SumOne

I'd like to test a few side by side in a shop and I'm in Central London once a week but can only think of the Yamaha shop and the Roland shop, are there any central ones that have multiple brands and testing rooms? I suppose a day trip to Andertons might be in order (I'll get sidetracked by the Bass guitars though!).

Less chance of interference at 5.8ghz. Or another option is UHF, I might try some Lekato WS-70 UHF mentioned earlier in this thread. Usually UHF is an expensive option but those are £33. UHF has lower latency (<3ms) and better range but can colour the sound a bit - at least that was the complaint with some older ones, new ones seem to get generally good reviews though (although the Lekato also has a lot of 1 star reviews on Amazon for the sound quality). https://www.cablefreeguitar.com/blogs/performance-without-limits/tech-talk-wireless-guitar-bands?srsltid=AfmBOorgPrwgXFH79N6fgadiOSsM7fpbEd2iNFAUMMDplfGy2eVXaoxd

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I've been tempted to do Piano lessons and grades to help have a target but worry I'd fall in to that 'I want to play, not do exams' mindset. Overall, do you think it has been worth it vs just having piano lessons? I did grade 1 when I was 10 years old and haven't had any lessons in the 35 years since then - but I have been playing a lot over the last couple of years (YouTube and 'simply piano' app lessons, lesson books, and the theory I've picked up from Bass) and I've started playing keys a bit with a band so reckon it is at least time I had some proper lessons, and perhaps do grades.

Nice one, they all look decent. I'll look into them in more detail. The IEC socket isn't a deal breaker. I'd prefer it, but it is more that I find it generally a sign for everything from DJ mixers through to multi-fx and keyboards that they've been made with more robust longevity for gigging/roadworthness in mind. I would like 88 keys in some ways - especially for home use, so that isn't a deal breaker either but what puts me off for live use is that extra size and weight (I play some quite packed pub areas and need to transport it in a VW Polo). At the moment, I've found I can get by with 61 keys and octave buttons but 73 keys would be better especially for splitting the sounds, 88 just feels a bit unnecessary for my use.

I've been gtting into the dangerous territory of keyboards (dangerous for the wallet!), speciafically Stage Pianos and I'm looking for recommendation in the <£2k sort of price rage (new or second hand). The things I want: Good sounding Piano, EP, Organ (ideally with drawbars), and synth would be a bonus but not essential. 73 Keys (semi-weighted), good keybed. 'Hands-on' design for the controls (for live use without menu diving). Relatively light/portable. Tough/reliable for live gigs and moving around: Gigs every couple of weeks, rehearsals each week, set up at home in-between. Decent professional level type connections and power supply (including a tough IEC type power cable rather than barrel would be ideal). Budget: £2k I've owned a Yamaha CK 61 for 18 months and it has has had a decent amount of use - both at home and for gigs, it shows me this isn't just a flash in the pan or quick impulsive decision for something that'll gather dust. The CK 61 is good start for a decent enough Stage Piano but I'm starting to feel it is lacking in a couple of areas: Mostly as I'd prefer an extra Octave (especially for split points) and it is starting to feel a bit on the budget end of being a professional instrument e.g. things like a barrel power connector are not as roadworthy as I'd like, the keybed is just 'okay' and the keys are slightly smaller than standard, and as I get more into playing I think I'd start noticing an upgrade being worthwhile and noticable for playability, sounds, robustness. Any recommendations? That £2k sort of price seems to be the level that most manufacturers have their entry-level of professional stage pianos: Nord Electro 6D 73 (this is my front-runner) Yamaha CP 73 Viscount Legend 73 Korg SV2 Roland Fantom 07 .....or second hand could get to things like a Nord Stage 2. Or is this just me wanting new stuff?! A: Yes! ...but I think something like a Nord Electro 6D 73 would be quite a significant upgrade to the CK 61 in terms of feel, sounds, robustness. My 'buy stuff justification' maths says: £1,920 for the Nord Electro 6D 73. (or about £1,500 with part-ex for my CK-61, and I do also have a MPC Key 37 that could potentially get sold/part-ex for about £500, but I thik of that as a different thing I'd like to keep - as it's more for home production, sampling, sequencing and synth sort of stuff). After 10 years (about the time that updating a Nord seems worthwhile) it'd still be worth about £1k (given that the asking priice for an Electro 4 from 2015 is about £1k). So that'd cost me less than £100 per year (or £50 per year if you include the CK-61 being sold...or free if I also sell the MPC!). Who can argue with that?! (I'll give you a clue: I'm married to her!). In a word that is increasingly asking for subscriptions/pay monthly and throwaway stuff/things with planned obsolescence I do find that my 'buy stuff justification' for musical instruments a wonderful thing!

