Gigs!

The Craig Martin Experience, the jazz band I play in, just had another great gig at the Blue Window for their monthly "jazz nights." This was the fourth time we've played there. We were joking around that we are becoming the house band. The Blue Window sells tickets to their Jazz Nights for $15 each, and we've sold them out every time, a feat that even bigger names from Santa Fe can't claim. I guess we have the home-town appeal! Here's a write-up from that gig:

http://www.ladailypost.com/content/craig-martin-experience-tight-tight-tight


Also up for CME's near future are a photo shoot in July and possibly recording some of our original tunes (written by guitarist Mike Rogers and trumpet player Carl Hagelberg). 

July promises to be a busy month for DK & the Affordables, the rock band I'm in. We are playing a wedding on Saturday, then bars, clubs, and pubs almost every weekend in July, including a trip to Salida, CO. We just finished laying down tracks for an upcoming EP; stay tuned for that as well. Keep your eyes on Reverbnation:

http://www.reverbnation.com/dktheaffordables

Thanks for reading!
Aaron

The Faux-Rhodes: Construction

Like many of my woodworking projects, the Faux-Rhodes was constrained by the materials I had on hand, if for no other reason than this: I'm cheap. I had a bunch of 1/4" plywood wall paneling that I'd gotten for free to build boxes for my shop, and some 3/4" hardwood plywood l had left over from a bookcase. After cutting everything to size and adding some curves and a pass-through to access the headphone jack and power switch, I clamped everything together to check fit.

The wood was free, but I purchased the red vinyl from JoAnn Fabrics in Santa Fe (1/2 off), which, even at full price, would have been cheaper than Tolex. The Jury's still out on durability, but after a year of pretty steady gigging I have no major tears in it, just some scuffs from sliding on/off my stand. Tolex is sold in a wide variety, and I lingered on the striped tweed and faux-snakeskin for a long time. However, I love the look of the plain red. The black top is a long piece of carbon fiber-look-alike sticker stuff I found at Autozone stuck to plywood; the pass-through on the end is the sticker stuff on flashing, riveted to the end of the case.

 The hardware was the biggest expense (other than the PX-3) and I got it from Reliable Hardware (http://www.reliablehardware.com/). I like the black hardware, and Reliable was one of the few places that sold it. I read some articles about building road cases that advised against painted hardware, but the box goes into a gig bag for portability so scratching the metal is not a huge concern for me. The black on red adds a nice contrast. The music rest was an afterthought, but the black material is the carbon fiber sticker stuff stuck to two pieces of aluminum flashing and riveted it to the wooden rest. The rest sits on the 2nd tier of my keyboard stand.

As you can see, there's room for everything, including a spot on the left end for the power adapter and all the cords that I could possibly plug into the keyboard. Since the Casio weighs in at 24 lbs, I estimate the total weight of the PX3 and the box at 30 lbs, which is lighter than the Roland FP-3 I used to have and a fraction of the weight of a Rhodes. All the cords route through the bottom, which doesn't seem like it would matter but it de-clutters the connection side of the piano, and gives the audience something to look at besides the manufacturer's logo, a bunch of cords, and whatever is playing the keys.

So, it turned out looking cool and working well. I firmly believe that stage presence has a huge effect on a live show. If the crowd digs your vibe (and your tunes don't suck), they'll stick around. The Faux-Rhodes adds to the vibe in The Affordables and the Craig Martin Experience, and it even fit in during a recent gig with the Los Alamos Big Band. It's turned some heads; Brant Leeper, killer keyboardist in Santa Fe who plays with Tiho Dimitrov, asked me, "what kind of keyboard is that?" (Last I checked, Leeper plays a Nord Electro-3, which fits his Hammond Organ focus well.) The stage manager at a benefit I played with The Affordables was visibly impressed with the functionality I had built into it; I can load in and set up in under 15 minutes and all the cords are there, ready to go. And of course my Mom told me I did a "great job on it."

There are a few things I'd do differently, but overall I'm happy with the functionality and the effect. What project should I tackle next?

The Faux-Rhodes: Inspiration

Some of what follows made it to Facebook a while back, but I thought I'd lay out the whole story of the Faux-Rhodes here.

