, yet costs less. We wonder if that has anything to do with Alto being bought by the Alesis/Akai/Numark folks earlier this year. List: $499 | Approx. street: $400 | altoproaudio.com
KORG MICROARRANGER Concept: Miniature arranger workstation keyboard. Big deal: Same velocity-sensitive mini keys as MicroKorg XL. Stereo speakers. Four effect slots, 304 accompaniment styles (each with intros, endings, fills, and four variations, all editable), 660 factory sounds, and 128 user programs. We think: Arranger keyboards can be powerful songwriting aids, and now you can put that power in your backpack. $TBD | korg.com
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS MASCHINE MIKRO Concept: The pad-based interface and groove-oriented host software of Maschine, now in a fun travel size. Big deal: Velocity- and pressure-sensitive pads. Comes with full Maschine software and 6GB of sounds. Expandable via Maschine Expansions and the free Komplete Elements library. We think: The full-sized Maschine is an absolute blast, and this will bring it to tight DJ booths and even tighter budgets alike. List: $399 | Approx. street: $TBD | native-instruments.com
See press releases about new gear as soon as we receive them at keyboardmag.com/news. 11.2011
KEYBOAR DMAG.COM
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CONFERENCE
October 20-23, 2011 EXHIBITS
October 21-23, 2011 Jacob K. Javits Convention Center New York, NY
www.aes.org
LESSONS The Chord Doctor COMPING CLASS Whether you’re playing in a stadium for a platinum artist, or in an intimate jazz club with a singer, it’s important to have a deep reservoir of comping choices to draw from. Comping (short for accompaniment) is the glue that holds a musical situation together and propels it forward. Choosing when to be a calming influence versus a driving force can be the thing that people remember about you, and the reason that your phone keeps ringing. Let’s take a simple four-chord progression of Bb minor, Db major,
Gb major, and F7 (it or ones like it have been used for decades in popular songs like Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”) and create different comping approaches. Before we begin, keep in mind what artists like Herbie Hancock, Kenny Kirkland, James Poyser, Wynton Kelly, Floyd Cramer, Larry Goldings, Mulgrew Miller, Donny Hathaway, and Stevie Wonder have in common: Each has the chops and ideas to impress, but the taste to know when not to do so. David Cook
1. Singer/Songwriter Comping Keeping chord voicings simple doesn’t have to mean making them boring. In Ex. 1, I’m adding fourths along with thirds to inject color and variation into my chords. A great device to develop your chord movement and voice leading is to think of the top note of your chord as a melody note, and move from chord to chord in a way that makes melodic sense. If you have a bass player, also experiment with playing different non-root notes on the bottom of your chords.
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2. Fast Jazz My teacher Ellen Rowe taught me how the pianist in a jazz group can be the glue between the rhythm section and soloist. Ex. 2 illustrates comping patterns that can help a jazz pianist lock a band together. Notice how I’m varying my voicings with a mix of clusters and quartal structures (chords built on fourths), playing them rhythmically to help spur a musical conversation amongst the band.
11.2011
KEYBOAR DMAG.COM
SARAH SLOBODA
New York-based keyboardist David Cook is the musical director for four-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift. Cook has also accompanied Jennifer Hudson, Natasha Bedingfield, ’NSync, and Marianne Faithfull. His debut album as a leader, Pathway, is available now. Find out more at davidcookmusic.com. Jon Regen
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LESSONS 3. R&B Rhodes Ex 3. takes our progression into R&B territory, with pulsing, repetitive Rhodes chords that strike a groove as hard as any other member of the band. Play these by pushing and pulling around the beat, or swinging the eighth-notes even if the main groove is straight. Add delay or tremolo to sweeten the sound even more.
4. Rolling Re-Harmonization In Ex. 4, I’m keeping the bass notes of our progression the same while changing quality of the chords. Remember that any chord can substitute for any other chord in the right circumstance. Instead of Bb minor, try a suspended, major, or compound “slash chord” such as Gb/Bb. Reharmonizing parts of a familiar chord progression is a great way to explore new sonic turf.
Audio examples recorded by the author.
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Gear Note: All audio examples for this lesson were played on the Nord Electro 3 HP for piano and Rhodes sounds. For my gig with Taylor Swift, I use the Nord Stage 2 and C2, along with Dave Smith’s Prophet ’08 triggering Apple’s MainStage running on a MacBook Pro. David Cook
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LESSONS Organ BETTER B-3 BASS LINES I was first immersed in jazz organ playing through live performances in the fertile Newark, New Jersey, jazz scene. Some of the who made an early impact on me were John Patton, Sonny Phillips, Ernie Jones, and David Brahm. As most organ trios don’t include a bass player, the creation and execution of driving, inventive bass lines is one of the organist’s most important tasks. And while the majority of organ players (myself included) use the bass pedals to add impact and thump to their bass lines, often
combining staccato playing on the foot pedals with legato playing in the left hand, my focus here will be on developing your left hand bass lines. One area where organ bass lines often differ compared to those on piano and string bass is their frequent reliance on open intervals, including fifths and octaves, with chromatic approach tones connecting them. Play the following examples alone at first, and then add comping on beat 1 and the “and” of beat 2, in order to develop independence between your hands. Radam Schwartz
1. Roots and Fifths Ex. 1 employs the root and fifth of each chord, with a chromatic approach tone on beat 4. Notice the pattern adjustment on the B7 chord in order to stay in the proper bass range—this happens regularly on the organ. I’m using the flatted fifth here on beat 4 as an approach note to the root of the next chord. Always think ahead to the next chord! C7
œ
? 44 œ
œ bœ
œ
A b7
?
B b7
F7
œ nœ
œ
D b7
bœ bœ nœ bœ
G b7
bœ bœ
E7
œ
A7
œ bœ œ œ
?œ œ œ bœ
bœ
œ bœ nœ
nœ
bœ bœ nœ bœ
D7
G7
œ œ œ bœ
œ
E b7
bœ bœ
œ
B7
œ nœ
œ #œ
œ œ bœ
nœ
C7
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2. Octaves and Fifths The bass line in Ex. 2 uses octaves and fifths, along with a chromatic passing tone to the next chord. The octave surrounds the fifth and provides motion to the bass line, and is also contrasted by the chromatic motion leading to the root of each new chord. Octaves (and interval skips in general) are often effective between beats 1 and 2. C7
œ
? 44 œ
œ bœ
œ
A b7
?
?œ 30
bœ A7
œ
œ bœ
œ
œ nœ
D b7
bœ bœ nœ bœ E7
B b7
F7
œ
œ nœ
G b7
bœ bœ nœ
œ œ bœ
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bœ
bœ
E b7
11.2011
bœ bœ nœ bœ
D7
œ
G7
œ œ bœ
bœ B7
œ
œ œ bœ œ
bœ bœ nœ œ #œ nœ C7
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LESSONS 3. Root, Fifth, Minor Seventh, Fifth Ex. 3 employs the root, fifth, and minor seventh, then returns to the fifth of the chord, for a very funky bass line. This type of motion also works well when syncopated over a funk groove. I used this bass concept on the tune “Browne James” on the Cecil Brooks III recording For Those Who Love To Groove. The passing tone on this bass line is a whole step to the root of the next chord.
C7
œ bœ
? 44 œ
œ
œ
A b7
?
B b7
F7
œ bœ
œ
bœ bœ bœ
œ
E7
?œ œ œ œ
bœ bœ bœ
œ
B7
bœ bœ
bœ
D7
œ œ œ
œ
œ
G b7
bœ bœ bœ A7
œ bœ
bœ
D b7
E b7
œ
G7
œ
C7
œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ œ
œ
œ #œ
œ
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4. Putting it Together Ex. 4 puts all these concepts to work over “cycle blues” changes, also called “Confirmation changes” after the Charlie Parker standard. Note that sometimes on a II-V chord progression, you can lead directly into the root of the V chord, as shown in measures 4 and 8. I also stayed on the II chord in bar 2, and used chromatic motion into the D minor chord in bar 3. This is a common result of using open intervals, and gives an alternative to more standard-sounding ii-V-I bass lines. Also note that when you approach your target note (root or fifth) from below, it’s almost always by a half step.
E min7b 5
F maj7
? 44
œ
B b7
?
bœ
œ
œ bœ
œ bœ bœ
A 7/E
nœ bœ
A min7b 5
D 7b 9
D min7
œ bœ
nœ bœ œ #œ
œ
G7
œ
G7
œ
œ bœ G min7/C
œ
œ bœ
32
Radam Schwartz with Cecil Brooks III at Asbury Park Jazz Festival.
KEYBOAR DMAG.COM
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œ C7
œ œ œ bœ
Radam Schwartz has appeared and recorded with acclaimed musicians like Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Arthur Prysock, Russell Gunn, David ‘Fathead’ Newman, and countless others. Schwartz’s 1995 album Organized was called “one of the essential organ records of all time” in Mark Vail’s book The Hammond Organ: Beauty in the B (Backbeat Books/Hal Leonard). Find out more at radamschwartzjazz.com. Jon Regen Audio examples.
C min/F
F 7/E b
œ bœ nœ F maj7
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LESSONS
Jazz Basics MELODIC DEVELOPMENT IN IMPROVISATION Many of the improvisers we regard as profound share the seemingly contradictory traits of being empathetic and emphatic. How is this achieved? The answer lies in the importance of selecting notes that resonate deeply against the intent of the harmony, and also in following the tension and release that’s inherent in every song. Great artists pour their souls into these notes, and the results sear deeply into the heart of the listener. When a student finishes playing a solo, my first question is often, “What was the longest note you played?” That query is followed by,
“What was the longest rest you took?” Soloing is like speaking, in that when we want to make a point, we add emphasis to the right word or syllable. The beauty of music is in the notes we linger on, and in the space we allow for listeners (and ourselves) to absorb those profound moments. The examples below use a common chord progression, often played over the first four bars of the standard “Like Someone in Love” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke—be sure to look up the lyrics as well. Shelly Berg
1. One Note Per Chord I often ask my students to practice creating melodies like the one in Ex. 1, which plays exactly one note over each chord. The seventh of Ebmaj7 is benign and “pretty” in this context. The following Ab note over G7 is the flat ninth, and adds tension. The F is an eleventh of Cmin7—also benign but more purposeful than the expected fifth. The choice of the ensuing D doesn’t add tension to the chord, but continues the melodic shape from the first measure, and is dramatic due to the large interval. In fact, the entire excerpt follows and manipulates the opening shape as a way of exploring the depth of that gesture. The B natural is very intense as the sharp eleventh of the chord, fitting the wonder of the words “gazing at stars” in the song’s lyrics. The equally intense A over Gmin7 tracks with the word “stars.” Then, Eb is the sharp ninth of C7, also intense and emotional. The final Ab note brings the exploration to an end, almost as a sigh.
2. Two-Note Solos Once the technique in Ex. 1 is mastered, the next step is to create a two-note gesture based on those notes. Ex. 2 demonstrates two-note motifs beginning with the notes from the previous example. The use of tension and release is increased here, as exemplified by the F to G in measure 2, the B to C in measure 3, and the A to Bb in measure 4. Every note in this example is a chord tone, adding richness and definition to the previous phrase.
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LESSONS
3. Three-Note Solos Ex. 3 follows a three-note idea through the phrase. This excerpt is very dramatic, with large leaps as well as subtly shifting intervals. Notice that the original emphatic notes from Ex. 1 remain the emotional force behind this phrase.
4. Eighth-Note Solos Once you’ve internalized the ability to search for profound notes in tension and release within a song, your playing becomes much more mature and virtuosic. Ex. 4 depicts constant eighth-notes emanating from the notes in Ex. 1. The “in-between” notes are the journey, seeking the tones that express the unique beauty of the song. This example employs tension and release throughout. The increased tension of measure 3 is well placed for the phrase, which becomes more intense as it goes long and lets up towards the end.
5. Simplicity An important exercise in simplicity is to find notes that either don’t move between chords (for instance, the opening G could have remained for the next chord), or move by a step to a note in the next chord. Ex. 5 explores this stepwise motion within each bar.
Shelly Berg is Dean of the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He has composed, arranged, and performed for feature films, TV, and major label recordings in multiple genres, and has performed all over the world as a jazz pianist. Berg’s album Blackbird reached number one on the U.S. jazz radio charts, and textbooks he’s written include Essentials of Jazz Theory (Alfred) and Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method (Kendor). Find out more at shellyberg.com. Jon Regen Audio examples.
