Re: I just can't stop writing today...

[John Pollock <johnpollock@delphi.com>]

Dave Trenkel wrote, in part:

> As far as jazz, geez, there's at least a hundred astounding keyboard
> soloists. I've been listening to the new re-issue of Miles Davis "Black
> Beauty" lately, highly recommended BTW, a great live record, and was 
>struck
> by how great and interesting a keyboardist Chick Corea was before getting
> infected by Scientology. Also, there's Marilyn Crispell, McCoy Tyner, 
>Cecil
> Taylor, Joe Zawinul, John Medeski, etc, etc

I've been steeping myself in Miles' "In a Silent Way" for the last few
weeks, and find that Zawinul and Corea get most of my attention.
 
> The earliest modular analogs make some really
> terrific variable and "expressive" sounds. The next generation 
>monophonics
> like the minimoog and ARP odyssey made excellent solo instruments, I 
>think
> there's a significant body of work from the '70's to support this, 
>Zawinul,
> Corea, Hammer, etc. Sample-playback synths are basically a blight on the
> face of creative music, but the newer generation of physical modeling
> synths, like the korg prophecy or yamaha VL70 are wonderful solo
> instruments, I have a VL70m and it really has a lot of expressive
> possibilities, in fact this instrument has rekindled my interest in
> monophonic keyboard soloing.

Let me slip in a reminder of the virtues of a class of synthesizer you
didn't mention:  FM and Phase Distortion (which I maintain is the same
thing with different labels).  They're not as intuitive to program as
analog devices, and they may lack the sonic virtues of physical modeling
synths, but my Casio VZs are capable of both very strange and very
expressive sounds.
-- 
John Pollock
mailto:johnpollock@delphi.com
http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock (Troubador Tech)