It seems like we are living in a different world than 6 months ago. Some countries have had a very different experience with covid-19 than others and the whole world feels like it’s upside down. 565K+ people have lost their lives in this pandemic all around the world, which is really terrible. But also many more people are living with the consequences of such a terrible illness. I’m sure you all know somebody. I do and it’s not fun. And, of course, all of us are living the economic consequences derived of the world stopping all of a sudden. Musicians have been hit really hard. Companies in our industry too. Yes, some products for home have sold well if the companies had stock (remember that many factories were shut down too), but those products for live performances? Not so much.
In those countries where life is coming back to semi-normal, hello New Zealand, hello South Korea, hello parts of Europe, hello Canada, …, I wonder if live music is coming back or not really. I imagine that local acts can probably start performing with certain restrictions but international tours are probably still dead.
Ksetlist is full of musicians that, pro or semi-pro, play live. That’s what you do. That’s our main premise. You play covers live and you need to get sounds to play them as quickly as possible. That’s why this website exists. So, please let us know in the Comments section or in the Forum how are things going right now for you as a live performer. Are you still at home? Are you starting to play outside? Do you feel comfortable rehearsing in a small room with that band member that everybody knows doesn’t take too many precautions?
In my personal case last year I was preparing a new duo with a singer to play covers, just keyboards and vocals. We thought we were going to be ready to start playing this spring but, obviously, that didn’t happen. New York, where I am located, was hit very hard and then everything stopped. While now the state is doing much better than other states of the US, hello Florida!, things are still chaotic here. I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer.
Anyway, here’s one of the covers we recorded to get our foot in the local pubs. The sound is a factory program in the Kurzweil PC4, 814 DoubleCleanChrs, unedited just with the variation button pressed. One of the reasons to show you this is to illustrate how useful are those Kurzweil guitar sounds when you play without a guitarist. Yes I could have made a piano arrangement (I do it for other songs) but sometimes you can get such a nice clean guitar sound to accompany the singer and that’s all you need. By the way, the FX matter. A lot. And I’m really proud of Kurzweil FXs. Also, mixing some pad on the background help you fill out the sound, that in these kinds of settings sometimes is a little too empty.
We are very fortunate in Western Australia. We have no Covid 19 in the community at all. All cases are from people returning from travel, and they are quarantined until they have recovered 100%. I’m really proud of the people from our state who have all pulled together, and followed the directions of our state government and health authorities.
We have co-operated, we have put in place a lot of measures to ensure that even if it does get into the state that we will limit the spread. We have a lot of testing, even though there are no cases in the community, and because of that, life is pretty much back to normal, except venue capacities have been limited, and we are forever keeping washing hands and disinfecting.
Masks are pretty much an accepted part of life in many places.
On the positive side, a side affect of preventing Covid 19 is that we have also had a pretty much non-existent cold and flu season.
Thinking of you all, in places that haven’t been so lucky.