That bass has been sold (not to me)

I think I'll go for it. I had a MIJ Precision roughly that age and it was really good. I reckon I'll like the Jazz neck on this one, and the weight, and the look. I usually prefer a J neck and tone (slightly more dubby), but I like the body shape of P basses and the simple controls and they are often lighter, and suppose a bit of EQ on the amp can go a long way to getting that dubby tone.

I'm tempted with this one: https://fenderfever.com/products/fender-hama-okamoto-signature-precision-bass-2016-3-color-sunburst-1?_pos=13&_fid=d06b40056&_ss=c What do you Bass chatters reckon - good deal?

That's the one, nice one.

I'm a bit annoyed by this as an trying to just stick with my multi-fx GX-10! .....it will be a case of:

"I haven't seen the programme, and I haven't got much information about it - but it'll be wrong and has annoyed me" (Basschat, 2025) It reminds me of an always grumpy old relative of mine that was complaining to me about the tide is 'always doing what you don't want it to do' last time we spoke. Literally complaining about gravity and an effect that means the tide is in just as much as it's out.

Soothsayers, Love will find a way.

I asked AI to tell me about AI music Royalties (so perhaps the answer is biased?!) So it'll be interesting to see who makes the ££ from it.

"AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart" https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/ai_country_artist_hits_number_one/ I wonder if we'll get to a point where the AI system that made the music will want to be credited as the song creator and get the Royalties.

It is a sociable instrument - not ideal for playing alone, but in a band you generally stand at the back and support the band. It isn't an instrument for showing off, people won't notice when you're doing it right - but they'll notice when you're doing it wrong. ....I think it is guitarists that get made to play bass that'd get annoyed by that. (these are big generalisations though - obviously there are a few virtuoso bass players front and centre).

I'll give MPC Stems more of a go over the weekend, probably a bit unfair of me to say it's so rubbish after only an hour with it. I would say as first impressions though, I've used a few stems things and they all seemed more intuitive, faster, and better results. This lengthy written tutorial kind of demonstrates how it is potentially quite un-intuative https://share.google/HiG1ct1JXDqRPdCq5 Stems are something I'll probably not tend to make on the MPC though as I tend to collect and edit and manage samples via Laptop. So I'll probably end up making the stems on Laptop and then transferring to MPC for use. (I'm not a big fan of the MPC Laptop DAW though, much prefer things like Logic and Reaper).

I'd recommend the Jura, I find it really addictive. I'll persevere with the Stems, perhaps it was user error.

The Queen of pop (at least in my opinion) is back:

I've recently bought a few MPC plugins: Mini D is Excellent. I think it's great, I immediately found presets with exactly the Minimoog bassline sounds I want. Editing is straightforward and intuative. Inspiring to make P Funk synth bassline sort of stuff. I've spent hours on it. Jura: Very good. I've found lots of great sounds and is inspiring for making 80s synth pop type stuff (it has had me listening to a lot of Italo Disco and getting quite close to replicate it) , I especially like the arpeggiator stuff and the lead and pad things. It has loads of editing potential - admittedly a bit too much for me right now to be completely sure what it is I'm tweaking sometimes. MPC Stems: Rubbish! Or at least it has been rubbish with a phone recording of the band - which is something Moises dealt with quite well, and I had Stems technology with Serato for DJ stuff and it'd do a good job of stems separation in a few seconds per song. MPC stems though - takes ages (something like 5 mins for a 5 min song) then has an extremely un-intuative way of working with the stems and the separation is bad. At least it was only £10, but so far it is one of the worst £10 I've spent in a long time. Big caveat here: I only got this yesterday and spent about an hour with it, if I spend more time with it and get better results I'll edit this. Edit: I take it back (a bit!) doing Stems on the Laptop MPC DAW software is reasonably quick, not bad results, and reasonably intuative (just drag a file into the 'sample edit' section then in project/functions/create stems and it gives you the 4x stem files). As soon as I've got the stem files I'm out of there though as I am not a fan of the Laptop MPC DAW, the files then go into my Laptop sample folders and get transfered to the MPC folders, or if I'm using the Laptop to do more editing they will go into Reaper as a DAW. It doesn't seem like it'll be good great for that 'let's just hear our band recording without the vocals....now increase the drums' sort of thing you can do with various apps and DJ software, it's more of a 'I'll extract that drum loop as a sample'. I think I was spoilt with the Serato stems via a Rane mixer though, a few seconds (even while the song is playing) and you can split a song it into stems and then cut/add fx/loop/mix the individual stems live. Different tools though I suppose, one's for DJing live and the other is for extracting samples. Sub Factory: Good, but I haven't been inspired by this one yet (which is what I think a really good synth does) so I haven't done much with it, I've got some good sounds out of it but I think I could get most of the sounds with other plugins + effects. I don't find it the most intuitive layout. Ring the Alarm: Alright I suppose, at least it's only £14. Simple and sounds good, decent for recording, not so good for live stuff - which is really what a dub siren is to me. I feel they've missed out hardware mapping that would be useful e.g. there's no volume control on the plugin (so a fade in/out requires going to the global MPC mixer screen), can't assign the pitch/mod wheels to adjust parameters, can't trigger it on screen which would be good to leave the pads and keys for other things. A dub siren really needs you to be able to just quickly trigger it and adjust a few parameters at the same time while other 'main show' things are going on, I don't think this lends itself to that. This will do the job until I one day get a hardware dub siren though.

