Analog Keyboards

Posted By admin on February 11, 2010

After reviewing the Nord Electro 3 for Electronic Musician magazine, I liked the keyboard so much that I decided to buy it. As mentioned elsewhere, it is the perfect vintage keyboard emulation for gigging - lightweight, portable, with a good action and decent sounds. What’s not to love?

Well, the color, for one. I’ve always been a big fan of the audience focusing their attention on the performer, not the instrument. And Nord’s trademark red paint with red wooden cheekblocks may be good advertising for them, but it does not at all recall the look of our beloved keyboards of yesteryear.

So once the keyboard was mine, it was time for a facelift. I took it apart, which was not particularly difficult - the whole unit unscrews, and a few ribbon connectors connect the electronic components to each other. I carefully wrote down the positions of each element, put the screws and cards in ziploc bags, and then stowed them were they couldnt be disturbed. At that point, I masked off the silkscreening on the front panel with masking tape, so the information there stayed safe. I hung the top and bottom panels up from the ceiling, and turned red to black with a can of spray paint. The red cheekblocks sanded down to bare wood quite readily. I then stained them with a mahogany colored stain, sealed them with spar varnish, and voila! An instrument that blends perfectly.

The Nick Peck Organ Trio with our black Nord Electro 3

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Tags: Electro, Nord

Posted By admin on February 27, 2009

So, I used to be completely insane. I carried the following with me to gigs for years:

• Hammond B3 chop
• Leslie 122 speaker
• Rhodes or Wurlitzer electric piano
• Hohner Clavinet E7
• Pedal board
• Fender Twin Reverb amp

There was indeed a method to my madness. I wanted all those sounds, and I had enough friends and van space to make this happen. But it was still totally crazy.

Nord recently sent me their newest vintage performance keyboard, the Nord Electro 3 to review for Electronic Musician magazine. And while I will save most of my comments for the article, I can say that it sounds great, is quite easy to use, and is incredibly portable. I was able to dial up very personalized Hammond, Wurly, Rhodes, and Clav sounds quite quickly, and tweaked them on the fly at the gig with no trouble at all.

Lest I betray my analog bias, I will certainly say that it is not identical with the real thing - it is a bit bright, a bit harsh, and a bit…digital. But certainly not enough to make any difference on the stage. For studio work, I will continue to use my real instruments - the sound and the interactivity are different enough to make it worth my while. And for jazz organ gigs, I will still continue to cart around my chop and Leslie, or my digital Hammond XK-3 and Leslie. But for more general purpose gigs, where straight up organ is not the primary focus, the Electro is absolutely the way to go.

Here is a video from a recent gig with the Electro:

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2009

Editor’s note: I wrote this thesis fifteen years ago, as the senior project for
my B.A. in Electronic Music from San Francisco State University.
The paper is an in-depth look at the orchestrational techniques
used by Rick Wakeman in the music he has created with Yes, and
on his own. It also includes a brief musicological treatise on
progressive rock.

Though the paper is certainly written in a formal academic style,
I think there is interesting information here for any fan of Yes
and Rick, musical training or not.

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2009

On Saturday, September 13, 2003, I was playing my trusty Hammond chop at my 20 year high school reunion. The greatest hits of the 70’s and 80’s were flowing freely from the band, and everyone was having a great time.

I started playing a wild, roaring solo over the rock chestnut ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. the Leslie was in high gear, the notes were flying, and glisses were spiraling up and down the keyboard with manic glee. Just as I hit the crescendo, the G above middle C snapped right in the middle. Hammond organ keys are not like cheap synthesizer keys - they are very thick, well built pieces of plastic. But the frenzied playing proved too much, and the key snapped in half. Of course, this took place just as I was executing and upward smear with my left hand.

The broken plastic shard neatly sliced my left index finger open along its entire length, and caught the top of my third finger as well. I kept playing for a moment, then stared dumbfounded at the ruin of the organ keyboard, as blood began spraying all over the instrument and floor.

Fortunately, my high school graduating class produced a couple of doctors, and three large butterfly bandages later, I was back onstage. I cleaned off the bottom manual, and played the rest of the night on that keyboard. A visit to Bob Schleicher, the Hammond guru, took care of the broken key. Now the organ is back to tip top shape, the bloodstains are gone, and my finger is healed. Onward!

