Do preloaded sets consume a great deal of RAM

ahhh DJ means Dancing Jumo, now I get it!

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@Corky no worries about the thread. I was telling my band what hoot this thread has been for the past 2 days! No DJ means Dusty Jalapeno. Thatā€™s my stripper name. Because, I may be old, but Iā€™m hot.

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I bought and loaded addictive keys. Wow! You are right. No further search is needed. I got both the upright and grand. They were very cool and gave me a huge discount because I am a student. I love this piano. Thanks for the suggestion!

addictive keys studio grand
Itā€™s been my fav for a while now.

I sorted out the WWII mics and positions and never touched the config since. Two speakers where the mics would be and itā€™s like sitting t the piano.


Iā€™m keen to get the upright, hopeing it will go on special!!![adkys|690x264]

I havenā€™t used my AK a lot, decided to put it in a few songs. I still havenā€™t figured out how to engage EQ and Reverb. I can light up the ā€œonā€ buttons and change settings, but no fx coming through. Maybe a little reading would help, hehe!

Interesting OT debate :slight_smile: Iā€™ll throw my two penneth worth in.

I auditioned for/joined Swansea based Pure Floyd in 2008 and when it was mentioned on the phone that they used backing tracks, I was very against it in principle, but they pointed out that Floyd used to do this before they started having additional musicians on stageā€¦

It did not take me long to get used to playing with backing tracks. We played a few Floyd numbers in my band before that, and the clicks made a world of difference in getting some of the ā€œicing on the cakeā€ into the performances, such as the spoken voices in Darkside, background instruments, female backing harmonies, etc.).

As a small pub/club band, people used to come up to us and say that they had either seen Floyd for real or, more recently, one of the BIG current tributes like Aussie Floyd, and they would say that whilst we obviously didnā€™t have the stage show, we nailed the music just as well as them (we were lucky in that the guitar player was a real Gilmour Clone who had the technique and sounds off to a T).

You do have to be disciplined with clicks, but we did have a few un-clicked spots for spontaneity, and you know what? Quite often they went wrong because very few drummers can play a rock solid tempo and not vary from it.

The challenge with a lot of Floyd music is that Gilmourā€™s sound is very dependent on tempo delay. If you play at the wrong tempo it doesnā€™t work. As an example, we used to do ā€œRun Like Hellā€ un-clicked. The song would start off OK as the guitar player could set the tempo by his playing against the delay before everybody else came in, and then the drummer would go into a fill and come out faster, go into another fill and come out fasterā€¦ until the guitar player would give the drummer THAT look, which the drummer would ignore (he was NEVER wrong), and eventually the guitar player would be just thrashing the guitar in disgust as he could not play the song properly.

Once we clicked that track there was never a problem, and it was 200% better in terms of getting the right vibe and stayed that way.

The other advantage of playing to clicks (as a small band on the pub/club circuit) is that I created a DMX light show which was synced to the track (all in Cantabile 2 at that time :slight_smile: ). We had the best light show on the circuit as I could program effects that no human could push buttons fast enough to get, all perfectly in time with the music. And we didnā€™t have to pay a light technician.

Fast forward to 2014 and Welsh Floyd, and we had a video show in the mix as well, triggered from Cantabile (now V3) so no need for somebody to do that, but sound, light and video were all in time.

Towards the end of Pure Floyd we had the usual band issues, not with the bass player (although we went through a few of those!) but with the drummer. Technically, he was the best drummer I have ever worked with, but could be a bit of an A-Hole. He left and we couldnā€™t find a replacement good enough, so we took the decision to slim down to a three piece and put the drums on the backing track until we found somebody.

I spent Christmas 2011 listening to PULSE (the Division Bell Tour live album) drum beat by drum beat to replicate Nick Masonā€™s performance (taught me a lot about how to program realistic drums in the process, despite nearly going madā€¦), using BFD2 for some very real sounding drums, and you know what?

We didnā€™t miss the drummer. We didnā€™t miss his antics, we didnā€™t miss his overplaying (towards the end he was bored and putting in things that shouldnā€™t have been there), we didnā€™t miss the fact that his kit took up half the area we usually had to play in. So we carried on for a year in this guise until something else made me decide that the band had run its course.

Oh and at one point, me and guitar player did it as a two piece for a charity gig and because bass player pulled out of the commitment, and it took the guitar player just two days to lay the bass down.

Is using clicks/backing tracks right compared to live playing? There is no right or wrong answer.

For me, they are currently the right answer as the local music scene has changed since I started. Unless you are big and on the major circuit (we tried with Welsh Floyd, but didnā€™t quite get there before the usual band sh*t set in, and I was losing money on it) then the local scene is very cost sensitive now.

