Keyboard - Tyros 3 Magazine-March - 2010 PDF [PDF]

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Paul Shaffer

Late Show Keys King

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Déjà vu!

The SEM Returns

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A NEWBAY MEDIA P U B L I C AT I O N MARCH 2010

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C O N T E N TS

MARCH 2010

DANNY CLINCH

KEYSPACE 12 Zenph Re-Performance 13 Love Girls MAJORminor: Lauren Fox 14 Doug Bickel 15 Session Sensei Career Counselor 16 On Our iPod Ask Mike 18 Weekend Warrior

FEATURES

PLAY IT! 36 38 40

22 PHISH The top-selling live concert band in the world is back together with a new studio album, Joy. Think of them as a “hippie jam band?” Get to know keyboardist Page McConnell and think again. . . .

TEN MINUTE TECHNIQUE VINTAGE FUNK

26 PAUL SHAFFER The hardest-working keyboard player in showbiz chats with editor at large Jon Regen about playing with rock stars and jazz giants, the wonders of the Hammond B-3, and why it’s okay that bands use backing tracks.

DO IT! 42

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DANCE Vocoders aren’t just for making robot voices. Learn to use them to add unexpected life to your EDM tracks. STEAL THIS SOUND Paul Shaffer’s Oberheim organ patch from Scandal’s “Goodbye to You,” recreated on Sonic Projects’ OP-X soft synth!

GEAR 46

50 54 56 60

NEW DECADE, NEW OS Our guide to Mac Snow Leopard and Windows 7. YAMAHA TYROS3 SPECTRASONICS TRILIAN TOM OBERHEIM SEM SOUNDS

30 MATT ROLLINGS How a Connecticut yankee rose to the top of the Nashville session scene and became the first phone call of artists like Lyle Lovett.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

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NATIVE INSTRUMENTS SONIC FICTION

20 NEW GEAR 64 PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

GEEK OUT 66 Get a closer look at Paul Shaffer’s keyboard fortress on the Late Show with David Letterman set.

NEW GEAR AT NAMM 2010 Slide shows, videos, and blogs of the hottest new instruments, software, and recording gear from the Mother of All Trade Shows at keyboardmag.com/ community.

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YAMAHA CP1 Before we could talk about Yamaha’s new flagship stage piano, and well before NAMM, we got a sneak preview at New York’s famed Avatar Studios. Join editor Stephen Fortner and Yamaha’s Avery Burdette in this exclusive video at keyboardmag.com/gear. Cover photo by Danny Clinch

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F R O M T H E E D I TO R

eyboard VOL. 36, NO. 3 #408 MARCH 2010 EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Stephen Fortner MANAGING EDITOR: Debbie Greenberg EDITORS AT LARGE: Craig Anderton, Jon Regen SENIOR CORRESPONDENTS: Jim Aikin, Tom Brislin, Ed Coury, Michael Gallant, Robbie Gennet, Scott Healy, Peter Kirn, Mike McKnight, Dominic Milano, Franics Preve, Ernie Rideout, Mitchell Sigman ART DIRECTOR: Patrick Wong MUSIC COPYIST: Elizabeth Ledgerwood

THE OUTLOOK FROM NAMM If you’ve been to your share of NAMM shows, make eye contact on the floor with someone else who has too, and say, “Groundhog Day.” You’ll definitely get a nod and probably a laugh. The Bill Murray movie was about a reporter who got stuck in time and lived the same day over and over again until he got it right, and there’s something about NAMM that makes you feel like it’s still last year and you never really left. True, many things are virtually identical year upon year — the booths are in the same places, the din is brain-scrambling, you just saw Bootsy Collins and someone said you just missed Stevie Wonder, and that “quick walk-around” through the Hilton and Marriott bars after dinner somehow gets prolonged until 2 A.M. But like in the film, it’s the differences that bear more importantly on the story. That’s why I’m happy to report that the mood at this year’s show was quite different from last year’s. Subjectively, foot traffic was way up. Less subjectively, so was commerce. (Remember, behind all the tech dazzle and rock-star glam, NAMM is actually about retailers and manufacturers connecting.) The day before the show officially opened, Hammond USA chief Dennis Capiga beamed to me, “I’ve signed seven new dealers and it’s only Wednesday!” Rhodes Music said they were “ecstatic” at the “unprecedented” demand for their Mark 7 electric pianos (reviewed last month). These two examples are especially encouraging because neither company makes instruments you’d describe as “cheap” or even “entry level.” A spokesman for one of the “big three” keyboard makers offered this theory: “Last year, music stores had a lot of inventory they got stuck with, due to the 2008 holiday season coming right on the heels of the big crash, the

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Stephen Fortner EXECUTIVE EDITOR

TARP bailout, and all that. Now, everyone’s been very careful for an entire year, and the 2009 holidays cleaned out their remaining items, so they’re coming out of their shells. Stores are gradually ramping up inventory to meet customer demand as it grows.” When asked for his summation, Chuck Surack, founder/owner of highly-regarded online retailer Sweetwater, simply nodded and said, “This year’s definitely better than last.” Over the course of the show, I heard similar sentiments from buyers for big chains, manufacturer reps, mom ’n’ pop store owners — pretty much everyone. Keyboard isn’t a B-to-B magazine, so why all the “inside baseball” talk? Because all these signs bode well not just for the business of making and selling instruments, but for the activity of making music itself. When the economy is bad, spending on music — whether it’s on a new synth for yourself, lessons for your kids, or a live band for your wedding or company party — is among the first things to go. (If only this weren’t the case in school budgets, but that’s a topic for a future editor’s letter.) It’s also one of the last things to come back when the economy improves. So if the industry is as upbeat as I saw at NAMM — and I can tell the difference between genuine optimism and singing the company tune — it’s predicated on real people really feeling better about music being part of their lives and budgets. So what about all the new gear? You’ll find an exhaustive Flickr photo stream and a long playlist of videos we shot at NAMM, at keyboardmag.com/Community. Dig into keyboardmag.com/news for press releases, often embellished with our own videos of the product in question. Hope your 2010 is proving prosperous, and keep on playin’!

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LETTERS Since I’ve been thinking about doing something like that myself, I would greatly appreciate any tips Jon could give. I think a lot of readers would be interested in what’s involved with giving a master class like that. How did you choose what to do? What kind of preparation was involved? How much was a prepared lecture and how much was ad-libbed? Questions like that. —Leo Ciesa

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NAMM, WE WANT IN! Why dosen’t NAMM let the public attend the show to see the latest gear, ask questions, and get names of suppliers in one’s area? I would think this would market their products far more effectively than the current format. —Doug Collins NAMM is mainly a trade show where retailers do business with manufacturers. Even media like Keyboard, though we get to go, is secondary to this purpose. One of the biggest concerns with having a “public day” is theft — even with the current limited access, a fair amount of gear manages to grow legs each year. Another is capacity — the sort of thing the fire marshal lacks a sense of humor about. I relayed your question to NAMM, and a spokesman responded, “We’re glad there’s so much interest in attending the NAMM Show because it shows how important playing music is to people. Our generous Visitor badge program lets our member companies invite guests to see the products and the many things our industry does to keep music strong in our schools and in communities around the world. These guests might be artists, enthusiasts, or educators, but the point is that they’re invited by NAMM members.” Fortunately, you can follow NAMM and Keyboard on Twitter, and see our gear updates at keyboardmag.com/community. It’s almost like being there, only without the fallen arches and sleep deprivation. —Stephen Fortner, Executive Editor GOIN’ BACK TO MY OLD SCHOOL I read with interest Jon Regen’s “Career Counselor” column in the January issue about how he went back to give a master class at the school he had studied at 20 years earlier.

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As my focus has been jazz piano, I was invited to speak to and perform for the students of the Frost School of Music’s Jazz Piano Forum. My first piece of advice would be to share your strengths. Pick the area(s) you’re most accomplished in — your students will delight in real-world advice from your experience. Master classes are just that: classes from someone who has achieved a certain degree of mastery. So choose your lecture material based on the things you excel in. Second, speak from your heart. Humility goes a long way in making an impact. Our lives are filled with ups and downs — letting your audience in on your own triumphs and failures makes you all the more human, and them all the more interested in what you have to say. Lastly, get them involved. I performed with a rhythm section from the school’s own jazz band. You could choose to have student or faculty accompaniment with your own performance, or, in typical master class style, have students perform for you and guide them in making their performances stronger. The more dynamic they feel your presentation is, the longer its messages will resonate with them. —Jon Regen, Editor at Large SEXY SOUNDSLATE? I couldn’t help but notice the nicely laid-out ad Open Labs has in this month’s issue. The ad says that their 1U rackmount [the SoundSlate] is “sexy” . . . ? I’m having a little trouble digesting how a rack unit can be sexy. I just don’t feel the sudden urge to procreate with a metal box running software synths. Open Labs has great products, which I don’t mean to undermine at all. Many advertisers go down the “sex sells” route. However, a recent study

shows that such ads aren’t any more effective than an ad without a reference to sex. —Dann Webber, Bridgeton, MO Unlike you, some of us at Keyboard Central do feel the occasional amorous attraction to musical equipment, but then, we don’t get out much. Seriously, though, I just looked at the ad, and it mainly shows gear and lists features. Yes, the word “sexy” is there, but that word is routinely used to mean sleek or aesthetically well designed, without intending a reference to sex. Maybe the real issue is how X- and R-rated words tend to take on tamer, non-literal meanings as time goes by (Quick — what’s a synonym for “stuff” that begins with the same letter?) and that our language would better serve us if we were more careful about this. But is that Open Labs ad using sex to sell you a synth? Naaah! Now, Open Labs’ parties are a different matter. . . . —Stephen Fortner, Executive Editor

VOTE IN THE KEYBOARD READERS’ CHOICE AWARDS! What was your favorite cover story of 2009? Who was the most breakthrough keyboard artist? Make your voice heard about these and other burning questions in the Readers’ Choice Awards, now live at keyboardmag.com! LET’S HEAR FROM YOU Contact the editors [email protected] Keyboard Magazine 1111 Bayhill Dr., Suite 125 San Bruno, CA 94066 Subscription questions 800-289-9919 (in the U.S. only) 978-667-0364 [email protected] Keyboard Magazine Box 9158 Lowell, MA 01853 Find a back issue 800-289-9919 978-667-0364 keyboardmag@computer fulfillment.com Find us online or join the forums at keyboardmag.com.

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ZENPH RE-PERFORMANCE Not Your Grandparents’ Player Piano!

Jazz pianist Gordon Goodwin hosts a live concert recording of Zenph’s Re-Performance of Art Tatum. That mannequin-like head is a binaural mic that “hears” like a human pair of ears. Zenph’s John Q. Walker has had the idea for his Re-Performance series of recordings since studying piano as a child with famed pianist and educator (and one-time Keyboard columnist) Ruth Slenczynska, in Edwardsville, Illinois. “Ruth lived on our block,” Walker tells me from Zenph’s headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. “She was famous for, among other things, being one of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s two piano students. Sometimes during my lessons with her, she’d say, ‘Now John, here’s how Mr. Rachmaninoff would play this.’ And I thought, ‘You know, I’d like to hear him do it!’ And that’s where the germ of this all started — asking what it would take to hear Rachmaninoff play live again.” What it would take, it turned out, was a whole lot of modern technology. A Zenph Re-Performance relies heavily on recent technological advancements to convert famed audio recordings back into living, breathing, live performances. “By the time I got involved in starting up Zenph,” Walker says, “the hardware had finally gotten good enough to replicate the nuances of performance. I’m a software guy, so here was a chance to pair it with hardware that could actually replicate the micro-timings and micro-touches — the levels of pianissimo and repeated notes that a professional pianist deals in. It’s highresolution technology that makes it all possible — the same technology licensed by Yamaha to build their Disklavier Pro self-playing piano.” Zenph’s process begins by painstakingly analyzing original recordings down to their bare essentials. “Think about every note in a recording like a row in a spreadsheet,” Walker explains. “On the Rachmaninoff album there were around 30,000 notes. So there

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are 30,000 rows on the spreadsheet, plus pedaling information. Every row in that spreadsheet tells how to play a note. It says what the note is, when it needs to start, how it should be attacked, how long it should be held, and so on. We need all this information about every note.” That information then drives a mechanism which plays a grand piano in real time. The result gives the best of both worlds: all the original artist’s dynamics and nuances, recorded again under ideal studio conditions with today’s best mics and high-resolution A-to-D converters. “We’re a software company, so we’re piano-agnostic,” Walker continues. “We’ll record on whatever piano is appropriate for the original artist. We did a Glenn Gould album, and he died a Yamaha Artist. We just did Rachmaninoff on a 1909 Steinway D concert grand. It’s one we think Rachmaninoff may have actually played!” Zenph’s groundbreaking work has produced acclaimed albums of recreated performances by Glenn Gould, Art Tatum, and Rachmaninoff. They’re currently working on a new recording of late jazz legend Oscar Peterson’s music as well. “Oscar heard our Tatum album in 2007, six months before he died,” Walker says. “He couldn’t believe it. We have movies of him sitting there crying — listening to Art Tatum play.” Walker delights in knowing that the painstaking work Zenph puts into each Re-Performance has earned respect from crticial listeners around the globe. “Human ears have a [timing] resolution well below a millisecond,” he says. “If we weren’t this accurate, your ears would instantly know. Now we can line up the original recordings with ours, one in each ear, and they match.” Jon Regen For more on Re-Performance, visit zenph.com.

