Wake up Rosetta!

[Mikey]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

[Trapezium Artist]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

About what, pray tell? 

[Mikey]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

About what, pray tell? 

A certain TV hogging celebrity

[Trapezium Artist]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

About what, pray tell? 

A certain TV hogging celebrity

Hey, outside. Now. That's no way to refer to me 

[DueyC]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

About what, pray tell? 

A certain TV hogging celebrity

Hey, outside. Now. That's no way to refer to me 

It's OK, I think he was referring to the one with the permanent cheesy grin 

[rogerg]

And it doesn't begin with "j". And it probably would be too big to put on a trendy T shirt for when TA next hosts Newsnight

I didn't think it had to start with "j", I just thought that was a placeholder.

(Just trying to find a way!) 

[Trapezium Artist]

Do I detect a smidgeon of sarcasm there? 

About what, pray tell? 

A certain TV hogging celebrity

Hey, outside. Now. That's no way to refer to me 

It's OK, I think he was referring to the one with the permanent cheesy grin 

Hence the wink 

[Mikey]

I've pulled 

[Trapezium Artist]

I've pulled 

Nah, you're not my type: can't abide people with -y at the end of their name.

Of course -ie is highly desirable 

[Trapezium Artist]

So ... since our resident Botherer of the Ivories seems to be very busy at the moment, I thought I'd stick on the old polo shirt and pop on over to the Big V's place instead, chat with him about why he didn't join Yes, and have a listen as he tinkled his way through a few choons.

As you do 

[rogerg]

way cool.

[Mordwin]

wow... nice perk that!

[D S]

Ooh err!  Suitably impressed.
Did you get to play with all those volume pedals he has at his feet?!

[Trapezium Artist]

Ooh err!  Suitably impressed.
Did you get to play with all those volume pedals he has at his feet?!

Well, he does have 16 pedals at his feet, but to be honest, I couldn't swear that they're volume pedals 

I mean, I'm no keyboard man at all, so I'm sure I won't do his custom system justice or even be able to describe it coherently, despite spending quite a lot of time talking with him about it and trying to understand it.

But essentially, it seems to be one big MIDI system, with 16 separate controller boxes (as seen above the keyboards), each with a corresponding pedal. Each box has a strip of 10, err, patches, which he can click to select, and then he can push another switch on each box to roll through a 5-sided mechanical thingy (think of the changing number plates in one of the old James Bond films), giving access to another 10 patches on each side of the pentagonal roll.

So, each of the boxes has 50 patches and he has 16 of them, so 800 patches at his fingertips. He said that roughly half were synthesised sounds and half samples.

Now, here's the thing I struggled to grasp. Somehow, multiple patches are mapped onto the main keyboard (there's a secondary one above it, but he rarely used that one while playing), so he can play multiple instruments / samples / patches at once. OK, but not only are these spatially mapped (different parts of the keyboard for different sounds, I think), but they are mapped by pressure. That is, depending on the pressure he applies to a given key, he can get four completely different patches out of that key. This requires very careful calibration, both of the system and of his hand-eye coordination, and it makes the system effectively unplayable by anyone else, he said. The keys still seem to be pressure / attack sensitive in the normal sense (i.e. he could play a piano note louder or quieter), but how these separate functions are disentangled, I have no idea at all 

The pedals below seemed to be used as switches more than volume controllers: he'd move his feet around to tap a given pedal, perhaps to switch the corresponding box and its settings onto the keyboard at one of the four pressure levels, but I have to admit to being a bit lost at this point (as well as just absorbed by the music he was playing  )

There are dials on each of the controller boxes which seemed to be volume-related, but he also occasionally reached over to the big mixing board to his left and moved sliders up and down: these also seemed to correspond to controller boxes, although I couldn't swear that it was one-to-one. At some point, he explained that when composing a big piece, he'll spend a whole day just tweaking the mixing board, so it seems as though this is used as an intermediate processing step in real-time, more than a post-processing "turn the volume of a recorded track up or down during mixing" thing.

But I've probably exposed myself as a complete dilletante here, as I know nothing about how this really works in conventional set-ups, let alone his one-of-a-kind system.

What I can say though is that he essentially composes, plays, and records straight from his (unconscious) mind: he talked at length about trying to get his conscious mind out of the process and just play. For us, he was only demo-ing the system, he insisted, but even then, it was amazing to hear what was coming out: one moment you were in Blade Runner, another in 1492 or China, and for me, a true hairs-up-the-back-of-my-neck moment came when I was enveloped in the closing parts of Horizon from the Private Collection album by Jon & Vangelis.

Not that he was specifically playing any of those pieces, mind you: it was just his musical signatures coming through and transporting you to those worlds. Wonderful.

Full, complete works flow in real-time and are recorded: he says he doesn't edit, mix, or over-dub later: what comes out now is what you get. He doesn't read or write music; it's all self-taught and instinctive.

Anyway, great guy, very genuine, curious, engaged, not at all pompous, and a real pleasure to spend time with. I suspect I'll be back ... 

[rogerg]

even more cool.