Why you need 5 Keyboards ?

[Brian007]

Hi ALL,

Personally I think this is a little excessive




Brian007

[Rev Tony Newnham]

Hi
Only 5 keyboards! Rick Wakeman's rig is often 10 or so - and they all have a purpose - either for ease of accessing different sounds (as in the video above) or for their specific tonal qualities.

I sometimes use multiple keyboards for these reasons. My rig at church is about to increase to 3 (5 if you include the Yamaha HS8 that's controlling a classical organ sim on a laptop). The main instrument is a very nice Roland digital piano, but I've also got a Viscount Cantorum V classical organ keyboard (it's impractical to switch between piano & the HS8 between verses of a hymn!) and I'll shortly be adding a Roland VR-09B to give me proper Hammond organ sounds (not just pre-sets) and synth/orchestral sounds that are cumbersome to access on the piano. I have used 5 or 6 boards in a concert rig at times - but only rarely used them all in one piece of music!

Every Blessing

Tony

[Hugh-AR]

Brian .. I really like this! Looks to me like he is 'playing along' with an MP3 track he has got from somewhere .. with the singer still singing the tune! He has just put in all those little extra bits he felt should have been in the original recording. This is the way to 'enhance' a music track! Thinking about getting 5 keyboards so I can do the same.

Tony .. Interesting! I have seen Rick Wakeman a couple of times, and he did have a few keyboards set up. Well done you for having such a versatile set-up yourself. The only other way to do something like this would be to have a very long keyboard and split it in 5 places (sorry, 4 places. As a Mathematician I should have realised that 5 different sounds only needs 4 split points!). And maybe have a stool with roller coasters to get at it all.

Hugh

[Brian007]

Hi Gentlemen,

I can totally understand the need for the 5 as has been said playing live you don't want to be switching patches/registrations etc
I must admit its not uncommon when watching the Jools Holland show to see 2 or more keyboards with a lot of the bands on the show
and am seeing more and more midi keyboards hooked up to computers etc as well, live music is certainly changing

Brian007

[Rev Tony Newnham]

Hi

In answer to Hugh's comment about using one keyboard and splits, this will only work if all the sounds you need are actually available on the instrument, and it does raise a further complication of having to remember where the split-points are, plus for some sounds, the limited compass imposed by split points could be a significant limitation.

I'm going down the multi-keyboard approach at church because I often want to modify things as I play, depending on how well (or otherwise) the congregation are singing - not often an easy task on modern boards where you might have to wade through layers of pages to access the relevant settings. The Roland digital piano at church has a sound category called "other" over 100 sounds in that - so it takes quite a while if the one you want is no.90 for example. Then there's the issue of getting the right sound. My Viscount Cantorum V provides proper pipe-organ sounds, and individual stops, not just the couple of generic "Church Organ" presets on the piano. The VR-09 will give a set of proper drawbars form Hammond sounds - plus I often modify drawbars "live". It will also give me reasonable and quickly accessible synth sounds and a few orchestral voices when I need them. Being a stage keyboard, the sound menus don't have too many items in them, and are accessible from individual buttons, making changes & finding the sound you want much faster.

For concerts, a multi-keyboard rig also has more stage presence than just a single keyboard!

Every Blessing
Tony

[Westgarth]

Hi

He played these well, particularly liked the clav.

I'd love another keyboard but I can't afford the divorce.

[Brian007]

nice one Steve

Brian007

[Hugh-AR]

Here's another video put up by Brian showing several keyboards being played.

viewtopic.php?f=314&t=5996#p39572

Hugh