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Free YC Sounds from YamahaSynth!

Written by Blake Angelos on December 17, 2020. Posted in YC Series, News.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I LOVE the YC. It is incredibly versatile, has an easy user interface that allows lots of possilbities without too much deep diving and it sounds GREAT! I created these 8 Live Set Sounds and uploaded them to Soundmondo to check out. I find them all very useful and inspiring. I explained how I created them in the descriptions. Check them out below:

Mean SevenTfree: For most of my EP needs I choose the 73Rd. I like this one for it’s mellowness and vintage quality and have spent a lot of time finding ways I can enhance certain frequencies for different uses. I used the “Case” setting in the Speaker/Amp Section with the Tone all the way up and drive at 12 o’clock. It gives it that “mean” quality great for R&B, funk, rock and jazz fusion. Keys B has Synth Bass ready with the Low Pass Filter effect. Over in the Organ Section I chose F3 organ and assigned the Effect Section with the Low Pass Filter effect. Both Keys B and Organ are set to the left with G2 as the split point and default “Off”. Adding these two Sections gives you a seriously fat bass!
SoulCryr: I chose H3 for this Live Set Sound because of its unique Organ Percussion and overall timbre. It has a breathy yet present character. I like this sound on R&B, soul, gospel and country. Keys A and B have Wr Wide and 73Rd ready if you need some vintage EP to go with it. This is a more conventional Live Set Sound that is useful many situations.
Blake’s Wurld: My go-to reed piano. I assigned “Case” from the the Speaker/Amp Section to this sound. This simulates the electric piano cabinet and amp system. I increased the amount of drive and pulled the tone back to get to the overdriven result. In Keys B is the synth Voice “Nu Mini” with Touch Wah and Digital Delay (default is “Off”). This sound as a cool buzziness that I love. Over in the Organ section you’ll find H3 with it’s distinctive percussion sound. I routed the Effect Section to the Organ and selected Simple Rotary as an effect. The modulation slider is assigned to control rotary speaker speed (Set that under Settings/Controllers/Modulation Lever/Assign and move the Effect Rate Knob to assign).
Blake’s DoubRd: I like elements of both the electric pianos in Keys A and Keys B. In Keys A, the 75Rd Funky Voice has a played-in “barkiness” and 67Rd Dark has a nice midrange thing. I layered them in the Live Set sound. For the 67Rd in Keys B, I pulled the volume down, set the tone all the way to the left to make it darker and assigned the Low Pass Filter and Compressor in Effect 1 and 2 respectively. This Voice plays a supportive role and is meant to thicken the overall EP sound. Keys A with the 75Rd Funky Voice has Volume set to max and Tone at 3 o’clock with Compressor assigned in Effect 1 (Small Phaser is in Effect 2 set to “Off”). The Organ Section is currently Off but you’ll find the F1 organ set at 82800000. I’m using the “Case” Setting in the Speaker/Amp section so I assigned the the Effect to the Organ Section, selected Simple Rotary and assigned the Rate knob (which controls the rotary speaker speed) to the Modulation Lever (Again, do this under Settings/Controllers/Modulation Lever/Assign and move the Effect Rate Knob to assign).
H2 Blue Dreams: The H2 Voice has a different vibe. It has a “played in” sound and for that reason it sounds great with drawbar settings like the one I set here for the Upper manual (800200048). I have percussion on so you don’t hear that 9th 1′ drawbar unless you either disengage percussion OR change the setting under Settings/Sound/Organ Settings and turn “Perc. Link to 1feet” to “Off” (it is set to “On” as on a vintage drawbar organ). The lower manual is set to “888000000” with Chorus 1. Keys A and B are off in this Live Set but have the reed EP “Wr Wide” with Tremolo and Compression and the synth lead “Classic Mini” with analog delay and simple rotary effect set to mono ready for action when needed.
Blake Low/Up H1: This is one of my go-to two manual organs. The lower manual is set up an octave with the setting 504000005 with C1 on. I like this as a left hand comp. The upper manual is 888100000, a nice standard drawbar setting for lots of music. One of the keys to this sound is the balance between Horn and Rotor level in the Rotary Speaker (Settings/Sound/Rotary Speaker/Level). I decreased the Horn Level to 60 and increased the Rotor Level to 112. This rolls back the high end and enhances the low mids. You can further shape the sound of the organ with the Drive and Tone knobs in the Speaker/Amp section and use the Master EQ if needed. In the Keys Section you’ll find the CFX in Keys A and “Classic Mini”, a synth lead sound set to mono (Both set to OFF).
Blake’s C7 II: Another version of the C7 with the Voice “Dark Light” in Keys B as a pad with Reverse Reverb and Delay. In the Organ Section is the sine wave F1 Organ with the drawbar setting 10320002. Under Settings/Controllers/Receive SW you’ll find I turned the Sustain Pedal on for the organ section since it is functioning as a pad.
Blake’s CFX: This is my basic CFX sound. Turn off the Keys B section and Organ Section if you don’t want the Pad. Keys B Voice “Fat Saw” is a nice pad. In the Organ Section is H1 with a setting of 0000400004. This is a nice whistler pad that works behind the piano. Under Settings/Controllers/Receive SW you’ll find I turned the sustain pedal on for the organ section.

Nick Semrad Artist Notes: How to Learn to Play in Every Key

Written by Nicholas Semrad on December 16, 2020. Posted in Artists.

