There’s this new thing called MIDI.
I am no longer One-Man
I am now an Army Of Sounds, all tied together with five-pin DIN cables
I am the KeyBro
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Can you recall your earliest impressions of MIDI?
The first time you hit ‘play’ on a sequencer and heard multiple lines pouring out of different instruments, quickly and easily edited to perfection?
The first moment, years later, when you had that same fresh experience with audio (rather than just with Data) (via DAWs)?
What’s next?
Above: Alan Howarth, Guy Fletcher, unknown KeyModel
5 replies on “1985: I am the KeyBro”
Are these from Keyboard magazine? They look familiar.
you got it…
Did I accidentally click on Hipster Runoff? Amazing.
we are all carles
Ah…I remember it fondly. In my parents basement with an Ensoniq Mirage, a Yamaha TX81Z, and most likely a Roland R8 drum machine, and finally, an Atari ST 1040 running Midisoft Studio. Golden years. I seem to remember finding a 1.0 version of Cakewalk that ran on the Atari (could be wrong on that…).
The 2nd “aha” moment was when I got a Soundblaster AWE 64 Gold (after tearing my hair out with a Kurzweil soundcard) and I could load multiple instruments via “soundfonts” and it….just….WORKED.
One of the final “aha” moments was when I could easily and simply record a live performance of a 4 piece all on separate tracks (Zoom R16) as well as record the “room” (Zoom Q3HD), and come home and mix the various sources together (in Sonar X1) to make a “matrix mix” that had the listener feeling like they were there at the gig.
Currently…I’m seeing this amazing shift away from desktop computers, laptops, and even notebooks and you can now run multi-track DAW’s on iPads (and Android pads) and even PHONES. I mixed down a recent gig recording (used the Zoom R16 to get 8 tracks) on my little Motorola Bravo Android phone. I could see all 8 tracks, add a splash of reverb, pan, EQ, compression, the works, and render it out to a stereo master file. Truly amazing.
I’m also noticing (both in other musicians as well as in my own struggle) almost a pilgrimage back to more analog sounds or analog processing (both in the studio and in live performance). I recently purchased a Line6 M5 stompbox modeler so I could run my various keyboard “swiss army knife” sounds (piano, Rhodes, Wurly, B3, analog synths) through it to process the sounds with chorus, phaser, flanger, analog delay, etc. It gives my sound a yummy warmth!
Anyway…we live in great times as musicians!