Music Blog

So, at the start of 2012, I find myself with a rather nice musical setup that's not getting nearly enough use.

I had some money to spend really working on my musical hardware over 2011, but I haven't really had the motivation, time, etc to actually use it...

Now, I mentioned previously about how I used to have access to a Shure Beta 58... but now all I've got is a cheap Radio Shack high-impedance microphone of uncertain vintage...

I notice that a decent percentage of my coworkers have MDR-V6's. And, when a coworker who was smart, got things done, and pleasant to work with from my last job interviewed at my present job, I pondered saying "Oh, you'll like him! He's another member of the MDR-V6 club!"

I've been interested in doing recording again. And the biggest gaping functionality hole is microphones and their accessory gear...

I've got a healthy dose of skepticism about my ears and the acoustic acuity thereof. This comes from a generalized transition that I had to make that, while I'm perhaps smarter than your average guy on the street, I'm probably not some Übermensch and always need to make sure that I'm not engaging in endless self-aggrandizing without some degree of justification...

Honestly.... I have enough storage-related nightmares. If I discover that a cable is actually sufficiently marginal to corrupt the data flowing over it or cause the transfer rate to drop so low that it can't even handle 44.1 kHz audio... I'm going to go balistic on wherever I picked up that cable. And, furthermore, if the analog section of things is so marginal that any EM leakage from a Serial ATA cable is hurting the signal, it's crap....

I have a distinct memory from my childhood. See, I was taking piano lessons but I wasn't practicing regularly. Finally my dad points at a guitarist's well worn acoustic guitar and tells me "See, look at that woman's guitar! Do you think she had a machine to wear down that guitar? No! She practiced! That's how she got good!"

Handling audio in such a way that both professional audio-centric users and casual users wondering why they can't hear the IM beep while playing MP3s are happy is actually fairly tricky. In the early days it was, naturally, quite easy. Your application wrote to the hardware. The hardware reacted pretty much instantly. No biggie. But multitasking threw a wrench in that.

I am not planning on purchasing a keyboard right now. But I was thinking of it for a while, and thought it might be useful to write up my notes after it came up in conversation...

or: How we've done nothing to make more interesting sounds since 2002 or so...

I've been finding that I'm not satisfied with the way that my music was coming out. I've been sitting down with the same software that I've used for years, the same basic instruments and samples as before, etc. I even found that with my guitar, all of the muscle memory is still there, except for the lack of calluses on my left hand and a little bit of playing speed...

I discovered that my fingers, other than needing to re-develop calluses, largely remember how to play the guitar...

The story of the Digitech Legend 21 goes something like this...

I think the thing that really sells this piece is how the LEDs trigger in sequence with the hammers of the instrument.

You need to *cough* saw this instrument...

For the longest time, my method of making a song and melody was to hash out vaguely poetic lyrics, then pick some chords to go with them, and then invent a melody and rhythm as I sang them the first time and figure out what stuck...

Confession: I've wanted a Simmons-style hex drum kit ever since I first laid eyes on one on TV.

Ever see "High Fidelity"? You know, the John Cusack movie where the main character deals with his top five worst relationships and spends most of the movie organizing his record collection in autobiographical order?

This is enough to give a dude nightmares. Four furbies hacked to be operated hurdy gurdy style.

It really does. And my roommate in college was into Pokemon for quite a while, so I grew to wish I had my very own pet Pikachu. Who wouldn't want a pet that could emit high voltage?

I like this. Music needs subtle quiet bits. I hate how the newer music is always so *loud*, unnecessarily so, compared to the old stuff.

Using water as a way to shape sounds. Quite incredible, actually

So if you've ever watched a drummer, especially one from marching band, you'll realize that they have a tendency to drum on... well.. just about anything. This robot perfectly replicates this behavior.

This is a super-crazy toy for electronic music. I want.

I've got bits of music starting to take form again. It's a fairly slow process because I really need to get myself in the right frame of mind before I can get started.

In 2007, I finished a useful portion of a web framework. After I got it working, I started adding the stuff necessary to host media.