Wow! There's much to be said for the combined two-keyboard and pedals of an organ set-up. Many of us, including me, try to emulate that concept with much less success than this young lady.

Organ is my main keyboard. Nothing like this, but the versatility and cohesiveness of an organ is far superior to any two keyboards I have ever used together.

I go back to the 'PLAYER' comment from cgiles in another thread. This woman is a PLAYER!

She did good Actually, if you take a Tyros 2 or similar model, add midi bass pedals, use a split keyboard and the same thing can be done.

I was with the Yamaha dealer that had the top store in the country around 1990. We hosted the Electone festival. What this girl did on the video is stupendous, this is what Yamaha based there organ manufacturing and marketing on. At that time the HX and HS series were the top models. They were hard to understand even to the people in the business and I garuantee that the students who bought them had no clue how to really use all the gizmos even after classes. In other words Yamaha was one of the first organ companies to leave the US because they were building the wrong kind of instrument for 99.9% of US organ hobbyists. Kind of sad, but true.

That's why Lowrey (and Roland kind of) are still in the business. They know what the American public wants in a home organ based on hobbyists needs. They were not designed for a pro, because as the saying always went, they didn't have the money for one.

Just a few insights from 30 years in music retail.

Scott
http://ScottLMusic.com

Having graduated in the Electone Course, and then having taught it for many years, I certainly can appreciate the work that goes into a terrific performance such as this.

I worked with a former Electone World Champion, Mr Claude Dupras, who was a product specialist/Artist for Yamaha Canada and who played with astounding dexterity, much in the same vein as this impressive young lady.

Scott's assessment of Yamaha's marketing strategy is spot on, and it was a shame to see the organ market dwindle in North America.

Thanks for the video.

Ian

------------------
Remember to leave good news alone.

WOW! Back in my high school days which was the late 60's, a young man played the organ like the talented young woman in that video. They would move his HUGE 3 keyboard tier organ to the high school auditorium and he would give a concert. It was amazing how one person could create an entire orchestra with the feeling of a conductor! No keyboard I know of sounds like that!

-Lin

hi
i hate to see someone put a floppy in to he organ before playing, you never know just how much she is playing and how much is on the floppy. she does look very talented. have a look at some of the claudia hirschfeld clips on youtube and you see she dont use backing tracks. what you see is what you get.
i use to have a wersi spectra and it was grat till i started having power suppy proples and the amp went faulty in one channle.
i now have a technics kn6000 and a wersi pegasus and they work great together. not so easy to play and set as the spectra, on the spectra you could have 3 voices on the upper. and two on the lower and two on the peddles. and change them all in one button push.
if it had not been so hard to get repaid i'd still have it.
bill

Hi bill
If you haven�t already, try and get to some of the keyboard festivals in the UK, as you will really enjoy the performances from Artists from all over the world.
Also have a look at Mark Whale here. (Main performance starts about 2.5 minutes in)
It also features the Bose L1 speaker system that everybody talks about.
http://switchboard.real.com/player/email.html?PV=6.0.12&&title=Mark3&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.en.wersi.net%2FMark3.rmvb

Bill

hi abacus
live up in scotland so hard to see the top organ player, have seen howard beaumont about 6 times live but no one else. i take it your a big fan of wersi keyboard and organ too. i think there fo far ahead of every one else even today.
i think mark is playing over in fife in march and i'll try and see him, its about 200 miles for a round trip to see him.
thanks agin
bill

I'm with you, Bill, but unfortunately that's
the same mentality we arranger kb players face ...
t.

Scott's right, with the technology of today's arrangers and workstations along with MIDI, it is easy to emmulate this style of organ playing. Personally, I think it is even more veratile to use keyboards because each can customize their own setup. If I were ever to add a workstation or synth to my G70, I'd likely add a Motif or something like that. Then I get a whole palette of the Roland sound, and a whole palette of the Yamaha sound. I agree that it might not have the cohesiveness, but the possibilities of what this type of setup can do are endless. Now, as far as classic or real organs go, unfortunatly, the technology does not exist to put these into a keyboard yet. Now of course, they have some stellar organ samples on board, but without sampling every stop and being able to play them in any combination, as far as I'm concerned, you can't beat the real thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gRBCAdC7wI&mode=related&search=