M O R E O N K EYB OAR D MAG.C O M

K E Y S PA C E

LOVE GIRLS Tech-House Terrible Twosome Sound: Tech-house in all its forms. Favorite Gear: Akai’s APC40 controller [for Ableton Live]. We use it in the studio and for our live performances. We can’t live without it at the moment. Favorite Songs: We have so many favorite songs, but right now we are really into Gui Boratto’s remix of Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus.” Influences: Artists like Trentemoller, Vitalic, Sander Kleinenberg, Robert Babicz, Gui Boratto, Joris Voorn and Luetzenkirchen. Newest project: A killer melodic techhouse project with vocals by Fab Morvan —

’80s kids will know who this is! We just signed this to Sander Kleinenberg’s Little Mountain imprint. Favorite artist you’ve probably never heard of: Furr & Hazendonk. These guys know how to make super-funky techJordi Kramp (left) and Frits Klaver of Love Girls. house. We’re pretty sure monitor. It will be much easier to decide they’ll be quite well known soon. what needs to get changed. Practice regimen: When you come back Words of wisdom: Beer is nice, but not to the studio from a break, listen to your for your gear. Francis Preve project without looking at the computer

MAJORminor

LAUREN FOX Junior Jazzer “Lauren Fox is not only a darned good jazz pianist, but she also sends an incredibly positive message about contributing, working hard, and being responsible,” renowned New Jersey-based band director and music teacher Matt Krempasky tells me. “She plays for the jazz ensemble, accompanies the choir, plays for her church — you know, one of those kids who’s not only involved in everything, but will probably run all of it sometime soon!” A sophomore at Somerville High School in New Jersey, the 16-year-old, trad-jazz fan Fox is our March MAJORminor profilee — a young keyboard artist headed for success! First memory of hearing jazz piano and being impressed/curious: Walking through the mall with my grandmother and stopping to watch the pianist play. I liked

the easy, carefree style. Age you began taking piano lessons: Eight. Musical heroes and influences: Art Tatum for being an extremely well-rounded pianist, and for overcoming the limitations of his body. Also, my piano teacher and church music director Brian Katona, for giving me opportunities and pushing me to get better. Why piano and not some other instrument? I started playing piano for the benefits it affords musically, and kept going because of the opportunities I’ve been given. Not only do I truly enjoy it, it’s also my stress reliever! Of course, practicing gets frustrating sometimes, but sitting down and just playing is limitless. Favorite material to play: Straight-ahead jazz.

Worst gig or gear nightmare and how you dealt with it: I haven’t had anything too nightmarish yet — knock on wood. Of course, things have happened, but I’ve learned to be innovative and go with the flow as best as I can. How important is traditional music training? I think traditional music training is important for the sake of being a wellrounded musician. Many people have talent, but it only goes so far. Read or play by ear? I read. I think reading music is a vital skill. Know a young keyboard wizard in your area? Share it with Keyboard through our forums at keyboardmag.com, tweet us at twitter.com/keyboardmag, or email us at [email protected]. That person might be our next MAJORminor!

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A R T I STS , A DV I C E , C O M M U N I T Y

DOUG BICKEL

The Student Becomes the Teacher

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MATT VASHLISHAN

Jazz pianist Doug Bickel never planned on a career in music — much less returning to his Alma mater, the legendary Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, to direct the jazz piano department where he once studied. “My father Ron is actually a jazz musician,” the Pittsburgh-born pianist tells me from his teaching studio in Miami, “but I had kind of decided against a career in music. My first inspiration back in that direction was playing in the Florida AllState Band, with [renowned multi-instrumentalist] Ira Sullivan as our guest conductor. Ira just has a real special gift for nurturing young talent. He was the one who really showed me by the way he lived, and by his exuberance for what he was doing, that this was something that not only I could do and do well, but that I could be happy doing.” Bickel would eventually enroll at the University of Miami, but not immediately in the famed music school where graduates like Bruce Hornsby and Gabe Dixon honed their craft. “Strangely enough, I was recruited as a math major,” Bickel continues. “But as soon as I heard some of the ensembles in the music school, I said to myself, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do.’ It was my first year here that really inspired me to get in the shed and get it together.” At UM, Bickel would eventually be tapped to anchor the school’s premier ensemble, the Concert Jazz Band. “It took me until my junior year to get into that band, and I credit that to the faith shown in me by [UM jazz chief] Whit Sidener, who has a rare gift in knowing in people, sometimes even before they know, the goodness that they have inside of them. He and jazz composition teacher Ron Miller were the first guys to really have a lot of faith in me.” Bickel earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at UM, graduating with a top-tier jazz gig waiting for him. “About a month before graduation, I

ended up in [late jazz trumpeter] Maynard Ferguson’s band. I did that gig for a couple of years, and it brought me to new places, including Europe. I decided to settle down in Bavaria and start my own music school. We had jam sessions and ensembles, and people were into it. It was a really important service, I think, for the public at large over there.” Bickel would return to the U.S. after getting the call to join trumpeter Arturo Sandoval’s band, staying with him for a number of years. “I learned the necessity of being on it every night,” Bickel says of time with Sandoval. “Say what you’ve got to say, then get out of the way.” In 2000, Bickel started his teaching career at Virginia Tech. He would leave to replace renowned pianist, educator, and Marsalis family patriarch Ellis Marsalis at

the University of New Orleans. Two years later, he’d get the call that would bring him full circle. “I heard the news that my teacher at UM, Vince Maggio, was retiring. I was actually quite happy in New Orleans, but some of my former teachers asked me if I would apply. I was very concerned that they pick the right person to succeed Vince. And to my surprise, I wound up getting an offer. “I feel blessed to play and teach,” Bickel enthuses. “It took me a few years to realize that 50% of my job is inspiring people to find something in themselves that’s probably already there, but they may not know it.” Jon Regen For more on Doug, visit dougbickel.com.

M O R E O N K EYB OAR D MAG.C O M

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Session Sensei DON’T LET ’EM SEE YOU SWEAT, PART I by Scott Healy, keyboardist for The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien In the studio you need to focus and play great, while doing business, networking, and maintaining the vibe that keeps a client calling you back. This is even harder if you’re at the edge of your comfort zone as a player. I was recommended last week to lay down an accordion track on a band’s new record, and the accordion and a mic in the same room makes me nervous. I’ve done a fair amount of recording accordion, but it’s not my first instrument, and still makes me feel like a nervous kid. But I do have some coping strategies that help me maintain my cool studio veneer. Homework. The producer had told me the tune was Rockabilly with a Tex-Mex flavor. “Think Flaco (Jiménez). Think Conjunto.” I hung up the phone, hit iTunes and YouTube, and started to study one of the world’s greatest recording and

performing artists. I grabbed my squeezebox, hit the woodshed, and tried to cop the basic feel. Show ’em what you got, not what you don’t. I brought three accordions, each with a distinctive sound — giving a client a choice breaks the ice and gets them listening. When asked “Which one gets the sound I want?” I could’ve launched into a lecture about the difference between an authentic button box and the piano accordion I play, but I just presented my trusty little Hohner, which comes close. The client loved it, and that was that. Don’t panic. The tune was fast, long, multi-sectional, and very grooving. There was no chart, so I grabbed a piece of paper and made myself a roadmap: Intro, verse, chorus? No, pre-chorus, then chorus — second time through the verse is a bar

shorter (good to know). I tried to get the form right and understand the energy and arc of the song. No one has noticed that I’m just hanging on; on the contrary, they’re impressed that I’m transcribing a tune in real time, something my Nashville friends can all do in their sleep. A little showmanship goes a long way. Turns out feel was more Rockabilly than Conjunto; the chords were bluesy, so I could do my rootsy Americana thing, mix in a Tex-Mex turn, and it would work just fine. As I donned the headphones I looked up. Through the glass I could see my audience: the band, engineer and producer, plus their friends and family eagerly anticipating my performance — gulp! This was beginning to feel like a show, and I was act one. Now how does this tune go again? Tune in next month to see how the story ends. . . .

Career Counselor WARM UP YOUR SENSES by Gabriela Montero Sometimes, you don’t have very long to get to know the piano you’re going to perform on. So my main concern is really to get to know the instrument as quickly as possible. I basically take the instrument through a range of dynamic extremes from pianississimo to fortississisimo. I want to understand it. And tame it. That’s the most important thing for me — to develop a relationship with the instrument. As far as my fingers are concerned, of course I warm up before I give a concert. But I don’t do Hanon, Czerny, or any of the other storied technical exercises many of us were forced to do. In fact, I always hated them. Those exercises make you like a robot. The whole point of music is to be a communicator, not to just play the notes as fast and as perfectly as you can. So instead, I play the piece I’m going to perform, slowly. I’m extremely interested in

phrasing and coloring — exploring the different sounds I’ll ultimately project. When you practice slowly, you can be much more detailed in your approach to tone production. That eventually translates into a wider range of colors when you play a piece at full speed. It’s really a diligent kind of work. I feel like I’m crafting something, piece by piece. Really, my approach to warming up is a four-step process anybody can do, regardless of the keyboard or genre of music they play. · See the instrument you’ll perform on. Whether it’s a piano or a digital keyboard, get to know it. The more you understand its quirks and capabilities, the more expressive you’ll be at performance time. · Touch the instrument slowly and deliberately. Play the music you’ll perform at a greatly reduced speed, accentuating dynamics and tonal colors.

Renegade, improvisational classical pianist Gabriela Montero’s new album Baroque is out on EMI Classics. Find out more at gabrielamontero.com. · Listen to recordings that inspire you. It will find a way into your own playing and help develop it. · Improvise over pieces you already know. Even if you’ve never done it before, attempt to create your own music and melodies over familiar songs. Breaking out of your regular routine will change your life — it sure changed mine!

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K E Y S PA C E

A R T I STS , A DV I C E , C O M M U N I T Y

On Our iPod . . . MUSIC FOR OUR FUTURE We’ll never know what music will be like in the future, or on other worlds — but this set offers some inspired guesses. Curated by Keyboard columnist and CreateDigitalMusic.com blogger Peter Kirn, XLR8R magazine, and Pitchfork.com, and inspired by the new SyFy Battlestar spinoff Caprica, it’s a free 13-song MP3 download. Included

are tracks by Richard Devine, White Rainbow, Untold, and other computersavvy acts. Lusine’s “Gravity” sets the pace with sliced-up vocals over a mellow beat. Devine’s high-energy sound collage in “Matvec Interior” is both riveting and unnerving. Hudson Mohawke deploys Celtic inflections to spice up a lead synth track in “Fuse,” and the beat evaporates into a thick, dark cloud of echoing sounds in “Toward Water” by Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Some

of the tracks are drawn from CDs released over the past few years, but Kirn’s “Anaxagoras” is new. It wraps up the set nicely with a rhythmic curtain of high-pitched piano-like tones. Jim Aikin Get it at xlr8r.com/musicforourfuture.

Ask Mike HEALTH CARE ON TOUR Dear Mike, As a music teacher who has recently retired after 27 years of teaching in the public schools, I have a question about touring musicians in big-name bands. I know that they’re paid a weekly salary and compensated for meals, lodging, and transportation, but do they receive health insurance and retirement benefits? When I was younger, I wanted to “make it big” and live a life of touring and rock ’n’ roll. However, I went a safer route and took a teaching gig. As a public school teacher, I’ve always had health insurance (which came in handy when I got cancer twice — and beat it!). After 27 years as a teacher, I can now do whatever I want and still draw retirement with health insurance. Would I be in the same position had I spent the last three decades touring? Michael Mesquite, TX Hi Michael, Forgive me for getting political, but this question points to yet another very good reason why we need real health care reform in this country. Many selfemployed people, like musicians, have little or no health insurance. Even on the biggest tours I’ve been on, health insurance is never offered. If you get into an accident or get sick on the road, many tours will get you a doctor and take care of the cost, but even that is getting rare now. Consequently, I went many years without any health insurance. You can and should get a catastrophic health care plan, at the very least, to avoid losing everything if you get sick, but it helps very little with everyday health care costs

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and does nothing to help with preventative health care. The monthly premiums are fairly low, but the deductibles are very high. The American Federation of Musicians has a decent health insurance program you can get if you do a certain amount of union sessions or gigs per year. If you have a year that isn’t quite as busy, you can continue the coverage through COBRA, but it’s so expensive it didn’t ever make sense to me, so I just took my chances. Musicians as a profession need to have affordable health care that doesn’t preclude people with pre-existing conditions and won’t kick you off when or if you get sick. Democrat or Republican, I think we can all agree on that.

Mike McKnight tours with Mariah Carey and is our resident guru. Email your questions about touring, technology, or music biz issues to [email protected].

Also, there’s absolutely no pension plan for touring musicians, so if you didn’t pay into social security or invest properly, you’ll be out of luck when you’re too old to work anymore. Honestly, I think you made the right choice sticking with teaching — now you can gig when you want, and have insurance and a pension! One piece of advice I give my friends is that if you’re lucky enough to marry a teacher, it’s probably the most compatible profession for touring musicians. They typically have the summer off and can come along on tour, which is a blast for them. Teachers are “onstage” doing five or six shows every day. It’s not so different from playing music live, except teachers definitely work much harder!

K E Y S PA C E

A R T I STS , A DV I C E , C O M M U N I T Y

Weekend Warrior ROBERT MARTINEZ Webpage: myspace.com/theemajestics Day job: I’ve worked at California State University, Bakersfield for the past 30 years as an automotive technician. How I got started: I had my first piano lesson at age six. When I was nine, my mother hired a classical pianist from Los Angeles to teach me. I learned to play pieces by the likes of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart. The teacher was persistent and strict, and hearing the kids playing outside made me almost resent having to practice the piano. But after hearing boogie-woogie music, my drive for playing was renewed. I actually began playing that particular style on local TV variety shows. At the age of 15, I started with Thee Majestics. We played rock ’n’ roll for about two years, then split up. But in the early ’90s, all the old band members got together and started jamming again. It’s gone from a couple gigs every other month to being booked every weekend of the year ever since! Band: Thee Majestics began in 1967 with a group of high school kids practicing in an East Bakersfield garage. The eight-piece

band’s repertoire consists of rock, funk, country, Latin, swing, and soul. We’ve opened for some big names, including the Dazz Band, S.O.S. Band, Sheila E., Lakeside, Thee Midnighters, the Drifters, Malo, Tierra, and War. For the sixth consecutive year, we’re hosting our own party aboard a Carnival cruise ship bound for Cabo San Lucas. Influences: One of my earliest influences was Jo Ann Castle and her boogie-woogie style. My parents used to let me watch the Lawrence Welk Show before I went to bed. Once I heard her play, I was hooked. I really didn’t have many influences after Jo Ann until the early ’60s, when I heard the “East L.A. sound” of Thee Midnighters, and the magic of the Motown sound. Then it was the Commodores, Tower of Power, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Jimi Hendrix. As I’ve gotten more mature, though, country has had a bigger influence on the way I play. Why I play: Honestly, I play to relax. Music is my great escape from everyday stress. It’s my time not to worry and just play music. I love to entertain — to make people dance and have a good time. Ed Coury

Robert gigs with a Roland XP-50 perched above a Yamaha S08. For monitoring, he employs a Roland KC-500 keyboard amp. “Things have changed since the ’70s,” he says, “when I played a Hammond B-3 through a Leslie, along with a Fender Rhodes piano.”