Video: Shelly Berg plays “Tea For Two.”
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PRECISION KEYBOARD - INSTANT MAPPING Want to get hands on with your music software? MIDI keyboards often have knobs and faders. Nobody uses them because mapping and re-mapping is so tedious.
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DEREK SHERINIAN Keyboard Hero for a New Generation
Derek with his new Minimoog Voyager XL, surrounded by a few close friends. Clockwise from left: Moog Taurus, Nord Modular G2, Hohner Clavinet D6, Nord Lead 3 and Electro 3, Roland Jupiter-6, Korg Kronos 61, Roland Fantom-X7 and V-Synth, Roland D-50, Sequential Circuits Pro-One, and Roland Super JX.
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WILLIAM HAMES
Interview by Robbie Gennet Story by Lori Kennedy In the ’70s and part of the ’80s, demigods like Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and Jon Lord topped the charts and battled each other (or, perhaps, we fans imagined that they battled) for rock supremacy. Today, the archetype of the keyboard hero is elusive amidst guitar-heavy alternative rock, not to mention the varieties of electronic music that are more about groove and sonics than about raw virtuosity. The most intentional and outspoken exception to this state of affairs has to be Derek Sherinian, the man Alice Cooper once dubbed “the Caligula of keyboards.” From straight rock gigs with Cooper and Billy Idol (with whom Derek still tours) to the calisthenics of Dream Theater from 1994 to 1999, Yngwie Malmsteen, and his own prog outfit Planet X, one thing is clear: Where you find heavy, you’ll probably find Derek, who’s thick sounds and guitaristic approach to soloing stand as tall as the baddest of six-string slingers. Need proof? Sherinian’s newest solo album Oceana matches his chops with those of legendary guitarists such as Steve Lukather, Joe Bonamassa, Steve Stevens, Tony MacAlpine, and Doug Aldrich. In addition, supergroup Black Country Communion—Sherinian, Bonamassa, Deep Purple bassist and vocalist Glenn Hughes, and drummer Jason Bonham—has been the surprise critical and commercial success of the year. With each new chapter in his career, Sherinian has risen ever higher into the rare pantheon of keyboard legends. We got the scoop on his approach, influences, gear, and the state of keyboards in rock ’n’ roll. I was just listening to Oceana, and there are so many influences: fusion, rock, progressive time signatures, and even a little funk. Did it come out how you envisioned it or did it morph into something as you worked with different people? The end product is pretty much what we decided on. At the outset, I knew I wanted to play again with [drummer] Simon Phillips as I did on my Inertia album. I’ve covered a lot of different musical ground between my last release and this one. I did some honest evaluating, listening to everything, and there’s just a certain quality factor when Simon is involved—not only in the writing but in the producing and mixing as well. Put Steve Lukather in the mix, and it’s just a whole other level—one that I aspire to be at one day. I’ve always wanted people around me that would make me a better player—why scratch with the turkeys when you can soar with the eagles? And I’ve always had a very strong rock and fusion influence. When I was younger, before I went to Berklee College of Music, I was very into Jeff Beck, Al DiMeola, and Allan Holdsworth. So, guitar players were influencing you as a keyboardist? Yes, moreso from the rock side of things. Eddie Van Halen was huge because he was the very first musician through which I saw that you could really express your personality through an instrument and have an individual sound. When you hear it, you go, “Wow, that’s him.” It really stands out from some guys who just play fast or have distortion on their guitars. I’ve always made that my main priority as a keyboard player—when I took a solo, I wanted to be identified as having a signature sound, no matter the style of music. Can you describe that sound? As you pointed out, it’s influenced by various guitar players—Van Halen, Holdsworth, Jeff Beck, and a bit of Yngwie Malmsteen, from playing in his band. That’s the thing—I’ve worked intimately with some great guitarists, on tour and recording and producing, and I feel like after working with them, a part of them becomes a part of me. I’m just a sponge, taking it all in and trying to incorporate it into my everevolving voice. 11.2011
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More specifically, Jeff Beck influences me because he’s pretty much a rock player who loved the harmonies of jazz, so he surrounded himself with these jazz guys on his fusion records and came up with this beautiful sound. As opposed to a jazz-trained guy, who might get a distortion box and a Charvel guitar and all of a sudden he’s a rock player. That doesn’t translate in the right way. I’m coming from rock and going into the other worlds, so it always has a level of balls—it has to have balls—and that goes not only for the arrangement and composition but the keyboard sounds. So the big difference between rock and jazz is “balls”? Yeah, man. If you didn’t have Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin or Van Halen posters on your wall as a kid, you’re not gonna have that in your blood when you solo or in the riffs that you write. On the other hand, you have a lot of sensitivity in your arsenal. It depends on whom I’m playing with. It’s like, I wanna be able to go in with Lukather, who plays more of the ballad Jeff Beck-type stuff, and still be able to play the cool “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” Rhodes parts, but then be able to go into Yngwie’s world and play choir sounds and double his riffs. I wanna be that chameleon guy while maintaining my own sound. I think a lot of the reason why all of these great people are making themselves available to play on my records is that I’m letting them shine, but over a different backdrop than they might on their own records. Which keyboardists are among your main influences? Jan Hammer was the first keyboardist that I heard where when he soloed, I thought “Okay, that’s different.” It was more aggressive than, like, those video-game Minimoog solos that didn’t have cool pitchbends. It was more guitar-like. He overdrove his Minimoog, and the way he bent it was very original. He was a role model to me as a kid. To a lesser extent, I was influenced by Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, and Jon Lord. I loved their heaviness, and with the Hammond B-3 organ I use in the band Black Country Communion, I’m constantly telling producer Kevin Shirley, “Listen to how loud Jon Lord’s keyboards were in Deep Purple. Don’t be shy, crank it up!” About Black Country Communion, had you played with Joe Bonamassa or the other musicians before? Glenn Hughes has been an acquaintance for the past 15 years or so. I’d never played with Jason Bonham, and I hadn’t really heard much about Joe Bonamassa until I started playing with him. Then I became aware of the tremendous impact he’s making on the blues guitar world. Black Country Communion is a formidable but perhaps unlikely combination of talents. How did you four get together? The way it happened was, Joe Bonamassa was playing House of Blues in Los Angeles and Glenn Hughes sat in on a few songs. Kevin Shirley was in the audience and he had the epiphany that somebody should put together a group around those two guys. The next two people he called were Jason and myself. The whole idea was to go into the studio to learn a few songs and record them. It turned into a week-long session and we got a whole album in the can. I didn’t even meet Jason or have a conversation with him until four days into the session—we were moving that fast. We were all so focused, and Kevin Shirley is great at what he does, harnessing everything. We put out the self-titled album and it resonated great in Europe. No one was expecting that. Then we decided to play a couple of shows in the U.K. during the holidays in 2010, and we sold out venues with 3,000 to 4,000 seats. It was like, “Wow, this could be something.” So then, the plan was to go back into the studio and record Black Country Communion 2 in January [2011] and release it in June, then do a full
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summer of European touring. I just got back from the tour last week, and it went great. People are digging it, and sometimes in this crazy business you stumble into something that just works and you don’t question it—it’s organic. How has Black Country Communion impacted you musically? It really gave me a chance to get to know the B-3. I’ve been a purist in using real instruments on my records, but on all my tours, I’ve never taken a B-3 out; I’ve always taken clonewheels instead. I’d brought the real Leslie, but this is the first time where I’ve gone on tour with the B-3. I purchased a gorgeous 1962 fruitwood B-3 and had it modified by Ken Rich. The Leslie is cherry and I love it; I’ll never play live again without it. I’m doing some shows with Billy Idol this October, and I’m bringing the B-3. Once you have the real thing, why mess around? I feel almost embarrassed that I didn’t insist on one years ago. As long as I don’t have to lift it, I’m bringing it! What other keyboards are staples in your rig? If I wasn’t bringing the B-3, my favorite clone is the Nord Electro 3. There are a bunch of new ones that I haven’t played yet, but thus far the Electro 3 through a Leslie 122 is what I’ve used. There’s a lot of Rhodes on my record, and the Rhodes samples in the Electro 3 are pretty awesome—you can tweak and overdrive ’em. Also, the Mellotrons are fantastic. On the last Billy Idol tour, I didn’t run just the B-3 sounds from the Electro through the Leslie; I also ran the Wurly sounds and the Mellotrons through it and rolled off the overdrive a little bit. [Billy Idol guitarist] Steve Stevens turned around and said, “Man, that sounds amazing!” Have you done a lot with modular synths? It seems they’d work with your signature sound. Not much, but I just got a Minimoog Voyager XL, which is pretty massive. I’m using probably five percent of its capacity. I really need to just sit with the manual and dig in. There’s gonna be a learning curve, but it sounds so massive. I used it all over Oceana for bass sounds and for doubling the guitar melodies to get that thick analog sound. I run it through a guitar amp or a Tech 21 SansAmp to give it a little teeth. [See our full review of the Voyager XL on page 56. —Ed.] While we’re talking gear, I have to give a shout-out. Arlan Schierbaum is someone that I met this year that has been very helpful. He helped find my B-3. He loaned me his ’74 Rhodes, which sounds great, for the record. He’s a great player that hasn’t gotten his due credit. Tell us about your custom-tilted keyboard stands. Whenever you see pictures of keyboard players—unless you’re behind the rigs shooting from an aerial view—every shot is of a person standing behind a box. One of the great things about guitar is that you see the player’s hands on the instrument, and there’s something that resonates there. So I came up with the idea—and I’m not saying I’m the first to do it—to tilt the keyboards away from me a bit, so no matter where you are in the venue, you can see my hands moving on the keys instead of just me making stupid faces and moving my shoulder. Was it hard to adapt your playing to the tilt? Actually, I found that having the hand tilted is better ergonomically. I was always taught that the correct technique in piano is to let your hands just fall on the keyboard so there’s no tension between the tip of the finger and the shoulder, keeping as loose as possible. The forward tilt achieves that looseness when I’m standing up. I now see metal keyboardists all over the world doing the tilt. As to the audience seeing the keyboardist’s hands, what about the keytar?
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As early in my career as 20 years ago, I’d instructed my closest friends that if they ever saw a keytar around my neck, they should rip it off and bludgeon me with it! Can we blame the ’80s for that? Yeah, all those disgusting digital Tinkerbell sounds that you heard in pop songs—it’s just cheesy. There’s just been a lot of cheese. It’s probably why I used minimal digital sounds on Oceana, though there are modern synths. There’s Rhodes, there’s B-3, there’s analog synth. It was before I got my Kronos, so I’m using a Korg M3 on a lot of the solos. I have some soft synths that I love, which I run on the [Muse Research] Receptor. I like Omnisphere, GForce M-Tron for some of the Mellotrons—those were the go-to sounds. Can you recall an instance of a certain type of synth sound inspiring your playing in a new way? A big breakthrough in my keyboard style was when I first joined Dream Theater in ’94. They gave me a Korg Trinity and connected me with Jack Hotop, the master sound designer at Korg. He asked me, “What would be your ultimate thing?” and I told him there was a factory patch called “Monster Lead” that I liked, but wanted to get more expressiveness out of. We put a delay on it, assigned the joystick so that down was wahwah and up was vibrato, and put feedback on the ribbon controller. Jack helped me tweak that and other sounds. You’ve played alongside Yngwie Malmsteen. How demanding was that? Yngwie’s music may be more demanding than Alice Cooper but certainly not more so than Planet X or when I first played in Dream Theater—jumping into that was like being thrown in with the lions, learning all those songs I’d never heard before in such a short time. I knew that if I could get over that obstacle, I’d be able to tackle anything that was put in front of me musically. Tell us about playing with Steve Lukather. He has probably been on four of my solo records, and he’s great. As a kid, I wasn’t really a fan of Toto, but the outro solo he played on “Rosanna” was massive, and it’s obvious he’s one of the greats. I remember the first time on my Inertia album, ten years ago, Simon Phillips goes, “Why don’t we bring Lukather in?” and I go, “Why not?” It was a big landmark in my career. Simon is one of my heroes, and here’s Lukather, and they’re playing on my record, and I’m sitting there going, “Wow, these guys are the cream of the crop—you don’t get any higher than this.” I need to align myself with those guys because I wanna be one of those guys! I’ve structured my whole life to get good enough to be in that pantheon of players. Do you have any influences that fans would be surprised to find out about? I’d like to give credit to a couple of my teachers that were fantastic. I studied with Russell Ferrante [of the Yellowjackets] for a year or so when I was 19. You can hear his influence on my piano solo on the first song “Five Elements.” Another teacher of mine who is very underrated is Mitchel Forman. He’s a jazz guy, but he has some balls to him. He’s here in L.A. and I studied with him. I recorded some tracks on Inertia at his studio because he had a really cool Rhodes, and I liked him coaching me along because he’s a really sick player. What was the first concert where you saw a keyboard player and it made you say, “Oh my gosh?” I saw the Return To Forever reunion in ’81 or ’82, and Chick Corea was great. What rock bands were you digging back then? In 1980, Van Halen was my first rock concert, for the album Women
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Derek with Eddie Van Halen. The forward keyboard tilt both lets the audience see his hands and, Derek says, improves the ergonomics of playing while standing up.
