Extended test drive - Korg Fisa Suprema

[Thomas N]

I guess there are two camps - those that love the digital accordion and those that don't.

I've always thought that my personal ideal setup would be an incredible acoustic and an incredible digital and that would be it. One of each.

I find myself gravitating to the digital. I have three accordions and for the past couple months it's almost 100% digital. I play with headphones a lot, and I use my BK-7M a lot. It really helps for improvisation and I've become a far more skilled player from using it.

Now I see a backup on the digital would be almost a necessity. So that's three accordions again LOL!

There are people like Cory, Richard Noel, Linda Herman, Dale Mathis, etc. They are 100% digital. I find myself moving in that direction but I don't think I could ever be without at least one nice acoustic just for those occasions that it would be advantageous to have one.

 

[dak]

I guess there are two camps - those that love the digital accordion and those that don't.

Know what is funny? The most frequent reason for a digital accordion cited here is that it allows for practising without annoying the neighbors.

Now here is the rub for me: the digital accordion is fun. And it is real fun with a good amp that gives the proper amount of oomph to the orchestral basses. In contrast, my acoustic accordion is fun even when playing at a low level.

So it turns out that one of the reasons I use the digital accordion comparatively sparingly is because of being considerate of my neighbors.

There are people like Cory, Richard Noel, Linda Herman, Dale Mathis, etc. They are 100% digital. I find myself moving in that direction but I don't think I could ever be without at least one nice acoustic just for those occasions that it would be advantageous to have one.

It is not a matter of "advantageous" I think. It is one of the right instrument for the right task. Even "digital God" Uwe Steger retains an acoustic bayan for those pieces where it is the right instrument to use.

 

[Thomas N]

Know what is funny? The most frequent reason for a digital accordion cited here is that it allows for practising without annoying the neighbors.

Very true. It's certainly down the list for me. Number one is improvisation with the BK-7M. I have become an exponentially better player because of it. I've played an acoustic with Midi tracks and it's ok, but nothing like being in charge of the chord changes with the arranger. Second would be using two sounds together, in my case vibes over a bassoon reed a la Art Van Damme. It's a sound I love.

You're also correct about thumping it with a loud amplifier, which I also do for about an hour a day. Headphones is somewhere after that, and usually when my wife has friends over or my son is back from college and watching a movie with his girlfriend.

I like the acoustic because the keyboard is fast. I like working the bellows. I like the small nuances you can get out of it that you could never achieve with a digital accordion. When I'm around my Italian family it's the acoustic. It's what we're all used to.

 

[dak]

Very true. It's certainly down the list for me. Number one is improvisation with the BK-7M. I have become an exponentially better player because of it.

Again in the "know what is funny department", this scenario works better with me with a MIDIfied acoustic. Because its dynamics and response and interaction work better for me in that context. It "breathes" better for improvisation on a synthetic background.

Where the Roland is best for me is when doing everything with it, and employing the non-accordion sounds extensively.

When getting an accordion MIDIfied, just the left hand is usually a (more affordable) option. Just the right hand is more an option for internal microphones: for right-hand-only play (popular in band settings), the interest in MIDI seems low.

 

[Thomas N]

Again in the "know what is funny department", this scenario works better with me with a MIDIfied acoustic. Because its dynamics and response and interaction work better for me in that context. It "breathes" better for improvisation on a synthetic background.

Where the Roland is best for me is when doing everything with it, and employing the non-accordion sounds extensively.

When getting an accordion MIDIfied, just the left hand is usually a (more affordable) option. Just the right hand is more an option for internal microphones: for right-hand-only play (popular in band settings), the interest in MIDI seems low.

Interesting. I always saw the MIDI accordion as a duck. It walks, it swims and it flies but it doesn't do any of them gracefully. There was this guy years ago, Chuck Berger I believe was his name, and he was a "MIDI Accordionist". I watched a ton of his stuff, oh 20 years ago or so. He was a Petosa Artist back in the day and featured on their website.

I just generally never liked the sound. I bought a Petosa Millennium Reedless accordion instead. The MIDI accordion seemed to have all the weight of an acoustic, with all of the trouble of MIDI and sound modules as well. I played a Cordovox for years - different animal of course - but similar in nature. I loved it.

Then again, I've never even played a MIDI accordion, so I have no idea if I would truly like it.

 

[dak]

I always saw the MIDI accordion as a duck. It walks, it swims and it flies but it doesn't do any of them gracefully.

You should clarify what you mean by "MIDI accordion".

 

[JerryPH]

Then again, I've never even played a MIDI accordion, so I have no idea if I would truly like it.