1. Sound desk: Mackie ProFX12v3+ (£340) seems the one that does most of the things I need. 2. 4 string passive Jazz Bass. My main Bass is a 5 string active but it'd be nice to have something a bit different as backup. Neither are really essential, I can do my home recording just one thing at a time with an audio interface I already have or l could borrow the band mixer for live stuff, and a backup bass is - well it's just a backup. ....other things might come along and tempt me but that's all I'm after right now, which is just as well as that short list is gonna be at least £600 which is a stretch for Santa's budget! I could see Jazz bass creeping up anything from 'backup 2nd hand Squier' to 'might as well get a decent keeper' to 'a vintage one is an investment isn't it?!'. I'm happy with my current Bass setup: Ibanez EHB 1005MS sounds/plays decent enough and is lightweight for rehearsals and gigs, Ashdown RM 500 does the job, Markbass 102 is lightweight and good sound, Boss GX-10 covers most effects I need and is easier to carry than a big pedalboard. Practicality/gig-ability seems to be winning out for that live stuff and what I have is quite hard to beat when it comes to that.

Perhaps I've been brainwashed by the algorithm but I find Facebook okay if you can limit your time on it and choose what you allow it to show you e.g. If you get some toxic political rant pop up you don't want to see you need to click to say you don't want to see more of that, it does tend to do as asked. Turned it on for 5 mins just now and this is what I see: - Messanger notification (a friend sent a link to a song) - Marketplace notification (someone sent a 'is this still available' message for a Bass I'm selling) - Roll down my news feed is: Simpsons meme page post, t-shirt advert, random youtuber doing some click bait walkabout thing in my home town, a post in a drum and bass group asking where a sample is from, train company advert, holiday post from a friend I haven't seen in years, cycle helmet advert. ..... none of that is particularly stuff I needed to see, but also no harm done and they are all topics mildly interesting to me, not interesting enough to spend more time clicking through but not the worst way to spend 5 mins. And all of my band's gigs are listed on Facebook, it is actually my go-to calendar to find out when the next gig is!

I suppose anyone with enough Lego + time + skill could build it themselves without needing to buy a set. They make it look that simple on Lego Masters anyway! That sort of is the core idea of Lego as a creative toy rather than always following box sets and instructions isn't it?... At least that's the message I got from the Lego movie and Lego Masters!

Steve Monite, Only You

The Akai Midimix is a good relatively cheap (£77) addition to an MPC: Plugged in and it all worked as it should with minimal faff, the 'MIDI learn' function of the MPC works well. Two things I've used it for so far: For an Organ preset I use it as the Organ drawbars which is much nicer than doing that on screen, and the knobs are mapped to mirror the Organ delay and reverb screen, it means you can do stuff like change the delay feeedback at the same time as moving drawbars - stuff that's impossible (or at least tricky) to do simultaneously on the MPC alone without doing stuff like switching between screens. I also use it like a sound desk mixer e.g. A slider for guitar volume and dials above it for some guitar EQ and overdrive control, another similar channel for piano, drums, bass etc. also some sliders specifically for for effects (e.g. Global delay dry/wet mix on the slider then delay time, feedback, hpf on the knobs). Doing all this with loops is good for live dub mixing sort of stuff. ...and of course using the Midimix as a controller frees up the MPC controls to do other stuff like use the screen as the XY effects controller, assign the Q-Link knobs and the pitch/modulation wheels to specific things, assign pads as sample triggers etc. it feels with a bit of planning that it should be as many controls as I'll reasonably need and be able to cope with in a live situation. The main issue is remembering what you've assigned things to do if you get more complex and change stuff around for different presets. I'm considering some sort of interchangeable overlays I can label - something like this https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1782574539/akai-midimix-overlay-blank-template)