April 10, 2008
Electronic Jam Night 3/31/2008
Electronic Jam Night, 3/31/2008 - 43.7MB - 22:46
JVonD talked me into doing his Electronic Jam Night again and here's the result.
The Electronic Jam night is audio and video stream fed into SecondLife (or any media player via the stream links on JVonD.com) and consists of 'electronic' musicians performing low-pressure live sets of whatever they can come up with. It's kind of like a digital coffee house open mic. I love it because though I've never played out in real life, I always get good response and encouragement from these digital performances.
In this 'jam,' I just played the Korg Karma straight through. Since it was really last-minute and I didn't have anything planned, I stuck with the EXB-09 Trance Attack presets in the "Tranzfer" set I bought from EJ2 Sounds a little while back after I got my EXB-09 expansion board.
Often I'll throw in some effect-heavy guitars, but this is all Karma. What is presented here has been compressed a touch in post. As for content editing, I cut out dead spaces, overblown speaking portions (they're still a little hot, but few and far between) and made a few transitions more elegant (something I still need to learn to do live), but it's presented in what I like to call "Pretty Much Live," warts and all. If there's any interest I might break this into individual tracks, but for now I'm just putting up the whole she-bang-a-bang.
Please let me know what you think - pro or con.
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
- My voicemail line is dead from neglect.
- skype: oblivion9999
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December 04, 2007
Emily's First Song!!!
Emily's first Karma Jam - 20.6MB - 0:11:17
Tonight I set Emily on my knee in front of my keyboards, the Korg Karma and the 88-key controller. She went to town. The only times I pressed buttons was when she got it into a mode that would no longer play. And a few times I pointed out a few buttons/knobs to try and moved her up and down the register, but really, it was all her. I started recording it in progress and left it as I recorded it - gaps and all. Mostly I put it online to share with Mommy who is out of town, but I figured I might as well podcast it :)
Yay, Emily!!!
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
- call: 206-FEW-EBLO (206-339-3256)
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November 04, 2007
Electronic Jam Night
Electronic Jam Night October 29, 2007 - 138MB - 1:00:22
I'm sorry for the huge download, but this show is all music, so I thought it was worth the extra bitrate/quality. I was going to post a smaller version, but as my buddy Kat reminded me, you've got to "Go big, or go home." If you WANT the 80MB version, it's the same URL as above minus the "_high-fi" part of the filename.
This is music I 'live jammed' on my Korg Karma and my electric guitar running though a Crybaby Wah, DOD flanger, and an old DigiTech RP-1 effects processor. Sometimes I used an E-Bow with the guitar. There's no overdubbing and as such it isn't all 'great.' The only editing I've done is to pull out dead air or me talking and I've faded the different 'pieces' together to smooth things out. I'm by no means a great keyboardist NOR guitarist, more of an experimenter with a rudimentary understanding of music and a small collection of cool gear built over more than 20 years. I don't know that I make songs so much as I make sounds. Whatever.
Thanks to JVonD for setting up the "Electronic Jam Night" on his Skydeck Streams in Second Life. And as always, thanks for inspiring and encouraging me, bro.
Enjoy!
00:00 - Intro
01:35 - Hello World! Settling in
02:30 - Trying to find a groove
04:45 - Slowing it down a bit
11:15 - Hitting the Ethosphere
13:42 - Twittering on the fringe
18:15 - Stumbling through the noise
23:51 - Sometimes your shit turns to ice cream (but it's usually still Rocky Road, not vanilla).
35:18 - I got the cosmic shaft
38:08 - Slow and low with much delay
48:02 - Chaos creeps in and things fall apart
50:43 - Lullaby-bye
56:00 - Bowing out
As always, feedback is welcomed and encouraged.
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
- call: 206-FEW-EBLO (206-339-3256)
- skype: oblivion9999
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October 07, 2007
M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 MIDI Repair
I recently had to take apart my new-to-me M-Audio Keystation Pro 88 keyboard controller. The MIDI Out port had flaked out. I bought it as a floor display and I think the MIDI cords got yanked out of the back more than once which resulted in broken solder joints. I've used it for a while as is, but the plug always felt loose and I wasn't surprised when it went totally Tango Uniform on me. So I busted out my screw driver, multimeter, and soldering iron to effect a repair of the MIDI jack.