Various Artists, Playlist Plus: Motown 50th Anniversary (Motown)

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Robert Martinez says the music of Motown has had a huge influence on his playing. “Songs like The Temptations’ ‘My Girl’ and The Four Tops’ ‘Baby I Need Your Loving,’” Martinez says, “along with The Supremes’ ‘Stop in the Name of Love,’ and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Heard It Through the Grapevine.’” Three of those tunes can be found on the triple-disc CD compilation Playlist Plus: Motown 50th Anniversary, which features a whopping 40 Motown classics.

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NEW GEAR

by Stephen Fortner

YAMAHA CP50 SOME CP1 FOR EVERY 1 THE PITCH The most affordable sibling of the CP1 (see last month’s New Gear) doesn’t skimp on sound. THE BIG DEAL Retains the CP1’s Spectrum Component Modeling for six A-list acoustic and electric piano sounds, and adds 215 more sounds derived from the Motif XS: Clavs, organs, strings, synths, rhythm patterns, and more. Has VCM effects from Motif XS. WE THINK Given the next-level SCM piano sound you get for the price, plus all the other gig-ready sounds, this could be the killer app in the new CP family. $2,199 list/approx. $1,700 street, yamaha.com

RADIAL J+4 SIGNAL LEVEL DIPLOMAT THE PITCH Unbalanced, consumer-level signal goes in the RCA jacks or the 1/8" stereo mini-jack. Balanced, pro line-level signal comes out the XLR jacks. THE POINT Lets you plug your CD player, iPod, computer, or other consumer device into a pro mixer for P.A., post-production, or broadcast. WE THINK Your mixer may have a “tape” input with RCA jacks, but this sounds way better. It also lets your signal take advantage of the EQ, aux sends, and other features of your mixer’s full channel strips. Plus, it has a ground lift and lowcut filter to kill buzz and rumble. $220 list/approx. $200 street, radialeng.com

PRO TOOLS INSTRUMENT EXPANSION PACK ALL THEIR SYNTHS BELONG TO YOU THE PITCH Full versions of Digi’s high-end soft synths for Pro Tools in one box. THE INSTRUMENTS Structure, a powerful soft sampler. Strike, a virtual drummer with uncanny human-feel functions. Velvet, a killer vintage electric piano plug-in. Transfuser, which is like MPC-meetsReason. Hybrid, a virtual analog synth that goes beyond virtual analog. WE THINK You can get into Pro Tools cheap these days, and a lot of great soft synths come with it. Add this pack, and you’ve got every sound you could want, in what’s still the dominant multitrack environment. $499 list, avid.com

IMAGE-LINE HARMLESS 21st CENTURY SCHIZOID SYNTH THE PITCH Uses additive synthesis to make sounds you’d normally reach for a virtual analog (subtractive) synth for. THE BIG DEAL Instead of filtering, say, a sawtooth wave full of harmonics, you add up a bunch of waves that have been pre-filtered, giving you a lot more control over the sound. WE THINK As avant-garde as it seems, Harmless is actually quite easy to use, and quickly gets sounds that would take longer to create with complex tools like Reaktor. Gotta love the price, too. $79 direct, image-line.com

Want to check out the same press releases that we see about new gear, as soon as we receive them?

Go to keyboardmag.com/news 20

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NEW GEAR CAKEWALK A-PRO SERIES CAKEWALK DOES CONTROLLERS THE PITCH Made in partnership with Roland, the first MIDI keyboards to bear the Cakewalk brand feature Active Controller Technology (ACT). THE BIG DEAL All sizes have same complement of knobs, faders, and buttons, and drum pads. Dedicated ACT button handshakes with included software to map these gizmos to your onscreen controls. Included software: Sonar 8.5LE, Rapture LE, Cakewalk Sound Center, and Studio Instruments Drums. WE THINK If you’re a Sonar- or PC-centric user, these will certainly edge out the Edirol PCR series as the controllers of choice. A-300 Pro (32 keys): $299 list; A-500 Pro (49 keys): $349 list; A-800 Pro (61 keys): $399 list, cakewalk.com

MUSE RESEARCH MUSEBOX THIS MUSE WON’T SPEND ALL YOUR MONEY THE PITCH The Receptor gets more affordable and flexible, thanks to a collaboration with Peavey. THE BIG DEAL Hosts VST instruments and effects for live gigging. Mic and guitar inputs on front panel. OS lives on a 4GB solid-state drive (expandable to 8GB); 250GB laptop hard drive is optional for storing sample libraries. Comes with Peavey ReValver amp modeling software. WE THINK If price and/or perceived tweakiness made you shy away from the Receptor for playing soft synths onstage, Muse heard you — check this out. $1,199 list/street TBD, museresearch.com

SONIVOX EIGHTY-EIGHT HIGH-END PIANO, LOW-END PRICE THE PITCH Up to 16 velocity layers per note. Large and economy sizes for memory and CPU efficiency. Includes 35 piano/pad layers as well as 52 “straight” presets, plus 15 multiinstrument splits with adjustable split point. THE FORMATS Mac or PC, VST, RTAS, AU (Mac only), and standalone. $199 list/approx. $150 street, sonivoxmi.com

KORG KAOSSILATOR PRO MORE KAOSS, MORE CONTROL THE PITCH Massively upgraded new version of the alreadycool Kaossilator touchpad synth (reviewed May ’08). THE BIG DEAL Up to four-bar looping. Overdubs external audio onto loops of internal synth and drums. New drum samples. Vocoder mode for external signals. Gate arpeggiator from Korg’s Electribe grooveboxes. MIDI out and USB for use as a MIDI controller. WE THINK Once you picked up the original Kaossilator, you couldn’t put it down. That’s even more true here. Go ahead — we dare ya. $460 list, korg.com

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PHOTOS BY JAY BLAKESBERG © PHISH 2010, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

To the uninitiated, Phish is hard to explain. To their core fans — even harder. How do you describe Phish to someone who has never heard the band or worse, has the wrong idea? Misconceptions usually boil down to some post-Grateful Dead narrative, where a quirky cult jam band picks up where the Dead left off after Jerry died. This grossly misrepresents what Phish is all about. True, like Deadheads, “Phish-heads” will follow the band anywhere, but as a musical entity, Phish is light years beyond what the Dead ever aspired to.

Got a blank space where my mind should be. —“Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan” To even attempt to categorize Phish, one must look at the wide scope of their influences. There’s a strong current of Americana, with flavors of the Allman Brothers, the Band, the Heartbreakers, and yes, the Grateful Dead. But there’s also classic rock, prog, jazz fusion, funk, blues, R&B, soul, Latin, bluegrass, and country, making Phish not just one of the greatest American bands but possibly the Most American Band. Add to all that reggae,

trance, and a healthy dose of the musical universe Frank Zappa came from, and you have an amalgam that draws from more sources than any other band. But to the members of Phish, it’s not about labels and categories; it’s about communication and listening. “Certainly, Trey and Fish [guitarist Trey Anastasio and drummer Jon Fishman] are huge Zappa fans and some of the compositional stuff we do hearkens to that,” says keyboardist Page McConnell. “With some of the jamming, we’ve often been compared to the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers — bands who like to stretch out. We’ve tried not to be like any of them,

and shied away from sounding too much like anybody. The jamming that we do and the communication that happens when we’re really improvising well together is about the listening and the chemistry of the four of our personalities. It’s not that different to me when we’re having a conversation than when we’re onstage playing; it’s a very similar kind of energy and free-form-ness.” In an odd way, by sampling so many genres of music, Phish has created their own genre, labeled only by their name. They can’t be pigeonholed as just a “jam band;” if anything, they’re a progressive rock band, yet not in the classic sense. Continued

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You decide what it contains, how long it goes but this remains. —“Backwards Down the Number Line”

After experiencing 12 sets of mind-bending music over the course of Halloween’s Festival 8 and their Miami New Year’s run, this writer is less able to define Phish than ever. That resistance to definition is one reason why their fans love them beyond words and why their “cult” status defies normal bandfan relations.

Come hide in the herd and float with the flock. —“Ocelot” The four members of Phish — Trey Anastasio on guitar, Mike Gordon on bass, Jon Fishman on drums, and Page McConnell on keyboards — add unique ingredients to the musical stew. Anastasio is the bandleader, though all members can and do sing and front songs in concert. Their connection onstage borders on ESP, with a Möbius-strip quality that weaves and bobs amongst intricate melodies and time changes. Though Gordon and Fishman both do admirable jobs of holding down the foundation of the music, it’s McConnell who most often compliments Anastasio’s melodic work. With a subconscious effortlessness, McConnell’s keyboard comping dances among the guitar lines, filling in subtle spaces and adding to both the rhythmic and melodic tension and release of the music. The more you see and hear Phish live, the more you realize the depth of McConnell’s abilities. As a player, he runs the gamut from Chuck Leavell-style piano runs and funky Clavinet grooves to soaring B-3 beds, tasty Rhodes comping, and other-worldly synth explorations. McConnell sits surrounded on three sides 24

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by a fantastic rig (see “Page’s Phish Rig” on page 25) which gets a full workout during most shows. As a songwriter, McConnell has a bit of a Steve Winwood vibe, which he displays live with the band via his indelible solo cut “Beauty of a Broken Heart.”

A love supreme, an ancient art, a finely tuned piano part. —“Beauty of a Broken Heart” McConnell is Phish’s most versatile and utilitarian member, adding textures and sounds that can transform the band from a good-time blues and boogie combo to a trance-inducing psychedelic prog explosion, often in the same song. From their first studio album Junta right through to their new release Joy, McConnell’s role has developed in unexpected ways that have fleshed out his own style as the band collectively expanded their own direction and definition. If there were an evolution from Junta to Joy, it would be in the tightening of the songs and the melodic narratives that the instruments create within. Where Junta had epic multi-part adventures like “Fluffhead” and “The Divided Sky,” Joy has more concisely written pop/rock tunes like “Backwards Down the Number Line,” the funky “Ocelot,” and the haunting and uplifting title track. Aside from the lengthy and ambitious “Time Turns Elastic,” most songs are in the three- to five-minute range and feature some of Phish’s best hooks. Joy may be one of the best records of 2009, but in some ways, it’s miraculous that it ever got made in the first place.

The Phish of today is considered “Phish 3.0” by fans; Phish 2.0 came after a hiatus in 2000 and this new chapter comes after almost five years apart. Though they’re touring again, the band’s primary goal was to record an album. “Part of the reason we got back together was the thought of doing another record,” says McConnell. “We all had material that we were excited about sharing with the band.” They rehearsed for over a month, leading up to their first reunion shows in the spring of 2009 and soon after, went into the studio with producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, the Rolling Stones) with whom they’d previously worked over a decade prior on Billy Breathes. “I enjoy working with Steve; we have a great relationship,” says McConnell. “Last time we were so much less experienced in the studio at that point and we were still sort of getting our feet wet, even though we’d made a few records. We started out the process in the studio without Steve, in a barn in Woodstock. We did a lot of experimental sort of things.” In the studio, the band prefers to track live and get that magic take. “When the four of us track, generally we like to track with all four of us playing at the same time and in the same room if we can,” says McConnell. “As much as possible, when we can use the live tracks, we do. I overdub as little as possible. On a song like ‘Joy,’ we ended up overdubbing the whole piano track.”

Standing on the edge of the cliff, I start to slip, don’t mind if I slide off. –“Sugar Shack”

Gonna dream, dream of being free. —“Stealing Time From the Faulty Plan” Live, the band is on fire, rejuvenated after a long hiatus and enjoying the music they’re playing. Their musical telepathy produces moments of sheer brilliance, though they give themselves room to morph freely. “I don’t listen to a lot of our concert tapes,” says McConnell. “But sometimes I’ll hear a tape and I’ll be like ‘Man, it’s kind of meandering, it doesn’t really feel like it has its footing’ and it’ll go

Rhodes. I have a little bit of synthesizer in there, too.” No matter how Phish performs their tunes, the fans are always along for the ride. “Our crowd is very encouraging,” he says. “They really like us taking chances and stretching out.” However, he doesn’t pay much attention to fan or press feedback. “I don’t read critiques almost ever. I tend not to read anything people say. If it’s praise, I don’t really need that and if it’s negative, I definitely don’t need that either [laughs].” The song “Joy” sums up the mood of the band these days, which is happiness. There’s a feeling emanating from Phish 3.0, a gratitude for the music and community that they steward. Instead of the Dead, perhaps they represent the grateful living, and their fans overwhelmingly show it. At Festival 8, I asked a passing kid of maybe eight years old how he’d describe the band, to which he spouted, “Amazing, creative, and rhythmic!” Leave it to a child to describe the indescribable. KEVIN BROWN

To balance the succinct songwriting of most of the record, Anastasio brought in a 13-minute epic called “Time Turns Elastic,” which the band approached recording with no prior rehearsal. “‘Time Turns Elastic’ was a different animal altogether,” says McConnell. “We had never heard that song before, never tried to play it. Trey would say ‘Okay, I’m going to teach you the first 20 bars,’ and we sort of went piece by piece and learned it. We’d play that chunk over and over until we got a good take with all four of us playing it right. Then we’d do the next section, et cetera, and edit it all together. With Steve Lillywhite’s help, we were able to do it seamlessly. But all of the piano on that song was from playing with all those guys at the same time, even though the song was chopped up and spliced together.” Of all the keyboards in his arsenal, McConnell was often drawn to the piano. “For the most part, I tracked piano on everything except ‘Stealing Time,’” McConnell says. “Piano is my go-to thing and my primary instrument. I like to use all of them, but if I can, I’ll play piano first. It’s such a complete instrument with the melody and the percussive quality and all that.” When the band first started, McConnell had a piano in the studio, but live, he wound up using Mike Gordon’s Fender Rhodes and Roland Juno-106. Soon after, he got a Yamaha CP70 electric grand, which he played right up until he started touring with a grand piano.

on sometimes ten or 15 minutes, and all of a sudden it locks together and it’s like ‘Boy, if we hadn’t persevered, we never would have found this cool thing.’ I think that happens a lot, where it kind of goes and goes, but hopefully we don’t meander too much.” Though the recorded songs give a foundation for those freeform jams, McConnell isn’t tied to the keyboard parts used on record. “I usually start with something but try not to be married to it,” he says. “When I’m playing a song that has parts, usually I have something that’s lined up for that. Very little of it happens on the Rhodes or the Yamaha [CS-60]; most of it tends to happen on piano and organ, and some on the Clavinet. When we’re jamming and it’s going well, it seems like whatever it is that I can reach for at the time is the right thing to be reaching for.” One example he gives is “Time Turns Elastic,” which they now perform live. “I mix it up,” he says. “Instead of starting on piano, I start on

