billbaker wrote:
I think everyone who reaches a certain level in their playing should get their feet wet. It is such a useful skill, and does so much to open up your sound that you should start right away. Or at least try.
BB
What is the best way to get your "feet wet" ? Karma-lab videos from Stephen Kay ?
Self Education (auto-didactics for the classically minded) is a great place to start, but I'm talking even simpler than that.
Twist a knob
Step on a pedal
Try a sequence
Tweak a program
Build a combi
Build a drum kit
Substitute KARMA patterns
Learn to save your stuff!
Learn ADSR and what it means and why it is set up that way.
Take a string patch and make it: fatter, thinner, arco, staccato, marcato, legato, change the attack, change the sustain, make it more "analog-y", make it "melotron-ish", make it (help me, Lord) like the one the guy in Nightwish uses.
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I'd venture to say that the majority of us come to synths from piano. And the temptation is to treat the synth AS a glorified piano. We stick to the known, tried, reliable gestures of playing piano and never think that there could be more.
But there is.
Watch Jordan Rudess play. As monstrous as his piano chops are, he goes to pitch bend and modulation just as naturally -- gestures that have nothing to do with playing piano.
Organ players (true B3 players) know about grabbing drawbars to shape their sound. For those of us who didn't have access to that instrument coming up it's NOT a natural performance gesture for pianists. By the same token, sustain pedals are not organ performance tools.
Volume pedal.
Expression pedal.
Aftertouch.
Mod wheels, sliders, pads, knobs, buttons....
Drummers play drums - not keyboardists. But that's not true any more. You need to watch drummers, think about their gestures and adapt those gestures to pads or keys. Watch Thomas Dolby in his videos from the Sole Inhabitant live tour and you'll see him put together a great rhythm for 'Leipzig Is Calling' on the fly using just a Trigger Finger pad. [For that matter, watching him do the whole 'One-Man-Band' thing is humbling.]
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Now, being a synthesist includes a whole gamut of imitative gestures for playing strings and brass and whole ensembles as well as our traditional keyboard gestures. And the ability to shape the sounds we use... even as we use them? What a great time to be a keyboard player.
Steven Kay's built a minor industry (more power to ya') around the performance gestures of other instruments. But you should know 'em yourself, not just rely on Steven.
I got a compliment from a guy I respect the other day who said he'd never heard another keyboard player who phrased and voiced brass like me. Thanks, Dave. I do it 'cuz I'm a brass player as well as keys.
Jumping genres is like that, too. What are the appropriate gestures for Funk, Country and Techno? You play them all the same, and well, it's welcome to the cheese factory.
Your sounds are only factory, only net-found, only 3rd party purchases? You're missing all the fun.