Sure you have... its called an FR-8x... lol
I know what you mean. My Elka is MIDI powered, it was the basic version of MIDI. It was a blast to make your accordion sound like other orchestral instruments!

 

[Thomas N]

You should clarify what you mean by "MIDI accordion".

You're correct. I was unclear. By MIDI Accordion I meant an acoustic with a MIDI module added. So basically a "normal" acoustic accordion retrofitted with a MIDI module to allow simultaneous use of both acoustic and MIDI sounds, or solely one or the other.

In other words, not Reedless.

 

[dak]

You're correct. I was unclear. By MIDI Accordion I meant an acoustic with a MIDI module added. So basically a "normal" acoustic accordion retrofitted with a MIDI module to allow simultaneous use of both acoustic and MIDI sounds, or solely one or the other.

In other words, not Reedless.

Then I am not really clear on why you state

I always saw the MIDI accordion as a duck. It walks, it swims and it flies but it doesn't do any of them gracefully.

Why wouldn't it play gracefully acoustically if it has been designed as an acoustic accordion in the first place and only retrofitted with MIDI?

 

[Thomas N]

Why wouldn't it play gracefully acoustically if it has been designed as an acoustic accordion in the first place and only retrofitted with MIDI?

Correct, but pedantic in my opinion. My response would be that isn't as aesthetically pleasing with the MIDI module tacked onto the grill and a MIDI cable hanging off of it. The sound would of course be the same, but I would argue that a pure acoustic would perform the same without the aesthetic slights of a MIDI module and associated cabling. Hence, a bit of a duck.

 

[dak]

Correct, but pedantic in my opinion. My response would be that isn't as aesthetically pleasing with the MIDI module tacked onto the grill and a MIDI cable hanging off of it. The sound would of course be the same, but I would argue that a pure acoustic would perform the same without the aesthetic slights of a MIDI module and associated cabling. Hence, a bit of a duck.

Ok, so a MIDI cable is unpleasing while a microphone cable is fine, and the cables coming out of a Roland are pleasing. By the way, modern MIDI installations more often than not do not affect the grille optics (my Merkimidi installation is probably from the 90s and has no external controls: you use combinations of bass buttons to change parameters). And modern installations tend to use wireless connections anyway.

In summary it would appear that I consider your characterisation as somewhat of a stretch and you consider mine pedantic. I guess we can leave it at that.

 

[Thomas N]

Ok, so a MIDI cable is unpleasing while a microphone cable is fine, and the cables coming out of a Roland are pleasing. By the way, modern MIDI installations more often than not do not affect the grille optics (my Merkimidi installation is probably from the 90s and has no external controls: you use combinations of bass buttons to change parameters). And modern installations tend to use wireless connections anyway.

In summary it would appear that I consider your characterisation as somewhat of a stretch and you consider mine pedantic. I guess we can leave it at that.

Hah hah, sure. I see you are from Germany and am making the massive leap to assume you are German? My father-in-law for the 30 years of my marriage is German, and a retired Physics professor. On top of that he has Asperger's. He is extremely precise with phrasing and will argue with you until you either admit you are wrong, or that he is correct. I have seen him get in a heated argument at a Farmer's Market about the origin of the beekeeper's honey and whether it met the strict criteria for the organic label. Me, I just eat the honey!

Incidentally, most of the time he's correct and when interfacing with him I go into it knowing that!

 

[dak]

Hah hah, sure. I see you are from Germany and am making the massive leap to assume you are German? My father-in-law for the 30 years of my marriage is German, and a retired Physics professor. On top of that he has Asperger's. He is extremely precise with phrasing and will argue with you until you either admit you are wrong, or that he is correct. I have seen him get in a heated argument at a Farmer's Market about the origin of the beekeeper's honey and whether it met the strict criteria for the organic label. Me, I just eat the honey!

Incidentally, most of the time he's correct and when interfacing with him I go into it knowing that!

I feel like "topper": my father is an emeritus theoretical physics professor (the difference between "emeritus" and "retired" is that the regular wages and affiliations are not terminated) who is actually still publishing papers in the respective journals. He says he cannot afford to die until he has managed some uptake of his latest work in mathematical foundations of theoretical physics (because it would fit a lot of current cosmological puzzles). But he's bordering on 91, his contemporaries are pretty uniformly dead and his PhD students and their generation mostly retired. And he wasn't exactly a mainstreamer even when he still had tenure.

But to give credit where credit is due, he is less of a pedant than I am.

 

[breezybellows]

Ok, so a MIDI cable is unpleasing while a microphone cable is fine, and the cables coming out of a Roland are pleasing. By the way, modern MIDI installations more often than not do not affect the grille optics (my Merkimidi installation is probably from the 90s and has no external controls: you use combinations of bass buttons to change parameters). And modern installations tend to use wireless connections anyway.

