רשמיו של קלידן: ג'ורדן רודס והבלוג

[kawkaz]

בוא'נה, זה כלי מגניב בטירוף!
כדאי לנו לצפות לשימוש בו בדיסק הבא, סטייל הקונטיניום באוקט'?

[Carpe Diem]

this guy is a GOD!!!!!
בואנה זה לא יאומן הבן אדם הזה!!!
ואהבתי את סיפור שלו על מייקי וכו'.

[טל רודס]

סחטיין על הקעקוע של מייק, נדמה לי שזה עטיפת האלבום Rush - Fly by Night , מעניין שג'ורדן לא ציין זאת.

משעשע הקטע שג'ורדן הוא יענו הפפארצי של הלהקה עם תמונות מצחיקות (פורטנוי עם המכנסיים למטה וכו').

[YtseJam]

06/22/2008
First LTE Show!
Yesterday was the first Liquid Tension Experiment show at Nearfest in PA.

We had a day and a half of rehearsal before the show. The people at Nearfest are fantastic as they allowed us to come up to the festival early and set us up in a great little hall to have our practice time. It's been ten years since we playe as LTE but we jumped right in and started playing the tunes!

The most challenging part of the experience was arranging Rhapsody in Blue in the alloted time and getting it ready for the shows. It was pretty fun though and we actually pulled it off last night! (As if there was a choice right?)

The concert went well. We were all excited and some of us dare I say were even a bit nervous! Funny because you would think that after playing all around the world that that kind of thing wouldn't happen to us! I guess the human being rules come into effect even in this circumstance!

It was a great venue. I'm impressed with the whole Nearfest thing. If you don't know about it and you're a fan of progressive rock, you must check it out. The sound in the hall was amazing, the hall is beautiful and the people were all very accomodating and pleasant to work with!

In addition my time at Nearfest was made even more special by my meeting (and hearing) some of my idols! It was amazing to meet Peter Hammil of the band Van der Graff Generator. I remember seeing them play at the Beacon theater in 1974 and it was one of the most awesome shows I had seen! Peter at one point pretended (in his very dramatic way) to drop dead on the stage. When he played last night he sounded just as strong as ever! It was a solo show with him and a guitar and a piano. Here is a picture of us together after the show.



After LTE played and we signed what felt like a trillion autographs to a VERY patient line of people, I journeyed back to the hotel and had a beer at the bar...

Much to my delight somebody mentioned to me that Gary Green of Gentle Giant was hanging out in the bar as well. Wasting no time, I wandered over there and introduced myself. Of course you all know that I am a HUGE GG fan and it was a thrill to say hi to Gary.



We had a cool talk. It was really fun for me to hook up with one of the guys from a band that had such an impact on my life! Here is a pic of me a Gary. Sorry though - this is not up to the standards of a Tony Levin picture as I just handed my iPhone to a person in a fairly dark room. Nonetheless, it captured the moment!

Today I drove home and then tomorrow it's off to show number 2 and 3 in NYC at BB Kings before heading west to Chicago, LA and San Francisco!

That's all for now!

Be sure to check out Tony Levin's tour diary and photos!
http://tonylevin.com/lte08.htm

[טל רודס]

אחלה חוויות, לנגן ב-NEARFEST עם LTE, לפגוש את פיטר האמיל, אחרי זה עוד מישהו מג'נטל ג'יאנט, וכל זאת בכנות החמימה של ג'ורדן. מחכים לשמוע עוד

[YtseJam]

גם לג'ורדן יש מה לומר על התקלה בהופעה של LTE אתמול בשיקגו.

06/26/2008
Half Step Hell and a Guitar Blow Out!

Last night in Chicago started out flowing very smoothly. Another day at the office until some guitarist or bass player decided to start playing in direct half steps to the rest of the band, or so I thought until it was a keyboard solo moment and that same horrendous sound continued!

It was me!

I moved the pitch joy stick...pushed and pulled all of the controllers...reset the mode and finally in desperation did a complete factory reset on my beloved Roland G 88. Nothing worked and after the reset the problem still remained. It was like every fourth key would play half a dissonant half step when I hit the key a little hard.

Wow! it really sucked. Was a terrible sounding problem! A lot of things would have been better then the instrument deciding to play half step intervals! After I realized I couldn't do anything about this problem I left the stage and started calling all my friends from Roland trying to get someone on the phone. I emailed an urgent message to Japan as well.

Minutes later I got a call from my buddy Scott Tibbs in the US. He called Japan and then I was on the phone with the head engineer there discussing the problem outside on the street while Tony Mike and John were shredding it up inside keeping the show alive. Thank god that LTE is very much about jamming as well because it seemed like they were having a good time! This was surreal for me because I was amazed to have this problem! In 10 years of touring with Dream Theater I have never had anything as bad as that happen! In Dream Theater I always have a backup keyboard with me. I pretty much have a backup of everything I use for that. For the LTE shows obviously it is not the same type of budget so I figured for 6 shows we could do it with my one monster Roland Fantom keyboard.