In college, my friend Sean and I liberated an old Fender Rhodes Mark 1 Stage 73 from its watery hell in the leaky basement of the old gymnasium where we practiced. We cleaned it up, tuned it up, put a platform on top for a second keyboard, put casters on one end, and hauled it to gigs. It was an awkward beast, easily weighing 75 lbs and just big enough to be difficult to pick up. We didn't have the chrome legs for it, so Sean graciously sacrificed an old table he had lying around. The piano graduated from the table to a pair of sawhorses when I moved it home. After college & grad school, I still had the thing, on sawhorses, in my basement in Colorado. Thanks to the early (and much funner) days of eBay, I found a replacement plastic tine cover and the legs and pedal, replaced all the hammer tips, tuned it, replaced felts, and lubricated the action. It played great. I loved it. I moved it from Idaho to Colorado and then New Mexico.

There were some problems with it, though. First, it was a real pain to move--heavy, bulky, cumbersome, didn't fit easily into the backseat of my Civic. Second, the pre-amp was weak. It's no wonder the "classic" set ups paired the Rhodes with some monster amp like a Fender Twin Reverb or a Bassman. Third, it only did one thing--play Rhodes. And it was not lost on me that the Roland FP-3 I had at the time had a nearly identical tone (and bark if you dug into it). Apparently, the sampled Rhodes-es had caught up with the actual Rhodes, and I ended up selling the beast to some guys who drove from Phoenix to Los Alamos to pick it up.

I still liked the idea of the Rhodes, though--a cool keyboard in its own beefy road case. I'd been thinking of a fairly lightweight, but rugged, box for my keyboards (Roland RS-70 synth and the aforementioned FP-3) for a while. After some time off from bands and gigs, and after selling the FP-3 to a budding piano student, I ended up getting a Casio Privia PX-3 to gig with in no small part due to the "EPianoPure" patch which sounds just like a Rhodes (but the PX-3 is the antithesis of the Rhodes with respect to weight (24 lbs vs 100 lbs) and functionality (250 patches vs 1 sound)). However, I was a bit concerned with the durability of the lightweight plastic case, especially the flimsy lip on the front. I set out to build a plywood case to protect and enhance the appearance. I wanted room in the case for the PX-3, the cords, the power adapter, and some foam padding. I wanted to be able to install and remove the piano to/from the box easily, but I wanted a tight fit. Finally, I wanted a clean look that would hide the back of the piano (and the mess of cords) on stage. Hence the red Faux-Rhodes, which is shown in the cover picture for Big A's blog.

In my next post I'll go through construction details and post some pictures from the process. Stay tuned...

Not 25 anymore...

I'm sure a lot of you can relate, but my body is not 25 years old any more. After a weekend of carrying my daughter around at the zoo, karate class, and yard work, I'm tired and sore.

Another indication is my upcoming 20th high school class reunion. I'm kind of excited, kind of nervous. It's a quick trip, kind of like my 10th. That time, it was the fact that I was 2 weeks into a new job. This time, I'm in the middle of "proposal season" at work.

A third notice was the fact that my wife and I celebrated our 12th anniversary last weekend. What'd we do, you ask? Built a 8' x 8' raised bed and filled it with dirt (the aforementioned yard work). But then, the Mrs planted squash, zucchini, and pumpkins. She was psyched as the pumpkin patch has been a dream for years.

The last clue that I'm getting older is that I'm getting more and more irritated at the state of the world. The latest in the saga is food. I just started following foodrevolution.org. Not sure how true their facts are yet, but they assert that fully 90% of the food in the grocery store contains GMO-derived contents. I believe that's true for the center aisles. GMOs are linked to a whole list of maladies, not the least of which is the fact that the industrial food complex is operated by a small handful of companies whose entire purpose is to make money. The entire "GMOs will feed the world" is obviously not true. If so, the companies would be less worried about chemically tolerant seeds and more worried about things that would actually matter to people--plants for tough to grow in soils, plants that are drought tolerant, seeds you can re-use. Americans pay a smaller percentage of their income on food than anywhere else in the world. I guess we get what we pay for, and we are what we eat. Oh man, I got started. But, this has been growing for a while. We've been dissatisfied with commercial food for a while and the garden keeps growing and growing.

Anyway, check out foodrevolution.com. and "Radical Homemaking."