Acoustic & Electronic Instruments, Musicians, News, Tutorials, Videos & Interesting Finds
Acoustic & Electronic Instruments, Musicians, News, Tutorials, Videos & Interesting Finds

Daily Roundup 20 Jan 2022: New Casio CDP-S pianos, Alesis V49, Surge XT, PWM Malevolent, Jordan Rudess on PRO-VS, ERICA SYNTHS SYNTRX, Michele Papadia, Sismo Qadrox ƒ, Korg Modwave…

Casio intros two new “beginner” pianos

Casio adds to its line of what it calls “beginner” pianos with the CDP-S360 and CDP-S110, with upgraded features on the current S range.

The CDP-S360 has doubled polyphony from 64 to 128 notes while the CDP-S110 has improved piano tone decay rendering.

CDP-S360 features include:

  • Portable piano with 88 full size, touch-sensitive, weighted keys.
  • Weighs just 10.9 kg.
  • Backlit LCD display with easy-to-use jogwheel controls.
  • Bluetooth Audio streaming and wireless MIDI with optional WU-BT10 dongle.
  • Includes power adapter, sustain pedal and music rest.
  • Battery power option (requires 6 AA batteries).
  • 6 Track Song Recorder.
  • 32 Registration Memories.

Available in the UK for £529.

CDP-S110 features include:

  • Portable piano with 88 full-size touch sensitive, weighted keys.
  • Weighs just 10.5kg.
  • 10 High Quality Tones with enhanced Grand Piano tone.
  • Includes power adapter, sustain pedal and music rest.
  • Battery power option (requires 6 AA batteries).
  • SP-3 Sustain pedal included.
  • Available in black or white body.

Available in the UK for £389.

Alesis V49 MkII review

Music Radar writes:

“the latest controller to tempt is from Alesis, with V2 of the V49 controller available for less than £100.

The redesign of the second-generation V49 is substantial. The original offered a 49-key instrument but placed its additional controllers – a set of eight pads, function buttons, pitchbend and modulation wheels and four rotary encoders – to the left-hand side, making for a wide, thin instrument which rather assumed you wanted to play notes with your right hand and provide additional control with your left.

The MkII design moves this extended functionality above the keyboard to a more central location. Whilst it is still biased towards the left side of the upper panel, it allows for a greater breadth of interaction between the keyboard and a wider control set.”

Read more at Music Radar.

Surge XT open source synth new incarnation

The open source synth Surge gets an upgrade to Surge XT, featuring a doubling of effects within each sound, vector modulators or modulators based on formulae, filter models, wave shaping, and microtonality.

If you’ve not seen Surge before it’s probably best to head over to the product page, download and get it running in your favorite DAW.

PWM Malevolent Review

BoBeats checks out the synth newcomer PWM Malevolent. It’s a new semi-modular analog synthesizer but how good is it? Let’s find out!

Jordan Rudess plays the PRO-VS modern virtual synthesizer

Watch Jordan Rudess play one of the classic synths of Syntronik 2 – the PRO-VS. The Pro-VS recreates the sound of vector synthesis from the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS with its 4 digital oscillators through an analog filter. A cousin of wavetable synthesis, vector synthesis allows the mixing of 4 oscillators with X-Y controls for extreme animation and liveliness.

ERICA SYNTHS SYNTRX

Check out this performance.

Is Arturia V8 Better Than Komplete 13?

Mix Innovator continues their comprehensive guide. “Logic Trainer Eddie Grey show you why Arturia may be the best move for you as a modern creative.”

HAPPY PILL MIX EDM

Check out the “Happy Pill” mix for for some feel good vibes rom 606roots lab, featuring the NI Traktor and apparently some Roland and Korg gear. Would be nice to get a rundown of what’s being used, but no matter, we can still enjoy this set.

https://youtu.be/aGZ6uWYpnHI

Michele Papadia Trio ‘Free Your Mind’

Enjoy this performance from Michele Papadia and his Yamaha YC73 Stage Keyboard. In this video, Michele performs a composition titled ‘Free Your Mind’ accompanied by Giovanni Giorgi on Drums and Federico Malaman on Bass.

Paperboy – Chiptune Glitchcore

Music by Rap2h, contains noise samples from LLamatron by Jeff Minter. Various synths have been used for this song, including ymVST, a Prophet-like synth. It also contains samples of Commodore drums.

Zora’s Domain BOTW (Piano Improvisation/Cover)

Here’s a an original backing track of Zora’s Domain from BOTW that Adam Hersh made with some synths, and took a little piano solo over.

Sismo Qadrox ƒ

Qadrox function is an audio processor controlled by an 8-step sequencer, each step determines the quantity of processing, working as an attenuator. The behavior of Qadrox function depends on each steps, navigating between crunchy lo-fi to full textures. Each knob oscillates between failure and space.

Korg Modwave favorite patches

Gearjunkies shares favorite patches from the Korg Modwave synth.

SOFTPOP SP2 with Deluge and audio processing

SOFTPOP SP2 is an amazing audio processor! We are syncing Deluge and the SOFTPOP with MIDI. Bass guitar is then processed rhythmically and tonally for this amazing bass tone in the performance.

MODULAR SYNTH GURUS: Gareth Jones and Christopher Bono

A Zoom chat with Record Producers Gareth Jones and Christopher Bono about their Nous Alpha collaboration and their latest album “A Walk In The Woods”.

Bon Jovi It’s My Life (Piano Shopping Mall)

Pianist: Glaucio Cristelo, live at Barrashopping (Rio de Janeiro/Brazil) on January 16th 2022.

Is Sheet Music Bad For Piano Beginners?

An interesting question on whether learning to read and play sheet music is the best thing for beginning pianists. You have to bear in mind this is produced by HDpiano, which has the benefit of modern technology and a system which uses a much more visual and interactive approach to learning, and in fairness they are not suggesting that learning to read sheet music is unimportant, just not the most important thing for most learners.

I started learning piano in the late 1970s and just by nature we had no computers or any way of taking part in these interactive lessons. I also learned a lot of classical music. So learning and playing from sheet music seemed completely natural.

Watch and see what you think.

https://youtu.be/1dZYF7wLpNY

Lang Lang and Gina Alice duet at Steinway Hall, Marylebone

On a recent visit to London, married pianists Lang Lang and Gina Alice visited the Steinway Hall in Marylebone and duetted for Classic FM radio. You can see how amazingly in tune with each other they are as they play Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5.