Keyboard Corner update - a change in clonewheel

I just pulled the trigger on my acquisition list item to fill the Clonewheel gap. After going through decision points and targets that started with the Roland VR-09 V-Combo, then the Nord Electro 4D (which until last Tuesday was my actual target) - and then on Tuesday I thought enough to really dig in and go through a much larger list of Clonewheels that covered off the last 15 years: Korg CX-3, Voce modules, etc... and dug out references to two unknown to me keyboards that are new and both very highly regarded.

The Crumar Muse is a dual manual organ based on Windows Embedded hosting a firmware based VB3 VST from GSi. But as with what I'm typically looking at - the dual manual organ was a bit spendier than my budget allowed at $2500 plus shipping from Italy. Great reviews, great specs... but no...

The Fatar Studiologic Numa combo organ ended up being my choice. Endorsed by and based on the very iconic B3 organ owned by Joey de Francesco (very famous jazz organist) - I watched several YouTube performance and review videos, read many other reviews, and then did some soul searching as it is a dedicated organ clone - no other sounds loadable on this. With the Leslie emulation being very highly regarded, the sound of the B3 and C3 being highly praised, the portability of the unit... and the price being a full $300 cheaper on eBay than the Nord - this became a no brainer.

This means that in order to have my beloved Mellotron samples I'll need to have some kind of VST host unit. I have my eye on a couple Muse Receptor units on eBay right now which are very affordable - lets see how long that lasts. One auction ends Sunday so I'll have updates next week.

This means my keyboard rig now looks like this:

• Yamaha MOx6 workstation
• Studiologic Numa organ
• Yamaha KX-88 with Korg Triton Rack & Yamaha TX816
• Roland Gaia SH-01 virtual analog synth
• Novation X-Station 49 synth
• Muse Receptor
• Arturia Analog Laboratory
• Native Instruments Komplete 7
• Ultrabook computer - patch loading and editing/controlling

I also have a M-Audio Axiom 49 and a Roland GR-33 to MIDI into the rig - keyboardist will have their rig as detailed above, but I can access modules/workstations to either play keys or add layers to my guitar parts. There are some songs (such as Mesmerize) which have the Sustainiac guitar controlling monosynth lines adding timbres to the song.

I'm still alive - albeit barely

Kids have been sick last two days so sleep is at a premium. I'm also waiting on purchasing my clonewheel organ - soon is what I tell myself... Just a few more days and it'll be mine - might be a surprise choice in the end ;)

Also have an eye on another Muse Receptor - stay tuned.

Here's something in the way of eye candy to fill the space though - Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Studio with mini him buckets and clear finish on back. Nice light classic!

Look Back in Anger... well, not really...

Interesting - as I was writing a post for the Facebook band page I thought back to exactly how I wrote and recorded both A Fine Line and Sound of Thoughts CDs, and even looked all the way back to 2000's Onion project. Think of this as a post mortem for 4 recording projects in a music catalog that was never planned to ever exist for a "career" that I imagined would never happen.

- Onion was all written on Korg Z3 and Roland JX-8P keyboards, Svilpacaster, Squier Tele, Art & Lutherie acoustic guitar, & Zoom 9001 guitar processor. The PC was a good one at the time - Pentium II, Echo Layla audio interface with some MIDI interface. I was using Master Tracks 4 and Cool Edit Pro as my audio software - no synching capabilities between the two so I'd write all the drum, bass and keyboard parts with Master Tracks Pro with a 1 bar quarter note side stick two bars before Bar 1 to sync, then record each instrument track as a stereo wave - when done recording 16 or 18 audio tracks separately I'd then move the audio files around and align the clicks to get the composite audio project. At this point, guitars and vocals would be put down in that order. Now, because I wasn't a great engineer, and because the Pentium II wasn't able to handle more than 1 or 2 real time insert effects, I'd print the echo/chorus/reverb to disk and then figure out if it was good later in final mixdown. Often I'd be recording the tracks and then think of something very cool to put in, which would have me scrap the audio tracks I'd been working on, go back to the MIDI programming and insert the idea and instrumentation, then start over from scratch laying the audio down. Using this very painful method, Onion was finished and released in January 2000. While it was an important project for me in terms of writing and recording, I don't feel terribly nostalgic about this one, and honestly, listening back to the CD it's miraculous that the material is actually listenable (i.e. I'm not cringing and squirming too much in my chair)...

