A recent gig... terrible recording... but a tiny taste of what I do...

Bellyman

Hello fellow keyboard / piano players. Figured I'd offer a tiny taste of what our band sounds like. It's a terrible recording taken at a recent gig in a kinda cool place. It was supposed to be an outside event but the weather didn't cooperate for that. We made the best of it.

I was playing my old Casio PX-590M at the time. It's nothin' all that special but for a gig like this, nobody is listening for high end ultra-realistic piano sounds. I did have the RD-2000 in the car if I had felt like I needed to get that out. I do kinda hope that one day we can do some decent recordings, just hasn't happened yet.

Anyway, you can throw rotten cyber tomatoes is ya want. LOL!!

🙂

TC3

Bellyman Very nice! No need for anyone to waste tomatoes ... 😃

Your upright player is using an electric upright, yes? I've thought about giving one of those a try at some point.

Pallas

Bellyman I loved your video. That looks like a great place to hang out and they're so lucky to get live music!

Rob

Bellyman What's not to like? Great venue and band!

Bellyman

TC3 , yes, affectionately known as "the stick". He does joke around that he plans to buy the other half when he can save up enough money for it. 😉 😃

TC3

Bellyman Ha! I admit, I got tired of hauling an upright around, not to mention how much room it took up at home, I don't particularly miss it at the moment, especially since I'm not really doing the jazz thing much these days.

Bellyman

Pallas , it is a great place, and wonderful people who run the place!

They're somewhat famous for their "fried bologna sandwiches". When I first heard that, I kinda thought to myself that a fried bologna sandwich couldn't possibly be anything I'd wanna eat. But we were there for a different musical event right there where we were a few months ago and my dear wife ordered one. I had a bite. WOW! That thing was a surprise in a very good way! I now understand. 🙂

Anyway, it's one of those "old country stores" that is a sort of historical treasure that the current owners are trying to do good things with. Hoping we'll be back one day to do another gig. It was fun for both players and audience!

Pallas

Bellyman They're somewhat famous for their "fried bologna sandwiches".

I've had one of those! I found it surprising too, and delicious. And now I want one.

Simonb

Hi Bellyman

Certainly not terrible, aside from the inevitable background noise I thought it sounded fine.
Take Five is such a great tune, and you did it justice, without a brilliant alto Sax player!

The video doesn't look like it's from YouTube, so how did you upload it?
Is it on your own website?

Cheers

Bellyman

Simonb, I'm not even sure who recorded the video, I think it was one of the people who own the place. It was uploaded to Facebook, and I just linked to it there.

There are definitely times when I wish we had another player of some kind. Al, the "stick player" (bass player) does some vocals so that kinda takes the load off of me sometimes. But it can be pretty draining for me to try to keep the keys going, and interesting, for such long stretches of time. For the most part, I never get to "pull back" or "relax". I sometimes joke about wanting to play in a 20 piece jazz band where I can read the Wall Street Journal for most of the performance but just have something to prompt me to play my 30 seconds of actual piano here and there. LOL!! (I know, that's not how it works, but it's a joke I still like to tell on occasion.) In all seriousness, it can be a real workout and tunes like "Take the A-Train", Chattanooga Choo Choo", "Satin Doll", and a few others that are quite fast and all over the keyboard. ("Take Five" is actually a little more laid back.) I'm sweatin' big time and really physically workin' for some of the tunes. (I kinda scared the drummer one time when I did not keep hydrated as well as I should have and started to cramp in my arms, during a gig. He thought I was having a heart attack. Turns out, my dear wife took my bag that I normally have on stage, with several bottles of water, and didn't leave it within reach. And it only took a minute or so after chugging a pint or so of water for the cramps to subside. It was odd, calling for water, and the audience didn't understand, had to ask several times. My wife finally figured it out. But yeah, that's a real thing, at least for me.)

Just for reference, that video was from a 3 hour gig. Over the course of about 4 hours (including setup), I believe I drank about 3/4 of a gallon of water. And my shirt... completely soaked. But it was a good show, lots of fun, and the owners tell us they want us back again. 🙂

And thank you all for the kind comments! I'll never be a Dave Brubeck at the piano but... hopefully I can bring a little joy and happiness to some people out there who wanna listen for a while. 🙂

Pallas

Bellyman I have loved piano music all my life, but until I started playing I had no idea how physical it is. That sounds really naive, right? 🤣 I guess I thought that pianists were sweating because they were playing Rachmaninov under hot stage lights wearing a tuxedo (and I know that's probably ALSO true) but I underestimated, or was totally ignorant of, what it takes to play the piano, nevermind for hours on end. Time to get you one of those Camelbak things hikers wear. Or a beer hat (the water version).

Sophia

Bellyman video was from a 3 hour gig

I would probably be that customer who would be sitting quietly in front of the players most of that time, watching intently, soaking up the music and shushing anyone who dares to talk to me 😃 Thanks for sharing that mood video on what you during a typical gig!

Bellyman

Sophia, funny thing is, some of the really good stuff happens at "warm up" and "sound check", when "no one is listening".

Had a gig a few months back where we set up in the room but were pretty early. The guys were on their way to get changed, no one really there at the event yet, and I just was sitting at the keyboard letting whatever flow that wanted to, "loosening up". Turned out I played "Waltz for Debbie" quite nicely, and someone I didn't know was listening mentioned how beautiful that was. Maybe that's one reason I have in mind a quiet piano bar setting sometime, just background, mostly playing for me with others allowed to listen. LOL!

Thanks for the kind words. 🙂

Sophia

Haha that reminds me (a little) of all those times we visited someone who'd say "I have this gorgeous record of [name your poison] and I really want you to listen to it!" Ok, sure, we'll listen. So we'd sit down, the music starts... and the host would say "Anyway as I was saying [name your topic here], blah blah..."

Ok, I thought you wanted us to LISTEN?! Of course it would even be more insulting if the music involved someone in the room actually performing in that record... hurt feelings for sure 😂
So I learned quite early in life that listening does not involve talking or even not paying attention 😁