Hello world!

August 17, 2009

Hello World!

This blog was created to document my journey composing and producing music.  It will give insight to my music, mind, and the processes.  I am simultaneously starting a blog also on Blogger, so feel free to follow on which ever platform suites you best because both blogs will have identical information.  The dual maintenance is also for testing purposes to see which blogging platform suites me best.  As I get closer to releasing my first major album, my website will be revised, and this blog may move to the website.

I’ve been away from music for too long.  The last time I completed a composition and recorded it was in 2006, which was a piece entitled eClipse, composed for my girlfriend’s birthday.

I have a wedding gig coming up where I will play solo piano, so I am trying to make myself prepare for that.  One of my real obstacles is that my electric piano has a constant crackling noise emitting from it when its turned on, and when notes are depressed, then the cracklings gets worse.  I have the wiring schematics of the piano, a Roland HP 1700; so I should be able to troubleshoot it.  I’ve been putting it off for about a year now.  At first I thought it was just the volume potentiometer, but after purchasing and spraying contact lubricant on the volume slider, nothing changed.

My next approach will be to look at the different audio inputs and outputs on the schematics and test them one by one to see if any of them is not putting out the crackling.  This should allow me to determine between which two connections is crackling is occurring.

Needless to say, the crackling makes practicing quite unappealing, not that most practicing most of my life was very appealing anyway (although now, I get to practice whatever I feel like).  So, I thought about where to get another piano for practicing.  I still have a grand piano at my parents’ house, but I don’t like people listen to me practice—and someone is always home at my parents’ house.  Plus, I don’t like driving that far just to practice.  I have a Yamaha P90 stage piano in storage, but not where to put it in my apartment.  Last week I browsed Facebook’s Marketplace application because I wanted to begin researching how to sell things.  Talk about an impulse buy: I started browsing categories and filters the listings down to Tulsa, and of the very few listings was a Yamaha CP-25, a vintage electric piano about as old as I am.  Money and space is tight, so I kicked the idea around with my girlfriend, and ultimately purchased it for $200.  I really like the sound because most of this keyboard is analog, and I frequently look for synth patches that sound similar to this keyboard.  So I thought, “Why not just get the real thing?”  It’s barely been played and word is they’re built like tanks, so now I have this not so small, but not too large, very heavy CP-25 taking up half of my dinky living room.  At least there is no crackling, but I’m surprised my modern Yamaha foot pedal doesn’t trigger the sustain function correctly.  The CP-25’s owner’s manual states a Yamaha FC-4 came with the keyboard, but not only did I not get one with this purchase, I also can’t figure out what model of Yamaha pedal I currently own.  I’ll have to dig up receipts for that.