What you are actually seeing is the Registration disk being put into the organ NOT a MIDI orchestration, each competitor in Electone Festivals have their own set of registrations on disc so that they know exactly what sounds are where for their personal performance, otherwise they would have to spend 1/2 an hour setting the organ up to their particular performance needs, Yamaha Electones have 16 settable preset buttons (or pistons in organ terminology) between the keyboards, the disc will set these up to the players 'sounds and settings' requirments' and nothing else
I entered the southern UK section of the 1985 Yamaha UK Electone Festival and finished up playing at the National Finals at Woburn Abbey, even then I had my registrtations all ready on RAMPAK as it was called then.

Rgds

Noel J

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bill reed:
[B]hi
i hate to see someone put a floppy in to he organ before playing, you never know just how much she is playing and how much is on the floppy.

What you are actually seeing is the Registration disk being put into the organ NOT a MIDI orchestration, each competitor in Electone Festivals have their own set of registrations on disc so that they know exactly what sounds are where for their personal performance, otherwise they would have to spend 1/2 an hour setting the organ up to their particular performance needs, Yamaha Electones have 16 settable preset buttons (or pistons in organ terminology) between the keyboards, the disc will set these up to the players 'sounds and settings' requirments' and nothing else
I entered the southern UK section of the 1985 Yamaha UK Electone Festival and finished up playing at the National Finals at Woburn Abbey, even then I had my registrtations all ready on RAMPAK as it was called then.

Rgds

Noel J

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bill reed:
[B]hi
i hate to see someone put a floppy in to he organ before playing, you never know just how much she is playing and how much is on the floppy.

Noel ... thanks for clearing that up ....
t.

hi pasadoble
you do make a good point about registration but why not take the disk out again after the disk loaded its registrations, and with my spectra it was easy to set up and use all voices easy to pick out on the buttons and you had 3 volume slids for upper and 2 for lower and 2 for peddles so you could add a voice by pulling out a volume slide and change a voice when plaing by keeping the volume slid in so you knew the sound was there when you wanted it.
cant do that on my keyboards but maybe abacus can on his.
i do take your point about loading registrations.
thanks bill

[This message has been edited by bill reed (edited 01-08-2007).]

The instant she tinserted the floppy i knew it's not gonna be a MIDI file... (they should of make an anouncement "..that's not a midi file disk..") even if that was a midifile, it wouldn't make a difference to me, taking into consideration how good she played.
thanks for providing a link to this video Taike, i really love seeing telented or professional play, or even just listening to their music, and of coarse learning something from it.

Taike, awesome. One thing is for sure. Unless the talent is there, you could never, ever train a person up to that level; not in a lifetime. One of my ongoing daydreams is to find such a young lady of such beauty and talent; woo, win, and then worship her for the rest of my life. She would never have to cook a meal, clean a house, or do a wash. Just play for me once a day and I would be her naked slave forever. My wife is unaware of this ongoing daydream.

Seriously though, this video reminds us of why so many of us fell in love with the organ. From screamin' B3 rock solos to funky "Jimmy Smith" solos to talented young people like the young lady in the video, the organ continues to maintain it's niche in the world of keyboard instruments.

chas

are you sure thats not a idi file she is loading in.when she is playing at times i can hear movements that are being created when all her limbs are already being used ! Does she have hidden limbs ? If she did not use a midi file then that was astounding playing

This was filmed at a Yamaha Electone Festival in China. Midi files aren't allowed at such events. Pasadoble is right; it's a registration disk.

It's impossible to play this kind of arrangement on an arranger keyboard. You'd have to add a second keyboard and pedals so you're no longer playing on just one instrument. She's playing on only ONE instrument.

Mountie, you can also customize set-ups on an organ. It's been around for a long time.

Right, Cassp and Chas, this is one talented young lady. When I see and hear people playing like that I don't ask questions but enjoy it to the fullest.

Now, the German Franz Lambert, who plays on Wersi organs, doesn't even use registration files as he's lightning fast in manually changing registrations. You can see him in action on the video links I posted before.

