Pinilla or Kuprij?

Pinella or Kuprij?

  • Mike Pinella

    Votes: 6 66.7%
  • Vitalij Kuprij

    Votes: 3 33.3%

  • Total voters
    9

Mr. Shred-ididle

Its Chinese-Tilt ya' head
Jan 25, 2003
1,701
6
38
34
(WARNING: I mightbe wrong on some of the "technical keyboard therms" as I'm a guitarist)

Who do you think is better?
Personaly, I think Pinella is.

Sure Kuprij is fast (super-fast) but I can't stand his skweaky tone lately. I have "High Definition" which is very good but his other workis just shredding mastibationry. But his tone of his keyboard is awful. But hey, Pinella is not far off in speed. And I love his sound and tone (particularly in the Odessy). He also has a melodic theme to his playing and creates a mood to his solo's. Unlike Vitalij who just goes up and down appegio's and the phrijian dominant scale. And after hearing Mike P. playing that jazzy stuff in Awakinings, My fucking brains blew out of my head. Even if Vitalij can play Copan and classical stuff and harpsicord stuff, it's been done before in metal and Mike can do it aswell. Pinella is a player, Vitalij is more of a technitian.

I'm not saying Vitalij is bad, (He's very, very, very good) I'm just saying That I think Mike P is hugely underated and Vitalij is overated.

Now wadda ya think
 
Pinella is a *great* keyboardist, but Vitalij was a child prodigy (he was playing classical peices on Ukraine radio shows at the age of 16!!). He is also as much of a classical pianist as he is a metal/rock keyboardist, and regularly plays classical concerts. He has performed at Carnegie Hall and is also performing with the Berlin philharmonic this month. The only other metal or rock keyboardist in Vitalij's league is Jordan Rudess, and I stylistically prefer Vitalij (being the neoclassical fan that I am).

So what if Vitalij can play Chopin? Clearly you really don't know much about classical music if you can just shrug that off. Chopin wrote some of the most technically challenging piano works ever written (sort of like a Paganini for pianists) and I'm sure many metal and rock keyboardists could not play some of Chopins harder works that Vitalij has played. As far as if Pinella can play some of Chopin's harder stuff...I've never heard him play classical piano so I can't comment on that.

Again, Im not ragging on Pinella, hes one of my favorite keyboardists, but in terms of skill, I think you can't compare him to Vitalij. Pinella is definately underrated though, but Vitalij, I think, is underrated too. Everyone in the prog community talks about Rudess and no one seems to mention Vitalij much, even tho Vitalij is easily equal to Jordan, at least in terms of technical skill, I don't know if he can improvise like Jordan can (and I honestly don't think anyone can).
 
btw, as an interesting side note on Kuprij, he was supposed to be the keyboardist in Adagio but due to contractual problems he couldnt and instead did the Ring of Fire project with Mark Boals. Imagine how sick that would be to hear Kuprij AND Stephan Forte playing together?!?
 
They are both flawed players, in my opinion. Being a keyboard/piano player myself, I think I`m competent enough to comment on issues like technique, patches and composition. Whether you agree with me or not is not something I care about, so please, no flames.

Vitalij Kuprij is an interesting case. According to a friend of a friend who went to the same music academy as him, Vitalij entered the academy at a very young age, like Shostakovich, Alkan and many other greats. You don`t do that without a shitload of talent, and Vitalij is extremely talented, there`s no doubt about that. Whoever teached him did a very good job at it. Vitalij became extremely good at the piano. His expressive touch, his flawless technique and ridiculous speed gave him well deserved fame. Then he started playing neo-classical metal, for which his dexterous fingers were well-suited.

The first solo-album is very, very good neo-classical metal. Apparently Kuprij spent a lot of time writing and arranging the songs, and Greg Howe did a great job at producing and playing guitar on it. Some of the keyboard work heard on that album gets my vote as some of the most difficult ever played on a metal record(e.g. the harpsichord solo in Opus 1). I hear some of you say that Pinnella is as fast as Kuprij. This is bullshit. Kuprij has a million times better technique than Pinnella and can play more challenging patterns at a faster speed. This fact can not be disputed. Hell, I`d like to see Pinnella playing "I just don`t care". But back to Kuprijs career: From High Definition, however, Kuprij started going downhill.

The Artension albums are for the most part lackluster power metal with ridiculously fast and progressively sloppier keyboard solos. On the first album, they(the solos)are clean as country air, on Forces of Nature(the third album)they are getting very rough(take the 3rd solo in Forces of Nature[the song]as an example :err:)and I won`t even comment on the abomination that is the last Artension album and VK3. It`s sad to hear, but apparently Kuprij has stopped practicing and leaned back on his talent, which is not sufficient for me. It`s sad to see that once he got a name, he had nothing more to strive and practice for.

