Post a controversial music opinion

rather well indeed haha

rather jealous, would love to be able to sit down at a harpsichord and just kill it

tried to find a cool live clip of never never gonna give you up but they are all too fast and do not contain the harpsichord riff, wtf Barry White, how are you gonna record the nastiest harpsichord ever and then just skip it live

Was there ever even a prog rock band that took a harpsichord on tour? Maybe the Savage Rose?

mostly just electric piano with harpsichord setting probably.

one of my very favorite 60s band used the rock-si-chord to great effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfVmk_RliOY

that band is holy to me. i met one of them once (craig anderton) - he was great friends and musical partners with my friend linda cohen who also recorded for poppy records - and i could barely speak to him. he couldn't believe i knew his music. it was like meeting a beatle!

I dont know that band or song yet, look forward to learning.

from the whole baroque pop time, to me the big name is michael brown on the first left banke album... maybe there's harpsichord stuff that's even more classic, but from my knowledge that first left banke album is considered the goat. i actually like the second left banke album after michael brown left better, but i'm weird like that

Not at all, second album is great!

not controversial but harpsichords are a fvck to keep in tune if yr just moving them across a room, let alone going on tour with them

i tried to tune a guitar the other day and it was ... embarrassing. guess that's what happens when you stop playing for 20 years.

Just treat the guitar like a harpsichord - never move it across the room

Harpsichords are really difficult to mic up, too. I don’t love them outside of the context of Baroque music, at this point

what is the controversy level of reminding people that the piano is a percussion instrument?

https://i0.wp.com/chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/cage_photo_001.jpg

Are clavinets that difficult to keep in tune? It’s like a descendent or cousin isnt it?

Much easier, ime. Harpsichords, traditionally, are made entirely of wood... you can handily lift one on one's own without a second pair of hands. An adjustment in humidity or temperature in a room will cause the wood to expand or contract, requiring a complete re-tune. Clavinets in comparison are really stable. When I was young I played clavinet with a band on a months-long tour and don't remember ever needing to tune it.

My father owned a harpsichord, made by a guy out on the West Coast named Simon Sabathil. He was known for making experimental models of harpsichords... iirc he made one entirely of aluminium, another entirely of glass. I would later learn from harpischord-makers of the more historical variety that Sabathil harpsichords were widely derided. My only experience with one was my father's. I liked it for one reason only, the keybed was piano-scale, instead of the smaller traditional harpsichord-scale, so I didn't need to adjust my technique to play it. It had a heavy metal structural bar (I think it was aluminium, but it might as well have been iron), and required two people to lift it, it was very heavy.

I played one gig with it, in 2006 I believe, and it fell so out of tune by the time the room had filled that it was effectively unplayable. My friend had a studio down the street, and after the gig, we drunkenly decided to move the harpsichord ourselves. It was winter, and the sidewalks were icy. My friend, walking backwards with the tail end, slipped and fell and the harpsichord hit him full on the chest. He was fine, but the whole experience just soured me on ever using the instrument in a live setting again.

Harpsichords use items called "jacks", they sit on top of the key and rise upward to pluck the string with a small plectrum called a "quill". Traditionally, the tiny jacks are made of heavy wood, and the quill is made of hardened leather. The Sabathil did not have wooden jacks or leather quills, they were all plastic and light and unreliable. My harpsichord-maker friends offered to replace my jacks for me with good wooden ones, but I was sour on the thing. I lent the Sabathil to a band who wanted to record with it and never saw it again.

Recording things like harpsichord (or harp) is very tricky, you need the right microphones. I love harp, and have used harpsichord recently on some film stuff, and I bought a couple of active ribbon mics specifically so I can record these instruments. These mics aren't useful for much else except certain pitched percussion (they're reasonably good on marimba, for example).

I'm listening to La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano 81 X 25, 6:17:50 - 11:18:59 PM NYC right now and his just intonation tuning makes it sound kinda harpsichord-like to my ear.

strings do have a way of sounding good live, methinks

i don't have the right magenta lighting in my apt to do that album justice xp

i actually listened to patt of it on the 7 train a few weeks ago and unfortunately it assumed a cloying indie flick soundtrack quality with those visuals but it was still too mesmerizing to switch it off

I just looked up tickets to a Dwight Yoakam show I was thinking about going to — $105 for a general admission lawn spot. And for that I have to put up with the Mavericks, too. Sorry, no thanks.

there is a new pornographers live on conan clip on that orange amp thread and every time i hear them i can't believe how bad they sound to me. they sound like a bad local band that just formed two weeks ago and are now on national t.v.
i've tried to listen to them before and their solo stuff and i will never understand the appeal. maybe you have to be canadian. i'm just glad their stuff was never on letterkenny.

i mean i do try to listen to stuff that people like just to see what the fuss is about but i have my limits.

Wow, that is fascinating! I'm not the biggest fan in the world but I do like them a lot, Carl's solo album "The Slow Wonder" especially

weird, most bands did their best work live on conan

That is nowhere near the best NP song to scott's credit.

if this is the clip...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG1UVzslLEs

oof, it's rough. and I like NP

I don’t get that kind of singing

Their first two albums are incredible and I have no time for anything else they have done.

That's prob my favorite NP song (not that I'm a huge fan), and I agree that's a rough take, but... y'know, it's TV. Try the album track!

I love their first two albums and haven't really listened to them since. I did hear a song of theirs on the radio the other day that sounded pretty good.

There was a v. good version of "The Laws Have Changed" on Letterman but I can't seem to find it.

slow wonder is great! just put it on while cooking recently

the bejar tunes are kinda my favorite, I guess that's the wrong way to approach nps

The mixing in that clip does them no favors.

I will say that as the records got more complex & layered, as on Twin Cinema, the one they were promoting on Conan, they would eventually bring on more members/players like Kathryn Calder to fill out the sound, and that presented way better.

I think after all this time I've decided I only like letter from an occupant and nothing else.

for the love of a god

Carl was nervous about remembering to sing "replaced" instead of "shitfaced"

ha inspired by this i put on slow wonder and learned that in 20 years all were very well remembered by me, but my brain had refiled them into my new pornos brainbrary.

like miracle drug is clearly NP. always has been always will remain. changing metadata in mp3s now.

mass romantic >>>>>>> twin cinema

that isn’t controversial afaic

but then again i am one of the ones who loves the first two records and has never really given the others as much of a chance

I was really into Twin Cinema when it came out but it hasn't managed to hold up the way the first two albums have. Everything after that is just kind of ok for me, I've listened to all of them at least once I think and they are enjoyable enough, but there was never enough there to keep me coming back.

twin cinema has great songs, but isn't one of the absolute best albums ever made like mass romantic

they have some other good stuff but like a lot of bands i am not often in the mood for them and when I am it's 100% going to be mass romantic I listen to

My controversial Newpies opinion is that Challengers is the best one.

https://imgflip.com/i/8l68u6

I haven't listened to them in a while but my favorite is Electric Version. Twin Cinema isn't bad but I remember it came out around the same time as Destroyer's Rubies and Neko Case's Fox Confessor and I preferred both of those.

man i gotta think of something else controversial and get you guys off this stuff....brb.

the controversies have changed

Electric version is best, but mass romantic is next