A frustrating end to a frustrating and stressful week. I decided to take the keyboard out and put it in the proper playing position on its stand, now that I know that I'll be playing seated. This was good because it reminded me that it was wobbly. I started the day, then, by making a custom 'foot' from Polymorph heat-mouldable plastic. This didn't work, it was too soft when hot, so that the foot merely sunk, and remained wobbly. Not only that, this solution, though it would fit the circular foot perfectly with a neat click, it would only work when the stand was in that height and position, so I removed it and, far more simply, cut a square of 3mm rubber sheet and put it under the foot. Sometimes the simplest soloution is best.
Then I decided to make a holder for the foot M-audio piano pedal, a custom cradle which I can attach to the stand and stop the annoying thing moving. It went to plan...
(ignore the damage there)
Then, when playing, some notes seemed to sustain all the time, and some, never. After a few bangs and experiments, it was clear that the pedal had died/failed, which is a common problem. The pedal is solid metal, really good, yet the crucial switch itself is rubbish and unreliable, as many Amazon reviews confirm. This meant, amazingly, that on the very day I make a custom cradle for a specific pedal, the pedal breaks. So I have to bin both things (hnece the damage in the image, I tried to recycle the wood, but the pieces are firmly stuck.
This meant an emergency order for a replacement, a £65 Yamaha pedal with money I don't have to spare. So many things these days have 100 cheap versions and few or no good ones. These are a good example, all electric piano pedals costs £10 to £20 and all are unreliable. The Yamaha pedal seems to be the only good option, as fellow musicians say, and it's over three times the price. The same feature applies to mic stands, keyboard stands, camera tripods and all sorts of other things on Amazon; 99% of products are really cheap and rubbish and the 1% that is good is expensive and has no competion - or in a worst case there is no expensive option, just many variations of cheap rubbish.
At 2pm Deb arrived for a rehearsal and this went well. I used the cheap Yamaha FC5 pedal which is so flimsy it's more like a calculator than a foot pedal - but it worked rather well when I put a wooden bar in front of the keyboard for my feet, so I plan on using this for live play (I still need a realistic piano pedal for practice though). I will need to make a new 'cradle'.
The tricky and fingersome tracks of Truth Seeker and Give Me Your Pain are hard to play and sound muddy or overly boomy, so I've simplified the arrangements, removing a key. This keyboard, unlike a real piano, will sound a key at the very slightest brush. A real piano won't sound unless you press it firmly, so I've adjusted the preset to not sound on very light presses (velocity shift to 60 vs 64). This instantly made playing more reliable. The MODX piano sound still sounds rubbish compared to my P105 or SY-85, however.
Both rehearsals went well. I feel tired and overworked, squeezed by self-imposed and unpaid jobs, but I know that all art is this. I also feel frustrated at not being able to perform 'properly', my songs. Well, life must be taken one step at a time; my mind is only giant leaps.
