PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Do you have a "geek level" when it comes to gear?

My music world is keyboard centric. I do other things, but mainly I am a keyboard guy. As I look at the new boards and drool over how great they sound, before I seriously consider buying one I find the manual online. I scan that manual and see if it takes 2 advanced degrees in electronical engineering to use it or not. I don't want to spend several thousands on a keyboard and have it so far above my level to program it that I am stuck with only the stock sounds. A couple of years ago I bought a used Yamaha Motif. I had it for a day. Fortunately for me it had 2 bad keys so I was able to return it, but as it sat on my table I was never so lost as trying to figure out how to do sound layers, keyboard splits, octave changes to make those splits make sense... I just don't want a keyboard that turns into a full time job trying to figure out how to use it.

Where do YOU draw the line? Is your line a moving target depending on what you do? I am of the opinion that if you never play live you don't have a lot of requirements from a keyboard beyond stock sounds. If you just play in a home studio you can you use MIDI data to do any exotic sound stacking and have no use for keyboard splitting because you can overdub on tracks. I am trying to recreate some of what Roger O'Donnell does to play with The Cure, and between what I can hear and what I see on videos he does a LOT of keyboard splitting. One of the videos I have of them shows that Roger is playing 2 of this very Kurzweil. Keyboards can get intense in live situations under even the simplest of circumstances. You need to be turning the MIDI on and off depending on whether you want to be sending data to another sound source or play the boards individually. In the Southside Johnny band I was in the last couple of years I had to constantly change the MIDI channel on my sampler because I didn't always need it to be slaved to the Korg Krome. There were times when I was not playing horns that I played it independently from the Korg and the only fast way to do that was to change the MIDI to channel 2. Then remember to change it back to channel 1 for the next song. And at times I played rhythm guitar parts on the Korg for just an 8 bar guitar solo so I just pulled the volume down on the sampler and then often forgot to push it back on... It can really get confusing when you make changes within songs and takes a lot of concentration that my 8th decade brain doesn't always have anymore.

Oh, the manual for the Kurzweil is 148 pages. The Motif was 294. The more they do, the more they have to teach us. Way above my pay grade.

When I used to play keyboards live the extent of my programming was just in setting up enough patches to handle what we normally played. I would just set default sounds for each of the 16 MIDI channels on the Proteus and on the Korg N5. So 32 total patches ready to play. We didn't have a huge song selection so the 32 was plenty for me. If I had needed more I could have programmed multiple banks/patches to allow a larger number. I never did much layering as I could find the sounds I liked without doing so. There may have been a song or two where I hit both keyboards at the same time.....

As you say, now that I'm just a home body, I don't need as many keyboards and I'm fine with just the N5 and MIDI to control.

Since I play music for a living, I draw the line with a cost/gig-benifit decision.

Will this make my gig experience better enough to the audience to justify X number of gig take-home dollars I will spend on it?

I've gotten to the point where my musical instruments are tools, as well as toys, but the purchasing decision, more often than not, ranks them as tools.

Of course, there are exceptions.

Notes ♫

How about time, Notes? The money isn't as much of an issue for me. I really don't care anything about money. I have enough sent to me every month to not have to care. It's the time investment. That Motif I tried was ridiculous. The Kurzweil is difficult but I can make it through this because a former bandmate is a phone call away if I can't figure it out myself (which I prefer to do - like copying homework in school vs doing it). I toyed with the idea of getting a Prophet 10 but thought back to how complex the Prophet 5 was to program and how many players never got beyond the factory sounds.

So in THAT context if you know a piece of gear is extremely complex to learn is that more or less of a factor than price?

Example is that I looked at a Novation Launchpad because it looks cool and I see people use them and they look cool doing it. But I had to factor in "What would you ever use this for?" and I passed on it. But that comes from one who doesn't understand why people still play their songs from this software and not compile them into WAV files. It's not like you are remixing during a live performances. One guy here once replied to a similar comment I made saying he needed jukebox mode to string songs together. Okay. Can you not produce well enough to string songs together in a DAW and then render them as one song?

All a matter of preference, I know.

EDIT to add: I bought the Kurzweil after being in a band with a guy who had one, and seeing so many videos with Roger O'Donnell playing one with The Cure. On some of the videos he is using 2 of them. On others he is using that Kurz and a Motif. Now I need to form or join another band to give me a reason to sit at the thing and create the sounds I need for that band. The stock sounds are great but half the fun of synthesizers is, you know, synthesizing. I ran a vague ad to see what replies I'd get and it as usual it's a bunch of kids who want to form a band and be ready to play in 3 weeks.

Software YES, Hardware NO

It started for me with the MOTU Audio Express. I have had it for years and it still has a red light flashing which I have no idea what it is trying to tell me or how to stop it. Otherwise, I just plug into it and it works.

Then more recently it was the Studio Logic SL88 Studio keyboard. Every other month something changes and I have to dig out the manual and get on line searching for how to adjust the programming.

These both are just hobby tools for me so I try not to over stress. First course of action is to tune them off and then back on again and I am usually set.

What model MOTU do you have and how old is it? "For years" could mean 4 or 22. Do you have a manual that addresses that red light? Is the red light pulsing in a consistent pattern or when you inject input into it as if it is responding to input? Is it on one channel or a global indicator of something?

