This site is about my endeavor to perform, teach, write and sell Boogie Woogie style piano music. I started learning the piano/keyboard in January 2009 with no previous keyboard experience. I have found that playing the Boogie and Blues genre of music is fun, challenging and a great retirement pastime! Send comments and questions to Boogie Beau
For over two years I’ve used some Roland KC60′s position against the wall in the picture as my speaker/monitors. The problem of course with that is the direct sound gets mixed and muddied with sound bouncing off the walls and the ceiling. I’ve now positioned Roland CM-30 cube monitors on both sides of the keyboard. They are only about 4 feet from my ears so I’m getting lovely direct clean sound! Also with the KC-60′s out of the picture I’ve gained floor space. If I add another keyboard there I can just swivel the CM-30s around.
Roland CM30 monitors
Both the CM-30′s I purchased used on EBAY .. with shipping I paid about $110 each verses the $199 each going new rate. The wire setup is my main mixer outs go to a Behringer Truth subwoofer which has a built-in crossover. It has L and R outs which I plug the CM-30s into. Thus the lows under 70hz stay in the subwoofer. I’m very happy with the sound and wished I had done this years ago.
I was getting the evil eye from the spouse so I sold all my keyboards except my Roland FP-7F. But there were hidden reasons behind my madness and those were space and cash for a new Roland BK-5 arranger backing keyboard. The BK-5 came out a few months ago and it continues the tradition of the E-series of arranger boards Roland has been producing for a couple decades.
BK-5 April 2012
The BK-5 has a several features the older arrangers didn’t have that swayed me into buying it. One I want to mention is video output of lyrics of SMF and KAR songs to the display and or to an external display via a composite video output plug. In place of lyrics I’ve added chord notation to the my backing tracks which helps me greatly to keep time and know the next chord to play. Another great feature is the ability to edit your SMF backing songs. When I say edit I mean you can change the instruments and set volumes and effects overall and by track. You also can create your own Performances (user presets) which link to a SMF song file.
BK-5 display screen
The arranger part of the BK-5 comes with some 300 rhythm styles of various genre. These are drum beats and accompaniment with intros, endings and variations that you find standard in most all arrangers. You can also find large sets of styles on the Internet and load them via a USB stick. You can also edit rhythm styles and build your own rhythm styles from scratch.
What is not mentioned in the manual is that the BK-5 comes with 565 preset Performance:Rhythm defined. These often have titles that suggest a well known song or genre of music. Each of these presets has the UP1, UP2 and LWR parts defined and there are 4 other alternate part sets you can quickly switch to using the One Touch button! You can of course take any of these, customize it and save to a USB stick memory.
There are a couple things I’ve found I’m not liking. One is I haven’t seen a way to turn off the internal speakers other then by plugging in a blank plug in the headphone out jack. Another dislike I have is the Upper 1, Upper2 and LWR split feature is very geared for arranger song playing. I wish they could work in what I’ll call non-arranger split mode.
Important to me is getting several of the piano tones customized in Performances and outputting piano sound to my liking. After adjusting the overall EQ and COMP settings along with applying Upper 1 tone effect settings inside a Performance .. I can get a piano tone about 50% to what I’m looking for. I’m hopeful I can get to near 100% .. but that might take hours of experimenting as I don’t have the knowledge to know how to get to where I want to go in this case.
This is not a dislike but I’ve found after playing only the big full weighted FP-7F keys for a few months now .. I’m having much difficulty switching my fingers to light touch mode for the BK-5. I’ll need to start giving the BK-5 a walk every day. Last I need to mention that I haven’t even looked at making my own rhythms(styles) yet but that is next on my list. I bought a collection of 5000 style files on the internet so I surely have a bunch of examples.
Well found some time to do a little Youtube production on how to play a boogietized version of Suwannee River. I like the drum/bass track I can up with.
I’ve been busy the last few months shopping on EBAY and Sweetwater.com for deals on rack gear as I wanted to build a little PA system around my Roland KC-60 amps and KCW-1 subwoofer. I have a couple Roland CM-30 cube amps to use as monitors. The EBAY auction process is a bit challenging as there is always some 30,000 items listed under rack gear! Lots of people selling and lots of people bidding. So how did I weed out want I wanted?
BoogieBeau PA system
First I went with one brand, Behringer, for the signal processing components. One big positive mark for using same brand is the user interface to controlling the gear is similar. Thus once you understand how parameters can be set and stored on one device you basically know how to operate the other devices. Also making connections between devices should work smoothly. For the rack selection itself I went with a SKB mini console. I can place my mixer on top and leave the cables connected with the lid on. There is room to store and keep speaker cables right in the box. It is a big thing to move around but not so heavy one guy can’t easily lift it.
SKB mini console rig
In the rack on top is a Furman power conditioner. It also has pop out lights. I purchased shorter 3′ power cords to help eliminate the power cord mess inside the rack. The mixer main stereo outputs connect to FBQ1000 Feedback Destroyer .. which connects to the CX2310 Crossover. Cables from the Crossover connect to the speakers. The mixer monitor mono out connects to a 1124P Feedback Destroyer and a cable from it connects to my little CM30 monitor amp. The Virtualizer Pro effects box connects to the mixer using channel insert cable. It has two channels so I could run effects on two different microphones.
Rack componets
The mixer is a Behringer FX1222 I had before I thought of this project. It will do the job nicely but I can clearly see now the advantages of having a full featured mixer. I’d like to have one with sub channels to run multiple monitor outs, main and sub inserts and dual effects. Also I’d like one that had remote control via wireless link to an IPAD .. but that’s a bit beyond what’s in my wallet. In all this was a good project and I’ve learn a bunch about PA systems. Though I have my small Roland amps connected now I could easily replace them with much larger active PA speakers.
I’ve now started building a separate studio rack. I believe it would be nice to be able hear the processed live audio while making it.
Also with the KC-60′s out of the picture I’ve gained floor space. If I add another keyboard there I can just swivel the CM-30s around.