Kuprijs patches are for the most part presets and consist of the basic categories "lead 1 & 2, strings, hammond organ, church organ, choir", et.c. He has not much will to experiment or come up with some interesting and fresh ideas when it comes to sound, but they(the patches)do the job and don`t sound awful. Still, I wonder what came into his mind when he used the "Thunderstorm" patch as the intro for an Artension album :p Kuprijs compositions range from excellent to horrendous, and become progressively worse from record to record. Bottom line: Kuprijs first works are excellent, but after that he became lazy and stopped practicing and caring about what he put out on record(The Malmsteen syndrome).

Michael Pinnella gets my vote for the worst patches of the 90`s. I hate his playing on all the SX albums up until Twilight in Olympus, mostly because his patches were so horrendously bad, but also because his parts were often horribly written. For those who are keyboard illiterate, I will try to explain a bit as I comment on the albums.

The S/T is clearly the worst of all the albums in terms of keyboard playing. Abominations like the Harpsichord solo in Thorns of Sorrow:)yuk:), the excruciatingly bad solo in the long song I can`t remember the name of right now:)yuk::yuk::yuk:) and the missed hits throughout the album all make this a poor experience for any keyboard player. On Damnation Game, he has put some effort into practicing and there are few mistakes playing-wise, but the parts are still boring or very out of place, the patches are still terrible and the solos are nondescript or just pure tasteless(Damnation Game). DWOT has slightly better patches(he probably bought a new keyboard), slightly better solos(the one in Candlelight Fantasia is actually quite good), and slightly better overall patches, but it still misses the mark for me. Not until Twilight in Olympus did I start enjoying his playing.

First of all, on TIO MP used two new keyboards, a Roland Jp-8000(a Virtual Analog synth that tries to emulate the analog synthezisers of the 70`s and early 80`s digitally)and a Korg Trinity(one of the best synthezisers ever made, with several groundbreaking innovations, owned by yours truly). Even though he only used preset patches on these(I played around with the intro patch on Lady of the Snow before I went to school this morning)they still sounded eons better than the shitty Korg 01/W(a cheap general purpose board from the early 90`s)patches he used before. The playing is also more interesting than the previous efforts, even though solos could easily be more interesting(mostly improvised scale-fests). On V, Pinnella for the first time does a GOOD job. His playing on it is seriously good. Parts are well-crafted, solos are interesting(well, not always, but most of the time)and his patches suit the songs.

Odyssey gave me the hope that we would see more of Pinnellas piano playing in the future. The piano part in the middle of Awakenings is haunting and even though it lacked the climax that it needs toward the end, that part alone made my day. Pinnella shows that he has evolved from mediocre neo-classical keyboardist to a mature and conscious musician, even though he`s not on the level of greats like Keith Emerson, Wakeman, and of course my personal favourite; Richard West. I hope to see him shine on the next records.

As for the original comparison, Pinnella gets my vote.
 
On a technical note, I never meant Mike at the same speed of VK.

I was meaning that Mike can play very fast aswell. And once you get at that level of speed, it doesn't matter how faster you can play, its the note selection that counts. Sure, in the first ten/twenty seconds but then I want a climax or some kind of structure or melodic theme. By the end of a whole album of VK or Artension or Ring of Fire, the dazzling shredfest would of been alot better if they were sick-ass or cool-as licks (Mike Romeo, Pinnela) instead of up&down, Appegio-up, harmonic minor run down at hyper-speed.
 
As I said:
Kuprij has a million times better technique than Pinnella and can play more challenging patterns at a faster speed.
You obviously have no idea about what you`re talking about, Mr Shred-Iddle. Kuprijs licks are for the most part much harder than Pinnellas(which are basic scale runs for the most part). There are some exceptions to this rule, but they are not many, believe me.
 
I dont know shit about keyboard playing (guitar here) but i will try not to say something stupid ... i dont actualy like mutch kuprij or pinnela ... kuprij like someone said suffers from Malmsteen Syndrome (a very serious disease with low expectations of cure lol), his usual lead patches are very weird and you cant understand a shit of what he is playing ... pinnela i think is good on the back arrangements but his solos (in DWOT ... i dont own any other) seem very out of the songs, his lead patches are not very good but he gets the job donne ...

My fav are Jordan Rudess (cool patches although he in some songs abuses of the improvisational driven stuff) , in the metal section i like Janne Warman of Children of Bodom ... i love his lead patches and his melodic playing on his solo project Warmen ... on cob e is good on the first 2 ...the other 2 its just more wanky wanky stuff , jens johansson is great also ... its nice to see he doesnt overuse his technical abilities and prefer to be more "musical"
 
inflamer said:
in the metal section i like Janne Warman of Children of Bodom ... i love his lead patches and his melodic playing on his solo project Warmen ... on cob e is good on the first 2 ...the other 2 its just more wanky wanky stuff , jens johansson is great also ... its nice to see he doesnt overuse his technical abilities and prefer to be more "musical"


Oh fuck yeah, Janne is sick!!! Definately one of the best keyboardists around right now in the metal scene. I like the Kotipelto album where he trades off solos with Romeo :D