Hi Mark
I have seen your channel and I watched your right hand as well. When you are singing it does not add to the style anything you can't have the style contain. I think it is called "comping", I use that hand to control the backup singers which does add to the performance.
Yamaha ADVERTISED the Genos when it first came out as a tool for song composers and had at least one video stating that usage. But I just would like to see and hear one of there experts perform using the whole machine and sing. Maybe it is not possible, I notice that when Vince Gill performs (as an example) Live with his guitar, a lot of the time he only CHORDS when he is singing. He does slip in a lick at the end of phrase.
Drake
Then I'm afraid you perhaps didn't really pay attention: the Bohemian Rhapsody ones; in some parts i use them to control the different types of harmony, in most of the song I'm playing the piano (and the bass guitar with my pinky) and I play the *entire* piano arrangement, not just chords. Additionally I also play the guitar solo and the post operatic double time guitar part. The opening is a slow choir sound so it's *just* copies of my voice from the vocal harmonizer that you're hearing. Literally wouldn't be the same without the VH. For the operatic part, I switch from duet, 4 part, and then 4 part with doublers to make it sound bigger in some sections, and for that part the actual song's piano part that I'm playing (while singing!) is what I feed into the VH control. It literally differs from verse to verse. None of it is comping, as I'm playing the actual piano arrangement as per the original song (I'd say I'm playing the same as the guitar, but I'm not. There I comp the signature falling scale in the 4th bar of the guitar solo because I still can't quite identify which notes those are supposed to be; Brian May plays pretty darn quickly, and I figure everything out by ear).
And for in the Air tonight, I'm playing the harmony live as I sing. If I let go of my right hand, there *is* no harmony (which is how I like to control). Only at the end do I use the left hand for chords and the right hand is free to do the guitar solo licks! I do the same for Ed Sheeran's Castle on the Hill; when I flick the vocal harmony on with the registration change, I also make sure to play the harmony vocal part on top of the chords since I'd programmed only a single vocal harmony for that part (no 2 or 3 part harmonies) the top note always became the vocal harmony note.
In the air tonight, it is literally different for each verse because Phil Collins changed the harmony interval for each subsequent verse. For Castle on the hill, the harmony line identical for the first 2 choruses because that's how the song went.
Incidentally for With or Without You and The Show Must Go on, there is no VH, in the latter case it was focusing on being able to switch between the correct backing played live (not from a style, but just simple 8th note chords) to the very tricky guitar solo parts, while still singing.
I literally *do* what you're complaining nobody does! The Polish(?) guy, Bartek Krzemiński, who demos the Ketrons does as well (he's amazing, and incredibly joyful). He also does what you think not enough demonstrators do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjp0Q7c2BooIncidentally, Drake, I agree, playing part of the song to showcase the style and then just comping on the same style because they didn't bother to learn the entire song feels lazy, but at the same time, sometimes the song is too long (My Pirates of the Caribbean demo is 7 minutes long! When demoing in the store I usually only perform 1 minute of it)
Peter Baartman's himself (RIP, sir) told me he was in awe of my ability to demo all the functions of the keyboard *while* singing, which he himself said he can't do (he didn't sing, although his actual piano skills were light years ahead of mine. I'm practicing to get even better, but I *always* want people to feel like they can do a version of what I do. Remember, he walked up to me past all the other staff, including (our company president !) the 2nd time he came out to visit us just to shake my hand and tell me that I was famous (among Yamaha global), and that he'd watched all my youtube videos (which at the time, there were only a few).
Oh and they (Yamaha) let me design the i/o and external features of the CVP309! (not the guts of course; that was already set in stone that they were going to use the Tyros 1 chipset and sound library). I designed the flip up lid with screen (very different from CVP's before that), insisted on USB A (they kept insisting on Smart Media cards and Floppys, both of which I insisted were dead), wooden keys and 3d Soundfield speakers like that had on the CLP170 (basically rear facing reflection speakers), and the lower profile cabinet that I sketched for the head of R&D of Yamaha Japan.
I'm a *very* oddball combination of musician, singer (both my parents were recording artists in Hong Kong) but with civil engineering and comp sci degrees!
Mark
