Arranger Keyboard makes Canadian TV appearance

Good to see an arranger on TV.
Robert Messier forwarded the link after appearing with a friend Live on the channel.

Audya rocking the house sounds super ! ....great vocal also !! Nice!

waw this duo ROCKS !

Robert is playing such crazy chords. the singer is excellent to never move from the right note, even with such hard harmonies.
Robert is a very talented musician who finds the right note at the right moment ...

That was a most excellent performance both by Robert and the young lady . Did Robert program the track ?

Outstanding performance and rendition of a great song. Ironically, she has a great, crisp, clear, distinct voice, the player is just incredible, but the MC, well, I couldn't understand a word he said. He talked like he had a mouth full of marbles.

Gary

Awesome player! Good singer as well. Long live the arranger keyboard!

Joe

Fantastic playing and singing. Not sure if I'd consider it an arranger keyboard performance though. Maybe I'm wrong, but that a backing track, I assume made on the Audya before the performance. Nothing at all wrong with that...

I am pretty sure Robert is playing in piano mode with arranger...the style is stripped down to bass and drums, while he plays full RHODES..

Wow, that's impressive. I wonder how he gets the drum and bass to do those kicks?

Paul, there are some styles that have been programmed with kicks just like that.

Gary

Welcome to the standard everyday world of the Audya...

Henni

I don't know........there was something not right. So I listened to the audio (without watching) a few times until I figured out what it was. The vocalist is too dry......too bland.......too sterile. One note after another without any phrasing.......no holding onto notes....no spaces in between. In short, monotonous. The complete opposite of Mr. Frank Sinatra and his magnificent phrasing.

She's just singing the notes without injecting any personality into the song. And the "oohhs and aahhs" are too cliched. And, to be honest, I think Robert is a good player, but I don't think he's a GREAT player. He's bordering on "dry" himself........again, just playing the notes! I've watched him in other video's and get that same feeling........good playing, but nothing that really moves me.

Watching the video is like having a Chinese dinner. You eat it and you're still feeling hungry afterwards. That's the feeling I get from this video.

On a positive note, the background arrangement is terrific. I'm assuming, like Fran said, it's a MIDI with the bass and drum tracks.

Mark

Not many people will have heard Franks swing version Mark, and actually whilst I am sure a young woman such as Elizabeth would be flattered to be placed in the same sentence as Frank Sinatra, she is obviously covering Stevie Wonders version - it does not allow for the same flexibility in phrasing as a swing which has a completely different groove. Perhaps go and listen to Stevie's Version and have a rethink abut what they were probably trying to achieve - an early morning, feel good song that listeners will be humming for the rest of the day.

I must also point out that you are evidently buying and eating Chinese food badly - probably even with a knife and fork

I liked the naughty Latin Piano style of playing that popped in too.

Mark, Since you're astute enough to spot all what's wrong with the performance, I'd love to see some youtube stuff of you and your female vocalist. How about it?

Not too many can phrase like Old Blue Eyes. Frankly, I enjoyed the video, and it wasn't only because of the "red head"

Well I really don't know what to say other than video singer and the musician were top notch. I have jammed with a lot of musicians in my time and they were very good. Robert is an excellent keyboard player. He did Just enough to sit behind the singer but enough to keep you interested as a musician. Hos phrasing was excellent and did not take away from the vocals . As for the track? I think it was definitely a pre-sequence track it was not arranger style as he did not press buttons to produce the fills , no buttons to produce the intro or the ending or the Rit. But a great performance all round and he showed how versatile an arranger keyboard is . Why would anyone require any other form of live performance keyboard ?

[quote=Pacesetter Mark, Since you're astute enough to spot all what's wrong with the performance, I'd love to see some youtube stuff of you and your female vocalist. How about it?

Not too many can phrase like Old Blue Eyes. Frankly, I enjoyed the video, and it wasn't only because of the "red head" [/quote]

+1

That was what I was thinking too. I guess you don't really need to push button when you can use pedals. Maybe someone here knows the keyboardist and could ask him if it was style or a track. It would be intteresting to how he achieved these great results.

Either the style was a song style, only usable for that particular song, or it was an SMF or even a MP3 made up for that tune. TBH, I find song styles a terrible compromise, as, while the kicks and stuff can be in the right place, you still lose the voice leading that bass players will put in to go FROM somewhere TO somewhere, and an arranger never knows the next chord until you play it!

Both are great musicians, and Robert has a great sense of re-harmonization, without totally losing Stevie's intent. But I must confess, falls into the same trap so many do, allowing his piano part to dominate the track instead of sit 'inside' it. Seems like this pitfall catches great and small alike!

My guess was that the track was an audio file... Anyone notice that there was only a sustain plugged in on the back of the Audya? There goes the idea of triggering different sections with pedals. And he never makes a call to the fill section. Not to mention that the bassline is something that no arranger could ever play (too much voice leading).

It's karaoke, with a singer and Rhodes as the only live thing.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it ain't an arranger performance, in case anyone was fooled...

Just FYI regarding "song (specific) styles"-- It's possible (at least on Korgs and Yamahas) to designate a melodic accompaniment track as "no transpose." So you could record a MIDI bass track unique to a particular song, and the rest a "live" style, like playing with a real bassist. Add rootless chords and you're good to go!

I'm not sure whether this would work on a BK with the proper CC inserted at the head of the style track, but I tried it on my E-50 without success.

Ketron has "Riff mode" but I think this just means an extended fill consisting of accompaniment through chord progressions typical to the current style genre. Their manuals aren't very descriptive and I've never even SEEN a Ketron in person except at Don's arranger jams.