When it came to dismantling the board, it looked fairly straightforward to me, but I searched online to see if there was any guidance to be had. I didn't find any, so I decided to take some photos along the way and post this little write-up in case any one wanted to follow in my footsteps. WARNING: I am not an electronics expert by any stretch. I'm just a guy who likes to take broken things apart and fix them if he can. I get lucky and occasionally things work the same or better after I put them back together, but follow this guidance at your own risk. If you have any doubts, take your board to some one with experience and/or insurance.
1) To work on the keyboard, I took it off its stand and placed it on the floor. I tipped it to that the back of the board (with the ports and power switch) was facing upwards. On my carpeting, it would rest like this on its own, apparently with no pressure on the keys, but I didn't trust it to stand on its own and kept a hand on it while it was propped up thusly.
2) The back of the board is made up of one continuous plate of metal. To remove it, I removed all of the screws on both the back and bottom of the board that attach the metal plate to the frame. Note that on my board, the screws on back had little clear plastic washers presumably to protect the finish of the board. I kept an eye on those so I wouldn't lose them. Also note, NO OTHER SCREWS NEEDED TO BE REMOVED! Just the ones holding the metal plate down from the outside.
3) Once all of the screws were removed, I took a while to figure out how the plate came off because it was still held in fairly tightly. I was trying to open the back panel up by lifting up from the bottom of it, but this didn't get me any where. The trick was to use a broad putty knife and pry up at the back plate from one end of the board. The plate has 90 degree bends at both the top and bottom that fit tightly into the frame of the board, so it has to be lifted straight out of those tracks.
4) I found that once the panel was loose, tipping it 'bottom forward' while looking at the bottom of the board was the best way to get at the ribbon cable connectors. There wasn't a lot of room on these ribbon cables, so I was careful not to over stress them and kept the back plate as close to the board as I could. I believe all of the connectors are unique, but it's always a good idea to label or at least photograph them before removal.
5) Once I removed all of the connecting wires, I removed the 8 screws holding the the circuit board to the back plate.
6) After using my multimeter to confirm that the jack itself was still good - the solder joints were just broken, I resoldered the jack to the board, tested the connections with a MIDI cable and my multimeter and put everything back together.
Note: The one tricky bit I found when reassembling everything was that the power and USB jacks did not want to fit nicely through their cutouts on the back plate. I cranked down the screws before I realized this and risked screwing up those jacks while repairing the MIDI. I removed the board one more time, made sure everything was seated properly, and THEN screwed the back plate back down.
That's it! As easy as 1-2-6, I fixed my MIDI controller. If not for my recent Brain Machine project and my first experience soldering on a Printed Circuit Board, I don't know if I'd have had the guts to attempt this repair, but it was really not a big deal when all was said and done. The toughest part is that the board weighs nearly 50#. I could have hurt my back getting it off and back on the stand :)
I hope this helps some one out there who needs to crack the case on his/her board. If you have any questions, let me know: oblivion at ratula dot net.
March 12, 2007
Takeoffs and Landings
047_takeoffs_and_landings - 33.6MB - 35:52
I went flying. I recorded it. Nothing too exciting, just trying to get back into the flow of podcasting. I left the silences in the recording so it is real-time as far as when I made my position reports on the radio, etc. I banged out 6 takeoffs and landings in 0.6 hours. That's one every 6 minutes.
I did create some new background music. Please let me know if it's good or bad to have in there. Entertaining or distracting? Don't worry, I'm not quitting my day job any time soon, so please don't judge the music itself too harshly. Then again, if it really does suck, I'd like to know that. Thanks.
Enjoy!
Oh, BTW, thanks to Nintendo Freak for your voice mail regarding MemTester. I don't know offhand what version I had, but it was a newer rewrite. I have since replaced that motherboard, and run the RAM through the memory test 150 times. The RAM is good, and the new motherboard is good. The old one was crap.
BTW II, I tried to ride my motorcycle today since it was so nice out. The front brake is seized up. Damn. My usual fix of beating on the cylinder with a hammer didn't free it up this time. I'm pissed since I just rebuilt the brakes last year. I didn't feel like monkeying with it today, so I picked up 15 pounds of dog shit in the back yard, instead. Talk about a buzz kill.
On the upside, I spent some quality time with my wife and daughter today, and cooked out on the grill for the first time this year. Spring is on its way!
Ok, NOW I go. Goodnight.
Contact info:
- email: eblo at ratula dot net
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