<< Notes to Future Selves

2004 > February

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Saturday, 21 February 2004

Piano ::

Tuesday night I caught up with a friend who’s been seriously ill for some time. He’d listened to Notes to Future Selves and commented that he would like to hear me play more piano.

That was the nudge I’d been waiting for; Wednesday morning, I ordered the Roland RD-700 digital piano I’d contemplated following the NAMM show.

Thursday, someone I’ve known for many years in the musical instruments biz sent an email. He’d seen my entry about digital pianos at NAMM and wrote a wonderfully detailed comparison of Roland’s RD-700 and FP-5. What I took away was that the FP-5's action and sounds are in the same league, but it’s not a master controller with other good sounds (what I want), rather, a less expensive and more convenient standalone digital piano.

Earlier in the week, a coworker asked if I could help a friend of his wife’s with some audio/MIDI recording questions and I said, “sure.” Thursday, she called. I asked about what she does musically so I could understand her needs and point her in appropriate directions. It turns out she’s quite an accomplished pianist and composer, describing her original music as somewhere in between classical and jazz. She wants to record her acoustic piano as digital audio and then compose with MIDI on top of the recordings. We’re trading CD’s; I’m looking forward to hearing hers.

Since getting back from a short vacation two weekends ago, I’d had a hard time getting back into a creative flow, concentrating more on the final details of the CD. I have a complex piece in progress, but I was feeling stuck. Instead I played David Borden’s Continuing Story of Counterpoint, Part 9, which got the fingers moving. Wondering if my new piece was going to thwart me with its complexity yet again, I opened the song in Logic. I did some editing, but came to the same brick wall. I tried an Oblique Strategy: “What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?” I’d just finished smoothing out some clumsy bits in the basic track, making the pulse more steady—reduced the tempo aberrations, but maintained the fluidity by not removing them. What to increase? The piece felt like it wanted more intensity following a smooth, flowing section. I switched to the piano track, and on the second take played the fieriest solo I’d ever recorded.

References:
RD-700 first impressions (27 February 2004)
Burst ( 9 March 2004)

<< Notes to Future Selves

2004 > February

SUVs and Big Time >>

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