- The Sound of Thoughts - starting in 2003, I was assigned as Alpha customer support for Steinberg. My primary contact point was Charlie Steinberg - the CEO of Steinberg and creator of Cubase. Charlie was a very pleasant guy - when we were done he sent me a copy of Cubase SX3 signed by all the engineers as a way of thanks, and also put me in touch with various VST companies who supplied me with their product. Well... with all this good software and an improved PC at home, I started trading/buying/selling keyboards, guitars and amplifiers with a view to recording new material. Like Onion, I simply started writing pop songs, then took some of those songs and made them more "progressive", and finally realized that I should just write a "progressive rock album" - I enjoyed the really twisted proggy stuff more than the pop stuff. Most of the material was written or transcribed (in the case of Lady in a Cage) in my office at work with a MIDI keyboard - I'll go into more detail in a future post. By this time I had a decent studio set up and my playing chops were improving with daily practise such that I was able to write the material immediately as inspiration struck and then simply transfer MIDI files to the home studio for arrangements and guitar/vocal overdubs. Still, it took almost 2 years to write and record everything on the final CD - not perfect by any means, but the CD was very well received by anyone chancing to buy it. And online reviews were very good as well...

- A Fine Line - this time, after numerous personal & professional obstacles that cropped up beginning July 2005 lasting through Dec 2007, after writing an entire CDs worth of music just to throw it away because I didn't feel it "met the bar", and other bad things - the family moved to a new home and I was allowed the "media room" upstairs for my studio. Gear wise, I had built an electronic drum kit, had a very good set of keyboards/guitars/bass, excellent microphones - everything needed to rehearse and record material with very high quality. But the delays took what would have been a great band I'd assembled before the tribulations down to simply Paul and I writing and recording. A far different writing & recording scenario resulted - some of the material was done more spontaneously like First Piece, Mesmerize and Adagio, where ideas were thrown down not knowing how they would turn out. Others like Temple, Frantic or Drawing the Short Straw were a lot more disciplined and composed. And of course there were three songs that I brought forward essentially completed - Mirror, Shadows and Only One were done years earlier. Because we were hiring drummers for the tracks, and we had to have everything pretty much finished before they could work, the songs ended up being ridgidly composed and arranged. There wasn't anything that would be considered totally out there stylistically or technically - and I think it was because everything had to be so regimented such that there was no jamming which would produce anything spontaneously. AFLB is a very strong & cohesive CD start to finish - but in some ways I think Sound of Thoughts had a couple more exciting and higher risk tracks on it because of how the material was written.

 

 

What to take away from this? Well, going chronologically, early on it was about capturing the idea and fleshing it out enough to recognize it as a whole. As the technology got better, it facilitated better fleshing, but sometime about 2008 I got obsessed with the flesh instead of the bones - now, I dont think it hurt the material since I believe it all is quite strong and can stand up in solo performance. But I also strongly believe that with a good band behind to work on the material and build on the strengths, all the songs and therefore the CDs would be far better for it.

 

Going back to do some reworking of the material, I have a lot to do. Having my friend John come in and play drums on stuff that is in some cases more than 20 years old from original writing - pretty big for me. I have also been working on getting the authentic vintage sounds for the projects, so that not only do we get a live band feel on material that is kinda mechanical, but also the tones and sounds that I'd intended to have when I first wrote the stuff. Finishing the Vocal Iso Booth so that I can belt out my vocal parts without feeling foolish - crucial to me getting the final song completed. Finally - this is the springboard for new material and building the end game set of songs. I've discussed how I want to build a composition based on bits from past efforts as well as new material; I've also talked about closing out the trilogy of CDs appropriately. There will be a cover songs project here as well.

 

A lot of material that over the next 12-24 months will start flowing out - trying to finish off and close on the aspirations of youth in a fitting manner. I dont think anyone really understands, but then while I feel it's necessary for me to go forward, I dont understand this need either. As my Facebook friend Anil Prasad has said in a posting earlier this week (and I paraphrase here) - "you dont write and record music to make a fortune, become famous or earn accolades... you do it because you have to, you need to and your life, your very soul depends on it..."