Hello Spalding
Had another look at the video and while there may be a programmed drum style about the middle of the piece, I cannot see or hear any indication of a Midi file being used.

bill
If you fancy a listen to the top artists, then book a week�s holiday in May and go to the Blackpool keyboard festival, where you will see a lot of top performers http://www.keyboard-cavalcade.co.uk/festival.htm (Including this year Franz Lambert, who also has a DVD that I can highly recommend, here�s a demo http://download.yousendit.com/05D0852068E3D2E0)

General
As to the performance, it is quite common for players from Asia, and has been for many years, (If you go to the Blackpool keyboard festival and watch the electone competition you will find quite a few Chinese now showing up) however apart from the contests, 99.9% of the players are not heard from again in the West, because while technically proficient, they are not entertainers.
As a matter of fact in the last 30 years while performances like these have been common, (They are all taught through the Yamaha Music School) there are only 2 artists from Asia whose names are still around, these being Chiho Sunamoto and Max Takano.

Bill

hi taike
yes like you say franz lambert is so fast with his on the fly changes but it seems to me that most of the top players that use wersi are the same, just watch cauldia or mark or the late klaus on any of the clips that abucus has given us links too and they too are really quick at there changes too. to hear someone play a top of the range organ and use no backing tracks or auto rhythm and only hear them play is something of wonder. a top organist playing a top of the range organ will always sound better that a top keybord player playing a keyboard and i include the wersi keyboards too. you just cant do the same on a top of the range keybard you can on a top of the range organ unless you program everything in first and and even if you add a second keyboard and peddles the changing of set ups is so much harder with the keyboards as that what i try and do now with my 2 keyboard and its no where as easy as when i had the organ. i know the abacus is set up very like my old specta organ and that will be close to ease of use.
bill

I have always used a mult-keyboard setup and at times included midi pedals (and the old Taurus pedals before that). One of the main ways it differed from my old B3/C3 days was the placement of the keyboards on top of each other. There was no way to get the right height between keyboards without covering up some or all of the controls of the bottom keyboard; uncovering them made the top keyboard too high for comfortable playing over a long period. Not having one set of controls controlling both keyboards made them always feel like the two seperate instruments that they were and further distanced them from the "organ" playing experience. Some of us placed them at right angles and learned to adjust to that awkward configuration. I have played gigs with as many as five keyboards and while entertaining for the audience, it was a nightmare to set up and a malfunction waiting to happen. In any case, no matter the configuration or setup, it never felt like an integrated instrument (organ).

I guess the closest one could come would be a full-featured keyboard controller on top and your favorite keyboard properly positioned on the bottom and completely controlled by the controller (sounds redundant), but we know how difficult it is to control every feature of a modern synth from a controller keyboard. But then again, why bother? We already have the ORGAN. If only it weren't so darn heavy and cost so much .

chas

Hi Bill Reed,

You're right that most of Wersi's top players are lightning fast when it comes to manually registration changes. The fastest that I've seen so far were Franz Lambert and Curt Prina. I had the pleasure of seeing them in concert several times, even had a talk with them. Very down-to-earth guys, I might add.
Also have seen Hector Oliviera when he was still playing on Kawai organs. Very fast too. Mike Oudewaal, now playing for Wersi, is pretty fast too. I attented a concert of his when he was playing for Technics. Still, a snail compared to Franz and Curt.
Max Takano, attented one of his concerts just after the EL60 came out, is also pretty fast but again, Franz and Curt outdo him.
Have a DVD of Claudia, guess she's playing in Cornwall, but she takes it rather easy on that one. Still, I know for a fact that she's lightning fast.
Then there are the manually produced effects. Franz and Curt once again shine in that department although Franz is the King.
Now, the Wersi Abacus isn't just a keyboard as it can be upgraded to a complete organ and be played like one. It has a feature that says Manual 2 and Pedal. Registration changes are made realtime from the Abacus. I don't think Yamaha, Korg and Roland keyboards come with that option. The Mediastation, on the other hand, does have that feature and I've seen the upgrade on a photograph.
Like Chas says, you just don't get the same comfort level by playing layered keyboards and using a controller. Close but no cigar.

Taike