Well, that was a short honeymoon.
\nI remember now why I found the Kawai K4 to be a limiting machine, and it’s funny — I can see retrospectively how the equipment actually had something of an adverse effect on my writing.
\nAt first, I treated the K4 like my other boards. I can control assignment of channels to patches through Cakewalk, and it’s a pretty transparent process on my Korg N364 and Kurzweil PC-88. The Kawai K4, though, is different.
\nI’d forgotten that in my old set-up, I had to program the patches on the board itself, not on the sequencer. When Cakewalk would transmit program information, the K4 translated it in its own special way.
\nIt took reading a PDF of the owners manual — I had thrown mine away a long time ago — and a few button clicks for the memories to kick in. “Ah! That’s how it’s done.”
\nAnd as a result, I have to do a work-around for the K4 that I don’t have to do with the other machines.
\nFor a little while, I wondered whether $255 was worth the investment.
\nBut now that I’m beginning to remember how to work the machine, I think it will be. It does have some irritating quirks, but today, it’s only part<\/i> of a set-up, not the whole thing.
\nWhich means I can depend on my other machines to carry the bulk of the work.<\/p>\n
\nI always had a sense I fell out of songwriting because whenever I went to create something on my old set-up, it never turned out how it would sound in my head.
\nAnd that cognitive dissonance can be pretty discouraging.
\nWorking with the old machine again, it’s clear that’s exactly<\/i> what happened.
\nThe equipment I have now has enabled me to do different — perhaps better — work, but there’s still a sense that I’m still not getting the timbres I seek.
\nBut I also see a potential for danger. And perhaps this is how the music gear industry works.
\nI got locked into my old set-up, not having the resources to expand and upgrade, and it effected how I perceived my work. I don’t want to fall into the same trap by relying so heavily on my N364 and PC-88.
\nAt the same time, I don’t want to be continually seduced by more and more gear. My bedroom has already gotten seriously cramped with the addition of the old\/new machine.
\nToo, I have to wait till April to see whether I can even afford more equipment.
\nVicious, vicious cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I see a potential for danger. And perhaps this is how the music gear industry works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkir-p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/meisakuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}