PAGE’S PHISH RIG On tour, McConnell plays a Yamaha C7 piano outfitted with hammers from a German Steinway. A Helpinstill pickup run through an Avalon U5 direct box, plus an Earthworks Piano Mic system, feed the P.A. Then there’s the Hammond B-3, Hohner Clavinet, Rhodes, Moog Little Phatty, and Yamaha CS-60. “Since I did my solo record, I’ve been out with the Little Phatty and I really like it,” says McConnell. “Before the Phatty, I used a Moog Source. I’ve had a few different keyboards occupy that particular spot.” His Clavinet got quite a workout at Festival 8 on songs like “Down With Disease” and “Ghost.” “People like the Clav,” he says. “It’s funky and it makes them dance.” The CS-60’s flavor comes in handy for certain moods. “I use it more for the spacious stuff and the ambient or spacey sounds. Pads and textures — I really like the texture of Yamaha’s analog synths. I’ll start with one of the presets, like the flute or brass sound, and mess with it.” However many vintage keyboards he owns, McConnell keeps his live rig tight: “I try not to have more than six keyboards with me.” 03.2010

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JON FILO/CBS PHOTO

PAUL

SHAFFER The Soul of Late Night TV by Jon Regen “A piano decays, but an organ sustains,” Paul Shaffer tells me, recounting his earliest exposure to the sound of the mighty Hammond B-3 organ. “Feeling that for the first time as a small child — the sense that you had the power to sustain a note as long as you wanted to, was amazing. Then, when you get into the drawbars of a Hammond organ, it’s like a metaphor for the universe in all its cosmic splendor. The possibilities are endless.” Shaffer, the legendary keyboardist, bandleader, and impresario, has been a household name in television for over a quarter century. From his signature stylings as David Letterman’s right-hand man for the past 27 years (as of this issue hitting the stands, he and Dave passed the 5,000 show mark), to his razor-sharp musical direction for the yearly Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and countless other productions, Shaffer has proved, night after night, that he’s far more than just a TV sidekick — he’s a master musician with a keen sense of history. From bebop to hip-hop, he can cover it all, and groove hard while doing it. On the eve of the release of his new memoir We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives, we reconnect at New York City’s famed Ed Sullivan theater to delve deep into his remarkable musical career. I was taken by many of the musical memories in your book, especially those detailing your first encounters with the Hammond organ. It’s an experience that resonates with so many keyboard players. It sure was an early fascination, and of course, it was tied in to the sounds that I’d heard as a kid on the radio, and on my dad’s records. Things like Ray Charles’ organ, and Del Shannon. But it was that sustained sound — an organ never decays until you pick your finger up. Just discovering that was powerful. Of course, now you can do those things with synthesizers. But in its day, the Hammond organ was as amazing as any synthesizer. It has a human sound as well, because of the tonewheels inside. I don’t know what the magic of a tonewheel is, and I don’t want to know. It’s

too much knowledge for a human! On the Late Show, you constantly seem to be energized by the music, whether it’s a young band performing on the show, or you playing and leading the band. New and old music alike seems to inspire you, regardless of the genre. That’s absolutely true, and it probably has to do with the eclectic musical tastes of my parents and their initial influence on me. My mother was in many ways, quite a cosmopolitan and up-to-date woman, but she had that old-fashioned side that said, “My kid will be musical. He’ll learn the piano and have golden hands.” I may not have come through on the “golden hands” part, but the other parts, I did, because that’s what she insisted on. My mother always had music playing in the

house. Rachmaninoff and Chopin were her favorites, and Broadway tunes as well. And on the weekends, my dad would play different jazz vocalists. He also played Oscar Peterson and Ray Charles. It was pretty funky. So it was learning by osmosis — soaking up all the different sounds in your house? Yes. There were lots of different styles in my house. My parents liked pop music, so I learned the standards of the day. Their songs. I was attracted to that. I liked learning songs, but I never felt compelled to write them. Now everyone knows that writing is where it’s at for so many different reasons – but for me, just playing was enough. I don’t know why, but I was fascinated by songs that were already written. [Shaffer has struck veritable gold with the two songs he 03.2010

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PAUL SHAFFER

When you get into the drawbars of a Hammond organ, it’s like a metaphor for the universe in all its cosmic splendor. Shaffer’s pride and joy: the Hammond B-3 organ originally owned by James Brown. has written: the Late Show theme, and the disco classic “It’s Raining Men,” which he co-wrote with Paul Jabara. —Ed.] The late, great jazz organist Jimmy Smith is known to be one of your biggest musical influences. Did jazz seem like something you might have considered pursuing at one time? Well, yes, it did. But rock reached me. Rock was totally of my generation, and I could understand it. Jazz was beyond me, and still is. I’m a fan, but I can’t call myself a participant, although I’ve been in a position where I’ve been able to play with so many of the jazz greats. I remember seeing you play John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” on the show years ago. Right. And I’m thinking about Miles Davis’ and Dizzy Gillespie’s appearances on the show. And the honor I’ve had to play with McCoy Tyner a number of times. I attribute my ability — I mean, I’m not quite able to hang, but I can certainly be in the lounge — to my apprenticeship with my mentor, [guitarist] Tisziji Munoz. I talk about him in my book. He was a spiritually-oriented jazz guitarist and a disciple of John Coltrane. For some reason, when I met him, he sort of took me under his wing and I became his apprentice. Anything I know about jazz, I know from him. He’s the one who showed me how chords can open up and become more sophisticated than just the triads in rock music. I got quite the education in traditional and free jazz from him. I still enjoy playing with him to this day. Do you still go out to hear live music these days? Absolutely. I don’t get the chance as much as I used to, but I certainly enjoy going to see people like [renowned jazz organist] Dr. Lonnie Smith. The live music I like to check out is often more of a jazz nature, 28

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background vocals. How do you feel about that? In the case of something like background vocals, it certainly does make acts sound better, and it does so more easily. Today’s audience seems to need to have the sound of a live performance be the same as the recording it’s based on. In my day — I sound like an 80-year-old — but in my day, we used to have music variety shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train, where acts would come on and just totally lip-sync. So what are we complaining about? At least these acts today do it half and half. As you look toward the future, what are the things you still want to accomplish? I have two ambitions these days. I want to learn how to play the pedals on the Hammond organ, and I’m getting there. I’m closer than I ever was before. What kinds of tunes do you play to woodshed your pedal technique? I play the blues, and walking bass. Lots of things. I was playing “Please, Please, Please” by James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, today. And your second ambition? The other thing I want to do is to learn how to sight-read. I can arrange, and I can read, but I can’t sight-read and play on the spot. I know the feeling! It’s nothing but putting in the time and practicing. [The late jazz and blues organist] Jimmy McGriff once told me the same thing about playing the organ pedals. He said, “People ask me how I did it. I put in the time.” So that’s what I’m gonna do.

and I like taking advantage of the fact that I’m in New York City, where jazz can still be heard. Unfortunately, primarily by listeners not from this country. [Laughs.] Fans from other countries are more loyal to American jazz music than even we Americans are. What about when hip-hop and rap artists play the Late Show? Do you enjoy listening and sitting in? Of course. I think all of us in the band get a kick when we get the chance to play with a hip-hop artist, recreating sounds that, often, they might have created on a computer — recreating them with live instruments, and giving that live energy to those same parts and sounds. Often times, the artists get off on it. They’re used to playing or singing over tracks, and don’t realize their music could work in a totally different way. Do you have a standing invitation to the musical guests on the show that you and the band will play with them if they want you to? Yes. We recently played with Weezer — they were nice enough to ask us to play with them on both of the nights they played the show. That was a lot of fun. What percentage of bands that play on the show these days are running tracks behind them? Almost all of them. Weezer was actually one of the exceptions — they went all the way live. But almost all of the musical acts these days play to some kind of preAnchored by Hammond B-3, vintage Kurzweil 250, and Baldwin grand piano, recorded element. Paul Shaffer’s keyboard rig is easily the most recongizable and impressive Even the rock acts, multi-keyboard setup on TV. For an up-close look, flip to “Geek Out” on page 66, who do it with their and get an exclusive video tour from Paul himself at keyboardmag.com/video.

MIKE HUMENUIK

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Road Warrior

MATT

ROLLINGS Country’s Keyboard King by Jon Regen Matt Rollings never planned on an A-list career in the Nashville music scene, but he was certainly ready when it came calling. “I’m not from Nashville, but I spent 20 years there from’86 until 2006,” the now Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer says. In his quarter-century plus atop the pop and country music charts, Rollings has produced, toured, and recorded with a veritable hall of fame of musical legends. Artists like Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Billy Joel, Trisha Yearwood, Bob Seger, Randy Travis, Mark Knopfler, Neil Diamond, Tim McGraw, and countless others continue to call on him to inject his singularly sinewy keyboard sound into their live and recorded work. A CONNECTICUT YANKEE Long known as a Nashville session ace, Rollings actually hails from the East Coast. His two-decade ride atop the very pinnacle of country music would follow a circuitous and sometimes accidental path. “I’m from Connecticut and lived there as a kid,” Rollings says. “We moved to Chicago when I was nine, and my parents found a piano teacher in Evanston, Illinois, named Alan Swain, a well-known jazz pianist with a teaching studio. I really lucked out studying there, because his teachers had a philosophy of turning young people on to music. They taught the rudiments — hand position, sight reading, and technique — you had to learn how to play the instrument. But as soon as you did, they introduced you to an entire library of popular music and blues songs. It was a very jazz-geared philosophy, and within my first year there, I was playing these little blues tunes, and learning how to play walking bass in my left hand. In hindsight, their approach was brilliant — it did indeed turn me on to music.” Rollings would move with his family to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1979, enrolling in a musically-progressive private high school with a top-tier jazz band. “Up until that point, there’d been no

opportunity for me to participate in music in school,” he recalls. “My past schools basically had just concert and marching bands. But I lucked out going to Phoenix Country Day School, where a guy named Les Felton, Jr. ran the music program. He had a little jazz band, and I ended up bringing my Fender Rhodes from home to play in it. Les was really into teaching and promoting jazz to his students — he took us to all the festivals, where we would play across the country. I also went to a summer camp called ISOMATA [Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts] where I spent two summers immersed in arranging and performing. So by 16 or 17 years old, I knew this was what I was gonna do.” THE GIG THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING During the summer of his junior year in high school, Rollings got a gig that set him on his way. “I had gotten a call from a bass player for a gig in Phoenix,” he said. “It was five nights a week with a house band in a local club called Mr. Lucky’s. But what he neglected to tell me was that the club was the biggest honky-tonk in Phoenix, and the band was a rocking, country band. It was a massive complex with two huge rock and country clubs in it. I had never played

country music in my life! I went down to the audition looking like a preppy kid from private school, wearing jeans and Docksiders!” [Laughs.] “The band was called J. David Sloan and the Rogues, and they’d lost their piano player,” Rollings continues. “I auditioned for them and got the gig. That was the beginning of this whole chapter for me. It was an incredible band, where we’d learn two songs a week of whatever was hot on the country charts. How we’d learn these songs was that we’d sit down and listen to them, and write number charts.” Rollings is referring to the vaunted Nashville numbering system, where chords are called out by their scale degree instead of their lettered names — for example, if a song is in C and the verse progression is C, Am, F, G, the chart reads “1, 6-, 4, 5.” The same chart can thus apply to any key, which is useful when working with different singers. “That’s how sessions are run in Nashville, and I spent two years doing just that.” LUXEMBOURG AND LOVETT “In the middle of my run with the band, we got called to do a whacky gig in the country of Luxembourg for a summer music festival,” Rollings says. “So we went there for a month as one of three acts on the bill. 03.2010

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MATT ROLLINGS PALOMA CAIN

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M MF-101 L Lowpass Filter F One of the other acts along with us was a guy from Texas who was just playing solo. It was Lyle Lovett. He was just out of journalism school at Texas A&M, and was over there playing solo between us and another loud, electric band. So to compensate for the sheer drop in decibel levels when he went onstage, he approached us about a week into the run and asked if we’d accompany him on a handful of his songs. We learned a bunch of them — songs that eventually wound up on his first album. When the gig ended, Lyle actually came to Phoenix with us and recorded 18 tracks with the band, paying for the sessions out of his own pocket.” “Later that year, I moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music,” Rollings continues. “I was convinced I was going to be a jazzer. A year into my studies there, I got a call from Lyle, telling me that he got a publishing and record deal, and that they were going to use some of the original sessions we had recorded for the album. Lyle wanted me to play real piano on some of the tracks I’d played Fender Rhodes on. So I went to Nashville, and met Tony Brown, who

was co-producing the record along with Billy Williams. Meeting Tony, who is arguably the most successful producer in country music for the last 20 years, changed the whole game for me. He’s a champion of musicians, and heard something in my playing that he liked. He started calling me to do development demos for him. And that’s the point when I realized that being a session player in Nashville was something I needed to do. So I moved there in ’86, and it’s been an amazing ride ever since.” THE BOOM YEARS Rollings’ reign supreme as one of Nashville’s most in-demand session players began almost immediately after he arrived in the storied city. “It took about a year,” he recounts, “but I showed up right at the beginning of the boom years. The end of the ’80s and all through the ’90s were the absolute gold rush of Nashville session work. My timing couldn’t have been better. I started working for a guy named Jimmy Bowen, who at the time was president of MCA Records. Jimmy had at one time been in Los Angeles, and

GUY FLETCHER

ROLLINGS’ RIGS For his tours with Mark Knopfler, Matt Rollings uses a Yamaha acoustic grand piano and a Motif ES8, along with a Hammond B-3 organ and a Baldoni Combo I Accordion. His Los Angeles, California, recording studio is based around the following. · Main controller: Yamaha Motif XS8. · DAW 1: Apple Logic Pro 9 on eight-core Mac Pro. · DAW 2: Digidesign Pro Tools 8 on quad-core Mac Pro. · PC: GigaStudio 4 on two custom PCs. · Soft synths: Spectrasonics Stylus RMX and Omnisphere, Quantum Leap Stormdrum and Gypsy, NI Kontakt 4 and Komplete 6, ProjectSAM TrueStrike and Symphobia, Synthogy Ivory, Sonic Implants Orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Library, Garritan Orchestra, Gforce MTron, Ilio Origins. · Keyboards: Kawai RX7 grand piano, Hammond B-3, Fender Rhodes Suitcase 73, Wurlitzer 200A, Minimoog, Roland Juno-60, Sequential Circuits Prophet-T8, Harmonium, Farfisa Mini Compact organ, Vox Continental organ, Hohner Melodica.