Iā€™ve had cases of booking a Ā£400 gig at pubs in Swansea area which is not too bad a split four ways (which is more than double the usual going rate but the pubs knew they would have a huge crowd draw, so easily would get the money back on bar sales), only for the landlord to do a runner or the pub gets taken over and the new owner reneges on the fee and offers Ā£100 as he can get a teenage band willing to play in front of their mates for that price.

Or, classic example in Welsh Floyd, we did a gig last year in the Welsh valleys, where Floyd usually always goes down well, it was a new venue that the owner had sunk a lot of money into into (doing up an old theatre). Lovely sound, his daughter (a lighting enthusiast) augmented our light rig. It looked and sounded great but it was a disaster gig in terms of attendance. We were charging Ā£10 a ticket, but there were three pubs in the immediate vicinity all with ā€œfree musicā€ on that night.

Iā€™m at the stage in life (mid-50s) with a well paid job and still a decent pension, that I am not going to throw that away on a music whim - which is why I left Welsh Floyd as the rest in the band wanted to try and make it bigger (few of them worked for a living!!!). I do think I missed my vocation in life, if only I could have afforded that DX7 in 1983ā€¦ But here I am now, well paid job and music is a serious hobby (well funded by the job!)

So, for me, music now will be low key gigs in the local music venue and a few other choice ones not too far away. And I am probably looking for a duo format to backing tracks (using Cantabile) to keep it small and compact, and you stand a chance of covering your costs at least. Whilst I do not need to make money out of it to put food on the table, I do want it to be cost neutral at least and ideally the band cash I get has always been reinvested in gear.

Even if it got the point where I wanted a larger band again, I am now used to augmenting the live sound with extra layers and the lighting.

So, I hope that is a useful perspective from the ā€œsmall end of the spectrumā€. :slight_smile:

Back on topic :slight_smile: I preload my set on a machine with 32 GB RAM, and I donā€™t think I have used more than 4GB so far, but would need to check. As the machine is the fastest I could afford and with a 500 GB SSD it loads in next to no time.

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Very nice Derek. Great story. Somewhat like you, I have had my time on stage and touring. And, like most everyone here, I am not going to give my music upā€¦ever. Other than my siblings, music has been with me longer than anyone. I can depend on it to be there tomorrow and I can hate it one day, then love it the next. It has been both a blessing, and a curse. I have been retired for some time now, and do not depend on music for a living (can be a money pit at times). I find it amusing that I am still performing at my age. Most of the people I perform with are younger. Last weekend, a patron asked me how old I am. It was the first time I remember being asked that during a gig, and was, in a way, stunned by it. It turned out to be a very nice compliment.

As I mentioned above, my 3-piece project is coming along very well. I discovered with C3, so many things are possible, and decided to do something slightly unusual by making multiple-instrument songs live with only 3 people. I didnā€™t want to be stuck in the usual 3-piece nightmare of limited, empty sounding songs. My bandmates thought I was crazy, but they were not willing to do click tracks, or backing tracks. We play some Floyd, and in particular ā€œRun Like Hellā€. I remembered the Gilmour ā€œsound on soundā€ effect and was able, through different effects, create a ā€œpadā€ sound behind my guitar playing. Our Bass player is adept enough to play keyboard parts with right hand, and tap the simple bass line with his left. I play the synth lead in the song on keyboard as my bandmates fill the vacancy, and I keep the rhythm going with my left hand on guitar. It takes some work, but once we get certain parts down, we are confidently smiling. :sunglasses: Lighting is my next project.

Despite all the stances on use of backing tracks, good or bad, purist or experimental, a singer using a full track or a band using a percussion stem, sell out or gainfully working, we all do what we are going to do to get by, regardless. To each his own. I completely understand something like a Floyd tribute show with lighting and timing. I also understand the amount of work put into working with, and development of backing tracks. (Not too hip on the paid Singer with a purchased karaoke track, though) My 2 cents.

Speaking for my own personal self, I love being able to extend a song at will, work the crowd in the middle of a song, jam an extra 12 bars, correcting a mistake and moving on with out being tied to strict song changes. But mostly, there is nothing like reacting with every musician making that sound and taking it to a higher place, and watching the crowd go there with you. That is my drug of choice. I guess it is the old rock n roller in me that conjures up Mitch Ryder, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, Prince, Chuck Berry, Otis Redding, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc, etc, when I perform. I still attempt to be out in the crowd, whether singing, playing harmonica or guitar, or just a quick dance with the lovelies. In-ears & a broken hip has slowed a lot of that, but I still give it a go occasionallyā€¦as long as I donā€™t look too ridiculous :grin:

No more jumping off stage into splitsā€¦ohhhh the pain !

