Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Quick Sunday morning recording: Nord Black Upright

Good morning chaps,

I sat down at the keys earlier to work something out for a band practise this afternoon, and somehow got side-tracked into playing 'I Wish I Knew How It Felt To Be Free'. I no longer have the sheets, but my hands roughly know the correct position. Some of you may know that I mostly play organ/EPs on my Electro, but have been trying to get back into proper acoustic piano playing now that I have a decent controller.

I don't usually make recordings, but recently stumbled upon a way to turn the Mic input on my old Dell laptop into a Line-level input. It seemed to do the trick - certainly not the cleanest of recordings, but acceptable for onboard sound.

Anyway, this is the 'Black Upright (Petrof)' sound as played from my Nord, into a pair of cheap ART pre-amps, then into the laptop's Mic input. I'm rather fond of this upright piano sound - it reminds me of the family upright I used to play as a child.

Apologies for the bum notes and sloppy playing/timing...I seem to lose a lot of my feeling and technique when I know a recording is being made, and I'm not much of a player to begin with...

Here it is:
http://db.tt/kPPo0X87

Cheers,
James
x

I really enjoyed that. Sounds very real.




Your statement reminds me of this video.
At about 2:40 into it...
Adele says: that's my guitar...I don't really know how to play it.
Pete Townshend says: I've had a guitar for years...still don't really know how to play it.
I'll just post the link. In case anybody really wants to see the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VTrjOAn7E

Oh BTW, James? .... Don't forget the Godzilla Metronome.

Great stuff! Sounds like you should have had a fag end dangling from your lips, with your eyelids half closed, and a pint glass sitting on top of the piano.

BTW, I chose the Black Petrof as my sole upright for the NP today. Has a lot of character. I always liked playing around on Petrofs in music stores.

Yeah James. Nice representation of the upright. Good recording and enjoyed your playing and rendition. Good job man.

The playing is fine enough but I don't like the RROOWW-RROOWW-RROOWW in the decay of that piano. To me it is unnatural and distracting. To each his own, I liked more than half of those dreamy tones set up for my survey a while back.

Made my morning!
Thanks!

Great playing, James! I enjoyed it for real and I could easily assume it was played by some badass piano player!

Is this you improvising it or you're playing a transcribed version?

James,

This is the first time I have heard your playing at the piano as it has a natural rhythm and feel. This style of music is not always easy to play.

Nice job!

KJ: You don't have the sheets? Yet you're still able to pull it off! Nice.

Sorry for changing the subject, but ...Can you elaborate? This issue has come up on the board before, and the answer might be of interest to lots of folks here.

James, many thanks for this – as one of my favourite jazz/gospel piano pieces it throws around so many echos for me. In the uk this was and still is the theme track for one of the BBC’s most enduring tv progs, a cinema news review and trailer spot, these days called ‘Film 2013’ (when it started it was Film ‘72’ or thereabouts) . You did a grand job of it and I’d been thinking of using it myself for a recital. When I tried it out and got to the jamming bit I realised how tough it is without the driving drums and bass but you pushed it along nicely. Just a thought; instead of blowing on a 12 bar as you did, it would be worth sticking to the 16 bar chord routine of the theme so it's still in the head....although with the chords changing at 2 to the bar it’s quite an undertaking to make it flow (I wasn’t able to do it justice when I tried it).

Anyway, it sounds great to me – better than it does on my PX-150!
(p.s….that second chord is A7/E)

Well it was on FilmNight. But maybe this taken from another, possibly older, version.

- the Film Night version (chords) is the same as that of the writer, Billy Taylor's.

(in fact I think the film night version IS Billy Taylor although it sounds to me more like Ramsey Lewis)


- the move (in James's key) from F to A7/E is standard gospel fare.

Ah, ok....so that was the real deal, then? It was an interesting recording - like the microphone was practically inside the piano with the lid closed: warm and intimate.

Oh come on! You're a good enough player to notice the sloppy timing, so you're a good enough one to sort it out! A metronome's boring, but I bet you could grab a drum box, or run one on your computer.
Nice playing in the solo choruses, but why didn't you blow over the changes rather than slipping into a standard 12-bar?

Tough love time. You're better than this. A LOT better. You're not the sort to run away crying and hide. Put some work in and show us something next Sunday that you DON'T have to apologise for!

now you went and did it, you made wombat notice you!

