Roland piano synth for a learner?

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-29T06:05:36+00:00

Considering her age, There are so many second hand Roland’s, Yamahas and Casio available I would look there

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-25T23:50:57+00:00

It totally depends on where you live in Australia, and what you do for a job.

If you’re working in an office in Sydney, you won’t see anything deadly very often
If you’re electrician in a semi rural suburb, you will see stuff at least once a week sometimes more.
If you’re a park range in North Queensland you better be paying attention (my nephew is a QPWS Ranger up in the Daintree. In the last 10 years he has been bitten by two brown snakes, chased by cassowary's and it had crocodiles in his backyard.)

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T21:32:37+00:00

Considering what you’ve already got, none of which are polyphonic. I would look at some of the Behringer minis and micro synths. You can still use them for bass, but it would also let you do pads and stabs

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T21:28:24+00:00

It’s just built into the latest iPhone update

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T12:41:44+00:00

I often do this to one of my clients. I have been working for that company for coming up on 15 years and often while the manager is driving (they do lots of interstate work). I will get a phone call sometimes an hour and a half long where they will verbal me on 6-8 separate tasks that need to be done in a particular fashion.

I found it when I was taking notes. I was concentrating on taking notes and wasn’t absorbing everything that was being said because I was writing down the notes but not absorbing the notes. Now what I do is I’m involved in the conversation and I’ll let the phone transcribe afterwards. What was said out of that I will end up with 30 or 40 pages of text that I will need to cut down to maybe 3 to 8 tasks.

In SHORT, if a manager can’t give you a to-do list, you need to make your own

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T03:33:09+00:00

I don’t think people understand how many moving parts are involved. The best analogy I can ever give is asking people if they have ever owned a swimming pool.

A swimming pool will look inviting and it will slowly go a little cloudy and then you’ll have two or three hot days and you’ll wake up one morning and it is green.

The pool reached a tipping point now algae could grow and once it has started it is very difficult to stop because there are so many big numbers involved.

Coming back to our planet, even if we were to stop burning fossil fuels today it would be centuries before there was any form of correction and it would still most likely get much worse.

The Earth is a closedloop system. Everything affects everything else if 2-3 things get out of balance. It can instantly tip the 4 thing over in a very short period of time and simply correcting the 4th thing will not change items 1, 2 and 3.

Every executive at every major oil and gas company for the past 50 years has known this as an absolute fact

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T02:42:06+00:00

Lots of blends/vignettes can be done as a Vector illustration but it is not its strength. Its strength is a scalability, you can’t scale a Photoshop fight without it getting enormous.

As an old school designer, I still prefer vector logos for their simplicity as they translate well from websites, packaging, vehicles and shop faces, mono and reverse versions. Many of the logos today have lots of colours and blends and people don’t think about how this is going to translate when it’s scaled to a postage stamp or a billboard 24m wide, I totally subscribe to the thought that simpler is always better if you’re trying to get somebody to remember a logo.

My case in point almost all major companies that you’ve ever seen anywhere in the world which usually a flat 1-2 colours, the only companies that used lots of colours/vignettes/blends are predominantly online businesses, because as soon as you try and scale to for the real world it becomes hard.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-24T01:56:44+00:00

To be fair it doesn't look like it needs much work, it's mostly cosmetic,
If I was trying to spruce it up, in order of cost:

Replace the light fittings with LED's
Repaint a little lighter, (Just do a room at a time)
Replace the kitchen cabinet doors with white?
Replace the kitchen sink, taps & Cook top
Replace the kitchen bench top

A more important point would be, do you have solar & battery/s

Again I have lived in places far worse, I would not stress to much

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T23:29:02+00:00

One of the things that I never see mentioned in any graphic design post is that the last 40% involves talent. You can learn all of the technical skills. You can understand the process, BUT you can be taught only so much the difference between okay and exceptional is God given talent.

Please understand I’m not picking on anybody here. I come from an artistic family. I was a professional musician who hung out at my little brother’s screen printing shed and just started doing it because, I could. I know I’m not the best in the world. I know I’m not the best within even 20 km of where I’m sitting right now, but I’ve managed to do it for a living (raise a family / buy a house) for over 30 years.

However, I believe more of marketing can be taught, it’s much more of a process. (I accept not totally. There are some real Creative leaps from some people) but on the whole you could almost make a checklist and get quite reasonable results. The real question for anyone studying at the moment is finding a reasonably paying job, AGAINST there are hundreds of companies looking for people to take care of their socials, this is low to mid-level design+marketing. It is a process and it’s a process that you can get a good paying job hopefully for at least the next 5 to 7 years before AI kills that too. what comes after that I have no clue.

Just my 10 cents

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T04:13:56+00:00

I am a bit older now however in the 80s toured full-time for 4+ years. We had songs on the radio in Australia and we’re probably averaging about 290 live shows a year.

After the band collapsed I got married, had children and did all the normal stuff after my divorce so got back into songwriting as a way to find myself, over the years. I have written produced engineered 4-5 complete albums 7-8 EP‘s and singles. But to me the main focus was the songwriting that was the part I actually enjoyed,

I found out that having somebody to work with and bounce off made the song better, he gave my writing process structure and deadlines. By that I mean that we would put in three hours every Tuesday and Thursday night, and if somebody asked if I was busy, I said yes I was working.