and Children First. My son is named Halen . . . that’s how big of an impact they had, even though there was no keyboard until the 1984 album. Just the massiveness, the mightiness—I thought, “Man, this is what I wanna do for a living.” I actually got a chance to play with Eddie in 2006. How did that happen? There was a party at his house, and he hired a cover band my friend was in. My friend said, “Derek, you gotta be on this gig.” So we went to Eddie’s house for rehearsal. It wasn’t planned that Eddie would play, but he said, “I wanna play too.” And I’m all, “This is amazing!” So I’m up there jamming, and I took a solo on something, and Eddie says, “Wow, it sounds like you’ve listened to me a lot.” And I go, “Aw, yeah!” It was just surreal. I’ve met a lot of rock stars over the years, but that was a different level. So he brought me into his studio, and I ended up staying in there for two hours listening to stories, and I’m seeing the shark guitar from the Women and Children First cover, and vaults of master tapes that no one has ever heard. I was like, “Pinch me. This isn’t real.” At that point, did he know who you were? He probably had no idea! [Laughs.] At the end, I said, “Eddie, this has been a dream come true.” I had brought all my solo records, and I said, “Will you please give these a listen?” He took them and said, “Thank you so much.” It was pretty awesome to be able to do that. Speaking of dreams, being on the cover of Keyboard is something I’ve wanted my whole life, and I hope seeing this inspires younger keyboard players to step up and not just be playing in the background. Really get into your instrument, get into your programming, learn as many styles as you can, but stick to the kind of music that inspires you the most. Do you have any other rock ’n’ roll dreams? If you’re reading this, Jeff Beck, you need me in your band. [Laughs.] Work with Simon Phillips and I on one of our records. Let us write produce and play. Let us go back to the roots. I want to be your keyboard player! Listen to the new solo album online.
Video: In the studio with Black Country Communion.
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“FINISH HIM!” Jesse Keeler Wins at Mortal Kombat by Lori Kennedy 44
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As half of two duos—MSTRKRFT with Al-P, and Death From Above 1979 with Sebastien Grainger—Jesse Keeler is well known in the electro and dance-punk scenes for his bassshattering beats, buzzing synths, and grinding guitars. So when Keeler was approached to curate the soundtrack for the latest installment of the Mortal Kombat video games—of which Keeler is a fan—he was stoked to lend his club-thumping talents to this virtual throat-ripping project. The end result? A sonically dark and appropriately evil collection of songs, with each track reflecting a different character in the game. Keeler spoke with Keyboard about how choosing the artists featured on Mortal Kombat: Songs Inspired by the Warriors (Watertower Music, 2011) creating his own track for the album, “Deathstalker (Scorpion’s Theme),” and his tools and techniques for the production process. How did the Mortal Kombat gig come about? Someone who works at Warner Brothers approached the manager of our label [Teenage Riot], and we’re fans of the game. We played a demo of the game and thought it was cool. We—me, Adrian Martinez [Keeler’s manager], and Jamal Dauda [label GM]—pitched the idea that we could get different artists and pair them with characters from the game. Did you personally pick the artists who appear on the album? We worked on it together at the label, so it was me, Adrian, and Jamal. The three of us brainstormed about who we thought would be right. We approached people, and as people got back to us gradually, we got it together. The artists seemed to know which character they wanted to work on right away. We gave everyone simple and straightforward direction as to what to do. We told them what feel to go for: dark and evil! [Laughs.] We told everyone to be as dark and as evil as they could get, but to also keep in mind the character they’re working on. I mean, Johnny Cage [a “good guy” in the game] doesn’t need a really dark, scary track, like Sub-Zero or Scorpion would. How much hands-on involvement did you have with each artist’s track? The artists on the album are all people whose music I respect, and they’re all people who we trust with the responsibility of doing something appropriate. After all the talking, I don’t like to be told exactly what to do. If someone wants something really specific, I usually tell them that they should probably do it themselves. I don’t like to operate that way. We don’t run the record label that way. If we say we want to put something out for someone, we want them to have all the creative control. I didn’t wanna have a record label where I sat there and told someone to swap out kick drums or change an arrangement or whatever. I wanna deal with people I trust musically. In terms of involvement, the artists would send in tracks, and the only involvement we ever really had afterward was a couple of tracks where maybe one song was initially sent in as a demo, and maybe we said, “Well, you could go further with this or that or make it scarier.” We’d tell them to not be afraid of playing around with arrangements because we weren’t asking them to make tracks for a club. This project had a different purpose, so you could play around with the arrangement. Other than that, the stuff came in, and it was right for the most part. Warner Brothers had a mastering guy they were using, and it was important for me to make sure that everything was mastered by the same guy. Ideally, I wanted it to be all done at once in the hopes that it would feel cohesive, despite the fact that the music is dramatically different from track to track. I think it worked out pretty well. The overall tone makes sense, despite stylistic differences. For me, the most work I did was for the track I did for Scorpion [“Deathstalker”]. Can you describe step-by-step how you created “Deathstalker”?
I work in [Avid] Pro Tools. I did this track at my home studio. The MSTRKRFT studio is all analog, but in my house it’s pretty much all digital, with the exception of a Doepfer Dark Energy synth, my Wurlitzer electric piano, and some guitars. I try to work just in the box at home. It’s funny, because that track is composed of a bunch of sounds from different soft synths that weren’t intended to be, I believe, what they ended up being. For instance, the main clicking melody that starts at the beginning of the track—it’s a tuned rimshot sound from the Predator synth by Rob Papen. I’d drawn out this elaborate thing that got faster and faster and just moved off-grid. I programmed this part, and when I was trying it out with some different patches, I got this drum click, and I thought, “This is perfect.” I ended up using that and just processing it to get some more tone out of it. I ran it through a [Universal Audio] SPL Transient Designer plug-in to get a little more length out of it. The main sort of swirling pad sound was from [Native Instruments] Reaktor. It’s funny because I had just installed Reaktor a day or two beforehand. Working on the song was a bit of a learning experience with that synth, because there are all kinds of automation things I wanted to figure out that I just had to learn how to do in Reaktor as I went. I was like, “How do I do this? I have an idea.” [Laughs.] It’s funny that I didn’t understand anything about the program when I started, but I had to get it together by the end. A lot of producers might not be bold enough to use an unfamiliar tool on a mission-critical project like that . . . Whenever I get a new piece of gear, whatever it is—even if it’s a cowbell—I need to use it right away. I always wanna dive in with any new piece I have. I was trying out different things in Reaktor. I had to move myself a bit outside my own box to get the track done with the feel that I wanted. I’m really impressed with Reaktor in general. It’s one of those things where I’d been intending to use it, or trying to get into it forever, but I never got around to it. I’m so impressed with how it sounds, and the possibilities really are endless. I feel like an idiot for not using it for years. I’d probably be more popular now if I had used Reaktor earlier in my career. I had my cousin, who’s also a producer, come over, and I was showing him things in Reaktor, and he said, “What the hell? Why have we never used this?” [Laughs.] Do you prefer the in-the-box approach of your home studio, or the analog synths of the MSTRKRFT studio? Well, there’s a funny thing that happens when you have access to both— they feed off one another. We have a really nice modular synth and all this analog stuff. Sometimes, I’ll stumble on a patching idea in a soft synth that then makes me think, “Whoa, I should do that with my modular, but I never thought of it before.” Maybe it was a little complicated or wasn’t as intuitive for whatever reason. I have lots of ideas like that, 11.2011
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where then I take it to the studio and find myself standing in front of the wall of modular, re-creating whatever I’d stumbled on digitally. In the end, nothing sounds as good as the analog modular synth. I’ll argue that point with anyone forever! I haven’t always owned a modular, but I think personally I was doubting a little bit just how different it would be—how much better it actually was. The first time I plugged it in, and just listened to the oscillators, I was blown away. It just plain sounds better. There’s no comparison. Was the “Deathstalker” track created entirely in the box? Yeah, although I came up with the melodies on my Wurlitzer. I’d say 80 percent of all the music I’ve made in the past five or six years has been written either on a piano, the Wurlitzer, or my Rhodes 73. I write on those because you don’t get caught up in the sounds right away. It’s just about the music. From there, I figure, “Well, at least now I have the building blocks of something that will go together and be nice.” Then, it’s getting into sounds and patches and playing around with all the things that you can do there. After that, you’re sort of free to just fiddle around with knobs. At that point, maybe you say, “Oh, well given this, now I wanna change this note.” You can always go back and change it, but I think having the music first is better than searching aimlessly for a sound that’s supposed to lead you to the music—that doesn’t work so well for me. I’m sure it’s not the same for everybody, but that’s how it goes in my head. The melody is the best place to start. Those sort of initial musical decisions—that’s when you’re a musician. What happened after you came up with the melody? I tried to roughly get the MIDI notes going. I have the M-Audio KeyRig 49
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controller, and I get MIDI into Pro Tools with that. I sort of use whatever sound, it doesn’t matter—sometimes I’ll just use the piano sound to keep me from fiddling too early. From there, I spent a long time on that clicky, rimshot-type sound we talked about, and on auditioning a bunch of kick drums. I actually made the entire track with a different kick than the one I ended up using. It was the last thing I did. I thought, “You know, this isn’t the right sound,” and then worked on that after everything was done. Then in my playing around with Reaktor, I stumbled on this pad sound, worked on that for a bit, and found that it really felt right. It’s really just a kick drum and that clicking melody, and the pad had that darkness it needed. And then from there I envisioned what the movement would be and how it would change. I just wanted it to be something that would plod along for a bit and then open up and become something more like an A-B part with a transition. It’s about two minutes into the song when the beat drops out . . . And then I introduce that big ugly synth? [Laughs.] I know that sound was in Reaktor, but I don’t remember exactly what it was. I know I had to edit it a bunch of times to get it to do what I wanted. It’s really just a lot of pitch-bend. [Laughs.] Pitch-bend and some filter automation. All that together seemed to work. How long did it take you to create the track? How I work at home is that I’ll work on something for a little while and end up walking away, going to sleep, cooking dinner, watching television, just doing something else, and I’ll leave the session up and open on my computer—sometimes for days or weeks—and keep walking back to it. Every time I walk past that part of my apartment
that I can’t avoid, there’s that evil screen looking at me [laughs], waiting for me to do more. I just start chipping away at it. I think that for the whole second half [of “Deathstalker”] I had an idea at about two in the morning, and I programmed that in, played it, then perfected it. I got pretty deep into Reaktor, getting it to make the sound I wanted. How does that contrast with your workflow in MSTRKRFT? Well, with MSTRKRFT, we generally have a much more complete idea in our heads before we start. When we’re making a track, we both have a complete idea of how the song will be in our heads, and then it’s just a matter of whether or not we’re actually having the same idea![Laughs.] It just takes us a little while to figure out we’re there. A little arm-wrestling? Yeah, because neither of us is that certain. I might know completely what I want, and we may have discussed and believe we are working on the same thing, but it may not actually be the same, which I think is cool. I like that sort of back and forth without really saying anything until we sort of stumble on the end result. What was your first synthesizer? It was a Roland Juno-60 that I got for $245 when I was a teenager. I actually still use it all the time. It’s the only synth I’m using now with Death From Above 1979. I had to decide whether or not I wanted to bring this old piece of gear around, but I thought, “If it sounds better and I know how to use it, then yeah.” Everything about it is intuitive for me, so I’ll just keep hauling it around until it breaks. And then I’ll cry. [Laughs.] You know, it really does sound better, but there are limitations in analog gear. A lot of times the limitations are based
on what the designer was thinking and what they had to work with around the time they were making it. I’m sure you’ve heard of the great interview with the guy who made the Roland TR-808. If you get it translated from Japanese, he’s still disappointed with the sounds. He’s like, “Ugh, the snare sounds like hitting two pieces of bamboo together; it’s not what I intended.” For him, he was trying to make real drum sounds, and I’m thinking, “Hey, dude, that’s the sound of all electronic music. Don’t be upset about it!” [Laughs.] That’s just the way it is. Sometimes you can look at the routing on some old analog gear and, however intuitive it might be, it’s really limited. With the digital stuff being made now, kids can route whatever they want anywhere and play around. I think for them, sometimes, to go back onto an older piece of gear, it might be really frustrating, like, “Wait, why can’t I send this envelope to the pitch before it hits the filter? Why doesn’t this LFO sync to the MIDI clock? Why can’t I get the repeat rate happening in time with something else?” What’s your studio setup? I have the one-generation-previous Mac Pro. I also use a Digi-003 Rack. And I have half-decent monitors that seem to work really well. They’re old Yorkville YSM-1s. Just recently, I got this Peavey CS-1400 power amp that actually sounds so much better than the amp I was using before. It’s so dramatically better. I’ve always been a fan of Peavey stuff, but this power amp just blew me away. What pieces of gear can’t you live without? Pro Tools, my Roland SH-101, as of late my Modcan modular synth, and the Wurlitzer 200A, which is my main writing tool.
UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION (All Periodicals Publications Except Requester Publications) 1. Publication Title: Keyboard 2. Publication No: 0730-0158 3. Filing Date: October 1, 2011 4. Issue Frequency: Monthly 5. No. of Issues Published Annually: 12 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication (Not Printer): NewBay Media, LLC, 1111 Bayhill Drive, Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066-3040 Contact Person: Denise Robbins Telephone: 212-378-0444 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: NewBay Media, LLC, 28 East 28th Street, 12th floor, New York, NY 10016 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: John Pledger, Publisher; Stephen Fortner, Editor; Debbie Greenberg, Managing Editor NewBay Media, LLC, 1111 Bayhill Drive, Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066-3040 10. Owner: The Wicks Group of Companies, LLC 405 Park Avenue, Suite 702, New York, NY 10022 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding One Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or other Securities: None 12. Tax Status: The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes has not changed during preceding twelve months 13. Publication: Keyboard 14: Issue Date for Circulation Data: September 2011 Avg. No. Copies Each No. Copies of Single Issue 15: Extent and Nature of Circulation a. Total No. Copies (Net Press Run) b. PAID CIRCULATION 1. Individual Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 2. Copies Requested by Employers for Distribution to Employees by Name or Position Stated on PS Form 3541 3. Sales through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid or Requested Distribution Outside USPS 4. Requested Copies Distributed by Other Mail Classes Through the USPS c. Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation d. NONREQUESTED DISTRIBUTION 1. Nonrequested Copies Stated on PS Form 3541 2. Nonrequested Copies Distributed Through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail 3. Nonrequested Copies Distributed Outside the Mail e. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution f. Total Distribution g. Copies Not Distributed h. Total i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation
Issue During Preceding 12 Months 22,184
Published Nearest to Filing Date 18.564
12.025
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14,512
15,906
942 0 350 1,292 15,804 6,380 22,184 91.83%
926 0 0 926 16,832 1,732 18,564 94.50%
16. Publication of Statement of Ownership for a Requester Publication is required and will be printed in the November issue of this publication. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties) John Pledger, Publisher (signed)
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SOLUTIONS Dance
SIDEBAND MORPHING One of the cooler tricks for creating morphing leads for buildups, breakdowns, and transforming riffs over the course of a track is the application of sidebands. Sidebands are additional frequencies that aren’t necessarily related to the harmonic spectrum of the original tone— though with careful tuning, they can be. Anytime an LFO rate exceeds 20Hz and enters the audio range, sidebands are generated. One common example is ring modulation, which creates two sidebands
that are the sum and difference of the original tone (the carrier) and the ring mod frequency. Another classic is FM, which applies audio-rate modulation to the pitch of the carrier oscillator. When the modulator is tuned to a specific harmonic, the results are musical. When the modulator is tuned to a non-integer frequency, the results are clangorous. Some LFOs can exceed “low” frequencies and enter the audio range. Reason’s Subtractor includes this feature, so we’ll use that for our examples. Francis Preve
Pitch Modulation (FM) Start with an initialized patch, turn Velocity-to-Filter off, increase the volume envelope sustain to maximum, and open the lowpass filter cutoff all the way. Next, set LFO1’s amount to maximum (so you can hear the results) and its unsynced rate to zero. Play a note and slowly raise the LFO rate (either manually or via automation) until you hear the vibrato dissolve into a mess of additional pitches that shift as you turn the knob. Then reduce the LFO rate and listen to the sound revert to vibrato.
Filter Modulation Modulating the filter cutoff is another cool way to add spice to a lead or breakdown. The effect is most pronounced when the cutoff is set to about 30–50% and the resonance set at a value greater than 30%. Again, start with the initialized patch above, but set the LFO destination to filter frequency (left). Then, set filter cutoff and resonance to about 40% each (right) and repeat the experiment.
Amplitude Modulation Technically, this is similar to ring mod, as both effects rely on audio-rate modulation of an amplifier, with ring mod eliminating the carrier tone, unless a wet/dry knob is present. Since Subtractor doesn’t provide amplitude modulation on LFO1, we’ll set the LFO destination to “Mix” (left). Begin with the initialized patch once again, and keep oscillator 2 turned off. Next, turn the Osc Mix knob fully counterclockwise so that the Mix modulation only affects the volume of oscillator 1 (right). Now, repeat the LFO experiment described above.
Step-by-step audio examples.
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Those are three common approaches, but almost any synth parameter destination will provide interesting results. If your synth allows, try modulating the pulse width or waveform instead. Plus, panning combines elements of amplitude modulation but with a stereo flair. Be sure to try different LFO waveforms as well.
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SOLUTIONS
Steal This Sound
DAFT PUNK’S “DEREZZED” If your idea of video games involves stacking quarters on the Defender machine at the local 7-Eleven, then you were likely a fan of Disney’s original Tron movie. Now, its primitive computer graphics and glowing rotoscoped effects look positively quaint, but the soundtrack, composed by the legendary Wendy Carlos, was groundbreaking. Last year Disney released a sequel, Tron: Legacy. Soundtrack duties went to French synth wizards Daft Punk, who cooked up a cutting-edge electronica feel. This month we’ll recreate the insistent, swirling lead of the club-stompin’ single “Derezzed” using Native Instruments Massive. Mitchell Sigman
Step 1. Choose saw waves for OSC1 and OSC2. With Massive you’ll select “Squ-Sw1” and turn the “Wt-Position” knob fully right. Select the “RoughMath II” wave for OSC3. If you don’t have Massive, it’s not critical, we just want something high-pitched and “digital” sounding— you may need to experiment.
Step 2. OSC1 should be at nominal pitch (zero), OSC2 down an octave (–12), and OSC3, our digital-sounding one, should be up two octaves and detuned around eight cents (+24.08). Set OSC1 and OSC3 at full volume, but set OSC2’s volume halfway up—we’re just using it for a little sub-bass.
Step 3. The filter section is bypassed entirely. If you’re using a synth that doesn’t do this, simply open the cutoff to maximum and set resonance to zero.
Step 4. ENV4 sets our volume to a simple on-off envelope with a little attack
Step-by-step audio examples.
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Download this patch for Native Instruments Massive.
KEYBOAR DMAG.COM
time to take off the initial “click.” Set the attack up just a little, attack level full, decay full, decay level full, and release up just a little.
Step 5. Turn on the Feedback module and set the knob exactly halfway. Then, put a hard clipper effect in Insert 1, set fully wet with the Drive knob fully up. These only affect the sound subtly (at least after we apply all the effects in Step 6), so don’t fret if you don’t have these available.
Step 6. Insert a heavy stereo phaser in Massive’s FX1 section. In the Logic instrument channel that hosted Massive, I inserted a GoldVerb with a 0.65 second decay and 50% wet/dry ratio. I then inserted a Logic Distortion with Drive at 34.5dB, Tone at 2,900Hz, and output at –16dB (careful, this plug-in can get loud). If you use a different DAW, its mid-grade reverb and any distortion with a tone control yield similar results. Placing time-domain effects like phasers or reverbs before distortion is usually a bad idea, but here, the smeary, distorted, stereo mess gives the “Derezzed” sound its character. Rules were made to be broken!
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SOLUTIONS Producers’ Roundtable
PROBLEM SOLVING We’ve all encountered it at one point or another. A musical element that we want to use (or in the case of a remix, need to use) that just doesn’t fit. Sometimes it’s a janky vocal, other times it’s a riff that just doesn’t sit with our groove correctly. One of the things that defines a professional is the ability to solve production issues effectively, so that’s what we asked this month’s team of producers: Describe a problem solving technique that you’ve used recently. Got a question for our experts? Email me at
[email protected]. Francis Preve
MORGAN PAGE (morgan-page.com) When a vocal is hard to get in time, I’ll sidechain it to the kick, so it ducks down to the beat. It doesn’t work for all vocals—it’s very hit-and-miss. It depends on the syncopation of the vocals and the timbre of the voice. Sometimes I use it to de-emphasize the voice, if I like an instrumental hook better. You really need to let the song be your guide and do what is appropriate to make it shine, while adding your own touch.
BOOM JINX (boomjinx.com) Depending on the key, sometimes a bass line can be so deep that it leaves a hole between the mid and bass frequency ranges. Situations like these can also give you a bass line with very little tonal clarity in the low end. However, if you like the subby sound of it all, layering the bass line with a different bass one octave up can solve this without sounding like you’ve merely transposed the bass up and added a sub-oscillator.
JOSH HARRIS (myspace.com/seirenproductions) Recently, I worked on a track where some of the demo synth parts were not quite in time. The sound and the part worked well, but I didn’t have that particular sound to replay the part, so I quantized the audio in Pro Tools 9 using its “Elastic Audio” feature to solve the problem. It worked really well and the problem was solved in five minutes.
MATT LANGE (mattlange.net) I recently finished a remix that took about seven different versions before I was finally able to settle on it. There was a melody from the original track that I’d been trying to use, but for whatever reason it just wasn’t gelling well with anything I put behind it. I started running the melody through my Eventide DSP4000, looking for something to modify it in such a way that hopefully it would fit. Using an algorithm that has two pitched delay lines (one at +1,200 cents fed into the input of the second delay at –500 cents, with feedback on both) followed by a chorus and a gigantic reverb, a couple of simple piano notes became huge, slowly-evolving pads and swells. Suddenly the entire direction of the remix changed. I stripped out almost everything else that I’d already done, and built from the ground up again using these piano “pads” from the Eventide, and it all came together within two days after that. Happy accidents are king!
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GEAR
Moog Music MINIMOOG VOYAGER XL If throwing down five large to grace your studio—or live rig, you nutter—with the most bitchin’ lead synth on the planet isn’t something that requires careful budgeting and diplomatic family discussion, why are you sitting there reading this review? Put down the pre-embargo Cuban cigar and Courvoisier XO and get your Moog dealer on the phone. If you, like me, might consider telling Junior or Princess that filling out scholarship applications builds character so that you can spend their college fund on the ultimate monophonic synth, read on.