Now I here it too... you're right!

Yup. The Curse Of Wombat is upon you. And the only escape is to rig up a drum beat, do some practice, and post a better version next week! You'll thank me for it really :-)

Good afternoon chaps,

Wow, thank you for the encouraging feedback!



I totally agree. I'm rather looking forward to playing the new Yamaha U3 sample (I wonder what's taking so long?), although the character of this Petrof is very special. Moreover, it doesn't sound *too* bad when played in mono.



Well the main theme is what my hands remember (I expect there are some differences to the original sheets I used as a 12 year old), while the middle section is just an improvised 12-bar structure in F.



Mac, I believe some onboard sound hardware allows the jacks to be reconfigured. On most laptops with two jacks this is usually headphone and microphone. However, the functionality to swap the mic for line is occasionally possible with a registry hack. I followed a variety of different forum recommendations for registry modifications and reinstalled various drivers. I'm not entirely sure which one did the trick, however am now able to select 'Stereo', Line', and 'Mic' in the Windows XP (recording) mixer. The first two don't appear to work, however the third - despite being labelled as 'Mic' now appears to function as a 'Line in'.



Yes! I have great memories of 'Film '88' from my childhood - it was screened a little too late in the evening for me, but my parents would allow me to stay up just to listen to the theme music, which I loved. My father also had the tune on a TV hits compilation (vinyl LP), but there was a scratch in the record which would cause the song to repeat indefinitely a few minutes in - something that used to freak me out as a child. A couple of years later I received the 'Jazz on a Summer's Day' compilation on CD (wow!) as a birthday present from a family friend. I went straight to track 5 and listened to my favourite tune over and over!

A few years later I acquired the sheets and learned to play the main theme. The sheets included the improvised section too, but didn't sound anywhere near as cool as the Billy Taylor arrangement I loved, so for one reason or another stopped playing. At that time, I had a Yamaha PSR-510 (?) and used the recording to create my own drums and bass backing...but it still wasn't a patch on the original.

You're absolutely right though, I should polish this up and have a stab at playing the improvisation part with the real chord changes (instead of wimping out with a 12-bar). A nice project for next week.



Argh! That's it...thanks!
I'll have to seek out the Ramsey Lewis version too - thanks for the tip.



I love this warm, woody, vintage sound. The Nord Petrof sample isn't quite there, but I believe it suits this tune pretty well. In addition to the piano, I loved the tight, funky groove delivered by the other players - especially those bent notes on the double bass!

Exalted Wombat, thanks for the harsh love positive encouragement.

Yeah, you're right, I ought to put some work in and learn to play this tune properly - including the delicious key change in the last refrain. Actually, I'd quite like to play this live - it'd give me an opportunity to bring a Kawai along to the gig!

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback guys. Next up on 'James re-plays jazz piano standards from his childhood': Blue Rondo a la Turk.

Cheers,
James
x

Excellent piano sound; might even get that Petrof to play on my piano . . . Playing was great, man!

Where audio jacks are multi-function, they are normally configured either in the sound Control Panel or semi-automatically when a plug is inserted. It's possible that this might be seen as a "value added" feature and disabled on cheaper models - which could be where a registry hack comes in. (Remember the possibly true story of an early microcomputer, where the $5,000 basic and $10,000 deluxe models were identical other than a speed-limiting jumper wire? Or, nearer home, the Amstrad 8256 which became an 8512 by filling the already-fitted sockets with £20 of RAM and flipping four dip switches? It took customers a year to figure that one out!)

But the Registry hacking you're thinking about is more likely, I think, to be this. A few years ago, there was a move to disable the internal loop-back recording function on domestic equipment - the ability to record what the computer was playing. This was to placate such as the Spotify "free" service, which allows you to listen, but not download. If you can't run a recorder application set to input "what you hear" while playing a track on Spotify, keeping a copy is less convenient.

Mostly, hardware wasn't changed. Sometimes functionality was downgraded with a driver "update". Sometimes you had to find the old driver. Sometimes the makers were lazy and just flipped a switch in the Registry - you could flip it back'

On a similar tack, most video drivers include a function to rotate the screen. This will likely be disabled on laptop computers - but maybe only by a Registry switch. It can come in useful when reading the on-line version of a magazine, Portrait aspect is much more use, even if it does involve holding a laptop computer at a rather uncomfortable angle!