Thursday 31 March 2011

My main keyboard: The Roland JV-90


The Roland JV-90 was produced in 1994, and is a full 76-note semi-weighted keyboard.
I first started playing it in 1995, when I conviced my brother to buy one of these (and to keep it in my bedroom!).
I had to say goodbye to it in 1997 when I moved to the UK, but managed to buy exactly the same one second hand (from someone in Holland) in 2005. I haven't stopped playing it since!


As someone said:

"The JV90 offers a wide range of Pianos, all intelligently voiced with no muddiness, but just a hint of 'digitalness', in the upper middle region. Over the top octave or so, there's a fixed key 'clunk', which adds considerable realism. The velocity mapping of the keyboard works well with the Rhodes sounds, where the sound gets brighter and harmonically richer when you hit harder. Where the JV90 scores is in the bass end. Bass electric organ sounds, for example, are usually a dead give-away, with buzzing and growling revealing the digital nature of the sound. Not so with the JV90.

The acoustic guitars have an unnerving clarity, and the Pipe Organ, a favourite instrument of mine, is the best I've heard since the D50's Cathedral Organ, or even better, because the sound doesn't get too muddy when holding down a fistful of notes. One complaint is that on this Patch, and others, random panning is applied. Ban random panning. It's a nightmare -- a cheap effect and a gimmick. You need to go through all but the most abstract of patches and remove it (taking up valuable user memory).
Despite the lack of string waves, there is a wide range of string Pads, Solos and Ensembles, though no really aggressive bowed ensemble like the old 'Vivaldi Strings' of the DX/TX7 which was so useful.
Countless more esoteric patches offer yet weirder and more wonderful sounds, which would, I feel, generally record well. And, thankfully, the sounds are somewhat anonymous, so you won't keep hearing tracks and saying "Hey that's a JV90". Don't forget that on the Performance Control panel there is a Presence slider to brighten any sound if necessary!"


Wednesday 30 March 2011

"Mini Mousse (Maxi Mix)" (Home-Recording)

The moody soundtrack of an unrecorded film with more than just one thing happening in it.

 

Tuesday 29 March 2011

"Labyrinthine" (09 V 09) (Home-Recording)

This is were the EMF All Stars started! In April 2009, Maxim sent me a basic track (drums, bass and some keyboard), which I then overdubbed when every possible instrument I could find (on 28 April and 2 and 4 May 2009). The result was a somewhat meandering but very tight semi-electronic track with a cool acoustic guitar riff and some Gothic electric guitar soloing.
No vocals yet, because Maceo wasn't involved yet.

Actually, I was rather impressed by this tune when I heard it again the other day - so why don't you give it a try?


Labyrinthine (09 V 09) by Ymaginatif

Monday 28 March 2011

'Fury (27 XII 09)' (Home-Recording)

Maybe we don't need the videos at all? Here's a more direct listen-experience perhaps?
'Fury' is a Prince cover, recorded over a year ago (and posted on Entropy then). It combines a drum machine beat with some manual keyboard drumming, resulting in much more relentless version than the original !
At the request of Jfrost, the guitars were turned UP in this mix!


Fury (27 XII 09) by Ymaginatif

Friday 25 March 2011

"Strawberry Fields Forever" (Home-Recording)

This cover-version was recorded about 4 years ago. The basic track is my brother (who likes to call himself Jeroen) playing piano and singing. The MP3 version was emailed to me, which I proceeded to edit on computer. I overdubbed keyboards, guitars and drums (all plugged straight into the computer) and laced everything with a generous helping of swirling effects. A funny feature of this version is that I had to have the entire overdub-section follow the same wavering tempo of the original recording, resulting in some slowly gliding and othe gallopping parts.

Unlike me, Jeroen can hold a note!

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Dangermouse - Encore

From the infamous 'Grey Album': Dangermouse creates The Beatles and Jay-Z:

"Only A Northern Song" (Home-Recording)

If you cover the Beatles, why not try a really obscure song and Sgt. Pepper outtake? And then make it even more obscure? One sunny afternoon in March 2008, I did just that - with a doctored drum-machine beat, and recording different musical overdubs without listening to the other ones previously put on tape (they come out surprisingly in synch!!). The cherries on the LSD cake are the shimmering voice effect and the alien backing vocals.

"If you're listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they're not
He just wrote it like that"

Monday 21 March 2011

"Cinnamon Girl (Acoustic Version)" (Home-Recording)

In a first attempt to kickstart this music page (which may or may not be home-made, depending on which mood you find me in), I'll draw your attention to a laidback Prince cover I did a few years go, when Entropy was still in its infancy (April 2008). So was I, then. Still, you might expect me to post some much infancier tracks in the future!

This song was already recorded on the digital Tascam multitracker (more about this later), and uses a semi-improvised acoustic guitar + vocal track as its basis.

For those of you who have already heard it: ohnonothimagen!!
For all the others: here's your chance to pick it up
http://www.mediafire.com/?im24mk5dofi