Overview The Minimoog Voyager XL’s build quality is top class, and its keys have a ridiculously solid feel. The pitch and mod wheels are solid pieces of acrylic and exhibit satisfyingly little wobble. Pots and jacks are all secured to the panel with washers and nuts so as not to transfer stress to the circuit boards inside. Add 61 velocity- and-aftertouch-sensitive keys, a ribbon controller, an X-Y touchpad that responds to the area your finger occupies as well as its position, a panel studded with patch points, and luxuriously finished wood, and “XL” is apropos. “Mini,” not so much. Indeed, the hand-assembled XL makes most modern synths and workstations seem as coldly mass-produced as frozen fish dinners. [Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear is on line 1 and he wants that metaphor back. –Ed.] The audio signal flow starts with what you’d expect from a Voyager. Three oscillators, a noise source, and an external audio input feed a
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by Ken Hughes
mixer. A post-summing insert point also serves as a mix out or an input to the filter. (Imagine sending the mixer’s output into a string of Moogerfoogers or analog synth modules using an insert cable—more on that later.) After the insert point is the dual filter, which can operate ganged in lowpass mode or as independent highpass and lowpass filters. Try the latter mode in stereo, while modulating panning with the second LFO—it’s the audio equivalent of visiting the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Finally, the signal passes through the VCA on its way out to the dual outputs and 1/4" stereo headphone jack, which has its own volume control—a feature I wish every synth had. The XL hasn’t added all its new, neat stuff at the expense of anything we’ve come to expect of a Moog— the huge-osity of the oscillators, the filter that would be a prime candidate for a weight-loss reality show if we didn’t so love its obesity—but it has added a little more. Rather than discrete waveforms for the oscillators, you get pots to dial in any shade of wave from triangle to sawtooth to square to pulse. The longer keyboard is a shock when playing corpulent bass sounds with oscillators set to the 8' range, because you realize there are an octave and a half of keys to the left that you haven’t touched yet and you can set the oscillators two octaves lower still. Mythbusters may have debunked the legend of the “brown note,” but then, they didn’t have a Voyager XL. The Voyager XL has two modulation busses: one controlled by the mod wheel, the other by the Mod1 CV (control voltage) input on the patch panel. With nothing plugged into the Mod1 CV jack, it’s controlled
by the Pedal/On section of the front panel. Each modulation bus offers a nice selection of sources and destinations. Four additional sources— filter envelope, velocity, pressure, and “on/pgm” (the footswitch)—can shape the amount of modulation contributed by the first source. We’re still only talking about the hardwired or “normalled” signal path. We haven’t even looked at the patch panel.
Specifications Earth-shakingly huge sound. Extreme patching flexibility. Raises realtime performance control to new heights. Impressive potential for cross-patching with other synths and effects. Craftsman-grade build quality and aesthetics. Price can feel like a lot to pay for one note at a time.
CONCEPT Monophonic analog synth with integrated audio/control voltage patch panel. $4,995 (no list/street difference)
moogmusic.com
Patching Even though you don’t need the patch panel to get sound out of the Voyager XL, and even if you think modular synth patching is over your head, you owe it to yourself to find an XL on display and have a go with the patch cords. This is synthesis at its most visceral: the flow of actual electrons, not ones and zeros, creating the sound. In fact, it’s the reason we still refer to sound programs in synths as “patches.” Like any patchable analog synth, the XL can’t memorize what you do with the patch cables, because these are physical connections rather than virtual 11.2011
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GEAR ones. My advice is to record audio as you experiment so as to capture any happy accidents, and keep a camera handy to document specific patches. In addition to its default routings, the touchpad’s three outputs (X, Y, and area) can be sent to any destination on the panel. The keyboard’s four outputs (pitch, velocity, pressure, and gate) are all available as sources. Outputs from the pitch and mod wheels, and both control voltage and gate from the ribbon, are also available on the panel. Interestingly, the ribbon controller—one of the XL’s most lust-worthy features—is assignable only via the patch panel; it has no “normalled” routing. Patch points ringed in white can accept CV or an expression pedal. Patch points with left and right arrows can accept CV or a footswitch. Imagine the possibilities when you have velocity, aftertouch, ribbon, touchpad, mod wheel, up to four footswitches, and up to 17 sweep pedals available at once, each assigned to its own destination. Expanding possibilities even further, the Mults section can send each of three sources to up to three destinations simultaneously, and each Mult input can accept CV or an expression pedal. On the flipside, the CV Mixer lets you send (and attenuate) multiple sources to a single destination. The mixer produces both positive and negative outputs, letting you modulate two destinations differently from a single CV Mixer output. Because you can further affect either destination using the lag processor or either of the two attenuators, you can get something other than mirror-image modulation from those two outputs. LFO2 offers positive and negative outputs as well. A sample-and-hold circuit offers outputs for both stepped and smooth versions of its output. The rates of LFO1 and LFO2 can be controlled by expression pedals as well.
In Use Due to its extensive MIDI implementation, the XL is anything but a pure throwback. Just like every modern synth worth its salt, every front-panel control sends MIDI continuous control (CC) messages, so you can capture and edit controller data in your DAW. The upshot is that the XL has far more front-panel controls than most. In addition to the usual automating of filter sweeps and LFOs, there are some specific and very cool tricks to be unlocked. Even the destination of a connected pedal can be assigned to one of six options by selecting a single value in one of six sub-ranges within the 0-127 range of its CC. Imagine automating the pedal destination (or the mixer, or the waveforms, or practically anything) with your onstage sequencer while performing live. You could be the Criss Angel of synth soloists, making listeners gasp, “How did he [or she] do that?” Velocity response is musical and predictable, and aftertouch avoids hair-trigger response but doesn’t require finger-breaking pressure. The pitch wheel is stiffer than I’m used to, but then, I spend most of my time these days with my DAWs and a plastic MIDI controller that has loosey-goosey wheels. Although it gets the job done, I’ve apparently forgotten what quality feels like. Because the dual-purpose inputs are all over the patch panel, you need to think about cable clutter and strain relief. This is no big deal in the studio, but if you plan to take this beast onstage, you may find yourself customizing footswitch and expression pedal cables. Note that on a standard Voyager, the Mod 1 and 2 footswitch jacks are on the rear. On the XL, they’re on the front-facing patch panel, so using footswitches is less convenient. Using other sources is obviously more convenient, however.
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The value of the post-summing insert I mentioned earlier can’t be overestimated. With a grainy old Boss RV-2 digital reverb stompbox patched in upstream of the filters and VCA, ghostly, pseudo-polyphonic textures emerged when I used long reverb times and tipped the effect balance heavily wet. The XL’s volume envelope reined in the decay when I let go of the keys. I also connected my guitar pedalboard, which houses an overdrive, an analog delay, and a vintage Boss flanger. The party got delightfully weird. Bouncing delay trails were subjugated to the volume envelope, and re-emerged when new keys were struck and the envelope re-opened. Again, this yielded a pseudo-polyphonic effect. My flanger sounded distinctly weirder upstream of the filter than it did when connected to the XL’s main output. All this makes me wish every synth had a similar insert point. Other explorations arise from the XL’s keyboard transmitting polyphonically over MIDI. You could control an external synth, route that synth’s audio into the XL’s mixer, and then on to the insert point, filters, and envelopes. So how about a sound that encompasses XL oscillators and external sounds from a polyphonic synth, all processed through external effects and/or other modular synth gear via the insert point? Would that help you create completely unique sounds? Check out the audio examples at keyboardmag.com to hear, among other things, a hybrid sound from the XL, my Alesis Andromeda, and my guitar pedalboard. On a synth like this, it seems almost silly to discuss the presets, but they’re excellent and noteworthy. Among those who contributed patches are Will Alexander, Printz Board, Herbie Hancock, Chad Hugo, Brian Kehew, Jamie Muhoberac, Rick Wakeman, Bernie Worrell, and Fred Wreck. Also, Keyboard contributor Zon Vern Pyles has a whole bank to his credit. Is anything left to be desired? Keyboard editor Stephen Fortner had one item. “Since the XL has three oscillators and so much patching,” he explained, “it’d be great if there were some kind of mode that let you play it as a single-oscillator synth with three-voice polyphony—kind of like what Korg did with the Mono/Poly.”
Conclusions If you have the cash, what are you waiting for? The Voyager XL is everything you hope it is and more. It can stand alone, or with all its connectivity, be the nerve center of an advanced synth studio. Yes, you can get a knob-laden, polyphonic, analog or virtual analog synth with MIDI for a lot less. None of those, however, give you anywhere near the XL’s level of patching flexibility. In fact, to get that and a sound this huge, you’d have to step up to something like MacBeth modules, most likely exceeding the Voyager XL’s price tag to put together a three-oscillator synth with similar filters and envelopes, not to mention a keyboard of comparable quality. So while the Moog is spendy, it’s a good value by modular standards—and it is a semi-modular machine. With apologies to Samuel L. Jackson, if you absolutely need the most badass mother of a lead, bass, and effects synth there is, accept no substitutes. Audio examples.
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©2011 PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc. All Rights Reserved. StudioLive is a trademark of PreSonus.
e used a StudioLive™ 24.4.2 (and a lot of other PreSonus gear, too) to help create his new album Oceana. On tour, a StudioLive 16.0.2 channels Derek’s analog and digital keyboards as well as virtual instruments, creating an compact, uber-keyboard-mixer. “I was looking for a user-friendly, reliable solution for both my studio and on the road. PreSonus has delivered in both areas. I highly recommend StudioLive.” Visit Derek’s site at www.dereksherinian.com Discover our unique, affordable mixing systems for yourself at your PreSonus dealer today.
AVAILABLE NOW www.presonus.com
GEAR
Hammond SK1
by Stephen Fortner
Working on a laptop, you can become an overnight sensation of electronic dance music, or a pop star’s go-to producer. With some highend sample libraries, a computer beefy enough to run them, and some study, you can do film scores that might convince John Williams you used a real orchestra. Honest-to-goodness analog synths and electric pianos are back in full force thanks to the likes of Moog Music, Dave Smith, and Rhodes. In spite of these and more reasons that it’s an amazing time to be a keyboard player, what still gets us all talking like nothing else? Getting a great B-3 organ sound. We just got a lot more to talk about. Beyond going into great detail to simulate the sound of tonewheels, drawbars, and a Leslie speaker, Hammond’s ultra-compact SK1 has a whole slew of acoustic piano, electric piano, Clav, synth, brass, and other sounds that read like a weekend warrior’s wish list. We know—other manufacturers who don’t happen to own the storied Hammond name have been at this “clonewheel plus other cool sounds” thing for a while. Trust me, though—the SK1 holds its head high in that fray and could meet a whole lot of your needs in one go.
Organ Section Like Hammond’s more expensive XK-3C, the SK1 offers upper, lower,
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and pedal drawbar parts. An obvious concession to compact size is that there’s one set of drawbars, not two, but LED-lit buttons select which part the drawbars control. You can split the keyboard at the touch of a button (the split point is adjustable in a menu) and add sustain to the pedal part, approximating the “string bass” modification once added to vintage Hammond organs. The SK1 also retains the XK-3 series’ Manual Bass button, which couples the pedal part to an adjustable bottom range of the keyboard. You can set Manual Bass to polyphonic or lowest-note monophonic mode, and since the upper/lower split is available at the same time, a skilled player could use the mono mode to kick bass with some fingers of the left hand and comp simple chords with the others, leaving the right hand free. Though you can’t customize the tonal qualities of individual virtual tonewheels as you can on the XK-3C, you do get several drawbar sets: cleaner and dirtier B-3 variants, realistic Vox and Farfisa (with drawbar behavior appropriately changed), and a nice chapel pipe organ. If B type 1 or 2 is selected, four further tonewheel sets show up one editing level deeper: Real B-3, ’80s Clean, Noisy, and Noisy60—this last one has the most crosstalk and other grunge, and was my favorite because it added real chewiness to the sound without being musically obtrusive. By contrast, some other clones’ “leakage” simulations sound like a
Specifications Fat, warm, utterly authentic B-3 organ sound. Excellent and deeply editable Leslie simulation. “Extra Voices” include highly gig-worthy electric pianos and synths. Can split and layer organ and non-organ sounds at same time. No MIDI over USB. Recessed drawbars can feel cramped. No pitch-bend or modulation wheels. CONCEPT Ultra-compact drawbar organ with full complement of gigready non-organ sounds. ORGANS SIMULATED Hammond B-3, Vox, Farfisa, and pipe organ. NON-ORGAN SOUNDS “Extra Voices” include acoustic pianos, electric pianos, Clavinets, synths, string machines, accordions, saxes, and brass. POLYPHONY Organ: 63 notes each for upper and lower parts, 8 notes for pedal part. Extra Voice: 63 notes. MULTITIMBRAL PARTS 4: Upper, Lower, Pedal, and Extra Voice. WEIGHT 15.4 lbs. background sample of someone laying a forearm across the keyboard. The vibrato/chorus that vintage Hammonds created using an electro-mechanical scanner is an essential part of “the sound,” and the SK1’s emulation is as good as you’ll find anywhere. You’ll find settings to customize depth and how much the chorus emphasizes treble frequencies, plus a toggle for whether or not putting vibrato/chorus on the lower manual also affects the pedal part—so you could have a chorused left hand but straight pedals for a clean bass foundation. The XK-3C’s real tube output stage is forgone, but if overdrive is important to your style, the “Tube” simulation is warm and crunchy and compresses realistically as you turn up the dedicated knob. Drawbar for drawbar, the SK1 is brassier and more aggressive in the mids and highs than other clones I had on hand for comparison: the Studiologic Numa Organ (reviewed May ’11), a Roland VR-700 (reviewed June ’10), the CX-3 mode in the Korg Kronos, EVB3 in Logic, and my old Nord Electro 2. You really notice the SK1’s throaty scream in the top octave, which is where many otherwise excellent clones tend to be a little too polite. With all EQ settings flat and effects bypassed, the other organs had varying degrees of slightly scooped midrange and “production pixie dust” on the sound. The SK1 was more raw and ballsy, which is why it would be my first choice for running through a real Leslie—as real ones tend to roll off some highs and smear out the sound, so you want to feed them well-defined drawbar tones. The SK1 is no slouch through its own Leslie simulation either, so let’s check that out.
