shedshrine build 3.0 - furniture, cats, gear, enlightenment, and yer mom, man

[shedshrine]

Oooh! You guys rule, you know that right? Those are those red metal Swedish suckers with the wooden dealy switcher lever control thing. Or at least a model I remember seeing. Awesome.

[shedshrine]

Nord Grand on Clist. about an hour or two away. Looks gorgeous!

I see the Kawai name on there too, a collaborative effort?
I can see I've got some homework to do..

Nord Grand Sacto.JPG (145.66 KiB) Viewed 2239 times

[The Scum]

Turns out that the field of electronic piano-type keys is full of patents, particularly in the area of lever-action piano-emulation stuff.

Fatar controlled one family of patents, and sold key assemblies. Used by Roland, Kurzweil, maybe EMu, Ensoniq, M-Audio, and of course the Fatar branded stuff.

Yamaha had the other family, shared with Yamaha and Korg.

I'm guessing the Kawai thing might be a way to skirt those, or perhaps it's an OEM deal to buy the key assembly.

[markjazzbassist]

the grand will only get you piano sounds. a Stage or Electro (both available fully weighted hammer action) will get you electric pianos, organs, synths, etc. unless you ONLY want piano, i'd recommend against getting the grand.

[shedshrine]

Great info guys, thank you.

[winky dinglehoffer]

Ensoniq,

I'm not positive, but I think Ensoniq's weighted keyboards (as well as their poly aftertouch) were different from the Fatar or Yamaha stuff. Not that it matters much.

[The Scum]

Ensoniq

The poly aftertouch may be the exception. Or maybe it's something added to a Fatar assembly?

So the Nords are indeed cool.

You might also keep an eye out for a Korg SV.

How much need do you have for a pitch bender?

[shedshrine]

Ah geez.. I need to do some research on what's out there, watch/read reviews etc. and get a better bead on what I'd like.
As for a pitch wheel, I mean if it has one I would probably figure out how to use it in cool way for my needs. But is it a deal breaker without one? I don't know, there are modulations and filters and all that, maybe i wouldn't miss it. But the immediate precise control of a pitch sounds like a useful feature in and of itself. Actually, I just decided. yes, I 'd like a pitch wheel. And there's a mod wheel too right, but Anyway, I like how, with a little hair on a note you can hear the overtones beat as the pitch shifts, or something like that, or was that on guitar, I'm getting tired..

[The Scum]

So let's wind back a hair.

What are you trying to do that the M1 and XP80 don't?

And for fairness' sake: I'm sitting next to a Moog Sub Phatty with an Arturia BeatStep attached. Nice pairing, but not at all what you're describing.

[shedshrine]

Good morning Scum. ( You’ll have to explain that screen name at some point, I mean look at that sentence.)

So let's wind back a hair.

What are you trying to do that the M1 and XP80 don't?

And for fairness' sake: I'm sitting next to a Moog Sub Phatty with an Arturia BeatStep attached. Nice pairing, but not at all what you're describing.

I’d like to do weighted keys. Preferably the weighted hammer action of piano keyboards.
Namely for pianos and organs. Ideally it can do analog synth emulation stuff as well.

Re: Pitch Wheel
I see now what I was referring to last night before I crashed. In my sleepy noggin I was crediting a pitch wheel for the way two distorted notes on a keyboard can be either dissonant or consonant, and the dissonances sound great when they beat against each other.
Anyway, to answer your question, I suppose I could live without a pitch wheel.

[shedshrine]

Alright, I've got it narrowed down to one of these:
(we may blow ourselves up, go out virally, or combust in an asteroid collision, but damn, we hairless apes have made some stuff)

conbrioads200.jpg (38.09 KiB) Viewed 2112 times

a59611d3dff24cb928c818c97fcf9c24.jpg (63.52 KiB) Viewed 2112 times

Viola Audio.JPG (115.12 KiB) Viewed 2112 times

[shedshrine]

Runners up:

Torley.JPG (41.67 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

orange synth 2.JPG (83.69 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

unnamed.jpg (37.58 KiB) Viewed 2109 times

[A.David.MacKinnon]

VURT for the win

[winky dinglehoffer]

The vurt looks like a more "civilized" version of the contraption Simeon played in Silver Apples:

simeon.jpg (106.57 KiB) Viewed 2075 times

(screen grab from this short documentary--not that exciting a doc unless you're new to Silver Apples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DQiexiUjAs )

[shedshrine]

VURT

vurt

What a beast! Hard to find much on it. It's currently encased in glass in the museum of music of Czech Republic.

"Seems to have been built for the Czech equivalent of the BBC Radiophonic workshop."

"VÚRT synthesizer/organ (c.1949, c.1952-1962, or 1960s) for Zvurové Studio HAMU [In English: Sound Studio HAMU] by
Výzkumném Ústavu Rozhlasu a Televize
[In English: Czechoslovak Research Institute of Radio and Television], using twelve electronic oscillators by TESLA (brand).

"monophonic , uses additive synthesis from 12 giant electromagnetic induction oscillators"

VURT large.jpg (178.83 KiB) Viewed 2077 times

I was going to do another one of those faux Wiki entries and come up with a story on the VURT but not up to it tonight.
Maybe like it was used in cold war russian subs and those were 12 radar screens and to keep morale and attention up they added a little keyboard.

Or maybe it was a panel of temperature gauges for Chernobyl cores, and to stave off the monotony they added a keyboard, something like that.
Oh, and then the keyboard broke and they didn't want to get in there to fix it because it was somehow believed that the primary board connections could not be disrupted on the VURT without irreparable damage that only a key technician who created the VURT knew how to bypass or avoid.
And then partially because the main crew at Chernobyll had come to depend on the keyboard so much for entertainment and interest morale dipped without it and they became more susceptible to boredom and listlessness and sleepy minds and less attentive to the reactor's condition, and then..