 

I have to give the artistic side of my brain a way to express itself. Otherwise, life is drained of color and becomes nothing more than existence.

Keyboard Rig (update)

Some changes in what I'm planning for the keyboards - I've changed my mind at this point on the wish list items (which could still change again - not sure yet) changing to another keyboard instead.


- Yamaha MOX6 workstation
- Roland VR-09 V-Combo (WL) Nord Electro 4D combo organ
- Roland VP-550 Vocal Ensemble
- Roland Gaia SH-01 virtual analog synth
- Novation X-Station 49 Synthesizer
- Moog Little Phatty Stage I (WL)
I have sold the Roland VK-8M organ module - went on EBay last weekend and shipped out yesterday.

Now - I went through reviews of past VR combo keyboards, read tons of stuff on keyboard forums from guys who are really picky about their organ clones/workstations, and well I just went thru my own logic process and thought that a $1000 keyboard with a looper and other toys built in probably wouldn't satisfy the B3 need. Sounds seemed reasonable, and really the D-beam is an attraction to me, but I'm really attracted to the Nord Electro4D 61 - it's the Nord virtual tonewheel engine with drawbars!! As well, it ships with the Mellotron sound set standard, works well with the Sonic Reality packages, has very decent sounding pianos... and I've seen respected guys like Dave Kerzner, Per Wiberg, Derek Sherinian and others using this live and in studio for a long long time. The drawbars control for the organ emulation really was what I've been looking for - my Nord Electro2 was a pain in the ass to change registration settings while playing, it felt like playing my old Intellivision Football game from the 70's. But the update is great and this is ultimately what I'm now going to get.

The other change as mentioned was to remove the Little Phatty from my list. HORRORS!!! I'm going to put this change on hold to give the Novation a real run for it's value. I got the X-Station for so little money on Craigslist that it costs me nothing to keep it, and it seems to offer a lot of promise based both on the reviews (remember this is a keyboard from 2006 or so) and what I believe it's capable of doing to emulate and load patches from NI's Absynth VST. I really love the Absynth and it's various incarnations - so much so that I have been considering tossing some hardware keyboards out for a Muse Receptor of some kind (still a chance of getting this - stay tuned) and host much of what I'm looking for in sound sets on that and use the Ultrabook for set list and patch manipulation. Anyways, if the Novation doesn't cut it, then I sell it and go for the Little Phatty... or a dark horse deep in my wish list is an Access Virus TI - if I feel that we need another big wide range keyboard then it's the 61, otherwise I'm looking at the Polar with 37 keys (same as the Gaia). It might be going against many peoples' grain to dump the Moog for the Access, but I think that with the new material I need to really look to integrate a new set of timbres and stylistic items that I haven't done before. It wont be obvious hijacking of the electro and dance stuff just to paste in haphazardly, but there will be influence there with the technology helping give more edginess to the material.

I've elected to make the Gaia a keeper overall - it's got a great sound engine, and very intuitive interface making it easier for a guitarist like me to edit patches, plus a great editor set for my PC that enables deeper control of the sounds. The Novation has that as well and that appeals to me for the moment - again w.r.t the X-Station lets see if the D/A converters hold my interest. But the Gaia also has the wonderful D-beam interface which I loved on the V-Synth, and I'll be taking advantage of that.

So there you have it - I'll be posting my Visio drawings of the rig and how it will look set up on a full stage. The nice thing about this rig is I could simply take the MOX6, VP-550, Nord and Gaia out for smaller gigs and it would cover everything off decently, but for larger shows the entire rig allows for me and Paul to have a full set of hardware available to fill out the material. I have both a Axiom 49 and my Roland GR-33 to trigger sounds thru MIDI, and there would be no problem handling us in that regard.

Background on the song "Atonement" - a free download from ReverbNation.com

Documenting the recording of "Atonement" - your free mp3 download on the Robert Svilpa ReverbNation page.