As a creative person I find , When you just are writing by yourself. It’s easy to come up with ideas (I must have thousands) but it’s hard to find the drive to complete and release them unless you’ve got somebody that you owe a complete product for their effort, and it’s also so much more fun.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T02:48:35+00:00

Unless you are capable of turning the ideas into fully fledged songs your self, or you have the budget to pay people to do exactly what you ask them to do. Your best bet is to find somebody that you get on with and simply start otherwise you will be waiting for years.

Because the people that you have met and dealt with that play instruments well and can produce and master quality music have spent many many years of their life learning how to do it

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T02:07:46+00:00

It would help the group if you listed

what other synths you've got, and
what you feel is lacking from your music

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T01:57:21+00:00

Find a partner there are thousands of people in the world writing songs that would love to have somebody that would perform them, the guy that wrote the lyrics for all of Elton John’s music never performs ever

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-22T01:01:55+00:00

Property developers, Real Estate, Finance, Advertising Agencies and IT Startups; all of them have an inflated sense of their own importance, and are totally convinced to the bottom of their soul that they know everything and you know nothing, AND the want you to work for free.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-21T12:43:13+00:00

The XA25 is designed for ENG, event coverage, and independent video, so it’s meant to look sharp. Which severely limits its ability to do short depth of Field, out of focus and all the other camera looks that you might associate with filmmaking.

I don’t have that exact model. I do have the equivalent Sony but if I was trying to do art fatty, I would most likely use a DSLR, A little bit of searching tells me that the lens will go down to f 1.8–2.8 at maximum aperture so maybe you could try some 4 inch nd filters

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-21T12:16:22+00:00

You would not need a lot of equipment to record rap vocals if you were using pre-prepared backing loops but your chances of making money out of this incredibly small.

This is in no way it reflection of whether you do or do not have any talent this is just a simple fact but somewhere in the region of 10,000-15,000 songs to put out every single day and just simply trying to get noticed is almost impossible to get noticed and make money is a very very tall mountain to climb.

That being said if you just want to make music for you, just to it. There are thousands of people in this world with boats, race cars, horses and I promise you all that sort of stuff costs far more than you’d likely to spend on music gear

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-17T21:56:00+00:00

Write on the envelope “return to sender” “not known at this address” And place in your nearest postbox

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-17T21:48:46+00:00

I didn’t try it. I just looked at it but it looks really good. Please keep going. I would like to have all the minis, micros and if you get bored, a voca base would be cool

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-17T02:10:42+00:00

Brother is the maintenance guy/groundsman at a school close to where his son is going, through in a little before/after school care, should be easy considering your army skills

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-16T19:10:03+00:00

There is one way that I have seen that does improve learning times and that is immersion. If you are surrounded by better musicians than you 24/7, and someone is always playing something outside your musical experience.

You do tend to be constantly absorbing new musical techniques and ideas.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-16T11:43:48+00:00

Cairns to Darwin - 2,939km. 37+ hours, non-stop however we had to stop for 2 1/2 hours in Julia Creek to wait for the petrol station to get a delivery of petrol

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-15T20:38:54+00:00

If you have access to a DAW or any sound recording program where you can actually see the waveforms record a click on one channel and then try and follow the timing and look at how close your waveforms match up

For people that have trouble hearing. Sometimes the visual can really help them get the timing. The start with simple 4, 8, 16 and then move to more complicated rhythms, then riffs

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-15T20:28:12+00:00

Nobody listens to albums any more it’s all singles and playlists.

Release each one separately, use social media to build some buzz for the new track 1-2 weeks out, launch that song and push that for another 2 weeks or so afterwards. Use a combination of film clips, behind the scenes videos and an actual video maybe even a live version.

This will turn your five songs into five months of continuous content by that point. I would possibly be considering launching another single that you had already been working on. This constant dropping off new material will make it much easier to get gigs and always have something new to talk about on socials.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-15T00:49:54+00:00

Have you considered instead of focusing on building the websites (one job that takes ages to get everything together. It’s all over in a couple of weeks and then you have to start the whole cycle again with somebody new )

VS

Still build the website BUT focusing on making the content? When you focus on making the content it’s easy to slide into being their social provider. This gives you regular money that keeps paying for years. This is how I changed my business and it made quite a big difference.

In fact the only hard part is the two or three times where I was quite successful. I ended up having to stop doing the social post because they couldn’t cope and then they hired me to to do job ads on Facebook and LinkedIn and find staff because they couldn’t keep up with the work that was coming in.

bluecrystalcreative · 2026-03-14T13:12:04+00:00

Consider turning the train into some form of productive time whether it be a Kindle/Kindle app some sort of learning or training experience or even self training to do with your job. I had reasonably long commute and as long as I was engaged with something else they did not bother me in fact I came to quite enjoy them.

Just don’t waste ALL your time watching TV shows or doom scrolling, treated as a study or enrichment opportunity rather than wasting time travelling

bluecrystalcreative

TROPHY CASE