Aluminumfalcone

My question is, in regard to the recent vinyl renaissance, where the placement of "side breaks" on a vinyl LP should occur. A "side break" is a point between two intermediate tracks on an album's track listing where the listener must flip the disc over to continue. Here is what I know so far: During the heyday of vinyl (and even now) the album is usually given an even number of tracks, which means the tracks are evenly distributed among both sides of the disc. For example, if your album has a total of 10 tracks, the "side break" would naturally come between tracks 5 and 6. But what do you do when, due to other circumstances, the total track listing has an odd number of tracks? The end result is that, supposing an album had 9 tracks, one side will have 4 tracks while the other has 5. This makes the side break placement more difficult. What is the protocol as to which side gets more tracks? Running time I guess. Another thing I would like to bring up--while browsing the new wave of recent vinyl pop-music releases at the local Barnes & Noble, I have come across what seem to be "double albums" with as few as 3 tracks per side. The Decemberists' recent release goes as far as leaving the second side of the second disc ("Side 4") completely blank. I can see why this could have been done--ordinarily each side of an LP can hold an average of 20-25 minutes (in the heyday of vinyl, single-disc LP's rarely had more than 10 tracks total), but IMO the use of only 3 tracks per side (depending on the running time of the tracks) is wasted space, as it is technically not impossible to exceed the customary 25 minute sound barrier. What are your folks' thoughts on this?

Nothing yet, unfortunately. I've been going through money and personal struggles and have not had room in my budget to work out a keyboard of any size yet. I hope that I can afford one in the future, though.

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but here are my general thoughts: 1. An acoustic piano is my go-to instrument, but when you don't have enough room for one (such as in my case), you have to improvise. 2. For the sake of practicing, it is important to "exercise" both hands at the same time, so a large keyboard is ideal. 3. From a songwriting point of view, the number of keys is not critical when using MuseScore, but it is a good idea to play your melodies using a VST or MIDI host to see how they sound and how you can play them--it's easy to make melodic lines in MuseScore that you can't reproduce yourself! Therefore, having less than 88 keys gives you less to work with when making a melody.

I used to play the piano, but I recently had to sell my 61-key Casio for extra money. Now I am relying on MuseScore-generated accompaniment tracks in my demos that are in progress. I need a new keyboard (an MIDI controller to be precise, and a USB-to-MIDI adapter), but don 't know whether or not to splurge on an 88-key controller or settle on something smaller. What do you guys think?