"Atonement" was a different piece from everything I'd written to date - the core group of songs for the "A fine line" CD were demo complete, but the collaborations with my friend and band mate Paul Harrington were going so well I chose to continue on writing new material. The risks of writing too much for the CD were thrown aside as I felt confident that we'd be able to hit our marks in what was a rather overextended schedule of production. As a result we produced a song which I hold up as in the Top 5 of all music I'd written to that point and am using as the measuring bar for all new material going forward.

I had been playing with a guitar motif that extended my King Crimson takeaways - a syncopated two guitar thing that had the big grunting chords of Red mixed with the stereo offbeat rhythms of Discipline and Thrak. I'd programmed a drum part that was big and primitive - a compound time signature grouping that resolved to 4. Mark - our bassist - put down his part sitting tight with the programmed drums and guitars wove around this. Key modulations were used to generate tension and momentum - draw the listener in anticipating where this was going. Breaking this up was a semitone modulation and sustained chord leading into a 7/8 swing feel guitar arpeggio with marimba keyboard part playing against each other - rhythm section disappears here until the entire motif modulates up when it hits in again and drives towards reappearance of the Crimson riff. Modulations happen and key rises until we hit a tension point - at this point I had my next section already stemmed in, but there was a need to make the transition a bit more "intentional", and it was a struggle to find the appropriate thing...

As for the appropriate thing - I had the very strange atonal main riff from "First Piece" - in fact I kept coming back to that since doing just ascending or descending scale runs were not at all what this piece demanded. The resulting riff I ended up with was pulled from taking fragments of the melodic minor scale and omitting some notes - keeping the notes clustered in tight fingerings on the fretboard made it playable at tempo, and the strangeness of the riff and the modulation to get to the key for the next section was crucial. I also had to make it somewhat exotic to provide counterpoint to the really groovy section/really straightforward melody line to follow. For the transition bars, the original demo had everyone hitting the notes in descending fashion - drums, bass, guitars and a monosynth line. Final version just has guitars, monosynth, and drums.

The groove that follows - the acoustic and electric rhythm guitars were inspired by Opeth's "Deliverance". Suspended B5 chord moving the pedal tone from B to A being the key item supporting the electric guitar lead that was played horizontally - the melody line starts near the nut on the A string and then your hand moves up the string to hit this ascending notes, using the vibrations from the previous note and by shortening the string, actually increasing the intensity of the vibration and charging the tone considerably. Glissandos on the descending part of the run to maintain the notes, slurring them together. Paul brought in the wonderful Nord B3 organ tones of a old style horror movie holding the sustaining chords of the progression. There's some very high EBow guitar deep in the mix with a lot of delay and reverb - this is the icing on the cake setting a melodramatic tone for the piece. This ends on what is a chromatic chord modulation on the organ up to the ending motif...

The ending motif - it started off as a literal lift of the opening progression from The Beatles "I want you" off of Abbey Road. I have been using IK Multimedia's Amplitube guitar amp emulation software since 2005, and one of the presets was a pseudo-George Harrison patch that was super clean with some slight chorus and a slapback echo on it. I pulled this out and started playing with the "I want you" slow arpeggio, then changing it to be a straight B-minor chord on the upstroke of the pick, but a Bdim5 minor on the downstroke all in 3/4 time. Chord progression then goes to G-min/Gdim5min, and finally Emin/Edim5min with the heavily effected organ stomping all over it. Paul then got to do his magic - an absolutely wonderful bit that sounds like an evil circus caliope doing a foreboding melody for the entire progression. The drums go from quarter note kick hits to eighth note, to 16th note and then 16th note triplets through the fade out, which then brings in a reprise of the EBow guitar orchestra from the beginning of the piece.

The EBow guitar orchestra? That was the last thing to be done. 6 months earlier I'd been messing around with my Digitech Jamman loop pedal for a while but could not for the life of me replicate Frippertronics... At that point I got tired of trying and simply decided to layer guitar sounds in Cubase to map out what I'd like to be able to do in a live setting, and in the space of about 30 minutes I layered 6 tracks in a large chord just warbling along with different hand vibratos which then gave this very ethereal effect. The last track was a very simple melody line - and then everything sat in another project on my disk for the next few months. We had gotten the stuff recorded, and I was at home one evening mixing the piece into a good demo to send off to Andy Edwards for his drums, and I remembered the ebow stuff. Copied and pasted the stuff into the head of the track list... did a quick mix and processing... and wow - that's great! Then thought "hey, the fade out is a bit dry..." so I copied and pasted in at the end of the track and cross-faded - "double wow!!" I packaged the "with drums" and "sans drums" wav files, email them off to Andy for his efforts.

