Hi MG,
Talking about doing the things we normally would not do because of music, after 4 years on the road as a young musician I could probably write a book about as thick as "War and Peace". Actually, I left Dixieland for R&R for the money. But it wasn't all R&R, it was more a variety show group. In addition to the dance sets, we also did shows.We did a lot of Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chicago, Three Dog Night, The BeeGees, Four Freshmen, etc., including comedy stints.

>quote: I forgot to remark, yesterday that, in both versions, now, you've somehow captured the sound of a live performance.

Yeah!, and I am totally surprised by that. I think cutting the size of the band did the trick on this one. It's funny though, I started trying to capture the sound of the old band, using the same instrumentation as the band at that time, and it sounded terrible. We used two tenor saxes, trumpet and trombone, bass, drums and either piano, guitar or organ and I can't get that instrumentation to sound good for some reason. I think the problem is the sax presets. Only the low ranges sound close. The higher ranges sound like violins, and everything sounds weak. I'll have to keep working on that. I did find that using tenor and alto sax together sounds a little better. BTW, there is a hand clap GM preset, but I've never tried it.
Cheers,
Fred