Street: $1,995 (no list/street difference)
hammondorganco.com
Leslie Simulation The Leslie speaker is the most beautiful irony: It’s so low-tech it’s practically steampunk, yet the gargle of speakers pumping through spinning rotors is still one of the most elusive sounds to duplicate by high-tech digital means. The SK1’s simulation is Hammond’s best yet. More than that, it’s world class: Hammond-Suzuki may have been behind the competition ten years ago, but that’s simply not the case anymore. Editing goes very deep. You’d expect independent slow and fast speeds, rise times, fall times, and volumes for both bass and treble rotors, and you’d be right. On top of that, control over the distance and separation angle of a pair of virtual mics offers immediate and dramatic variation—play with these until you like the sound, which I guarantee you will. Large (122/147) and small (142/145) cabinets are modeled, as are solid-state and tube amps, and you can mix and match cabinet and amp types. I’ve said this enough that regular readers are probably sick of it, but high drawbars at fast speed are the true test of a Leslie simulation. Even a good ROMpler can get a decent Jimmy Smith or Procol Harum sound, but pull something like the Erroll Garner setting (80 0008 888) and spin 11.2011
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The SK1’s rear panel features strain relief for the external power supply cord, a USB type A port for loading in new Extra Voices or system updates from a thumb drive (you can also play audio files from an attached drive), and an eight-pin jack for sending organ sounds to a real Leslie and controlling its speed. up to fast, and a subprime simulation will have squirrelly treble that goes yi-yi-yi and seems to bounce in and out of your speakers rather than go ’round in circles. The SK1 avoids this pitfall, so well that I could almost sense the bass and treble rotors moving in opposite directions as they do on the real thing. Adjusting speeds and virtual mic placement to taste can go a long way towards increasing the sense of motion you want to hear, so don’t be afraid to dive into those parameters. The last rotary simulation that really impressed me was in the Studiologic Numa Organ. Compared to the SK1, it seemed to have more pitch modulation in the low-mids, and at fast speed, was somehow a more “blendy” sound—as if the Leslie were miked with a less directional mic in a more reflective room. At slow speed, the Numa’s sim almost seemed to have some sort of stereo widening on it that, while pretty, isn’t totally authentic. Here’s an observation for which I only found words after a lot of obsessive comparison—playing the same notes with the same drawbar settings and using a metering plug-in to set everything to the exact same volume, then switching between slow and fast until even my cat left the room: Whereas the other clones in my studio were like different record producers’ ideas of how a B-3 through a Leslie should sound in a track, the SK1 was more like being in the room with the real thing. Firing up my own vintage Leslie 142 confirmed this perception. A lot of readers have asked if the SK1’s onboard Leslie sim is as good as Neo Instruments’ Ventilator (reviewed May ’10), which is widely acknowledged as the current king of electronic rotary effects. The short answer is that I don’t think anything built into a modern clonewheel quite is, but the SK1 is excellent enough to make you consider whether the extra percentage points of realism justify a $450 dedicated stompbox. If so, have at it—the SK1’s raw tone sounds awesome through the Ventilator.
Non-Organ Sounds It’s a shame Hammond calls these “Extra Voices,” as that suggests
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a handful of General MIDI-ish afterthoughts à la their XK-1 or my old Roland VK-7. Quite to the contrary, these sounds are darned good, they’re what you’d actually want on a gig, and there are lots of them. Dealing with them is straightforward as can be: The “Allocate” buttons assign the chosen sound to one key zone or the other (or, on the dual-manual SK2, to the entire upper or lower manual) and the Solo button mutes the organ so you hear only the Extra Voice. Though the octave shift buttons on the panel affect both sounds in a zone together, a separate menu item lets you shift the Extra Voice one or two octaves (up or down) while the organ stays put. Here are just a few highlights. Acoustic pianos. Bright yet full-bodied, these pianos will get you through any night of rock and soul tunes with aplomb. Because the SK1’s keyboard is meant for playing organ, it’s no surprise that the piano sounds go to full volume fairly easily, but MIDI’ing up a weighted controller got a surprising amount of subtlety out of them. Yes, you may hear differences in velocity layers, and no, these sounds aren’t meant to compete with dedicated stage pianos. For supplemental pianos in what’s mainly an organ, though, they’re surprisingly good. Electric pianos and Clavinets. Wow. The EPs here are full of bark and personality, and make use of the dedicated Extra Voice effect to provide auto-panned, phaser, and overdriven versions of what are ostensibly Rhodes Mark I and II and Wurlitzer 200A pianos. It has to be said: “EP Rd1 Phase” is the Steely Dan sound. Clavs are very funky, and include variants for how the A/B and C/D pickup switches might be set on the real thing, as well as the obligatory “Higher Ground” touchwah. Speaking of Stevie Wonder, a unique preset called “Clavitition” sustains notes from the lowest Eb down and maps chords to single keys in the top octave. It seems the intent is to let two hands approximate the multiple Clav overdubs on the original recording of “Superstition.” With some practice, I got pretty close indeed.
Synths. Hiding under the unassuming “Other” button are some tasty treats. The tastiest have got to be the handful of “Solly Strings” presets— as in ARP Solina string machine. These have a swirly phaser (you can change the effect type for any Extra Voice and store the result) with adjustable rate on the dedicated Extra Voice Effect knob. “Solly Strings O” is octave-doubled and simply nails the sound Bernie Worrell noodles on throughout Parliament’s “Flashlight.” In similarly funky territory, “P.O. Love” is a stacked sawtooth blast that reminded me of the synth in the Time’s “Jungle Love.” Other standouts. There are many more accordions than you’d expect, and brass patches with “FD” in the name have a pitch fall-down you can trigger by spanking the top key in a chord. A few saxes, trumpets, and synths have “Pcd” in the name, which is short for “ProChord.” Split the keyboard, and leads in the right hand will auto-harmonize with your left-hand chords. You can’t customize the harmony types, nor decide which sounds use ProChord—it’s a factory thing—but it works well. A couple of brass sections even have the fall-down and ProChord.
Performance Notes You could conceivably get through a night of cover band fare with just the SK1 and a compact (perhaps weighted) controller MIDI’ed to play Extra Voices assigned to the lower manual. Want to send organ sounds to a real Leslie or outboard rotary effect while keeping Extra Voices in the main stereo P.A.? The SK1 has an eight-pin output for direct connection
to modern Leslies like the 3300 and 2101. Hook up one of these, and the organ sounds are routed to the Leslie and removed from the main 1/4" stereo outs, leaving only the Extra Voices there. (The exception is pipe organ, which presumably you don’t want to Leslify.) It’s important to use an eight-pin cable supplied by Hammond, as there’s some specific pin wiring involved. This cable also makes the speed buttons for the onboard simulation control the real Leslie. Hammond also offers an adaptor for connecting the eight-pin jack to rotary preamps or effects that use a 1/4" input. At press time, Hammond hadn’t decided whether to sell it for a few bucks or box it with future SK1/SK2 shipments and send it to existing owners for free—but it’ll be one or the other. Eight-to-six-pin adaptors are available if you want to go straight into a vintage Leslie without the need for a preamp pedal. The SK1 and SK2 don’t have the pitch and modulation wheels of the XK-1 and XK-3C, and at first, my unit didn’t respond to external pitch-bend or modulation messages. Since then, Hammond has posted an OS update in the support section of their website that fixes this in addition to offering many useful tweaks and some new Extra Voices. Only the Extra Voices respond to pitch and mod, which makes sense, as you probably don’t want to pitch-bend your B-3 sounds. A nice touch for editing is that holding any button for a second drills right into an initial menu of parameters for that thing, e.g. you can just hold the Leslie Fast button to get to rotor speed adjustments and the like. From there, getting your head around the menus can take
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GEAR some time—mainly because you can scroll pages both horizontally and vertically. The manual does a good job of visually “unfolding” the menu maze for each area. The SK1’s drawbars move smoothly, lacking the usual clicky feel. Presumably this saves on cost (because that clicky mechanism involves more moving parts) and front-to-back depth (because the guts that read drawbar positions go under the drawbars instead of behind them). Fair enough, but there is one thing that makes it a bit fiddly to “play” the drawbars as you play the organ. Many seasoned players use the base of the hand as a stop, resting it against the fronts of the drawbars while curling the fingers over and behind them. On a real B-3 or the Hammond XK series, there’s a flat “terrace” on which you can rest your hand in front of the drawbars. On the SK1, the drawbars sit in a sort of tray that’s sunk into the chassis about 3/8" on all sides. My hand sat on the raised panel between the “south” edge of the tray and the “north” edge of the keys, and if I pressed it down into the tray while manipulating drawbars, things started to feel a bit cramped. I also had a tendency to pinch the skin at the base of my thumb if I wasn’t careful when pulling drawbars back out, which necessitated modifying my technique just a little. Look, some compromises are inevitable when designing an instrument this compact, and I’d still rather have this setup than pushbuttons for drawbars.
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In 1999, I set foot in the Keyboard offices for the first time, as a
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Audio examples.
Great SK1 tips and tricks from our readers.
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Conclusions
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panelist in the clonewheel roundup that would appear in that year’s June issue. Even knowing how quickly technology evolves, I could never have hoped that 12 (or even 20) years later, something this tiny would throw down B-3 and Leslie sound this huge. We’ve come an incredibly long way. Comparisons between the SK1 and the Nord Electro 3 are inevitable, given the squeaky-close sizes and prices. Under critical listening, the Electro has more polished acoustic and electric pianos that sound like they use larger sample sets, but the “Library” bank in the SK1 is meant for future Extra Voices that Hammond intends to offer for download, so that could change. Let’s not forget the more glaring difference: On the Electro 3, you can’t play the organ and non-organ sounds at the same time. On the SK1, you can, splitting and layering as you see fit. Combine that with how killer the B-3 sound is, how gig-worthy all the sounds are, a price that makes it attractive as the first keyboard in your road rig, and portability that makes it welcome as the third or fourth, and it all adds up to a Key Buy.
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keyboardmag.com/november2011
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Steinberg CUBASE 6 I’ve enjoyed Cubase since the introduction of VST technology in the mid-’90s. As plug-ins became widespread, I moved on to include other DAWs in my workflow. Cubase 4 rekindled the romance with the addition of several terrific sounding synths that had a unique sonic stamp. Version 5 introduced a great-sounding convolution reverb called Reverence, along with LoopMash, a one-of-a-kind loop-construction kit, and a brilliant pitch correcting and warping engine, all of which helped cement the relationship. Enter Cubase 6. Its advances might seem more evolutionary than revolutionary, but as it turns out, there
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by Marty Cutler are some genuinely innovative new features, particularly in the domain of expressive instrument performance.