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MATT ROLLINGS had produced Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. He was the first guy that said, ‘Matt, I’m gonna start paying you double scale.’ So from that point forward, I was not only working constantly, but I had that kind of seal of approval as someone paid above the normal scale for the work they did. For that period of time, I had more work than two of me could do! Periodically I would go on tour with Lyle, or Larry Carlton, or later [famed Dire Straits guitarist] Mark Knopfler. But I made a conscious decision to not just take any gig that came my way. I can’t play the same thing every night, or I’ll start turning into a typist. So I chose my touring projects carefully. But as far as records go, I think I’ve played on 600 of them — maybe even more.”

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PROTÉGÉ AS PRODUCER Rollings, now based in Los Angeles, is busy as ever these days, playing, producing, and composing for films. After decades entrenched in the Nashville scene, Rollings is making a name for himself out West. “One of the things I started doing in the late ’90s was producing records,” he says. “I had a bit of success, co-producing [with Kenny Greenberg] Edwin McCain’s Misguided Roses, with the hit “I’ll Be” on it. I also produced Keith Urban’s first album as well. But it was difficult to break out of my role as a Nashville session player. At the same time, I got the spark to compose for films, so it was a natural progression to move to Los Angeles, where all this work is really done. I realized that the two things that were keeping me in Nashville were comfort and fear. And so within 48 hours of thinking about the idea of moving, I had made up my mind to do it.” Rollings waxes practical when asked for advice for the next generation of aspiring musical greats: “When I came up, the way that you got into a career in music was that you learned how to play music. A huge part of my education was playing with people who were older and better than me. So any chance you can get to play music where you’re terrified, and you’re the worst guy in the room — take it! You have to look for those situations. Because nobody gets better sitting in their room, recording themselves for YouTube. You have to learn how to play with other people.”

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P L AY I T !

TEN MINUTE TECHNIQU E

CONCENTRATED CHOPS by Ben Stivers “head” as well. Add these exercises to your practice regimen, and you’ll be in shape for whatever the road hands you, and for the projects waiting when you get back home.

One of the biggest challenges I face when on tour is keeping my head and hands limber enough so that when I come home, I’m ready to jump back into the creative cauldron that is New York City. Here are a few examples I’ve found useful not only for keeping my chops up, but for maintaining my overall musical

Hear audio of this lesson at keyboardmag.com/lessons.

Ben Stivers has toured and recorded with the Bee Gees, Matchbox Twenty, and Ricky Martin, to name a few. Most recently, he’s been co-producing Swiss singer Beat Kaestli and leading his funk organ trio project Triple Crown. Visit him at myspace.com/ benstiverskeys. Jon Regen

Ex. 1. This one is a real “chops burner” that Dr. J.B. Floyd showed me when I studied classical music at the University of Miami. It requires a pretty good stretch. Play it slowly and carefully, and continue the pattern for as long as you can, taking breaks when you need to.

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Ex. 2. My friend Ruben Andreu from Madrid showed me this exercise. Rumor has it that Herbie Hancock was the original source. These kinds of “crossing-over” motions really get your hands in shape. Play the first pass through this nine-bar exercise using finger 2 to cross over, finger 3 for the second pass, finger 4 the third pass, and so on. By the time you’re finished, you’ll feel like you can play just about anything! Strong and fast Repeat four times 2 3 1 4 5 1

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P L AY I T !

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Ex. 3. I devised this simple pentatonic exercise myself, involving the head as well as the hands. There are an almost infinite number of ways to vary it. You can also alter it by changing any degree of the scale. For example, in the key of C, if you change all the E notes to Eb, you get a different set of technical challenges. Try playing it in all keys, around the circle of fifths, with a metronome clicking every two notes, then every three notes, etc. This one really works all five fingers, and the exotic sounds generated by the altered pentatonic scales make an interesting vocabulary for improvising.

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Ex. 4. This is a C melodic minor scale played in block diatonic fourths. One of the obstacles I face on the road is having to play the same show every night. So on a long tour, playing all those tunes in the same keys night after night, there’s a danger of losing the “feel” of different keys. Piano is a tactile instrument, and every key has its own “shape.” Playing through this in all keys (again, around the circle of fifths) helps me remember what those shapes are, along with colorful voicings that I might not get to use in every show.

              44                                                      44        Slowly, in all 12 keys

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P L AY I T !

V I N TA G E

GET DIRTY!

Hear full audio examples of this lesson at keyboardmag.com/lessons.

by Marco Benevento

Sonic iron chef Marco Benevento cooks up tasty musical fusion, both solo and as half of the acclaimed Benevento/Russo Duo. His new DVD is titled Marco Benevento and Friends Live in NYC: The Sullivan Hall Residency. He’s currently at work on a new studio album and DVD, due in May. This month, he contributes four jazz-rock licks that prove that a little overdrive (or even a little more) isn’t just for guitarists. For more info, visit marcobenvento.com. Jon Regen 3 3 3   3 3 5  3 3                    4     3 3 3 3

5  4                            Blistering B-3. Jazz legend Larry Young was one of the first organists to play his Hammond B-3 through a Fender Twin amp. I love this sound, and I replicate it here using Native Instruments B4 — the “B3 Clean” patch through the “Fender Reverb” setting. Reverb and distortion are at 3 o’clock. Try it yourself on any clonewheel organ, through a real Fender Twin or an amp-modeling emulation. This line is great for hand independence, and for stretching a lick across the bar line. Am

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Roughed-up Rhodes. This example is inspired by a project in which I’m currently involved, dedicated to Miles Davis’ seminal fusion album Bitches Brew, which featured Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea on Rhodes. Try it with your EP clone through an amp modeler for a little crunch. I prefer vintage instruments, but if I have to use a simulated Rhodes live, I’ll run it through a ’60s tube amp (like a Sears Silvertone) to get added color.

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Preamped Piano. Here’s a loop that morphed into a theme for the song “Bus Ride” on my album Invisible Baby. You can get amazing sounds by attaching a boundary mic [e.g., Crown PZM] to the soundboard of your piano. Run it through a preamp, then into a looper [e.g., Ableton Live’s, or a Boss LoopStation pedal if you prefer hardware], and record this sequence. Using different bass notes can introduce new sonorities into the pattern.

54  6                4       Wurly Wow. One of the great things about a Wurlitzer EP is its ability to feed back. Try running your Wurly or clone through distortion and a volume pedal, plus a tube amp. Set your speaker cabinet close to the Wurly, crank up the distortion (while the volume pedal is down), then slowly raise the volume pedal to “play” the musically useful feedback. Just a few notes go a long way under these conditions, so here’s a simple progression.

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FUNK

THE MINNEAPOLIS FUNK FACTOR by Ricky Peterson The so-called “Minneapolis sound” is a melting pot of many influences, ranging from Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown to Minnesota-based blues, funk, and R&B artists many of us grew up listening to. Artists like Bonnie Raitt, Willy Murphy, Dave Ray, Tony Glover, and many others played at coffee houses on college campuses all across Minnesota. These ingredients — as much as universally-recognized Minneapolis pillars like Prince and super-producers

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis — blended into a riveting recipe with a sound all its own. In my touring and recording career with artists such as Prince and David Sanborn, as well as my own solo projects, I’ve always tried to maintain a sense of the funky Minneapolis music I grew up on. Whether I’m playing organ, synth, piano, or Clavinet, I make it a point to create melodic lines that brim with rhythmic life. Here are four ideas to funkify your own keyboard parts.

Ace keyboardist and singer Ricky Peterson guests for this month’s funk lesson. Peterson has carved a singular path, performing with some of today’s most revered artists. Fresh off the road with David Sanborn and Bonnie Raitt, Ricky Peterson just released his Best Of anthology, featuring three new tracks. Look for it on iTunes and at cdbaby.com/cd/rickypeterson4. Peterson is also recording a new album with his acclaimed musical family, featuring brothers Billy and Paul, nephew Jason, and sisters Linda and Patty. Find out more at rickyp.com. Jon Regen

Synth Stabs. Here’s a pretty recognizable synth rhythm part I used a lot in the ’80s. It’s based on the minor sixth of the tonic. These were done mostly on Prophet-5 and Oberheim OB-8 synths. Try it yourself, using your mod wheel on the end of the phrase. For maximum funk like in the online audio example, do a quick “wipe” or “smear” up to the big right-hand chord stabs in measures 1, 3, 5, and 7 — the stabs themselves fall on beat 2; the wipe begins a hair ahead of that beat. I recorded this example on a Yamaha S90ES, which proves that you can get that retro-funk sound even without a retro analog synth!

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    Baby-Makin’ Ballad Bass. I played this type of synth bass line, based mainly around the blues scale, on many ’80s ballads — usually on Minimoog, which I love on ballads. Try it yourself on a Minimoog Voyager, or on any virtual analog synth or keyboard preset. In the notation below, if you see two note heads on the same stem, don’t hit them both at once — play the lower note and do a quick pitchbend to the higher note. 1

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P L AY I T ! Clav Comp. Here’s a Clavinet rhythm part I’ve used on a lot of records. I prefer to play this alongside a guitar player who’s not using a wah pedal. These rhythms are based on the use of two notes in second-position fifths, starting on the seventh, and going to the tonic. Make sure to play this with a triplet feel with a healthy amount of swing, and if it’s all a bit much, experiment with omitting notes in the more dense cluster voicings — some of them are more “hinted at” than played. Here, I played a Clav sound on a Yamaha Motif ES7. 3 3   44               

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Hear Ricky play these lines at keyboardmag.com/lessons.

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Bubbling B-3. This is the rhythmic organ style I played on many David Sanborn and Prince albums in the early ’90s. I usually use the first three drawbars and add some Hammond vibrato/chorus at the C3 setting, which is the deepest. Most of the funky rhythms start on the “one.” Don’t forget to “rake” up to it! I’m playing this on a real Hammond B-3. 1

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DO IT!

DAN C E Hear step-by-step audio examples at keyboardmag.com/How-To.

VOCODERS: BEYOND THE ROBOT VOICE by Francis Preve Say “vocoder” and most producers will immediately think of classic Kraftwerk or ’80s funk and rap, but this tool has far more uses than simply generating robot voices. In essence, a vocoder is a highly specialized filter bank and can create exotic effects that

are almost impossible to achieve otherwise. Another common vocoding technique is to use a drum or percussion loop to impart rhythmic effects to a bright synth sound, but that’s also just scratching the surface. If you’ve ever spent a session tweaking LFOs

and envelopes in search of the perfect filter sweep, you’re going to dig this month’s tutorial, because vocoders are a fantastic way to create perfectly timed sweeps, stabs, and falls using the most familiar controller you have: you.

Step 1. Make some percussive and whooshy sounds with your voice. Pops, clucks, and shushes are great starting points for sweeps or percussive effects. This type of unpitched material will give the vocoder more frequencies for the modulator input, so be ridiculous and record the results.

Step 2. Next, create a simple sawtooth patch with the filter wide open so the sound is bright and buzzy. The initialized patch for Reason’s Subtractor is a great starting point, but any bright sawtooth will work. This will be the carrier signal the vocoder’s filters will operate on.

Step 3. Now, using your vocoder’s input functions, set the sawtooth patch as the carrier and the recorded voice as the modulator. By using only a few filter bands — eight is ideal — the results will be more synthetic and less “vocal,” which is the effect we’re after.

Step 4. From there, you can add effects like chorus and delay to thicken the sound and add ambience. Step 5. Another really cool trick is to use white noise as the vocoder’s carrier. Ableton Live’s vocoder includes noise as an option, so select that as the carrier and apply the techniques described above. This approach is well suited to noise sweeps, retro ’80s synth snares, or even thunder and rain effects.

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DO IT!

STEAL TH I S S O U N D Listen to audio samples and download the patch for Sonic Projects OP-X at keyboardmag.com or celebutantemusic.com/keybmag. 8 2

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SCANDAL’S “GOODBYE TO YOU” SOLO by Mitchell Sigman If you were an early-MTV generation teen, you probably have the image of singer Patty Smyth’s stockinged leg etched into your brain, thanks to Scandal’s giddy “Goodbye to You” video. You probably also remember the groovy organ-esque synth solo. Though the video shows keyboardist Benjy King rockin’ on a rare Digital Keyboards Synergy synth, in reality it’s Paul Shaffer (see page 26) manning an Oberheim OB-Xa. Paul has always been a big combo organ fan (he was often photographed playing a Vox Continental), so it’s no surprise that he used his Oberheim to cop a cheesy ’60s organ feel for “Goodbye To You.” Getting into the Oberheim spirit of things, let’s take Sonic Projects OP-X virtual polysynth for a spin this month — check it out at sonicprojects.ch. You’ll need Native Instruments Reaktor to use it on a Mac, but it’s a standard VST plug-in for PC users. Otherwise, you can create this patch on most twooscillator virtual analog instruments. 1. Set both oscillators to sawtooth waves. I’d usually use square waves for

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transistor organ tones, but saws sounded closer in this instance. 2. Set oscillator 2’s pitch interval two octaves above oscillator 1. Detune the oscillators a tiny bit. The detune knob is on the left in OP-X’s Control section. 3. Open the filter cutoff frequency all the way. 4. Set the filter resonance to about 25% — just enough to thin the tone a bit and make it less “synthy.” 5. If you’re using OP-X, turn on the Half and Full buttons for oscillator 2 (but not for noise), located in the Filter section — these emulate an original Oberheim’s primitive mixer. On other synths, set the volumes of each oscillator equally in the mixer section. 6. Leave the filter envelope amount at zero.

7. Set the Loudness Envelope to a simple on/off organ shape: everything at zero except for sustain, which is full up. 8. We’ll need some ’60s vibrato, so set the LFO to a sine wave and the rate relatively fast. In OP-X, make sure the Osc1 and Osc2 buttons in the Modulation section are lit. Now set the depth around a quarter-step (in musical pitch terms) either up or down. The secret is to make the vibrato fast and deep without going so far that it sounds like a synthesizer. 9. In OP-X, make sure the Osc button in the Tuner section is clicked; otherwise, pitch will be a little sketchy. 10. Dial all the voice pan knobs on the right of the panel to center. Now, just add a little stereo chorus and reverb in your DAW’s mixer to sweeten the signal. And so I say “Goodbye to You” — until next month!

