From curtisprunty@yahoo.com Tue Feb 26 23:51:53 2008
Subject:Organ ignorance, etc... my $.02

I've really enjoyed reading all of these posts. I keep thinking that I like organ/B3
ignorance - it makes us keyboardists unique. If every band where I live had a
keyboardist/organ player, we would become like guitar players (overly-abundant) - but I
like being "in demand" - keyboardists are hard to find, at least where I live anyway. I
really enjoy when I'm on set break, and people come up to me and comment on my "B3
sound"... you just don't hear a Hammond (sound) a lot around here (South Dakota). I
think people are surprised to see a young person (I'm 27) utilizing the "vintage" sounds. A
gentleman (from the MSP area) at one of our shows this weekend said "If you moved up to
Minneapolis, a keyboardist like yourself would never run out of work".

In regard to seeing synths in music stores and no organs, I don't like that either. I hate
walking in to a music store and the keys department is full of little kids abusing the
keyboards - just playing them because of all the cool sounds they make. Also, I HATE
attempting to demo a synth and when I press one key, an obnoxious beat/arpeggio
pattern starts playing ridiculously loudly, and I don't know how to stop it, unless I shut the
damn keyboard off.

About a year ago, a band that I am acquainted with asked me to play some keys on a
cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" for an EP that they were recording. In the
studio, when I told them that I was going to record some Hammond (at that time I was
using a Micro BII/Pro3tm) they weren't too thrilled, but once they heard it, they loved it,
and in the final release, the sound engineer cranked the organ, to my surprise. I thought
I'd be mixed way down into oblivion...

Marc