Interface Cubase now neatly arranges track details and adjustments horizontally at the top of the Arrangement window, along with the selected track’s controls, inserts, and routing parameters along the side. Despite the neat reorganization, things can still get a bit busy visually, so Cubase can alter the display to suit your needs. Control-clicking on a Mac
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Specifications
or right-clicking in Windows opens a contextual setup menu in which you can reorder or hide parameters as you see fit. For instance, open an instrument track, and you’ll find a vertical series of tabs for Cubase’s standard track-inspector settings and below them, tabs that open VST expression Maps, Note Expression parameters, MIDI and audio inserts, and a neat new Quick Control window for manipulating virtual instrument parameters. Quick Controls have been around since version 4, but in 6, new commands will fetch any VST instrument’s controls immediately. For all the information and control provided, it’s good to know you can clear it out of your way at any time.
Audio Transient Detection Cubase 6 can analyze and slice audio files according to their transient peaks, instead of an arbitrary, measure-determined grid, adding ease and creative possibilities to such tasks as extracting a “drum kit” of MIDI-triggerable hits from a single audio loop or replacing hits with other samples. This same analysis technology can also match your session tempo to any audio file that has clear enough transients— anything with a beat you can head-bob to (including the 120bpm wahwah guitar tracks I dropped in) should work fine. To ramp up the headbobbing factor, you can add a bit of swing, or loosen the groove up a bit with a soupçon of randomness.
Fig. 1. Amp Rack’s effects have a generic look, but they sound great and are simple to use.
Amp Rack Cubase finally gets its own stompbox and amp plug-in, and it’s packed with useful presets and easy programmability (see Figure 1 above). Oddly, it’s hidden under the Distortion category in the audio plug-in menu. Whatever your musical bent, if you don’t find something you like right out of the box, you’re seconds away from a useful tweak. Because some patches suggested certain artists or guitars, my Roland GR-55 guitar synth came in handy; I dialed in an initialized GR preset that let me select from a batch of unprocessed electric guitars to play through Cubase’s Amp Rack effects. Some effects fare better when mated with single-coil virtual pickups; others, with humbuckers; still others with keyboard sounds. Customizing Amp Rack is easy; six tabs across the virtual rack’s top access effects, amps, cabinets, and mics. First in line, the Pre Effects section inserts effects before the amp. Don’t expect complex emulations
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Improved onscreen organization. Amp Rack sounds terrific and is simple to program. LoopMash 2 greatly expands its MIDI control and adds new processing features. VST Note Expression can add incredibly realistic articulations to instrument parts in the included HALion Sonic SE plug-in. Note expression could use more printed documentation. Amp Rack could use more models. CONCEPT Full featured DAW software with included virtual instruments, time and pitch correction, VST3 support, and loop processing. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Mac: OS 10.6, Intel dual-core CPU. PC: Windows 7, Intel, or AMD dual-core CPU. Both: 2GB RAM, 8GB free disk space, dual-layer DVD-ROM drive for installation, USB port and Internet connection for licensing. PLUG-IN FORMATS HOSTED VST instruments and effects, including VST3. List: $599.99 Approx. street: $500 Upgrade from previous version: $149.99 steinberg.net
of things like Mu-Trons at this stage; the effects sound quite good, but all have stompbox-like interfaces, which include a power switch and bare-bones controls, so the flanger (for instance) has Rate, Feedback, and Mix, but no cutoff frequency or other synth-like stuff. Any MIDI control change (say, from an expression pedal) can modulate the wah effect, but I’d like to see a velocity-sensitive wah as well. You also get a compressor, chorus, reverb with a selection of five types (surprisingly, no spring), an octave-divider, delay, tape delay, gate, and more. A Leslie-type effect would be a worthy consideration for a future update. Cubase lavished a bit more attention in the Amplifier section, dishing up seven different amp heads, each with Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence knobs, and a Gain and Master knob. I’m no guitar-amp maven, but the amp models imparted recognizable tonal characteristics of the assorted Fender and Marshall amps emulated here, most likely due to their convolution-impulse modeling sources. You can mix and match amp heads and speaker cabinets at will. The Post Effects section harbors the same devices as the Pre Effects area. If you need to keep tabs on Pre and Post processing, clicking buttons on the lower left and right respectively reveal their effects configurations. Then, the Microphone Position section lets you place a graphical mic (condenser or dynamic) in relation to your graphical amp. You get three fixed distances each for on-axis or offaxis placement. The condenser had a more pronounced bottom and warmer midrange: The dynamic offered a snappier high-end and crisp transients. The mix knob lets you crossfade between these two mic characteristics—a nice touch. Finally, the Master section comprises a no-frills Equalizer with Low, Middle, and High frequency and gain controls; a tuner; and the Master switch with a gain knob. Amp Rack can build some sweet, production-ready tones, but if you already have favorite amp modeling software, you can of course incorporate it as a VST plug-in.
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Fig. 3. Using Note Expression with HALion Sonic SE, you can create nuances such as tone color, amplitude, pitchbend or tuning—for individual notes in a muscial passage. Fig. 2. LoopMash 2 is a brash and wacky groove construction kit.
LoopMash 2 Cubase 5’s delightfully quirky LoopMash plug-in is now LoopMash 2 (see Figure 2 above). The basic premise is its ability to layer and slice loops to build rhythms on the fly. By making one loop the rhythmic center, all others adapt to its groove. Any beat can be mutually exclusive, and randomly substituting a slice of one loop for another can drastically affect the character of the loop. You can adjust the randomness and add selection criteria based on timbral characteristics that the plug-in analyzes from the file’s spectrum. New features include stutters, slurs, scratches, turntable-like backspins, and lots more. You can use a MIDI keyboard to change “scenes” as you would with a series of looped samples, and you can manually substitute slices from one loop to another, drag loops in from the finder, from an audio track within Cubase, or from the Media Bay, a comprehensive browser of Cubase-related audio files and presets. Whatever the tempo of the loop I dropped in, LoopMash quickly analyzed the audio and locked in. AIFF, WAV, or REX2 files are compatible. LoopMash is tons of fun, and you can create some astonishing composite grooves. It’s like a construction kit with a psychedelic sense of humor.
Note Expression and HALion Sonic SE HALion Sonic SE represents a significant upgrade from the HALionOne sample-based soft synth included with previous versions of Cubase. It has a sparkling sound set, vastly deeper editing, multitimbral capability, and compatibility with Steinberg’s VST3 Note Expression—arguably the most ballyhooed feature in Cubase 6. What makes the new Note Expression unique is that it can apply discrete controller events to individual notes, not unlike polyphonic aftertouch on a keyboard (see Figure 3 above, right). Double-click on a note in the Key Editor, a window opens, and you can paint in VST3 controllers in any shape you desire, including freehand, parabola, sine, square, or triangle. The payoff is that you can record a part (say, brass or woodwinds) and then add realistic nuances after the fact more easily and musically than by other methods. Currently, HALion Sonic SE offers a selection of Note Expression-ready patches. Appropriately, not all instruments offer the same expression types; you can sweep a filter on one or change tremolo on another, and HALion Sonic SE allows no customizing of Expression types—for that, you’ll need the full HALion 4 soft sampler. If you’re working with other software (or hardware)
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synths, VST Expression—a different feature than Note Expression—lets you paint the standard set of MIDI Control Change messages, albeit without the polyphonic operation Note Expression and HALion Sonic SE achieve. With VST Expression, though, you can explode notes to multiple MIDI channels and then apply different expression to each channel. When I got comfortable with Note Expression, I painted tonal changes on the upper note of a two-note brass part while I panned the lower note independently. A tutorial video at the Club Cubase YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/clubcubase) shows what you can do when you master this feature; an especially dramatic before-and-after example of a sax solo sounds like the difference between a cheesy MIDI part and a real sax player.
Mystic and Spector Mystic and Spector have been on the scene since version 4, but the synths haven’t received the love they deserve. Mystic uses elements of impulse-response modeling along with comb filtering to create a broad and brilliant spectrum of sounds. You’ll find some truly breathtaking stuff filled with an inner life, many of which remind me of my dear, departed Kawai K5000 additive synth. As with Mystic, Spector excels with animated, glassy, and bell-like tones, but has greater timbral variety still. Each of its two waveforms derives from an array of up to six oscillators, configurable in a number of harmonic series and with variable degrees of complexity. Kudos for straying from the conventional analog-modeling and sample-playback path!
Conclusions Cubase 6 is a mixture of the amazing and the occasional head-scratching moment. I love the synths, LoopMash 2 is a flat-out hoot to play with, and the audio transient detection will find a fan in anyone who works in loop-heavy styles such as hip-hop or electronic dance music. The presentation on the Arrangement screen and the ability to reduce informational clutter are the best I’ve seen. Note Expression is a boon for making acoustic instrument parts more realistic, and I look forward to more VST3-compatible instruments that work with it as seamlessly as HALion Sonic SE. I remain inordinately fond of Cubase. First look at Cubase 6 at NAMM 2011.
VST3 Note Expression tutorial.
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Mobile App of the Month Set a key and scale for the polyphonic playing surface onscreen, and whether notes glide from previous pitches. Moving your finger vertically morphs between the start and end waves, which you select in this pop-up menu.
Wizdom Music MORPHWIZ One of the coolest things about iPad instruments is that you can move beyond the 12-note keyboard and into alternative approaches. What’s more, being able to configure the screen to specific keys and modes makes bum notes a thing of the past. Jordan Rudess’ MorphWiz is a perfect example of what happens when a world-class keyboardist has free reign to develop a serious synth for the masses. Its synth engine focuses on intelligent and intuitive ways to morph the sound as you play. Sliding your fingers horizontally controls pitch, and yes, the synth is polyphonic. You have control over two waveforms for the vertical axis, so sliding your finger up or down morphs the sound in a very musical manner. If harder sounds are your thing, FM mode maps FM intensity to the vertical axis, and includes selectable ratios. Some ratios add subtle harmonic complexity while more extreme settings deliver wonderfully harsh results. The wave sync mode morphs the sound via hard oscillator sync, in a way that’s great for old Prophet-like sounds in the lower registers. You can also morph sounds by titling the iPad, and other tools include unison detuning, attack-release envelopes, tremolo, and some delay and chorus for that arena lead sound. Various key, scale, and mode options are stored per sound preset. Once you’ve chosen a key, your scale options include major, harmonic minor, natural minor, all the expected modes, pentatonic, blues, Jordan’s “Wizard” scale, and others. You can create and save your own scales. The sheer scope of sounds is ably demonstrated by the 80 or so Rudess-designed presets. Silky pads and blazing leads abound in this collection, and with all this playability, I promise you’ll find inspiring timbres for your tracks, whether you’re into progressive rock, progressive house, or anything in between. The built-in recorder is perfect for either doodling or nailing a take. Just hit the record button on the main screen as you play and
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by Francis Preve
Specifications Incredibly expressive. Preset key, scale and mode makes playing a wrong note virtually impossible. Integrated audio recording with many export options. Doesn’t talk MIDI with the outside world.
PLATFORM Apple iPad and iPad 2. $9.99 at Apple App Store
morphwiz.com MorphWiz records audio from your performance. From there you can overdub more audio (destructively, so be careful), save it, email it to yourself (perfect for importing into a DAW), or—get this—use your copy and paste functions to send it to any compatible audio app on your iPad. This makes integrating MorphWiz into a studio workflow pretty painless, though we’d like to see CoreMIDI support so you could play it from a conventional keyboard or sequence it from a DAW. With so many other features, though, it’s very cool as-is. We’re blown away by what MorphWiz delivers for ten bucks. It’s no wonder that this app has won so many awards. The latest? Our Key Buy, of course. MorphWiz demo with Jordan Rudess.
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Roland RD-300NX If you’re a fan of the detailed “SuperNatural” sound of Roland’s RD-700NX digital stage piano (reviewed Mar. ’11), but want to stay well within the sub-$2,000 comfort zone, you’re in luck. The RD300NX is the latest midrange model, which improves and updates the RD-300GX and includes most of the SuperNatural acoustic and electric piano sounds—along with their extensive editing—from the flagship RD-700NX.
