Analog! Oh Yeah

Brothers of Briar

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That story sounds a bit like a bloke I went to school with who I'm still jealous of. He could pick up any instrument and within minutes sound like he'd been playing it for years,
My mother was a classically trained pianist, but she loved to play the popular music she'd heard on the radio. She was forever buying sheet music for popular tunes. I really don't know if she could play by ear. She died in 1954, when I was just a child.

A few years later my father married a woman who was very different from my mother. While my mother was college educated and a teacher, my father's wife #2 didn't even attend high school. At age 14, she was sent to work to help support her family.

She was a widow with a teenage daughter when she and my father got together.
For my older brother and me, it was a very difficult situation, as you might imagine.

I don't remember the specifics, but I was accompanied by wife #2 to a dental appointment and as we walked through a department store in downtown St. Paul to get to the medical professional building, we passed by a piano. Wife #2 walked over to the piano and began to play with significant skill. I was stunned and asked her when she'd learned to play. She remarked that she'd never been taught to play, but could play almost anything that she could hear.
 
My mother was a classically trained pianist, but she loved to play the popular music she'd heard on the radio. She was forever buying sheet music for popular tunes. I really don't know if she could play by ear. She died in 1954, when I was just a child.

A few years later my father married a woman who was very different from my mother. While my mother was college educated and a teacher, my father's wife #2 didn't even attend high school. At age 14, she was sent to work to help support her family.

She was a widow with a teenage daughter when she and my father got together.
For my older brother and me, it was a very difficult situation, as you might imagine.

I don't remember the specifics, but I was accompanied by wife #2 to a dental appointment and as we walked through a department store in downtown St. Paul to get to the medical professional building, we passed by a piano. Wife #2 walked over to the piano and began to play with significant skill. I was stunned and asked her when she'd learned to play. She remarked that she'd never been taught to play, but could play almost anything that she could hear.

Love the story, as a keys player I think that they're rather straight forward, logically going up from left to right in the notes. I can also play just about anything I've heard, at least the melody. It might stem from always having at least a piano in the house if not an organ or two.

Give me a guitar or a brass instrument and I'm lost as to what I need to do as they're not the same as a keyboard. My mate from school however would be jamming with the best of them in minutes on something he'd never played before, lucky bugger.

BTW the Poly D should be arriving either Friday or Monday according to tracking.
 
OK, Rob, it arrived today and I had to rejig my studio to fit in.

It is a beast of a synth, with four oscillators, playing it in monosynth mode it is the fattest sounding synth I own. It's been a decade or so since I played with a Moog so I'm currently wrapping my head around generating different patches but I'm loving it. It took up most of my evening with noodling around trying stuff out.

The built in choruses are a nice touch along with feeding it back into itself via the phones outlet and the external audio in. Get the ext in volume just right and it's a real monster.

It seems to be a real analogue synth as I've had to tune it twice, once when powered on and then an hour later when it had warmed up.

Let me know if you've any further questions.
 
There's some lovely gear there Steve, quite jealous but I don't have the space for it.

My latest addition is a ripoff of the Moog Model D on the top right of that page, with an extra oscillator/voice.

Once I've got my head around it a bit more I'll post some music made on it.
 
R
Same here, Brother! I guess I fall into the latter category of playing and enjoying the sound of what I enjoy most. Growing up in the 80's, I was exposed to analog and digital. Just something about the allure of all the knobs, buttons, and switches. The model I have has digital interconnects, hence no patch cables. It does have patch memories, which I actually find to be very useful, though I was somewhat skeptical at first.

I'd love to have an old Model D to restore and play around with, but that's not in the cards right now. Honestly I'm not that good at playing piano/keyboard, I'm more into sound design, of which the possibilities are nearly endless with the multi-oscillator analog synth.
Rob - I used to play piano/keyboards back in the day. When I was living and playing in (West) Germany ini 1979 - 80 I sold my Fender Rhodes for a lot more than I bought it for new at Sam Ash in NYC and bought a brand new Hohner Clavinet D, which I still have, all nice and woody and in perfect shape except for a busted hinge on the case. I also have a Hohner Clavinet/Pianet duo I bought for 200bucks from Sam Ash when they were blowing them out the door in the early 80's, also in perfect shape. Add to that, a RHODES that I bought when I came home from Germany in 81, but never gigged with it - perfect shape and a couple Wurlitzers as well. Anyway, Gotta get rid of them but haveNO idea of what to ask for them. My main concern are the Hohners; What would you figure the ballpark would be for a D6 and the clav/pianet duo?
 
WOW! But then again, there's the shipping, which I'm not concerned about the cost impaired but rather, the actual prep work involved for a 66 year old man! At least we're not talking about packing up the Rhodes!!! How the hell I used to gig with one of those, into the '69 plymouth station wagon (with a lot of other equipment), out of the wagon, into the club, set it up onstage, tear it down at the end of the night, schlepp it back into the wagon, unload it back at the rehearsal space.........often in the dead of new england winter.......whew!!!!
 
... there's the shipping, which I'm not concerned about the cost impaired but rather, the actual prep work involved for a 66 year old man!
My 76-year-old hemorrhoids bleed for you.
Call a pack and ship location. They all have a couple of part time H.S. kids who'd love to make an extra $50.00.
 
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