Maybe 5+ years old. It didn't always blink. But it has 24/7 for the past 6 months. It the global main. Just a steady blink. Here it is. I caught it in mid blink so you see the red light on. I can only assume blinking red means all is working fine.

Dan

The answer to your flashing light is (and I quote)

The “+main” LED has three states: off, on, and flashing.
Push the PHONES knob to cycle among three volume
control modes: phone jack only (off), phones+main outs
(on), or main outs only (flashing).

So the fact that the light is flashing tells you that the phones knob is controlling the main outs only.


Kevin

hehe , nothing is obvious to the uniformed.

Things like that are why I will harp so much on RTFM.

Page 4. Item 6. LOL!!!

Bingo, we have the winner!

Hey Guys, go easy on me. I didn't post here asking for how to fix this. I stated that it was blinking and I didn't how to stop it from blinking. I did mentioned it was working fine so why fix something which was not broken. Trust me I am a busy guy .

But I do appreciate Kevin volunteering to provide guidance.

It's more about priorities than money.

Mrs. Notes and I spent 5 weeks in a Camper Van exploring the eastern half of Australia, a month in China, 5 weeks in England, a month in Spain with a side trip to Morocco, a month in the Czech Republic, and quite a few other countries. All independent travel, except for China (I took a tour because I couldn't read the transportation schedules in the Chinese characters).

And a lot of that involves music, concerts by Czech Philharmonic, Prague Symphony, London Symphony, Hungary Symphony, Moscow Symphony, Beijing Opera, real (not tourist) Flamenco in Spain, Jazz in Amsterdam, steel band in Jamaica, Salsa festival in San Juan, Opera in Italy, Mariachi in Mexico, and more.

We often plan our dates on music events. We were in the audience for this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFoFxa7Hc04 -- although the camera never found us. It's a symphony seldom played in the USA and one of our favorites.

We were planning a trip to Madagascar when COVID reared its ugly head.

We've been to 49 US States, all but the middle of Canada, through Mexico to South America the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. The only continent we haven't been to yet is Antarctica, and it's on the list.

We never go to the same place twice, we travel once per year, and we have over 50 more places we want to visit, and it's not likely that we will make them all, so we prioritize.

To us, travelling to a foreign country, staying in local non-US hotels, using public transportation when available, listening to local music, and meeting new people are much more interesting than having more gear.

If a new piece of gear comes along that will make a significant difference in what I do for a living, I won't hesitate. If not, there are other things to do that also give me pleasure.

Notes ♫

I can relate to all of these statements. The Student never even slightly made a complaint, and one of the team then volunteered a solution. Yep. That's what this forum is all about. Helping each other & team-work. That's what gets results.

Well all of that is good to know, Notes, (and a great flex, by the way) but the question really meant "How complex of a piece of gear will you tolerate"? This Kurzweil is a fantastic sounding board but the manual is like advanced calculus. 147 pages of complex information similar to what the Chinese train schedules must have looked like. All I want to do is find out if a screen on the display will tell me how many ROM Blocks are loaded in this thing (since I am not the original owner) and I am on day 4 trying to find out if that is even possible, much less how to do it. Between that manual and about 175 Kurzweil web pages (so far) I have not been able to see IF that is possible. I suspect that deductive reasoning should tell me that with no sounds in the 200s through 770 (out of 1000 sound slots) I don't have all 3 slots filled. BUT, how do I know the cards are not in there and just not populated?

That is what I mean by "geek level".

I am of the mindset that I am going to figure this *&@&*^* *$*#&#% out if it kills me. And if it does, so be it.

You enjoy travel. I hate it. I will never get on a plane again and pay people because I dare to have a frickin' suitcase! And not get a meal on a 5 hour flight. Plus I deal with enough foreigners right here in my city. I am not going out "in search of" to see more of them. Then again, I am an extreme introvert and surround myself with tech to keep me busy. Plus I have no spouse to travel with, and I won't go anywhere I can't take my dog. So no movies, no concerts, no restaurants unless they are dog friendly... This dog, while not officially, is my emotional support system. He comes with me. Period. I passed on seeing Brian Culbertson because after 3 hours away from my dog I would have been an angry, emotional wreck. You don't suffer from that kind of condition, and that whatever god you believe in for that. It is a miserable space to live in.

But back to music, anybody have a Kurzweil by any chance?

That was totally me in trying to figure out that multiple M2 SSDs as boot disk. Took me a while but I was determined.

BTW, what was that model of Kurzweil again? I can try some searching too.

I use a guitar and an amp. no pedalboard.

Guitarists at gigs ask me where the rest of my rig is.
I explain I do use a little reverb. i prefer springs.
I like an amp with a minimum of options. on/off, volume, bass,mid,treble, reverb.


Been that way for almost 50 years.

Not saying its better, it works for me.
My tone is pretty uncomplicated.
I try to sound like a guitar.
On a good night, I get most of the way there

My level of geek with keyboards is .... as long as I can figure out how to get the midi data out and into the DAW I'm good.

Beyond that.... Nope. I use the software synths for everything else.

But then again.... I'm a guitar guy....so......

Look around and see if there is an editor/ librarian app for that thing for your computer platform of choice.