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NEW DECADE, NEW OS What Matters to Musicians in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7 by Peter Kirn Operating system upgrades are often heralded with hoopla. Apple has traditionally announced “hundreds of new features” with each new release. Microsoft has turned launches into minor holidays; for Windows Vista, they even hired spandex-clad acrobats to hang the Windows logo from the side of a building. All of this seems surreal given the way musicians use computers; after all, the OS to most of us is plumbing, the stuff

underneath the stuff we actually use to make music. You’ll be pleased to know, then, that this latest generation of operating systems looks very different. Microsoft heard your criticisms of Windows Vista, and focused on a version of Windows 7 that shipped quicker, with fewer compatibility issues and more usability improvements that directly responded to user feedback. Apple says that when developing Snow Leopard, they

opened some 90% of the projects that make up OS X in order to emphasize refinement over new functionality, optimizing performance and building a foundation for future development. With the dust from each of these releases having settled, we have a great opportunity to give these operating systems a real evaluation — especially if you’re considering buying a new computer for making music.

Snow Leopard offers a tweaked, more responsive Finder and lots of little improvements, down to the Audio MIDI Setup user interface. What you can’t see is more important: Rebuilds of the OS guts prepare the Mac for 64-bit musicmaking and future optimization.

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GEAR AT A GLANCE: SHOULD YOU UPGRADE?

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Don’t fear Snow Leopard. This release is subtle enough that backward compatibility is very unlikely to be an issue.

Microsoft Windows 7 Get a machine with Windows 7 pre-installed, period. The days of reverting to Windows XP are happily over.

Upgrade if

You like some of the latest enhancements, you’re a frequent Finder and Apple app user, or you’ve got a 64-bit machine. There’s no rush, but if you back up first, the upgrade should be relatively smooth.

You’ve got a fairly recent machine and you’re ready to part with either XP or Vista. Check hardware compatibility first, but W7 is a worthy upgrade — even if you’re already on Vista. If Vista is working for you, W7 almost certainly will, too; unlike the jump from XP to Vista, W7 doesn’t make many under-the-hood changes that break compatibility.

Don’t upgrade if

You’ve got an older machine or are happy with OS 10.5, which remains the “preferred” Mac version for developers like Ableton and Native Instruments. If it ain’t broke. . . .

You’ve got an older machine running XP. You can always get Windows 7 pre-installed when you get a new machine.

Advantages for audio

Logic Studio has just added 64-bit support. Expect significant advantages once 64-bit applications and plug-in support mature and become more common.

A leaner system that gets out of your way and makes music more productive. Noticeable improvements to 64-bit and multi-threaded operation, especially in 64-bit apps like Cakewalk Sonar.

Compatibility

Most hardware and software that works with 10.5 should also work with 10.6; by press time, Avid had confirmed compatibility of Pro Tools 8. Simply because it’s been around longer, 10.5 is more widely tested than 10.6.

If it works under Vista, it should work under Windows 7.

On new computers

MAC OS X SNOW LEOPARD: LEANER, FASTER, SLICKER Some of the biggest changes in Mac OS X Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) aren’t visible at all — and some won’t become a big deal until down the road, as developers take advantage of new features. Hang on tight: We’re going to get into developer territory,

as it’s the bits Apple has built for developers that matter the most, even if the end result is that you won’t notice a thing. The biggest change is a full transition from 32-bit to 64-bit technology. What does that mean, exactly? (“Twice as many bits” — yeah, right.) Well, 64-bit computing refers to the size of the most basic numeric

building block, or data register. Snow Leopard represents the first OS from Apple that’s truly ready for 64-bit use in everyday applications. While parts of the operating system were 64-bit in previous Mac releases, 10.6 finishes the transition, with rewrites to the Finder and the CoreAudio and CoreMIDI frameworks atop which

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your music apps are built. That should mean we’ll start to see 64-bit recording programs and plug-ins soon. The upshot of supporting 64-bit is twofold. Most significant to music is the ability of a 64-bit architecture to access larger amounts of RAM: up to 16 terabytes, which is hundreds of times more than today’s computers can (or would want to) accommodate. By contrast, on a Mac, a single 32-bit application can only access 4GB of data at a time. Only a select few applications have devised workarounds to get beyond that limit: Native Instruments’ Memory Server for Kontakt 3.5 addresses up to 32GB on the Mac, and Logic’s EXS24 Mk. II sampler can allocate its own virtual memory. True 64-bit raises this ceiling for all 64-bit applications, essential for people using lots of memory to load enormous sound libraries; 64-bit computing also offers a significant performance boost over 32-bit, which could make some audio processes more efficient. In other words, 64-bit is good news, but don’t expect to bring home a Snow Leopard box and reap the benefits right away. First, you’ll want a 64-bit processor. Intel’s Core2 Duo is 64-bit, but the Core Duo (without the “2”) is not. Second, you’ll need an application. Logic Pro 9.1 and MainStage 2.1 have just added 64-bit support; MOTU expects to add support to Digital Performer soon. Other DAWs should follow. You’ll also need some 64-bit plugins, which could take a little longer. In addition to 64-bit, developers may soon look to take advantage of two other major technologies. “Grand Central

Dispatch” is a new programming paradigm for making it easier to take advantage of parallel processing. When you run an application, your computer is doing lots of number crunching behind the scenes. Grand Central Dispatch is designed to more efficiently process those tasks across multiple CPUs and cores, and is smart enough to free up resources that would otherwise be idle. Apple has rewritten their own CoreAudio and CoreMIDI libraries to use Grand Central Dispatch, and they’ve provided the ability for audio developers to do the same with music apps. Not all developers are likely to use it, preferring to stick to their own approaches to multi-threading instead, but it does add to the toolbox of Mac developers. Snow Leopard also provides integrated support for OpenCL, a cross-platform, open standard for extending computing tasks across the CPU and GPU — the graphics processing unit in your video card. Unless you’re running graphicsintensive software, chances are your GPU isn’t even breathing hard, so some developers have thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could farm some of that power to audio tasks?” As new and faster graphics chips emerge, that could hold promise for everything from new synthesis and effect techniques to faster rendering. There’s no immediate benefit yet, however, as hardware evolves and developers work out just what the technology will do. What Can You Use in Snow Leopard Right Now? Being future-proof is a good thing, but there are some reasons you might want to

upgrade now that are more readily apparent as you use the OS. The upgrade process itself has been made more painless: The installer runs more quickly, and it’s less likely to hose your system if it gets interrupted because, say, your cat trips over your power cord. More importantly, the OS has trimmed down, and Apple’s own apps are more responsive. The OS itself takes up less space on your disk, thanks to moving unused code, languages, and drivers out of the installation. In a welcome change from typical OS upgrades, Snow Leopard may use less disk space after installation than before. Once installed, you should notice that applications like Mail, Safari, and the all-important Finder are more responsive. Even little details like the eject time for volumes have been improved for more reliable operation. There are also subtle user interface improvements. Exposé window tiling is now more predictable. You can also see open windows for an app by clicking and holding on its Dock icon. Minor refinements around the Dock, Finder, and even Audio MIDI Setup reflect the thought Apple famously puts into the user experience. Snow Leopard also includes multi-touch support on supported devices, like the new trackpads on recent MacBooks. What hasn’t changed is important, too. Snow Leopard doesn’t change the device or driver model, or change the core frameworks in any way that should cause incompatibility. You’ll still want to make sure your software and hardware has been tested on 10.6, as issues can arise with any OS upgrade. But generally, it should be safe to switch.

WINDOWS 7: HASTA LA VISTA, VISTA Windows 7 is a lot like Vista in the right ways (upgrading is seamless, with few if any new compatibility issues), yet unlike Vista in the right ways (an OS that’s cleaner, leaner, less annoying, and less likely to cause problems). Here’s what happened. Vista made a lot of changes that directly impacted compatibility. Modernizing the windowing system, modifying the graphics engine, re-designing

the audio system, making changes to kernel performance, and changing the driver model were all major changes in Windows Vista — all accompanied by growing pains. If you were an early adopter of Vista, you experienced some of those pains firsthand, with application and hardware compatibility issues, sometimes-glitchy performance (often resulting from video drivers, which could interfere with audio), and other issues. But a series of Microsoft Service Packs and updated drivers from device

vendors has patched many of those holes. That means that, if you skipped Vista, or even if you didn’t, you can now enjoy the modernization effort in Windows 7 without the hassle. It’s a bit like the difference between moving into a gut renovation halfway through, or after it’s finished and the sawdust and drywall have been cleaned up. Windows 7 is also a different OS from a usability standpoint. User Account Control, a feature intended to make Vista more secure, still protects your system, but

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Windows 7 sports a user interface that improves upon Vista with a cleaner look and more usable taskbar, plus better organization of your files into libraries. But it’s the leaner, less intrusive performance of the OS, and under-the-hood optimizations for multi-threading and memory specific to audio, that make it worth a second look for musicians. without constantly interrupting your work to tell you about it. (It’s more customizable, too.) The taskbar tray, in which a parade of confusing icons have gotten dumped by various applications, is now cleaned up: Icons get hidden away by default into a new Notification area, so pop-ups aren’t constantly competing for your attention. There are time-saving features as well. Windows has always excelled at tiling windows side-by-side. Now, you can drag a window to a corner of the screen and maximize or tile it quickly, or shake a window to make unused windows disappear. The Start menu, one of the better-liked features in Vista, has been further tweaked for efficiency. The Taskbar now includes larger icons and the ability to preview open windows without them getting in the way, with additional features organized into “Jump List” shortcut menus in supported applications. A new feature called Libraries can make it easier to organize groups of folders in disparate locations, allowing quick access to projects and samples without getting lost in folder hierarchies. Like Snow Leopard, Windows 7 also includes new multi-touch support; on Win-

dows, this extends to new computers with multi-touch (or at least two-touch) trackpads. Audio Improvements in Windows 7 Having Windows work better in general is nice, but to most of us, audio performance matters more. Unlike the Leopard-to-Snow Leopard comparison, it is possible to say in some specific cases that Windows 7 can currently outperform Vista at audio tasks. The difference isn’t enormous, but it is significant, and combined with better stability in Windows 7, it could well make upgrading worthwhile. Multi-threading performance has been improved. A significant multi-threading bottleneck was removed in Windows 7, which is significant on multi-threaded applications for multi-core machines. Improved memory management is also relevant in multithreaded applications. One complaint about Vista (and operating systems in general) has been “bloat.” The OS itself has gotten leaner with Windows 7, just as with Snow Leopard. Also, there are fewer services that run by default. In my own tests, I

found that a fresh Windows 7 didn’t start the disk churning while the search index kicked in, either, as with early versions of Vista. Most musicians use ASIO drivers, but if you use WaveRT drivers for specific hardware (like a built-in soundcard), WaveRT performance has been significantly improved. On Mac OS, fully 64-bit operation is a news headline, and users are waiting for more 64-bit music applications. On Windows, 64bit has been available for years, dating back to Cakewalk Sonar on Windows XP x64. But Windows 7 could be the first OS you painlessly install for 64-bit. You’ll want to verify driver compatibility, as there can still be tricky issues with certain hardware. You’ll also need a 64-bit host (like Sonar or Cubase) and some plug-ins, plus a 64-bit computer, to make upgrading from 32-bit worth it. If you have those ingredients, you should find enhanced performance under Windows 7. Cakewalk’s Chief Technology Officer Noel Borthwick puts it this way: “We finally have reached a time when 64-bit computing, low-latency performance, and low-cost components are a reality. It’s a great time for DAW users.”

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YA M A H A T Y R O S 3

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YAMAHA TYROS3 Solo Act Dream Rig by Jim Eshleman PROS Sounds are among the best available in any keyboard. Yamaha’s Styles for live solo performing are the best in the business. Mic section includes effects and vocal harmony. Large interface can display menus ranging from sound/style settings to lyrics/sheet music. CONS Comes in 61 keys only. Mic input is 1/4", not XLR. No digital outputs. Definite learning curve to get the most out of it. Pricey. INFO $5,499 list/approx. $4,599 street, music-tyros.com You’ve probably heard of Yamaha’s flagship Tyros arranger keyboards, first reviewed in the Aug. ’03 issue by Ed Alstrom and called “the gold standard” by Stephen Fortner in his Jan. ’06 review of the Tyros2. Meant for solo entertainers and advanced hobbyists, they now take an evolutionary step forward with the Tyros3. Arguably still the most advanced keyboard of its kind, the Tyros3 (T3) keeps its popular FSX action, smooths out the stealthfighter panel angles of the Tyros 2 (T2),

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and adds welcome new styles and features. Though the new features are not quite as dramatic a step above the T2 as the T2 was above the original, and (for those who have invested hours loading their T2 with treasured settings) moving to a new keyboard can be scary, rest assured that the T3 is unlike anything you’ve played before. If you’re a first-time Tyros explorer, or a skeptical pro wondering what all the fuss is about, read on. CONTROLS I unboxed the Tyros3 amidst a whirlwind of Christmas gigs, with only a week to prep. Fortunately, I own two PSR-9000 Pros, Yamaha’s flagship arranger prior to the Tyros. The layout of the T3 is not much different from the PSR series both old and new, so I was up and running quickly — and considering that playing a T3 is a little like playing a Motif XS and the button-based Tenori-On (reviewed Nov. ’08) at the same time, that’s saying a lot. The T3’s large, tilting color screen and plethora of backlit buttons make you wonder why Yamaha’s Motif workstations

aren’t this easy to use in the dark. Only the Littlelite sockets of the PSR-9000 Pro offer more illumination. New sliders below the display default to volume faders for sounds and accompaniment, and become drawbars in the “Organ Flutes” mode (see Figure 1 on page 52), which we’ll discuss below. The layout of the T3 follows previous models: Style (accompaniment) buttons turn your left hand into a bandleader. In a style, you trigger various arrangement sections: three intros, four main sections, a fill, and three outros — all ranging from simple to complex. Also, the four Multi Pads now trigger a range of sounds, from one-note strikes and simple riffs (e.g., sleigh bells for the “Christmas Swing” Style) to rhythmic patterns that tempo-sync and follow your chording. When the One-Touch Settings link button is lit, switching sections within a Style also switches Voices (sounds) selected to work best with that section. You can override the factory choices here by holding the Memory button while pressing any of the four One-Touch buttons. Above the Styles are the full-featured Mic settings with effects ranging from EQ,