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Posted By admin on February 27, 2009

If you are into DIY and have some facility with a soldering iron, building one or two clones of the famed Teletronix LA2A tube compressors can be a fabulous way to burn up six months of free time. I really love all this stuff, and am endlessly searching for ways to improve my recording studio, so I decided to take the LA2A challenge. And indeed, six months later, I succeeded in my quest.

Resources

A recording engineer named Dave Jahnsen wrote an e-book detailing a point-to-point approach to building the LA2A. This was how I built mine. Unfortunately, Dave is no longer with us, although I would assume that copies of his book might be available somewhere on the web. There are also DIY circuit boards that are now made, to speed up the assembly process. The best place for all this information is one of my favorite hangouts on the web, Groupdiy.

My LA2A’s

I decided to build two, rather than a single unit. Though this was more work and double the expense, it made sense for a number of reasons. First, I wanted to use a pair in stereo to process drum kit mixes and other stereo recordings. Second, a large portion of the time spent on a project of this type is rounding up the necessary components. Once you have found them, it is just as easy to order two as one. Another big timesink is figuring out where to actually lay out components. Once this is done, working on another unit right next to it is far quicker. I would say that building the second one took half again as much time as building the first (although I built them, component for component, simultaneously). Finally, I was lucky enough to find a very cool double 3U rack unit for a few bucks at the local electronic surplus store, so that clinched it. As an added bonus, the front faceplates are hinged and open up just like the originals.
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Posted By admin on February 22, 2009

Originally published in Onstage Magazine, Dec, 2001 issue

Sooner or later, everything old becomes new again. During the past few years, more and more keyboard players have followed in the footsteps of their guitarist compatriots and replaced contemporary instruments with gear made in the ’60s and ’70s. The reemergence of electromechanical keyboards such as organs, electric pianos, and Clavinets resonates from the largest festival stages to the smallest dive bars. A new generation of players and listeners is getting hip to sounds that have been around for decades.

Now vintage keyboards can crop up virtually anywhere, from electronica and hip-hop to country, rock, and blues (the Hammond organ in particular cuts across stylistic lines). They’re most prevalent, however, in soul-jazz, funk, and jam bands. Successful modern groups featuring vintage keyboards include Phish; Medeski, Martin, and Wood; Soulive; and Galactic. In addition to the big-name groups - that, after all, have roadies to lug the inordinately heavy old keyboards - a plethora of jazzers and jammers use them on club and bar gigs, carting the ancient behemoths around in the backs of vans, pickups, cars, and SUVs.
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Posted By admin on February 20, 2009

Hi, and welcome to a page showing my musical history, evolution, and growth over the course of my life. But before we begin: lest ye consider this merely a narcissistic journey into dig me-ism, let’s ask one question: Who am I? Nobody important. Nobody famous. I suppose I am (or was) moderately well-known in the progressive rock and jamband circles that I have gigged and recorded in extensively, but definitely on a local level. But what I am is a person who has pursued the exploration of musical composition, performance, and recording steadily and with great dedication throughout my life. Most importantly, I’ve gone through a number of distinct phases, exploring deeply in particular genres for some years, then moving up the rungs of the ladder to another musical area. Through displaying my evolution here, I hope to emphasize and give evidence to the concept that change is natural. We grow and mature throughout our lives, and pushing oneself into new artistic playgrounds keeps the work new and fresh. Music has brought great happiness to me, and has sustained me through difficult periods as well. I intend to keep playing and moving forward musically as long as I’m breathing. With all that said, here is where I’ve been, and where I’m going…
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Posted By admin on May 31, 2002

Music is a rather unique art form in that it can be an unstructured, collaborative process. Writing, poetry, painting, and sculpture are solo arts, in which the artist succeeds or fails based on their decisions alone. Group art such as theatre, dance, and filmmaking tend to have a codified structure, where an individual is responsible for the primary idea, someone else is responsible for interpreting that idea, and everyone else inputs their creativity in a rather rigid, narrowly defined way.

All music beyond a solo act demands cooperation and collaboration between the players. When money is involved, it is possible to have the same type of hierarchy that makes a theatrical or film production work: all the players are following the instructions of a leader, because they are making their living at it. It is a paid gig, so there is less ego involved. But what of the far more common example of a band that is together of their own free will, rehearsing, composing, and performing together with little or no financial renumeration? How do you make it work and keep it working? How do you know when it is not working, when it is headed for a change or the end of the road? How do you know when to leave the situation?
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