A couple weeks go by, and Andy sends me a very cross email saying I should be sending him tempo tracks for him to record to, but it also contains the drums for "Atonement" which he says that he "quite likes and really got into" playing. Andy did a wonderful bit of playing on this track! I fly the drums in, do some minor adjustments and we get what we have today. Mark did redo bass tracks for the piece and it gets a proper mix/master - but nothing really changed for this from the time it was first demo'd. I dont think we could have gotten it any better, really...

Keyboard rig updates, writer's workshop items - comments more than welcome!

A couple interesting updates - one for the gear geek, another for the songwriter/composer with associative questions for your response:

Keyboard Geek Time

I've got a couple more keyboard upgrades to do, but that will essentially finish the writing/recording and live rig. Wish list items marked with (WL), items available for sale (S)
- Yamaha MOX6 workstation
- Roland VR-09 V-Combo (WL)
- Roland VP-550 Vocal Ensemble
- Roland Gaia SH-01 virtual analog synth
- Novation X-Station 49 Synthesizer
- Moog Little Phatty Stage I (WL)
- Roland VK-8m Organ Module (S)

 

I also have the following available as rack units for live & recording:

- Korg Triton rack

- Yamaha TX812 (8 DX7s in a box)

- laptop computer with the following:

  - Arturia Laboratory with many vintage synths/patches as VSTs

  - IK Multimedia SampleTank, Sonik Synth, etc...

 

Now, question time for all you keyboard dudes - I have three synths essentially doing the same role. I would like to keep two which brings up the question for you to answer (in your comments below).

Which two of the Gaia, X-Station or Little Phatty would you keep?
Anyone interested in the VK module, or in the one synth that I remove from the rig - contact me thru the email address in the blog and we can talk.

Now, for the writers out there

As a matter of writing process, I tend to be inspired by the tone and timbre of a sound coming from an instrument in order to write most of my material. It's very rare for me to sit down with only a melody and lyric being the output and leave the arrangements to the negotiation/recording phase - in fact lyrics almost always come after and to an extent independent of the music. Now, I've started looking into "writing prompts" as a way of changing things up, but it's a hard go for me...

I'd like to hear how you all sit down and get going on new material. There is no right or wrong way to do anything, but approaching anything from a new angle promises to at least enlighten and instruct. I'd be very happy to read all the ways everyone gets their creative boulders moving in a positive direction.

Next post I'll discuss guitars and some modifications I've done to Craigslist junkers to turn them into jewels of tone :) Cheers!

New PledgeMusic Project ready for sponsorship

Hi All,

Rob's CD Remasters Project

As mentioned before, I've been working on plans to redo and release past CDs/material in preparation for writing and recording new material. I've since decided to take the past works & utilize crowdsourcing to fund the manufacture portion of the process - pressing those pesky CDs are a pain in the ass & can cost some significant $$$ before they can be made available for anyone to purchase (and thus recoup investment). With the decline of the music industry and artists now needing to be responsible for their own inventory (namely - I buy the CDs from the pressing plant and then sell/ship them myself), I need to find a way to make this happen.

This is how the crowdsourcing thing works. You (the crowd) pledge some amount of money towards the project, and I then go off and work on the stuff and at the end, you get the package that you pledged money towards. Capice?

So in the spirit of this, I thought I'd make it worthwhile for you all - a box set of music covering off the time period from 1986 thru today.