I decided to make today’s blog about the ability to play in all twelve keys because I still get questions about this almost every day. It is extremely common for students to ask me questions about how to play shout music in the key of E or what they should play on Ab minor funk tune. I usually respond something along the lines of “…well, what’s a key that you’re comfortable in?….” and, once they’ve given an answer, I tell them to transpose, or modulate it, into the uncomfortable key. Let me explain how we can use something called the number system, sometimes called the Nashville Numbering System, to translate the things we know into the keys we don’t.

The Nashville Numbering System

For this system, we’ll be constantly referencing major scales, and every major scale is built the exact same way. There’s the root followed two whole steps, then a half step, then three more whole steps, and a final half step. If we number all of these steps in the order they occur, you get something like this for a C major Scale: C=1, D=2, E=3, F=4 and so on and so on. By numbering things this way, we’re basically giving ourselves a universal harmonic ‘translator’ or amusical Rosetta Stone. If you find yourself able to play shout music in Eb extremely well but can’t play it in E, the answer isn’t some cheat code that you’ll hear or some secret lick you don’t know, but to start translating the things you do know into the number system so that you can move them around at will.

Here’s an example of this process: if I like the following chord voicing (left hand: C-E-A, right hand: D-G-B) for a version of a C major chord, and I’m struggling to find a chord voicing that sounds good in F# major, I can translate this C major voicing into numbers. The notes C, E, A and D, G, B become 1, 3, 6, and 2, 5, 7. Now that it’s been translated to numbers, we can apply those numbers to the key of F#. The left hand becomes F#, A# and D# (the first, third and sixth notes of the F# major scale) and the right hand becomes G#, C# and F (the second, fifth and seventh notes of the scale). You now have the harmonic equivalents of the same chord voicing in two different keys!

I should mention that the whole idea of translating from one key to another comes with a few necessary pieces of information. First, you have to know all of your major scales because the major scale is the default piece of information for learning not just the number system but other scales and things like extensions. A natural minor scale, for instance, has a flat 3, flat 6 and flat 7, and each of those numbers is based on the original ‘default’ major scale. The second piece of information is that, although knowing the numbers of a lick, chord, or idea will help you to translate the notes, you may have to figure out a different fingering for the new key; this is the part that’ll require the most practice. If your shoutmusic trick in Eb is fingered one way, it probably will be fingered completely different in E, and there may not be a perfect guideline on what fingering is the best. This type of practice actually ends up being of benefit because the more unique fingerings we have for any situation, the more types of harmonic situations that we’ll be able to adapt to. My advice here is to do whatever is comfortable while still following, whenever convenient, the basic technique rules of your respective instrument.

The Omnibook

I will say that learning different ideas in every key is some of the most important work that I’ve ever done. Early on in my twenties, during my heavier jazz practicing days, I would spend hours learning Charlie Parker solos from the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I would then spend even more hours translating and learning these solos in every key. This amount of work, though it took hundreds of hours, allowed me to access a lot of this information at will. It allowed me to take ideas that I had acquired from this work and, no matter the key/scale/vibe I was in, pull them out without even a second thought.

Now I know that this amount of work seems intimidating. If you grow the habit of learning everything that you’re working on in every single key, you’re multiplying all the work you

need to do by twelve. Who has this kind of time, right? Well, I had all these exact thoughts when I was younger. However, as I was working on all of these Parker solos, I started to notice that some of the information repeated itself. The first time I learned one of his solos in every key devastated me for about a month of extremely long practice days, but by the time I got to the second and third song, I noticed that some of his licks and lines repeated from previous songs. Therefore, it turned out that the work that I’d done with the initial tune meant that I wouldn’t have to work near as much on these tunes. It’s almost like the first tune was 100 percent new material, the second was 95 percent, and the third was 85 percent. That month of crazy work had now been cut down to a week or two per tune. By the time I had done 9-10 of these songs, I was really only learning a few brand-new things each time, it wasn’t taking near as long, and my learning became hyper-focused on phrasing, feel, fluidity and dynamics. Every time you put in the work to know another key better, your information gains become deeply cumulative and you’re cutting down the amount of work you’ll have to do in the future.

Angles of Understanding

Another interesting perk of learning everything that you work on in every key is that you are receiving multiple ‘angles of understanding’. Let me try to explain metaphorically. Imagine that you’re seeing a piece of artwork that you’ve never seen before and you’re struggling to understand its meaning because there is so much new information to process. You’ve stood right in front of it for hours, looking from the same perspective, and you’ve become focused on one or two blurry pieces of info. Now, imagine moving 2 feet from your left; the light seems to be coming from a different part of the room, and another piece of the artwork catches your eye. Now step a few feet to the right; you may notice something else. Now look at it from 20 feet back. All of a sudden, you’re seeing the piece as a whole because you’ve looked at it from many angles. This is sort of what happens when you learn something new in every key. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve learned a chord progression that made absolutely no sense to me in its original key, but, after learning it in 3-4 other keys, I’ve seen it in a context that I understood much more clearly. This happens when I learn solos in every key as well; I won’t notice that a specific line is actually just a chord outline of one of my favorite changes until I learn the solo in a key that I’m slightly more comfortable with. Each key we learn something in can and will give us a slightly different perspective on its meaning.

So, musicians, my challenge to you is this: take one thing that you know well and learn it in every key and see how you feel. It can be a chord movement, it can be a lick, or it can be, for those of you that want a challenge, an entire melody or solo. I guarantee that, once you’re done, you’re going to feel like a much better musician then when you started.

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