Nice upbeat sound Jag.

That is exactly what I'm looking for. Muchos Graçias, Señor.

My question for SM is more along the lines of hardware...

What's your favorite keyboard of all time? Your favorite VA synth (both hardware and software)? Your favorite classic analogue synth? What is the one indispensible instrument or piece of equipment for a live performance keyboardist (excepting stands, of course)?

Re: A&R Guy
 

The job is changing. A&R stands for "Artists and Repertoire”. They are the “green light” guys at the label, who can sign an artist and start a project. They find material for an artist to sing, or if the artist writes their own material, the A&R guy will cull through their songs and choose which ones make the final record.

The A&R guy will also pick the radio single, and coordinate with the radio promotions and marketing team at the label. Here’s where the job has changed – labels have become fiercely competitive even in-house. A&R people change labels so quickly, that their own track record at signing bands is more important than the success of the label. So every A&R person is competing against the others at his own label to secure songs, to secure the best release date, to get the best radio and marketing guys to work on his project instead of someone else’s.

Making a record is kind of an advocacy system. The manager is the advocate for the artist, the A&R guy is the advocate for the label, and the Producer is hopefully the advocate for the project (often a liason).

-sm

Too many. Of course, the B3 and the Fender Rhodes reign supreme, and will for a long time. I'm actually in the middle of rebuilding my Rhodes right now, and covering it in an old yellow tweed. It's getting harder to use those live though, because so many managers are bitching about cartage fees (a cartage company stores your equipment, then brings it to where you are playing – indispensable for keyboardists and drummers).

I’m not much into the VA hardware – I use a Jupiter 8 and a Mini Moog for analog, so there’s not much need for an emulator. On the software side, I like the Logic instruments – the ES1 and ES2.

My one indispensable instrument for live playing is my laptop. I run Logic software live onstage, and trigger samples, loops, BGVS, all the ear candy stuff from there. I think I’ve gotten more tours because of the wow factor of showing up to the audition playing a laptop than for any other reason.

Also, a vote for the Korg Triton. It’s a great bread-and-butter keyboard. Very easy to program, flexible routing and effects, and a great sound library.


-sm

elspode - do you play?

-sm

SM, what laptop do you play with? What's under the hood?

mac g4 12 inch powerbook 1ghz, 768mb ram, OSX 10.3.3

I run Logic Pro 6.4 as the software hub of the thing. the I/O is a motu 828, and an extrenal glyph drive for samples and audio tracks.

I chew through them pretty quickly. The stage is not the most gear friendly place in the world. I'm actually going to sell my old one on ebay. It has severe road damage - cracked case, fan sounds like a leaf blower, HD is whiring pretty bad, and the CDR doesn't work.

I'm thinking I'll put the reserve at $2900.00

-sm

I'm a guitarist who has a perverse fascination with synths. I currently own an ARP 2600, a Korg Poly 61, a Roland GR 30 guitar synth, a Roland XP 50, a Roland E-16, and a whole shitload of hacked and demo VA stuff. Had to sell my MiniMoog a couple of years ago during hard financial times, so I am, of course, plotting to get another. Wouldn't even mind having a Voyager, for that matter.

My keyboard abilities are pretty rudimentary, but I do know how to program and make lots of cool sci-fi noises.

What would be the minimum setup for MIDI to get a decent range of sounds and especially a full set of drum sounds/samples? Does one need a dedicated sampler nowadays or can most PCs serve that task?

Hot damn, UT. Maybe all that junk in your garage could become a band. A garage band of R2D2s, that always show up on time for rehearsals and have no egos. :D

Any good groupie stories?

A PC is going to work better than a sampler for most tasks. It’s much easier to map and edit samples with a mouse and screen vs. buttons and LCD banners. The only reason to use a hardware sampler vs. a PC is for live, where you need the bulletproofnessocity of a hardware box vs. a sometimes-unstable PC. I use the EXS24 software sampler for most of my drum programming and Gigasampler for orchestral. I use the Korg Triton sampling for live, as a redundancy for the laptop.

As far as minimum setups, that’s a really open ended question. There are so many programs and drum libraries that sound great and are fairly easy to use. I’m not really up on most of the entry-level stuff, so I’m probably not the best guy to ask. For mac, I know Apple’s Garage Band works well – I’m expecting the Logic Express to be really a great value. I’m not hip on the PC side of the equation.

For straight drum libraries, Spectrasonics makes something called the Stylus that has like 2 gigs of samples, and sounds amazing. I use BFD from Fxpansion for acoustic sounding drums. I spent som time editing a drum library for Russ Miller that’s coming out on Spectrasonics soon – it has some really interesting material on it.

Anyone else have a better answer?