GEAR HANDS-ON 1 Tilting color screen is large and brilliant, and plenty of side buttons and sliders make up for it not being a touchscreen. 2 Color-changing backlit style and Multi Pad buttons give wide range of accompaniment options. 3 New Super Articulation 2 buttons add expressive options to lead sounds. 4 Mic section controls independent vocal effects. 5 Music Finder selects complete performance settings by specific song title or genres. 6 Internet button turns the Tyros3 into a browser for direct downloading of Voices and Styles. 7 Hard Disk captures a stereo mix of everything — your playing, the keyboard’s playing, vocal effects, you name it — to the internal hard drive, which can also store your WAV backing tracks. 8 Registration Memory and One-Touch Settings instantly recall panel configurations. reverb, and chorus to a very effective vocal harmonizer that knows what chords you play. There’s even a thoughtful Talk button, which removes vocal effects so you can speak to the audience. Next is the Song area, which goes beyond simple MIDI sequencer functions to include markers, looping, and cueing. You can record Styles and Multi Pads into song tracks, and during playback, you can loop portions of the song (which you’d do if you want to keep a song going for a few more choruses to please the crowd), or cue up the next song for immediate start. It’s features like these that make the Tyros3 a true entertainer’s keyboard. To the right of the display are controls for Voice creation, hard disk recording (and audio file playback), and the “Voice effects,” which have been increased to five banks and now include compression, which gives the T3 more sonic punch than its predecessors. These are different from vocal effects — they do things that enhance your right-hand melody. SOUNDS All the previous groundbreaking sounds from the T1 and T2 are here, including the velocity-switching MegaVoices. The T3 advances the field with very playable new Super Articulation 2 voices, which are all wind instruments. Articulations (slurs, grace notes, etc.) are triggered not just by timing

and velocity, but also by relation to the previous note played. Hold a note, for example, then play the same note an octave higher or lower, and you get a Benny Goodman-like scale run. The new ART 1 and 2 buttons (next to the pitch and mod wheels) manually force certain articulations such as a slur on a clarinet. I love the new sax and clarinet sounds, and couldn’t resist the occasional Chris Botti-style trumpet lead. All of the SA2 sounds cut through the mix well and make soloing a pleasure. The upgraded piano sounds are great, but they get a little lost in the mix when played with denser Styles. The T3 features plenty of DX7-ish electric pianos but only a few classic EPs, and these tend towards clean rather than crunchy. Special merit goes to the T3’s Organ Flutes mode. It calls up a clonewheel organ in the display, complete with rotating speaker. It’s a decent replica, and in no time, I created modestly good representations of my favorite drawbar settings. But I found the virtual slow/fast switch located mid-screen to be a little awkward to use live. Fortunately, the Direct Access button (by the lower left corner of the display) makes controller assignments a breeze — press it, work the intended controller (say, a connected footswitch for rotary speed), and a screen of possible things for that controller to do comes up. You can roll your own Voices, via the Voice Creator function or included editor software (see Figure 2 on page 52). You can also buy premium Voices from Yamaha’s dedicated Tyros website, music-Tyros.com. Last but not least, while the T3 isn’t a sampler, it can import audio files (WAV or AIFF) like one. You can assign these waves to “elements” (layers) of Voices. You can install up to two 512MB sticks of optional DIMM memory for wave storage, and also store your favorite programs and other data to an attached USB drive. AT THE GIGS Playing the T3 isn’t like playing a typical ROMpler — you select in advance the way the accompaniment Styles respond to your playing, sometimes for each song. The ways the T3 interprets chords range from single-finger (for beginners) to the “AI Full

NEED TO KNOW Who is the Tyros3 for? Solo entertainers, home enthusiasts, keyboardists who accompany live theatre, and songwriters. What does the Tyros3 have that the Tyros2 didn’t? Sliders for drawbar/fader control, more Styles (450), enhanced effects, Ethernet port for Internet connection, USB2.0, synchronized Multi Pads, Super Articulation 2 Voices and buttons, and included hard drive. Why would I get this instead of a “pro” workstation like a Motif? The Tyros3 includes many workstation features, but goes further with sound and live performance features not found anywhere else. It’s one of the most sophisticated auto-accompaniment keyboards made. What’s the Internet connection for? Downloading Styles and sounds directly from Yamaha. Does it do audio recording? Yes: stereo 16-bit/44.1kHz to the internal hard drive or a USB device. There’s no multitracking, but there is unlimited overdubbing. Keyboard” setting, for which I found that the keyboard split point is crucial to accuracy. Then there’s the mic settings, Styles, Voices for each hand, song start options, Multi Pad assignments, and more. Point being, even experienced arranger-keyboard players may find all this a little overwhelming in a live setting. Fortunately, you don’t have to push all these buttons for each song! The Music Finder (called “Music Database” on some PSR-series arrangers) ties it all together. Music Finder stores all settings — Voice setups, Styles, mic effects, you name it — for instant recall by song names (called “records”). For a big sing-along where I took requests just before each song began, Music Finder proved invaluable. It comes thoughtfully preloaded with over a thousand “records,” and more can be downloaded from music-Tyros.com. For jazzy piano-over-backing-track tunes, I created piano-only setups using the One-Touch Settings, and the hard

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GEAR disk’s iPod-like playlist functions gave me a break from directing the arranger functions in real time — note that your stereo backing tracks need to be WAV, not MP3. If you install a hard drive in the T3 that was previously used on the Tyros/Tyros2, then you can view/play Song files from the hard drive. However to properly use your stored Style, Multi Pad, and Registration files, you’ll need the File Converter software — a free download from Yamaha. IN THE HOME AND STUDIO What I wouldn’t have given for a T3 in my jingle-writing days. The Tyros3 is a songwriter’s dream, allowing instant gratification and near-finished results at the same time. I discovered the “Movie & Show” Style category, which easily summoned Broadway and old-Hollywood glory, and even styles like “Ethereal Movie,” which has no percussion track and defies tempo restrictions. While sample libraries and sequencers are often used for score production, the intuitiveness of the T3 lets your creativity flow freely. It’s not just for soundtracks — plenty of pop, hip-hop, alternative, grunge, techno, R&B, and country Styles will keep any songwriter’s juices flowing. I nearly fell out of my chair when I discovered T3 presets

YA M A H A T Y R O S 3

that perfectly emulate Jean Michel Jarre’s classic “Oxygene IV.” If that’s not enough, new Styles can be created by sequencing, step editing, or pasting together portions of existing Styles. You can expand or compress the MIDI Fig. 2. Think of arrangers as just preset machines? The Tyros3 is also a fully editable velocities of the synthesizer, with eight “elements” (think oscillators) per Voice. You can even import Styles and alter samples to use as the basis for elements in your own custom Voices. their dynamics, The “Karao-Key” feature lets non-keyalleviating the repetition that keeps some boardists trigger note-by-note playback of people from embracing arrangers. songs by pressing any key, and video outThe T3’s hard disk recorder is clearly puts let you display lyrics for sing-alongs, meant for the one-man-band demo, but and/or a music score complete with “follow where you had to install a drive in the T2, the bouncing ball,” making the T3 a recthe T3’s 80GB drive is included. It’s not room centerpiece not unlike the home conmultitrack, but there is unlimited overdubsole organs some of us grew up with. That bing, so for example, you could get your reminds me, new downloads from Yamaha Style arrangement and section changes provide samples from classic Lowrey and worked out perfectly, record this, then do Wersi home organs. So your Aunt Gracey another pass to record your vocal. won’t miss her old “fun machine” at all when you talk her into a T3 for the living room — add a pair of headphones, and only you need know you’re recording Marilyn Manson tribute songs. All joking aside, it’s just as good at that as it is at show tunes or Billy Joel sing-alongs.

Fig. 1. In Organ Flutes mode, the Tyros3’s sliders become virtual drawbars, and you get a two-speed rotary simulation. The Volume/Attack tab is where you control the all-important harmonic percussion.

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CONCLUSIONS Yamaha has again raised the bar with the Tyros3. It’s entertaining and fun to play, yet powerful enough to cover any gig from a retirement home tea to a Cirque du Soleil show. I found myself writing music on it the minute I plugged it in, and had no problems integrating it into my solo gigs, although I recommend the optional Yamaha MFC-10 pedal to make changing Style sections easier, plus an expression pedal for the organ voices. My wish list includes digital outputs, a 76-note keyboard, and a combo XLR mic input. Still, it’s hard to argue with success, and as it is, the Tyros continues its reign as the benchmark of stage arrangers.

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SPECTRASONICS TRILIAN How Low Can You Go? by Jim Aikin PROS Extremely realistic and playable acoustic and electric basses. Very musical management of articulations on the fly. Deep sound programming options. Searchable HTML manual lives on your hard drive. CONS Requires lots of RAM. INFO $299 list/approx. $279 street, $99 upgrade for Trilogy owners, spectrasonics.net Every recording needs bass. Well, maybe not flute duets, but everything else. So every virtual studio needs a soft synth that delivers strong bass. Spectrasonics Trilogy, released in 2002, provided great sampled acoustic and electric bass, and became the go-to virtual bass in many

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studios. Trilian takes the Trilogy concept into the stratosphere. You’ll need a hefty computer. The library weighs in at a whopping 34GB, and some presets require more than 2GB of RAM. That’s more than just a separate sample for each key — each key has a number of articulations, and each articulation has several “round robin” samples, so that repeated notes don’t have that identical, machinegun sound. Above all, Trilian is playable. I installed Trilian in my new Windows 7 PC, and soon discovered that I’m on the bleeding edge of technology. With Image-Line FL Studio 9 as the host, Trilian occasionally freaked out the audio buffer, resulting in loud noise bursts. I’ve reported the problem, and with any luck it’ll be ironed out before you read

this. In Steinberg Cubase 5, Trilian was well-behaved. SOUNDS Acoustic, electric, and synth basses are ready to go in Trilian. There are four acoustic basses: one from Trilogy, one from Bass Legends, and two new ones. The new ones are actually four-channel recordings of the same acoustic bass, split into two pairs of miked and direct combinations. A Martin acoustic bass guitar, which has a round tone, is also included. With the acoustic and electric basses, you can mix miked samples with direct pickup samples — phase-locked, of course. The electric bass category is bigger. Sounds you didn’t get in the original Trilogy set (which Trilian includes) include a Bissonette

GEAR HANDS-ON 1 You get eight multitimbral parts, plus a multimode mixer. 2 Each patch has main, edit, effects, and arpeggiator panels. 3 The two layers can be mixed, muted, and transposed with these controls. 4 Six LFOs can be synced to song position for reliable sweeps. 5 These quick controls affect both filters in a layer. 6 The envelopes are multi-segment, so the familiar ADSR sliders are just for quick adjustments. 7 To program your own sound, load a waveform from the library here. 8 The magnifying-glass buttons open more pages of editing controls. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A soft synth with a massive 34GB library of sampled bass sounds. What kinds of bass sounds? Acoustic upright, acoustic bass guitar, over 60 electric bass guitars, Chapman Stick, and hundreds of synth basses — mostly analog. Plug-in formats: Mac or PC; VST or AU. Will it run standalone? No, it requires a host — either your DAW or a gig-oriented program like Apple MainStage. Copy protection: Online challenge/response with serial number. Studio Bass, Chapman Stick, Clean Fender, Hardcore Rock, Retro ’60s, and Rock PBass. Each of these has a number of presets for articulations: staccato, slides, muted, harmonics, and so on. Bass slaps and pulls are part of the deal, and are playable from the keyboard. Even legato trills are supported. Up to eight articulations can be loaded at once in Live Mode (see below). Within the basic preset, velocities of 127 trigger short, sampled slides up to the note, adding to the playability. Release noise doesn’t require a separate layer of the patch, which is good, and you can adjust its loudness with a slider. You can mix and match, tacking release samples from one bass onto another. The release noise volume depends on the length of the note, so long notes that have

faded out don’t have an ugly pop when you lift off the key. That kind of detail makes a big difference. Trilian is hardly the only source of greatsounding synth bass, but what’s unique about it is the library of sampled waveforms from analog gear. The instrument list includes the ARP 2600 and Odyssey, Cwejman, Dave Smith Mopho and Tetra, Korg MS-20, Metasonix Assblaster (a tubebased box that defies description), four different Moogs, Novation BassStation, Oberheim SEM, Oxford OSCar, PPG Wave, three different Sequential Circuits synths, six Rolands (including the SH-101 and TB-303), and a few others. Generally, these synths were sampled with the filter wide open, so you can use Trilian’s great-sounding filters and envelopes to sculpt your sound. There’s no reason to use the waveforms just for bass: Trilian is just as capable of doing warm pads and screaming leads. Because Trilian plays samples rather than generating analog-type waveforms via modeling, however, its lead synth tones aren’t as creamysmooth in the high register as those in virtual instruments such as Omnisphere (reviewed Dec. ’08). But hey, this is primarily a bass — and anyway, lead tones with an edge are good sometimes. SYNTH ENGINE AND EFFECTS Trilian’s dual voice layers will be familiar if you use Omnisphere. In each layer, you get six LFOs, four multisegment envelopes, two multimode filters with serial or parallel routing, FM for roughing up the tone, and threevoice detune/panning for fatness. The 19 filter modes include not only the expected types but a couple of metallic resonators. A modulation matrix with 24 routings gives you plenty of ways to massage the tone. The effects rack includes more than 30 modules: compressors, EQs, delays, distortion, an amp/speaker model, three reverbs, and more. Each of the two sound layers has its own rack of up to four effects, four more are available in the preset’s common rack, and Trilian’s mixer panel has four aux send racks and a master rack. PERFORMING Eight bass slots might seem like overkill, but in Live Mode, Trilian lets you play up to

eight articulations (one per slot) on the fly, using bottom notes on a keyboard for switching. With a little practice, I could play realistic electric bass parts with slides and pops. For adding them after the fact, you can easily insert the keyswitch notes into your sequencer’s piano roll. Just as useful is Trilian’s main panel, which has 11 controls you can play via MIDI messages. They’re pre-assigned to do useful things in presets (e.g., mix direct and miked signals on a bass guitar, or do filter cutoff and resonance on a synth bass) but you can re-assign them to control as many sound parameters as you’d like — at once. The main limitation is that there’s no way to offset or limit the values: Assign a knob to five parameters, and it’ll move all of them from 0% to 100%. I was especially impressed by the Chapman Stick preset. The real Stick is played by tapping, so hammer-ons and pull-offs for legato lines are a big part of the technique. The Trilian Stick plays these techniques even in the middle voice of a chord! Any pair of overlapping notes that are a half- or whole-step apart will be legato, while notes further apart will sound separately. I’ve never seen another synth that did this. Trilian’s arpeggiator isn’t fancy, but does a few useful tricks. If you drag in a MIDI file from Stylus RMX, the arpeggiator will lock to the RMX groove. You can program up to 32 steps, which can be notes or rests, and can be linked for longer notes. The duration and velocity of each step can be programmed, but transposed steps and chords aren’t supported. CONCLUSIONS With Trilian, you really can fool listeners into thinking they’re hearing a fine bass player recorded in a pro studio. A knowledge of bass styles will also come in handy: Trilian is a musical instrument, and begs to be played by a skilled musician. The attention to detail in the sample library is scary, the voicing parameters are powerful, the user interface operates very smoothly, and the sound is amazing. Trilian isn’t just the best virtual bass on the market, it sets the gold standard for years to come. For these reasons, it clearly deserves our Key Buy award.