1. "Onion & other rarities" - this is the entire 2000 release "Onion" which included several early versions of instrumentals and full songs released in very limited quantities. Also includes songs from one of my first recorded efforts - "Babble & Rhetoric" (my band with Marc Koenen & Juris Vinters), and some commercial & jazz rock instrumentals that to date were released only on compilation projects. All songs will be completely redone with 2013 technology and instrumentation/vocals - this is also the opportunity I have to make them relevant to a modern audience as well since the stuff from 1986 was recorded on a Tascam 4 track cassette portastudio (thx to Trevor Sadler for the millionth time!) I'll be enlisting my friends John Hernandez and possibly original drummer Juris Vinters to put together drum tracks, and as always I'll be trying to enlist my great friend Paul Harrington on keyboards for these new recordings. This specific item in the box set will be exclusively available only in this package - no plans exist to release as a stand alone product.
2. "The Sound of Thoughts" - this 2005 release will be completely remixed & remastered, with new vocal & instrumental performances on many songs including the 19 minute magnum opus “Lady in a Cage”. New CD packaging will include liner notes highlighting revisions to the original - musicians past and present who participate will be fully credited for their efforts.
3.  “a fine line between…” release will enjoy the same kind of end to end remix/remaster treatment as “The Sound of Thoughts” – Rob & Paul (keyboardist) are revisioning the final product, which in some cases will bring added clarity & expose details of the arrangements that are at times buried by the denseness of the original mix. Again, vocal & instrumental performances will be updated in some cases, improving the final CD and refreshing it in the eyes of the world.

As with all crowdsourcing efforts, the target is a modest value ($2000) with the promise of 10 cents of every dollar pledged above the target going to The Fender Music Foundation - which provides funding to schools all across America to help keep their music education programs on the right track. This charity has helped countless children learn about instruments and the arts, and they work with other charities to make the most out of all of their funding. 100% of the money sent into the organization goes right back into music education.

The money that is over and above the target goes into funding the remaining quantities of both box set and individual release zero carbon footprint CD Digipaks. After we achieve a 1000 count of CD inventory for each of the box, "Sound of Thoughts" and "a fine line" - remaining money will go into production funding for the new project - expected for early to mid 2014 release.

Please go to the project site and take a peek at the package offerings. Some really cool stuff exists - including t-shirts and posters imprinted with Ed Unitsky's wonderfully stunning artwork signed by the band (and I will be asking Ed to sign his work for the tees and posters as well).

Friday afternoon - getting ready for the weekend and a kickstart of writing

As per normal, wife is already planning our activities w.r.t. work around the house. I have a few things though that I need to take care of - day job work stuff that I'm having a hard time getting into at work, so I need to have a change of scenery to kickstart getting completed before the deadline in just over a week.

That said though, I also need to get my head back into some music stuff - I think part of my issue with getting on my work stuff and lack of motivation for the home stuff honey-do list is that I haven't had any "me" time in a very long time. I have a long list of things I want to hammer out just finishing up my studio setup, plus I have a long standing commitment to my friend Dave Kerzner from Sonic Reality to record a cover song using bed tracks he supplied to me almost 2 years ago. Can't mention the name or band, but it'll be a bangin' tune when I'm done.

But even apart from that, I need to do some woodshedding to reclaim my chops and knock the rust off. It's been a long long time since I've done any serious playing - since the end of May 2011 and my show at the Mars Bar in Seattle, WA - and picking up the guitar a few times this week just showed me how sloppy and lazy my playing is now. This kind of layoff though allows me the opportunity to learn a ton more scales and shapes - try to really advance beyond the habitual stuff I had been doing for a while and stretch out in a technical sense while breaking free the seized up muscles of my hands/fingers. In the past, I've made tremendous advances doing this - hopefully the same will happen again despite my age.

Then finally - I've set up something on Pledge Music to help crowd-fund the production and manufacture of my three past CDs (Onion, The Sound of Thoughts, a fine line between...) after I accomplish retracking/remixing/remastering all three. The final products I hope to have done by April or May, and as mentioned in earlier posts use that experience to grease the wheels to write and record new material. Lyric writing is a bit tough right now - again, very rusty chops there, but slowly improving. I have ~10 songs worth of lyrics already from past efforts, but need to generate more to find the best stuff to form music around...

Ok, this last blog post is brought to you by our sponsors - IK Multimedia, who produce the amazing Amplitube 3 product that I use both to demo new material as well as appears on final product, indistinguishable from the real amps that it models.



IK Multimedia's Amplitube 3 for Mac/PC