Overview Side by side with the RD-700NX, the RD-300NX is slightly more compact, with a simpler front panel. The case is rugged and inspires confidence for repeated road use. It weighs in at just over 38 pounds, which puts it in “manageable by one person” territory. The signature Roland pitch/modulation paddle is to the left of the keyboard as opposed to above it on the main panel, where some stage pianos put their pitch and mod controls. This adds a few inches to the width (about 57 inches total, without a case), so consider your vehicle’s dimensions. The fully weighted “Ivory Feel G” keyboard is a big upgrade from the semi-weighted feel of previous RD-300 series models. The key surfaces are pleasing to the touch, and are neither too slick nor too grippy. The action isn’t graded, but it does boast simulated escapement that approximates the feeling of a hammer being thrown when you strike a key. Note attacks feel solid, but the action was a bit sluggish on rapidly repeating notes.
Acoustic Pianos There are three acoustic piano sample sets, or Tones: a stereo concert grand, a mono version of that same grand, and a detuned honky-tonk piano. By pressing the gray Piano button, you get a one-touch bank
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by Tom Brislin of ten “Live Sets.” These store editable timbre, effect, and split/layer settings for the Tone. The concert grand has a somewhat mellow tone, with a warm sustain that doesn’t suffer from any noticeable loop points or “flattening.” The initial note decay happens perhaps a little too soon compared to most acoustic grands I play, but then, I feel that way about just about every hardware digital piano. The RD-300NX is equipped with several ways to get more punch if needed, which we’ll cover below. Each piano Live Set includes a number of detail settings courtesy of Roland’s “SuperNatural” sound engine. These include stereo width, “nuance” (adjusts the relative phase of the left and right sounds), lid position (essentially a brightness control), damper noise, duplex scale (adjusts higher harmonics), string resonance, key-off resonance, and hammer noise. Also available are extensive controls for key touch, tuning, and damper pedal resonance. Keyboard players always have the challenge of getting a digital piano to hold its own and be “present” in a live or recorded mix, without the cliché of simply jacking up the volume and treble to “cut through the mix.” The RD-300NX borrows a few helpful features from its big brother to give the piano sound a boost. In the Tone Edit menu, Tone Character takes the sound from mellow to hard; the range of difference is so wide that the opposite extremes of this control sound like different source pianos. The “hardest” settings are probably the most useful in a live rock context, as the punchy attack leads to a less realistic sustain. On top of this, the Sound Lift parameter modifies your selected touch sensitivity curve so that lighter playing yields louder notes. A three-band EQ features dedicated knobs for each band and a global compressor has editable settings. Then, there’s the Sound Focus button. Roland says this employs some sort of phase correction; to my ears, it seemed to reduce the stereo width, effectively bringing me
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forward in the mix at the same volume. For non-piano Tones, it seemed to add an enhancer or midrange boost.
Electric Pianos and Other Sounds The other one-touch category is “E. Piano,” a bank that features 15 editable Live Sets. The presets are variations of Rhodes, Wurlitzer, and Roland’s mid-’80s structured adaptive digital pianos such as the RD1000. Enter the edit menu of any of these Performances and you’ll find a generous selection of 44 E. Piano Tones. While the tone choices seem disorganized and at times redundant, standouts include Dyno Rhodes, Yamaha CP70-style electric grand, and even a few FM electric piano sounds, if you must. The RD-300NX also includes a range of non-piano sounds grouped as Clav/Mallet, Strings/Pad, Organ, Guitar/Bass, Choir/Scat, and Brass/Synth. In general, these sounds are full and punchy enough to use on the gig, though Hammond-style organ sounds aren’t especially inspiring. It’s worth noting that some stage keyboards at or below the RD’s price do drawbar control of organs, including the Kawai MP6 and Casio WK-7500 (reviewed Mar. ’11 and June ’11, respectively)— though neither of those offer anything close to the SuperNatural level of detail on acoustic and electric pianos. The Clavinet has good attack and a little key-release click to simulate old hammer tips, but the sound loses some life when sustained. Pleasant surprises include a plethora of monophonic synth basses and polyphonic analog tones, as well as multiple string section choices. These are great for splits and layers.
Effects In addition to the effects on the front panel (chorus, reverb, and the aforementioned EQ and compression), the RD-300NX features a multi-effects processor with 78 effect types. You can apply an effect to any preset, though if you’re playing a split or layer, they will apply only to the Tone in the “Upper 1” zone. There’s a lot to play with here, including multiple delays, phaser/flanger/chorus, distortion, rotary, tremolo, auto-pan, tape echo, enhancer, and pitch shift.
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Specifications Highly editable “SuperNatural” acoustic and electric piano sounds. Easy-tonavigate front panel. Pleasing action and key surfaces. Solid construction. Manageable weight. Some less expensive stage keyboards offer more authentic drawbar organ sounds. ACTION Fully weighted “Ivory Feel G.” POLYPHONY 128 notes. SYNTHESIS TYPE “SuperNatural” acoustic and electric pianos (multisampling augmented by physical modeling), sample playback for other sounds. SPLITS AND LAYERS 3 zones (Upper 1, Upper 2, Lower), each with assignable range. WEIGHT 38.7 lbs. List: $1,999 Approx. street: $1,700 rolandus.com
Conclusions The RD-300NX strikes a balance between simplicity and depth. For those who like to customize, you can get plenty of tonal variation in both piano and non-piano sounds, and it’s all so easy to access and edit that on live gigs, you can freely split, layer, and tweak without being distracted from playing music. If you want solid, detailed, high-end pianos plus a variety of other gig-ready sounds, the RD-300NX should be high on your test-drive list. Audio examples.
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P R OD UCT SPO T LIGHT
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SMALL BOX BIG BOOM Looking for a big Moog sound in a small, portable package? Check out the new Slim Phatty from Moog. Its 100% analog signal path, intuitive user interface, rugged construction and rich MIDI, USB and Control Voltage functionality make it a must-have for producers, touring musicians and DJs. Based on the powerful Little Phatty sound engine, earth-shaking basses, scorching leads and unlimited sonic creativity now fit in your back pack and your budget!
www.moogmusic.com
Action Drums: Cinematic Edition Nine Volt Audio Now Available
Recorded in a concert hall, Action Drums: Cinematic Edition brings epic percussion to the REX, Stylus RMX, ACID Wav and Apple Loop formats. SRP: $99.99
www.NineVoltAudio.com
Octavian - Keyboard Calculator Bitnotic
Ivory II – Italian Grand
Available on the iTunes App Store
Now Available
Instantly see and hear 500+ scales and 50+ chords on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Also features Circle of Fifths, scale modes, chord inversions, descending scales, and much more. Keyboard Magazine said of Octavian 1.1.0 (Jan 2010): “It’s a cheat sheet no keyboardist should leave home without.” SRP: $2.99 USD
Featuring the same award-winning piano engine found in Ivory II Grand Pianos, the Ivory II Italian Grand boasts a spectacular 10 foot piano with incredible tonal range. Enhanced with their exclusive Harmonic Resonance Modeling, the largest of Synthogy’s virtual pianos, (wth up to 18 velocity layers) rewards your touch with a sublime wash of color and nuance you must play to believe. SRP: $179
www.bitnotic.com
[email protected]
Distributed by ILIO www.ilio.com (800) 747-4546
To advertise in this section contact: Contessa Abono at 650-238-0296 or
[email protected]
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C LA S S IF I EDS Categories
For Sale
Education & Tutorial Learn Piano Tuning, Repairing, And Regulating, taught by Craftsman technicians. Complete correspondence course includes written and video tape training material, Apprentice Training Manual, much more. Licensed by Departmentof Education. www.pianotuning.com. Randy Potter School of Piano Technology, 61592 Orion Dr., Bend, OR 97702. (541) 382-5411.
Talent and Employment Sounds, Sequences, & Software Education & Tutorial Acoustic Products and Services For Sale
www.b3hammond.com. Buy/Sell MINT Hammonds, Leslies. Wordwide sales. (701) 400-2933,
[email protected]
www.B3GUYS.com HAMMOND Organs & LESLIE Speakers Sales - Service - Parts - Rental 615-438-8997
Mixing and Mastering Buying or selling instruments through our Classified Ads offers you convenience, a big marketplace, and a wide range of instruments and prices. However, buying mailorder does have its drawbacks, too. Keyboard Magazine suggests the following guidelines to help the buyer and the seller in these transactions: 1) Get a written description of the instrument, which should include the serial number. 2) Get front and back photos of the instrument. 3) Get a written purchase agreement, with a 24-hour approval clause allowing the buyer to return the instrument for a full refund if it does not meet his/ her reasonable expectations.
Bill Evans - Last Piano - For Sale 1939 Chickering Grand #160650 Estate of Bill Evans accepting private offers Send Interest directly to Bill Evans son, Evan Evans, at:
[email protected] www.vimeo.com/26181567
Piano & Keyboard Players Only “I enthusiastically endorse this book!” – Mark Isham http://www.billkeis.com/pkpo-ebook.htm
Learn jazz piano on the internet at www.JazzPianoOnline.com
www.keyboardmag.com
Sounds, Sequences & Software Acoustic Products & Services
www.VintageKeyboardSounds.com Authentic MELLOTRON, B3, and COMBO ORGAN
Mixing and Mastering
Acoustics First
®
SAMPLES. All Formats Supported. 562-856-9333
Toll-Free Number:
BAND-IN-A-BOX IMPROVEMENT PRODUCTS * Put A Better Band In Your Box * Norton Music (since 1990) * www.nortonmusic.com
888-765-2900
SOUND AND NOISE CONTROL MATERIALS Web Site
www.acousticsfirst.com
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advertisers may not list discounted prices or percentages on specific models, unless items are used or discontinued. Advertisers must provide us with complete name, street address, and phone number, whether or not included in the ad copy (you may list a PO Box address in your ad, however). Mail ads to: Keyboard Classifieds, Attn: Contessa Abono, 1111 Bayhill Dr., Suite 125, San Bruno, CA 94066. FAX (if paying by MasterCard, or Visa): (650) 238-0263. For more information, call Contessa Abono at (650) 238-0296; E-mail:
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Category: ❒ Marketplace ❒ Duplication ❒ Talent and Employment ❒ Sounds/Sequences/Software ❒ Mixing/Mastering ❒ Instruments ❒ Accessories ❒ Gear for Sale ❒ Acoustic Products & Svc’s ❒ Studio Furnishings ❒ Other
11.2011
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TIME MACHINE
GHOSTS OF CLONEWHEELS PAST by Stephen Fortner
Keyboard has always been fond of Hammond B-3 clone roundups. With Hammond’s new SK1 getting kudos this issue (see page 60) and our being quite impressed with the Nord C2 and Studiologic Numa Organ in May of this year, it’s fitting that this month’s retrospective
showcases clones that have made us exclaim, “Yeah, that’s the sound” over the years. The four shown below have a couple of things in common: They either placed first in a roundup or won a Key Buy in a standalone review, and they’ve been discontinued.
VOCE V3 “In terms of authenticity, sound quality, balls, and onboard Leslie simulation, the Voce V3 has no peer in the organ module universe,” proclaimed Mark Vail in our September 1995 roundup, which also happened to mark our 20th anniversary in print. Developed by Dave Amels, the $1,195 V3 was the first clone to use modeling such that 91 virtual tonewheels “spun” continuously.
HAMMOND XK-2 The only organ in our June 1999 roundup with waterfall keys (other than the vintage A-105 reference unit) also took top honors for sound—though today’s SK1, XK-3C, and XK-1 are worlds better. Fun fact: Being one of the play-testers for this roundup was my first role at Keyboard other than loyal reader. KORG CX-3 Rebooting the name of its 1980 analog predecessor, the “new” CX-3 won a Key Buy in our February 2001 review. Then the only single-manual clone with two sets of drawbars (the Hammond XK-3 wouldn’t be far behind), it sported a realistic and highly tweakable rotary simulation, plus an “EX” mode for extra drawbar tones not found on the real B-3. The CX-3 lives on as a virtual instrument inside Korg’s Kronos workstation.
ROLAND VK-7 Sweeping most categories in our January 1998 shootout, the VK-7 earned this praise from Santana and Vital Information keyboardist Tom Coster: “The VK-7 has a breathing effect that makes me feel like I’m playing a Hammond.” Between that and Keyboard summarizing it as “the Ferrari of B-3 wannabes,” I went out and bought one the next day.
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