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TOM OBERHEIM SEM The Return of an Analog Synth Classic by Mitchell Sigman PROS Silky analog sound. Discrete analog circuit design. Unique and flexible filter. Modularstyle patch panel has options galore for interfacing with other analog gear. CONS You either get the patch panel or MIDI, but not both. No memory to save presets. INFO $899, tomoberheim.com In 1974, Tom Oberheim released the first Synthesizer Expander Module, or SEM. Players loved this easy-to-use, ballsysounding synth, and its unique multimode filter gave it a distinctive sound. The SEM went on to become the basis for some of the world’s first polyphonic synths, such as the Oberheim Two-, Four-, and Eight-Voice,

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which were essentially multiple SEMs in the same cabinet as a keyboard. Beginning in the late ’70s, these gave way to more compact analog polysynths (the Oberheim OB-Xa behind Paul Shaffer on page 28 among them) but analog tone nuts still hunt for original SEMs. Much to their delight, Tom has now reissued it. THE SIMILARITY STARTS HERE In contrast to most second comings of great analog synth names, the SEM is almost identical to the original. In fact, the external cosmetics are changed far more than the innards. Tom tells us that just one component was changed from the original design due to lack of availability, and it

doesn’t affect the sound. He kept the wedge-shaped beige case, and even the knobs are the same parts as on the originals. Some details have changed: two separate tuning knobs work better than the original’s touchy concentric arrangement. The biggest difference is the 33-jack patch panel. Since “bringing out” patch points is a common mod on originals, Oberheim took it one more step — a large step — providing fantastic flexibility for interfacing with other analog gear. Modular and Moogerfooger maniacs rejoice! THE VOICE Oscillators. Two identical oscillators initially give you a five-octave range. The tuning knobs have no detents or marks on the

GEAR HANDS-ON 1 You get 33 patch points on 1/8" mini jacks. The SEM is compatible with all one-volt-per-octave analog synths, transforming the SEM into a powerful synth expander module, hence the name! 2 Large coarse tuning knobs for each oscillator offer a five-octave range; small pots above fine-tune over a range of about a major third. 3 Unique multimode filter operates in lowpass and highpass modes and is continuously variable between modes with a knob — at 12 o’clock it’s a notch filter. Slide switch activates bandpass mode. 4 These knobs combine the oscillator waveform and mixer functions found in separate sections on other synths: Center is off, left makes the sawtooth louder, right does the same for the pulse wave. 5 Slide switch bypasses the VCA. Translation: infinite sustain. This also lets users run external audio inputs through the filter without triggering the envelopes — handy. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A monophonic analog synthesizer module. Does it have MIDI? The version reviewed here doesn’t. You’ll need either a hardware MIDI-to-CV converter, an analog synth with CV outs, or MOTU Volta (reviewed Aug. ’09). Can I save patches? No, but this means knobs are fully analog and not digitally scanned, allowing finer resolution. Who is it for? Die-hard analog synth heads who crave the warm, big and fuzzy sound that only a true analog synth can provide. How does it compare to other synths? The SEM offers the purest analog synth experience available short of springing for a modular synth. The oscillators, filters and amps use no digital components. panel, so pitch-perfect tuning requires a tuner or reference tone. The upcoming MIDI model (see “MIDI and the SEM” at right will have an A-440Hz reference tone that feeds the SEM’s external audio input. On the positive side, the calibration is extremely accurate. On my unit, the coarse tuning knob swept exactly five octaves and

the tuning never drifted. The oscillators have saw and variable pulse/square waves but no triangle or sine. Pulse can be modulated via the LFO or envelopes, and is independent for each oscillator. This can lead to some seriously thick tones! There’s also a sync switch for classic sounds a la the Cars and Kraftwerk. Filter. The filter is the famous two-pole multimode Oberheim type. Due to its shallower cutoff slope, it sounds a bit sharper and brighter than four-pole, Moog-style filters. The SEM can function in lowpass, bandpass, or highpass modes for lots of tonal variety. With the bandpass switch turned off, the SEM’s filter is “state variable.” That means you can mix between low- and highpass modes with a knob. Moving this guy around while playing makes some great noises — too bad it’s not a modulation destination! Mixing. You may have noticed that the SEM doesn’t have oscillator waveform selector switches. Instead, centerdetented knobs for each oscillator live in the filter section; turn to the left to increase saw volume or to the right for square/pulse. This works fine, but doesn’t allow waveform mixing within the same oscillator. There’s one more knob for balancing volumes from the two external audio inputs, and this works the same way — there’s no mixing of two sources. Envelopes. There are two simple attack/decay/sustain envelopes. There’s no release segment — the decay knob does double duty here, and decay continues whether you hold a key down or not. Whether this bothers you depends on the sound, but let’s just say the SEM isn’t the go-to synth for elaborate 14-segment envelopes. Envelope 1 is hardwired to the VCA (volume) and can control oscillator 1’s pitch as well. Envelope 2 can control the filter or oscillator 2. These are just the “basic” routings — you can reroute the envelopes in numerous ways using the patch panel. Modulation. There’s a sine-wave only LFO with a solitary rate knob. So where do you set the depth, i.e. how intensely the LFO affects a given destination? You do it at the destination: oscillator 1, 2, or the filter. Finally, a VCA on/off switch acts as a

MIDI AND THE SEM The SEM’s extensive control voltage I/O is a boon for serious fans of analog, but what if you want to just wail on it from your MIDI keyboard? Tom Oberheim will soon release the SEM MIDI edition. This replaces the SEM’s left-side patch panel with a nicely outfitted MIDI-to-CV converter, and adds rear-panel MIDI jacks. Along with standard note on/off reception, there’s an auxiliary CV that you can control with your choice of velocity, mod wheel, or other continuous controllers. The aux CV destinations include oscillator frequency, filter cutoff, and amplitude. The MIDI panel also offers a portamento knob, and expands the SEM’s audio input processing with a preamp that lets you process low-level sources such as mics and electric guitars. Also, the MIDI panel works in standalone mode for CV control of external synths.

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bypass by disconnecting envelope 1 and setting the VCA to full volume. This is handy for drones or when you’re using the filter to process a constant external input such as a music track. All in all, the modulation routings are surprisingly flexible. Then there’s that patch panel! All the audio and control voltage I/O you could want is here. Unlike a full-blown modular system, you don’t get a mixer or patching jacks that can “mult” one signal to several destinations, but that said, the patch panel is a boon for anyone with CV/gate-type gear, be it a modular synth, older analogs, or guitar gear with CV I/O. The possibilities are staggering. IN USE If you’re familiar with analog synths, the SEM should be way easy to get your head around, requiring minimal manual-cracking. (Tom Oberheim tells us a more indepth version of the currently brief manual is on the way.) Much like a Minimoog, the SEM’s simple controls array makes sound creation a joy — the absence of menus and

confusing abbreviations is a breath of fresh air. All the expected analog sounds are on hand: big, aggressive bass, piercing leads, blips and thwips, and those brassy splats that vintage Oberheim synths are famously good at. By using bandpass and combined lowpass/highpass filter modes, all kinds of midrangey variations from spitty highpass to mellow horn-like timbres are on tap. Teamed up with my Synthesizers.com modular and MOTU Volta, it sounded like the end of the world — in a good way. Being a pure analog synth, there’s no patch storage whatsoever, but for true analog aficionados, this may not be a big deal. The lack of savable presets does tend to make the SEM more of a “studio” instrument though. As to sound quality, instead of using tired buzzwords like “fat” and “warm,” let’s put it this way: Compared to using virtual analog plug-ins, the SEM sounds like the difference between mono and stereo (even though its output is mono), or like someone took a dank tarp off your studio monitors. The thing sounds that good.

CONCLUSIONS Depending on your viewpoint, the SEM represents either a steep price for a monophonic synth with no keyboard, or it’s the bargain of the century. It faces obvious competition from Dave Smith’s Mopho and its four-voice sibling, the Tetra (reviewed Jan. ’10). Both of these are true analog synths and have MIDI and patch storage. But the specs only tell half the story. With their digital encoders and menus, their user interfaces are less immediate than the SEM’s. Sound quality is a hotly debated topic in the synth world, but my ears say that out of everything wearing the analog badge today, the SEM’s is as analog as it gets. The SEM’s knobs and pots make sound manipulation a whole lot of fun, the patch panel lets you get creative even without any other gear — some pretty crazy cross mod/sync madness is just a patch cord or two away. For my money, the SEM is a winner. Thanks for keeping it real, Tom!

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GEAR

SOUNDS

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS SONIC FICTION Sci-Fi Meets Reality by Jason Scott Alexander PROS Evocative sound design that’s highly imaginative and playable. Kontakt, Absynth, and Kore FX integrated engines are utilized. CONS Network drives do not appear to be supported. FORMATS NI Kore 2; Mac version requires Intel processor. INFO $79, nativeinstruments.com Jeremiah Savage has a definite knack for hearing beyond the noise, turning the mundanity of the everyday items and situations that surround us into beautiful sounds. Strikingly opposite in theme from Acoustic Refractions — his first “Powered by Kore” instrument — this set is inspired by concepts, scenarios, and philosophical ideas from

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science fiction literature and film. For example, the wonderful, THX-inspired “1138 Mindlock” incorporates shortwave radio snippets randomly scattered into schizoid ambience, while “Martian Tripod” is a smart adaptation of the remade War of the Worlds deep-trumpet sound, including menacing footsteps and mechanical loops. With Kore 2 Player as its interface, each of the 100 multi-instruments includes eight individual variants or patches for morphing and up to 24 editable parameters. Inspired by replicant Roy’s soliloquy at the end of Blade Runner, “I’ve Seen Things” is a highly playable and haunting layer of shimmering synth, muted-timbre electric keys, analog brass, percussive hits, glistening wind chimes, and dark thunder with raindrops panning left and right. Incredible! I also loved the Dan Simmons’ Hyperion-inspired

“Chronos Balalaika”, where blistering wind gusts counterpoint the classic three-sided string instrument. And the gorgeous Vangelismeets-Depeche Mode attack synth, “Alien Strings,” gives you control over attack harmonics, pick, scrape, and string noise. Lots of cyclical type patches also exist, resembling bouncing particulate matter, washing space surf, revolving asteroid belts, chattering insect pods, bubbling mud pots, and more. The only disappointment is that you’re forced to install the 740MB of sample data onto an internal drive or partition. My network drives were all rejected, and I couldn’t reassign the sample folder locations once installed. Overall, Sonic Fiction is a dynamic addition to any film scorer’s or video game composer’s arsenal, turning familiar conceptual territory into inspiring and unique soundscapes.

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GEEK OUT

RIGHTEOUS RIGS

PAUL SHAFFER’S KEYS TO THE LATE SHOW

Paul gives us a full interview on page 26, and gives you a video tour of his keyboards at keyboardmag.com/video.

To the left of the K2000 atop the piano sit Kurzweil PC2R and Roland JD-990 modules. The JD-990 is the rack version of the JD-800, which used to sit where the Fantom-X7 is now. Yes, that’s an old-school phone, and yes, it gets used on the air.

Oberheim OB-Xa — one of the most desriable vintage polysynths — above Kurzweil K250, the original sampling grand.

A Mackie 16-channel Onyx mixer brings it all together. It sits behind a Kurzweil K2000 V3, atop Paul’s Baldwin grand piano.

Minimoog Voyager sits diagonally between the treble end of the K250 and Paul’s gear rack behind him.

The view from the most coveted chair in TV keyboard playing: Paul’s Hammond B-3 organ and Roland Fantom-X7.

ALL PHOTOS BY JON REGEN

Behind Paul’s station sits a small rack of gear. Top to bottom: Mackie 1202VLZ Pro mixer, Sony CD player, AudioSource stereo preamp, E-mu Vintage Keys and Vintage Keys Plus modules, and Roland JV-2080. The cabinet on which these sit hides a miked Leslie 145 for the B-3. To its right you can see one of the Bose L1 speaker columns Paul uses for monitoring.

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In 2008, Novation’s Nocturn redefined plug-in control. Touch sensitive controls and one-click assignment made Nocturn an instant hit with music makers. We’ve added a velocity-sensitive, real Fatar keyboard with aftertouch, 8 ‘soft-touch’ drum pads and transport control, turning Nocturn into a full keyboard-DAW controller. Nocturn Keyboard’s award-winning ‘Automap’ software graphically displays the entire control surface, showing all the information where you really need it - on your computer monitor. Can you imagine the possibilities when you can simply click on a parameter, touch the controller and see it all laid out for you on screen? Its time to play. CLICK ANY PLUG-IN CONTROL

TOUCH AN ENCODER TO ASSIGN THE CONTROL

WHO WANTS A SMALL LCD SCREEN? Automap’s heads-up GUI mirrors Nocturn Keyboard’s control surface, allowing you to see which controls your soft synths and effects are assigned to easily. Change its opacity, size and whether its even visable, now you can’t do that with an LCD screen!

PLAY AND CONTROL THE PLUG-IN WITH EASE

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