« Lyrist 101 | Main | The 50 Worst Songs Ever »
February 23, 2009
The PWSRN, and The Magic Keyboard
I played a gig with Sybil Gage at a place, which shall remain nameless (although it has a name) last Saturday, February 21, 2009.
Now I love working with Sybil; we’ve been working together for almost three years, and we’ve had a lot of fun, but occasionally…
Anyway, upon entering this cavernous eatery which seats almost 300 at one time, one would never guess that there was a recession going on, as the place was packed with people ordering mass quantities of food and drink. I, of course, have yet to sample the food since the tradition of feeding the musicians at the restaurants where they entertain has seemingly long since died.
At this PWSRN (place, which shall remain nameless) I did not use my normal keyboard set up, which consists of my trusty Roland RD-700SX (don’t ask me what all those numbers and letters mean…), and my Korg Triton LE (for left hand bass lines).
I was instead to use their “house keyboard,” which was one of those electronic keyboards made to look like a grand piano. It was a consumer keyboard made by a well-known manufacturer (a MWSRN….) complete with countless auto-accompaniment features and about 1,524 buttons for various functions.
I managed to find a basic grand piano sound for the right hand and an acoustic bass for the left, and off we went.
The show was going very well in spite of the vast, echoing, loud, music-unfriendly venue. Sybil, as usual, was giving it her all, and I was doing my best to keep up with her. However, it became apparent that this keyboard had a minor quirk: it changed sounds whenever it felt like it. I was playing one particularly rollicking song, and my “piano” suddenly changed to a group of oboes, stopping the song dead in its tracks. Needless to say, this was embarrassing. At other times the bass would shift up two octaves, ending up no longer sounding like a bass, or the sound would simply fade away.
All right, I must fess up. It was not really a “magic keyboard.” I think what was really happening was that I was accidentally bumping into one of those 1,524 buttons, many of which were located only a fraction of a inch above the actual keys, thus setting off some unwanted feature, or changing the sound. This became especially apparent during one number when I began to hear a completely out-of-sync drum beat creeping into my playing. The frantic search for the “turn off the drum machine button” while trying to continue the song is an experience I am not anxious to repeat.
Well, we made it through the gig, the show was well-received (which means my keyboard difficulties were not readily apparent to the audience), and we may be going back to this PWSRN, so maybe I’d better learn more about this keyboard made by a MWSRN.
Beethoven never had to worry about buttons on his keyboard.
Posted by leonolguin at February 23, 2009 02:57 PM