Music Endeavors!

Left: Original rig from 1980's including Mini-Moog (still got it!), two Roland Juno-60s, and a Yamaha PF15 piano. Things have changed a lot since the old Farfisa organ and Fender Rhoades Electric Piano used back in my early band days with Southern Comfort in Tampa, FL.

Today's rig consists of a Roland XP-80 and Roland A70 keyboards which are used to control MIDI equipment in a rack mount system. The small traveling rack consists of a Yamaha TG77 sound module, EMU Proteus 2000 sound module, Alesis DataDisk, Peavey EQ-215 40 band graphic equalizer, Kawai MX-8 16-Input Keyboard Mixer, JLCooper MSB Plus digital MIDI switcher, and a Peavey DEKA/528 digital power amplifier.

fusionhouse

Robs current jazz fusion band is

fusionhouse - www.fusionhouseband.com

fusionhouse quad fusionhouse at the Note

featuring

Cooke Harvey - Bass

Dave Bozenhard - Guitar

Vince Marinelli - Sax

Jonathan Whitney - Drums

Big Package Band – 10 Piece Horns Pop/Jazz

Rob currently plays keys in the Big Package Band. A 10 piece horn band playing Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, and other popular horn band tunes.

Check them out at www.BigPackageBand.com

9 sTeps doWn – Wedding, Pop/Clubs, Jazz

Rob’s previous band played weddings and clubs doing light jazz and dance music. Got the old trumpet back out for the James Brown stuff! Unfortunately, 9 sTeps doWn is no longer performing...

Kong and ChopShop - Jazz and Rock Fusion

Rob's previous jazz fusion band was more rock oriented and played the music of Chick Corea, Dixie Dreggs, Eric Johson, Jeff Beck, and has put together kool instrumental medleys of Led Zeppelin. Of course we did originals as well; some from the CentrePeace days (see below).

Kong featured Ritchie Rubini on drums, Tommy Alderson on guitar, and Brian Hayes on bass.

Chop Shop featured Ritchi Rubini on drums, Nick Bucci on guitar, and Al Price on bass.

Download the music of Kong and Chop Shop!

CentrePeace - Jazz Fusion Band from 1978-1984

I wrote most of my best compositions for CentrePeace, which was prominent in the early 1980's when the city of Wilmington promoted the arts and the city was alive with entertainment. The recession during that period brought hard times to local restaurants and many closed their doors. The city has also never figured out how to establish a public transportation system, parking, or nightlife support infrastructure that could sustain such activity.

Download the music of CentrePeace!

What is MIDI?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is similar to the concept of computer networking with which you are no doubt familiar. Instruments and other equipment such as computers and sound effects can communicate with each other by using MIDI (if so equipped). MIDI uses a serial communications protocol running at 31.25 Kilobits per second. (Dial modems also use serial communications; that is, one bit of data is sent at a time.) Cables hook the MIDI out of one device to the MIDI in of another. MIDI uses 16 channels over which to transmit information, similar to the concept of broadcast television, but without the advertisements.

For example, all of the TV stations are broadcasting simultaneously, but you see only one show by selecting a specific channel. With MIDI, you select one of the 16 MIDI channels for the sending and receiving devices so that they will "listen" to each other. What kind of information would you want to send over MIDI? You could play one keyboard and have the sounds of several "slave" instruments play the same sounds together. You can signal a drum machine to start playing with your first note on the keyboard. You can record the MIDI events into a computer. A computer acts like a digital tape recorder. The big difference is that MIDI does not actually transmit sound. Only the act of playing the notes is recorded. In other words, if you play "middle C" on the keyboard, the MIDI information is made up of commands to "play note C and play it at this volume and hold it for this long". When asked to replay the events, the receiving device will interpret the commands rather than reproduce a specific sound. Whatever instrument sound is waiting to play on the right channel will play the "middle C", whether it be a flute sound, p

By the way, if you arrived here by clicking the MIDI link a moment ago, you are still in the same document. To get back, just scroll back up in this document using your scroll bar or click this return to top link. If you use your "go back" function, you will load the previous document which is not this Music Page!

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