In summary it would appear that I consider your characterisation as somewhat of a stretch and you consider mine pedantic. I guess we can leave it at that.

The problem with the midi cables are but the cables themselves, but the need for an external module. The Roland is self contained.

 

[dak]

The problem with the midi cables are but the cables themselves, but the need for an external module. The Roland is self contained.

So we are no longer talking about using it together with the BK-7M?

Number one is improvisation with the BK-7M.

That apparently is the context where a MIDI-equipped acoustic accordion is considered a "duck" while a Roland is considered to be in its natural element (presumably air, the thing the duck uses for sounding its reeds). I am afraid that the progress of this thread exposes me not just as pedantic but also as sarcastic. I should probably stop while I am underwater.

 

[Thomas N]

I feel like "topper": my father is an emeritus theoretical physics professor (the difference between "emeritus" and "retired" is that the regular wages and affiliations are not terminated) who is actually still publishing papers in the respective journals. He says he cannot afford to die until he has managed some uptake of his latest work in mathematical foundations of theoretical physics (because it would fit a lot of current cosmological puzzles). But he's bordering on 91, his contemporaries are pretty uniformly dead and his PhD students and their generation mostly retired. And he wasn't exactly a mainstreamer even when he still had tenure.

But to give credit where credit is due, he is less of a pedant than I am.

Love it! Mine is an especially egregious case because my degree is also in Physics. But comparing my knowledge of Physics, even back when I remembered what E equaled is like comparing Frank Marocco and a first year accordionist. I am not kidding you, but the first time I ever met him with his daughter (who I just started dating - now my wife) he asked "So, if there is a bathtub filled with ice and you are laying in it, and the ice melts, would the tub overflow and why?" I should have known something was up right then and there.

But he can't play accordion, so I guess I have that.

 

[Thomas N]

So we are no longer talking about using it together with the BK-7M?

That apparently is the context where a MIDI-equipped acoustic accordion is considered a "duck" while a Roland is considered to be in its natural element (presumably air, the thing the duck uses for sounding its reeds). I am afraid that the progress of this thread exposes me not just as pedantic but also as sarcastic. I should probably stop while I am underwater.

Nah, I like it. I should be more careful with my words as it's a written medium. I never mind your posts, they make me think.

Which brings up my next question: I haven't followed MIDI/Acoustic accordion combinations for well over a decade. Have there been advances that have included the addition of tone modules incorporated into the MIDI unit itself, or somehow contained in the accordion?

 

[breezybellows]

So we are no longer talking about using it together with the BK-7M?

I didn't read all the previous posts. Didn't know you were talking about using an external expander.

 

[dak]

I am not kidding you, but the first time I ever met him with his daughter (who I just started dating - now my wife) he asked "So, if there is a bathtub filled with ice and you are laying in it, and the ice melts, would the tub overflow and why?" I should have known something was up right then and there.

Ok, that's rough. In particular since "filled with ice" and "laying in it" are not well-defined conditions.

But he can't play accordion, so I guess I have that.

My father had a stroke in his early 40s. That's what he cites as the reason he was no longer playing his violin, but frankly, I cannot remember him playing it before either. I am playing this violin these days (and have been playing it with interruptions for more than 40 years now). When I had a stroke about 8 years ago, it was kind of important to me that I recovered my skills with both violin and accordion at the time.

So I have that. Also I am his go-to reference for TeX/LaTeX (and Emacs and Linux).

But mathematics/physics? One occasion I remember is after a written exam in mathematics for engineering students, he asked me how it went, and I said so-so. For example, that I spent about half an hour of proving that the eigenvalues for antihermitian matrices were purely imaginary and only got about half the way. So his eyes turn into his internal book of mathematics for a moment and come back and he says "but that's trivial". What? So he pens down about 4 short lines of writing, and once I got that notation (physicists use other symbols than engineers) disentangled and scratched my head for an hour, ok, it's trivial. I'll probably not have a problem reproducing that proof when I reach an advanced stage of dementia one day. It's burnt in. But I'll probably refuse to use the physicist inner product notation for it. One has to have one's pride.

 

[dak]

Nah, I like it. I should be more careful with my words as it's a written medium. I never mind your posts, they make me think.

Which brings up my next question: I haven't followed MIDI/Acoustic accordion combinations for well over a decade. Have there been advances that have included the addition of tone modules incorporated into the MIDI unit itself, or somehow contained in the accordion?

I think the Blueline "Artist" Midi installation contains a sound module internally. I am not sure how much sense that actually makes, though, in practice.