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I have played in bands with no BT or click and there are advantages to that, such as spontaneity. Like drop out for drum solo, or spontaneously mixing songs together for a medley.

What I like most about our backing and click right now is the vocal cues so that there are no count offs. A typical opening we do is to simply walk up on stage and bust into a tune with no count off and play three songs in a row bam bam bam. Then introduce ourselves. It is a cool effect, how the band just knows when to start. Some cool percs for Vocal Cues, BT and click combined.

We do use use the metronome on C3 sometimes for count off only through in-ears, or I will count it vocally same way. Not a click track, just stop it with switch after count. This would not work with my ā€œold schoolā€ bands. It has been my experience not to let most guitarists count off a song for we will be racing toward the finish line. :weary:

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Derek, is that a VK-9 that you are playing on your website?

Hi, Corky. Thanks for taking the time to read what turned into a bit of a tome! :slight_smile:

I agree with everything you say. There is no right or wrong answer re backing tracks other than a Lounge Lizard Singer crooning over MIDI files, but from his perspective, he is probably as happy as we are.

The right band with everything played free-form is equally magical. The band I was in before Pure Floyd had two magical gigs before it splintered. That was all live. People in my local music venue still talk about those gigs, and they were back in 2006!

Cheers
Derek

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Hi,

What website/song are you referring to?

If the Welshfloyd site and the studio tracks, those tracks were done before my tenure by my predecessor, who I think, used a Korg CX-3 live, but the studio they recorded in had the real deal in terms of Hammond/Leslie, but not sure if they would have used it.

If my Echoes Website, the organ on ā€œThe Cageā€ was a Native Instruments B4II.

Since NI B4II, which I used to use live in Pure Floyd (with Cantabile 2 hosting it along with the backing tracks and lights), I went to using the CX-3 engine in my Kronos.

Sounds like itā€™s time for a reunion concert :grinning:

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Itā€™s Welsh Floyd. I am going between integrating C3 with a Yamaha Montage 8 or get a Kronos with the C3 engine (Why no Radias engine? That is one of the biggest reasons for a negative on it). I am torn because I love VB3.

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Sadly we are too splintered for that (both geographically and a few relationships). But I am thinking of resurrecting the concept. :slight_smile:

Ah, OK. I canā€™t give the definitive answer then.

Just curious, what is in the Radias engine that is not present in any of the Kronosā€™s nine engines? It would be good if Korg would add more engines to the Kronos, but then again, I have my ā€œsuper-synthā€ concept now: a combination of Kronos, Montage and whatever VSTis I choose to run in Cantabile! :slight_smile:

I guess I used C3 (cantabile 3) and Korg C3 interchangeably (seemingly).

The Radias synth engine is only rivaled by the much venerated (and coveted by me) Access Virus. Nearly all synths that classify themselves as Anaolg (but arenā€™t really) use a sampled wave and list it in a wave table (Sine, Saw, Triangle etc). Waves are actually made up of partials (I may be preaching to the choir, sorry). Razor by NI consists of waves made up of partials so is the Access Virus (collections of sine waves at different frequencies to create an authentic wave). The Korg radias synth engine is both additive and subtractive synthesis (MMT). Although I donā€™t fully understand the terms, you can tell the shocking difference between a radias (not partials based though) and AI-1 (definitely sos- Same Old Samples). Korg took out the precious Radias synth engine and replaced it with the Al-1. If they would have stuck the Radias in the Kronos, it would clear the shelves IMHO.

If you own both the Montage and Kronos 1) Do you have an opinion about the two and 2) How is the Kronos as a MIDI controller (I know the Montage is very good as a MIDI controller. 8 Completely mapable zones to transmit any channel with sliders and knobs).

I want to purchase a Radias, but, like the Access Virus, it has particular application that canā€™t justify the expenditure. If I got rich, I would instantly purchase a Virus and Radias.

OK. Iā€™ve gotten some pretty good results out of AL-1, so guess I could do better with Radias?

I think Montage and Kronos are both pretty good controllers, as I use both in that context. In fact with Cantabile, it doesnā€™t really matter, as you can do all of the zoning and mapping in Cantabile.

I have never heard the AL-1 so I am commenting from a ā€œnot-not-radias (=pro radias)ā€ position rather than a ā€œradias vs AL-1.ā€ So, my point of view has an element of ignorance to it.

Nice reminder on the zone mapping within Cantabile 3. Never thought of that. I did all zone mapping inside the controller which usually is a Motif.

Used to do the same with mine. C3 is a godsend there.

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