Guess not...Lesson learned. I will probably never not have a backup again no matter what. That was too weird for me! Anyway after a while of dealing with the Japanese and realizing nothing could be done in the allotted time, I figured I would do a little guitar bit. With Eric's (my tech for LTE) encouragement I went over to JP and asked if I good borrow his axe for a bit. This led to a rare but very fun yours truly guitar feature. God, how I wish I had been in shape for that! I haven't played guitar in so many months! Anyway, had a good work out until my hand was very tired at which point I gratefully handed the guitar back to it's rightful owner.

After the show and the next morning I spent a good deal of time talking with my friends at Roland and figuring out a plan to make sure that I was covered for the rest of the shows. Yes folks...I WILL have a working keyboard (or two!) for the remaining shows and even a little surprise in Downey...

The Roland guys were all very cool and helpful to make sure they did everything they could given the situation. Ya know, with technology, shit can happen, and unfortunately it does on occassion (just not to me...wrong!).

Here I am tonight in Downey CA with a brand spanking new Roland Fantom G8 on my couch and it has be tried and tested. It sounds awesome. Apologies to those who did not see a full LTE show that they expected. On the other hand I think the band played even loooonger then we would have and it turned out to be a very unique evening indeed. I'm definitely gonna practice more guitar now so if it ever happens again I can be more prepared!

That's it for now all!

On with the show!

[YtseJam]

Rudess and the Fantom G8

Hello All,

Finally things have quieted a bit here at Rudess World. The year of touring with DT and then the mini tour with LTE were awesome but this keyboard man needed some R & R....

Now that I'm settled back and have some time, I wanted to talk about the Fantom G and mention what happened around my keyboard going down during an LTE show in Chicago.

I took the Fantom G keyboard with me on the tour instead of the Korg Oasys (which I play on the Dream Theater tour) for two reasons. One is that I put a lot of thought and energy into the development of the instrument and was very proud when some of the features that I requested were part of the instruments design. Not only that- the features of the instrument make it a unique instrument in the vast world of keyboards. There is no other keyboard that I know of out there today that allows the seamless transition between large combination (Performance) sounds. This is the basis of my (and most other real players) performance concept!
Aside from having the switching from one Performance patch to another being really smooth, I programmed the entire LTE set without using ANY outside samples. Everything was done with the Factory ROM and I did not feel I had to make any sacrifices to the integrity of my sounds to do it!

Part of the reason for this extended note is that I think in the madness of the Chicago keyboard failure, things became unclear with what actually happened.
First of all I got to re-acquaint myself with the guitar! I had not played in months!
Second of all I want to set the record straight with what happened to that keyboard. When I got to LA Roland took care of that problem immediately to make sure I was more then set for the next gig. What we learned from the service department at Roland, is that the keyboard took a big hit in transit and it shifted the contact board just enough to cause that problem. Unfortunately due to the timing of the LTE gigs there was no official hard case developed for the instrument, so I was forced to either use a box (don't ever do that on a tour) or use a prototype case, that was still in development. (try not to do that either) I choose the prototype and thought (hoped) it would work. When the proto case was delivered to DT world, I now remember my tour manager looked at it and said- "This is not good". He was right. The reason the keyboard went down, is because it was not protected for the kind of shipping the tour required. This could happen with any keyboard- and has!
The other difference here is that because the LTE tour is NOT a DT tour (different kinda budget!) - I was not carrying a backup keyboard. If I did, we could have swapped it out quickly and gone on with the show!

Finally- I worked hard on this instrument both in the design of it and then the programming of the sounds and I am proud of what it offers for the keyboard world. I do not want what happened to me because of a bad hard case to tarnish the reputation of an excellent and unique instrument. Last comment-
It's built like a tank.

I'm going back to practice now!

JR

[avrahamshuk]

כיף לשמוע ממנו אחרי הפסקה די ארוכה. אני חושב שהוא בן אדם ממש טוב! הוא יעשה הכל כדי לא לפגוע בשם הטוב של החברה שהוא עובד איתה למרות שהיו לא כמה סיבות שלא לעשות את זה...

[טל רודס]

ג'ורדן כרגיל כנה ובגובה העיניים - אין כמו אחינו היהודי

[YtseJam]

בשבוע האחרון הסטודיו של ג'ורדן היה לא בשימוש בעקבות מתקפת דבורים (הבעיה נפתרה).
במשך הזמן הזה ג'ורדן העלה קטעי אודיו שלו מדבר ומעדכן במקום לכתוב בבלוג.

ניתן להאזין לכל הקטעים בקישור הבא:
http://www.jordanrudess.com/home/diary.php

[טל רודס]

דיברתי אמש עם ג'ורדן והוא מסר לכולכם שנה טובה ומתוקה!