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Author Topic: Keyboards  (Read 1484 times)

dragyn

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Keyboards
« on: March 11, 2002, 01:35:31 pm »

What is a good keyboard to use?

I'm looking to buy a new keyboard cause my other one died on me and I'm using this wireless POS that was in my car. It takes me forever to type anything cause not all the keys work and I have to go back and fix all my spelling mistakes. Believe me, if I didn't..you wouldn't be able to read this post.

Looking for something that works with MJ well, like the multimedia keys, etc.

What keyboard are you using and what would you recommend?
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Gatobrit

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2002, 01:49:02 pm »

Dragyn - I'm using the Logitech iTouch cordless. The media keys work well enough when MJ is not minimized to the system tray.

There is a line you need to add to "players.ini" that I can post if you need.

Otherwise, the keyboard has nice action.
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Namaste,
John

JollyJim

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2002, 07:50:26 pm »

Dragyn

Try a Hammond C3 - greatest keyboard ever !!!

Jim
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Roger|PLS|the|PLS|Shrubber

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2002, 08:29:10 pm »

LOL Jim,

Don't forget the Leslie!
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JollyJim

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #4 on: March 12, 2002, 08:46:11 pm »

Roger

Yeah - a 760 screaming it's guts out with the belt slackened so that it took longer to go from slow to fast and vice-versa.

I've gone all funny......

There was a story going around years ago that the Yanks military had invented a 'sound gun' that was capable of destroying life by getting the amplitude and frequency exactly correct. Apparantly it was very close to the setting of a Leslie on slow speed. The story goes that they had some success with it but had to drop the project as there was no exact method of directing the sound - a bit embarrassing!! The story came from a Hammond salesman when I was in Music Retail in the 70's and I have no way of knowing if thee's any truth in it.

Jim
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Roger the Shrubber

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #5 on: March 12, 2002, 10:24:02 pm »

Jim,

How would you rate the Fender Rhodes' popularity vs. Hammond, Farfisa et al in the 70's?

Oh, and then there were Mellotron & Moog as well. The dark pre-digital ages.
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JollyJim

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #6 on: March 12, 2002, 11:10:14 pm »

Well, the Fender Rhodes had a sound of it's own did'nt it. Great stuff, especially when Stevie Wonder played it. If you hit the keys fairly hard, it had an amazing distortion to it. Disadvantage was it was big and heavy. Smaller and lighter was the Wurlitzer EP10 made famous by the Carpenters etc. Again, a very distinctive sound, but my fave would be the Fender Rhodes stereo electric piano. There were any number of 'Hammond' copies - Farfisa, Vox, Elka etc etc but no-one ever caught the drawbar sound like Hammond. It was produced by a motor turning a shaft on which were mounted 'cog' wheels running adjacent to electric pickups. The pitch of the note was derived by how many 'teeth' were on the cog. Hammond went away from tone-wheel generators, as they were called, in about the 80's and tried to catch the sound electronically. They got close, but you can always tell the real thing. The originals were designed in, I think, in the 20's and stayed exactly the same for about 50 years. The Mellotron was totaly unique and I sold a few in the 70's when they were disappearing from fashion. They derived their sound from magnetic tape sections upon which had been recorded from the pure instrument,(flute, choir etc) one tape for every key. When you depressed a key, it operated a pinchwheel which then pulled the tape past a recording head into the amp circuitry. If I remember correctly, 8 seconds was the longest you could hold a note down before the tape rewound. They were a nightmare to change tapes and the stability of the thing was what finally killed it. Groups like the Moody Blues for instance, used to have a roadie permanently 'assigned' to the Mellotron when they were on stage to keep it in tune. The heat from, mainly, the stage lights, affected it enormously. But, hey, what a sound !! One keyboard I really liked was the Hohner Clavinet. This was a stringed instrument, plucked, by the keyboard a la harpsichord. It had a series of guitar pickups mounted under the strings and you could get very authentic guitar sounds through the spectrum to real funky stuff. Again, Stevie Wonder really introduced it and I've still yet to hear anyone play it better than him. Yep, and the Mini-Moog really got things going. It was monophonic (only one note at a time) but was, I think, the first one to have two oscillators which could be tuned separately. You still hear one now and again - it's quite a unique sound. ARP kinda copied it with the Odyssey and it did'nt take long after that before synths became polyphonic, computer chips became available and the rest is history.

Good days eh!!

Jim
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Deathrider

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2002, 03:35:18 am »

" Gatobrit

Dragyn - I'm using the Logitech iTouch cordless. The media keys work well enough when MJ is not minimized to the system tray. "

Please e-mail me the info, I added a line to the players file that someone else gave me months ago and all I can use is the volume and the forward and revers keys are working backwards.

Thanks a bunch
Robert Long
legngrill@adelphia.net
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Gatobrit

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2002, 04:59:40 am »

Deathrider - here's the info. I thought I'd post as well as email...


MediaJukebox=cmd,media jukebox.exe,MJFrame,MEDIA JUKEBOX,xxx,32778,32779,32780,32781,32782,0,1,Media Jukebox
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Namaste,
John

Roger the Shrubber

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2002, 08:07:00 am »

Back to the topic.....

Good one JJ. Thanks....that stuff's like folklore now. I well remember roadie'ing (sp?) at the Rainbow theatre (London) in 1980 for the Charlie Daniels Band. Some poor dude came onto the stage just before the show (to ironic applause) to tune the Yamaha electric grand. It took him about ten minutes to complete his task!

Later....
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zevele1

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #10 on: March 13, 2002, 08:17:12 am »

cause i am mad at garage/psy,i have a soft spot for farfisa
saw many many years ago Spooky Tooth.The 2 keybroads face to face in the midle of the stage
I was.......Just after them,Jethro Tull.i was even more ...................................
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JollyJim

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RE:Keyboards
« Reply #11 on: March 13, 2002, 06:18:40 pm »

Roger

The Rainbow is still up and running although I don't think it's called that anymore. If I remember correctly, it used to get a new name every 2 or 3 years. They were going to pull it down in the 70's (I think) but the local council stuck a preservation order on it and it became a protected building because of it's ornate design. It featured heavily in a Cliff Richard movie (I can't believe I'm saying this) - The Young Ones I think, under it's original name which I can't think of at the mo. I saw the Moody Blues there years ago and remember well a roadie who was ordered onto the stage to track down a blown speaker. He had to go round and climb up the stack of all the Marshall cabinets and stick his ear in front of each cab till he found the blown one. This with the Moody's chucking out a coupla thousand watts. He got a good round of applause but, obviously, he could'nt hear anything by then...

Good days - Jim
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