Greg Mein
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Posts posted by Greg Mein
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We just got home from going out to dinner with some old friends of my wife who recently moved back here from the San Diego area. Things were really relaxed, the place wasn't overly busy but the "rules" appear to have mostly gone out the window already, next week the bars are "allowed" to reopen and then I'm sure all bets are off.
Anyone who's seen my posts here knows that I came to terms with this thing almost immediately. Although I don't want to get sick anymore than anyone else the idea that I could avoid or hide from a virus was always ludicrous to me. I've gone to work the whole time, done drive thru and/or take out almost daily and as soon as places were open I had my ass in a seat even when I had to drive to a different county. Perhaps it's just luck that I haven't been sick since the first week of January, doesn't really matter at this point.
Something worth pointing out is that here in the upper mid-west Winter typically sucks, it's bound to be cold, occasionally bitterly so and there''ll be a number of snow storms with a lot of cold wind and just plain miserable conditions. So with that in mind I probably don't need to elaborate on what folks are going to say to you when Spring arrives, the weather begins to improve, and you tell them they need to stay sheltered in their homes.
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So which iPads are you using?
I'm certain mine is the same as this although it's possible there could be an update since I bought mine: Space Gray
I worried at first whether 32G would be enough but the price was right, wifi is all I need, and I primarily only use it for checking the weather, kindle reading and some web surfing. It's also nice to have along when we go on Harley vacations. I still have an older gen 4 one that is now dedicated to my music app stuff but even then I mostly just use it for our set list. I never liked the small screen for any type of serious music creation and found it unnecessary because I have the computers for that.
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I bought a new iPad last year. I actually went to a Wal-Mart to get it because they were on sale for $250 if I remember right. It's the normal size one with, I believe, 32g but the price was right and it's all I need. For quite a few years now I've primarily stuck with Apple stuff probably more for the sake of consistency but I do prefer my Macs when it comes to music apps.
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We are out of time, guys.
Bob
I foresee some serious events occurring soon, potentially even violent. We all know the governor of Wisconsin recently had his uhm .....a$$....handed to him over his stay at home order. Now the owner of Poopy's, a popular spot for bikers near the Mississippi River in Savanna Illinois, has made it abundantly clear he intends to open this weekend in blatant defiance of Governor Pritzker's strict stay at home orders. Overall people around these parts are fairly pragmatic and when they've reached their limits, look out! This is fascinating stuff really. So I had to do some googling and found this, "Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is withdrawing his request for an emergency ruleâ, which would criminalize business owners that defy his 'stay-at-home' order."
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Our May 22nd gig is officially canceled, no surprise there but now the one my wife booked post apocalypse for June may also be in jeopardy according to something I saw on FB today. We'll see how that shakes out and we've got one for July at a different place that was also booked post apocalypse.
Even though things have begun opening up the "atmosphere" seems a bit weird, I suspect that's a common theme. We had dinner last night at a favorite Mexican place near our house rather than having to leave our county for a sit-down meal. Capacity is limited to 50% and the employees were wearing masks. Suddenly last week, after all this time, the company where I work decided we all needed to wear masks so I'm forced to play the pandemic game until about 3:00pm daily and then I return to my normal selfish self.
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I remember reading once that the conversion rate math worked better at 48khz over 44.1 and I don't recall the details. It's something I should know but I don't keep up the way I used to. I've been sticking with that more or less for quite a few years now.
I believe that the tale of conversion to double or half the sample rate came from the believe that all you need to do is take every other sample to convert down and double every sample to convert up. That actually isn't a very good way of doing it. The proper way to do sample rate conversion, and these days there's enough computer horsepower to do it so everyone does, is to virtually reconstruct the waveform, then re-sample it at whatever sample rate you want, up or down. Since you're, in essence, restoring the analog signal as accurately as possible, that's the best starting point. Then you can sample it at the desired rate.
That may have been it, been so long ago I don't really remember. In any case 48k seems to be a default with some of the gear I'm using, my hardware/software seems to work great with it so I just go with it. I'm actually pretty easy to get along with.
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With the premise that I don't need to worry about musicians etc. I'd prefer a full band that can really rock out when it needs too. Along the lines of the E Street band, Silver Bullet Band, Tom Petty, etc.. Rod Stewart had at least 17 musicians when I saw him a couple years back.
More practically I can cover some good Tom Petty, Mick Jagger, Bob Seger, Steve Earle and Mellencamp occasionally along with others.
I was approached last year about joining a No Doubt tribute band but was not interested. There was a good Pink Floyd tribute band in the area a while back which definitely would have interested me.
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I remember reading once that the conversion rate math worked better at 48khz over 44.1 and I don't recall the details. It's something I should know but I don't keep up the way I used to. I've been sticking with that more or less for quite a few years now. I wouldn't want my live project files to be any larger.
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Just keep your eye out for idiots to keep your safety record intact, and we're good.
However, I still feel that people who text while driving should be drawn and quartered
I'll do my best for sure! There are a lot of bikers out there who've grown old with plenty of years and miles over me, life is always a crap shoot.
As far as the covid-19 thing I'm keeping an eye out for any further headlines about Wisconsin. If I don't see any, it'll be the "news" I'd expected. It's actually not far from here but I'm not able to get there because we've got grand-kids for the weekend due to parents that are in need of a break!
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As a guy who's been riding for most of my life in lots of places with lots of people I could write a book on the crap I've seen out there. I've had the helmet discussion/argument ad nauseam with folks that likely have a lot more real world experience in the matter than most here. I don't see this as the right place for it and I'll just leave it at that.
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It's like a guy I knew who drove a motorcycle and refused to wear a helmet. He said it was totally his decision about whether he wanted to wear a helmet or not, and didn't affect anyone else. I said okay, that was fine with me - as long as he signed a document saying that my health insurance rates wouldn't go up because of him being hospitalized for his stupidity.
That guy has been me for 45 years East, West, North and South, perhaps you can explain how a helmet is going to help if a car rams me at 80mph? I suppose it makes people who don't ride feel better?
And BTW, I'm planning my ride to Wisconsin right now!
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I haven't used that feature in years probably but I actually did use it the other day within Digital Performer. I was looping to figure out the notes in a sax solo and when I was done I went to the notation tab and printed those midi notes out. Up until she met me my wife was essentially a sight reader only and this is a part she's working out for the EWI 5000. I gave her the print out and, of course, she quickly pointed out where I'd gotten a couple of the notes wrong!
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For many years I used financial software to track my income/expenses. The last program I was using was Quicken for Mac. Then a while back they suddenly decided they were going to the subscription model and I decided it was an expense I didn't necessarily need. I started a spreadsheet with the fairly ubiquitous Excel program and it's grown into something I'm pretty proud of.
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With the exception of bars and casinos, our state will be reopened albeit with a few hard to enforce restrictions on capacity and so forth this Friday. 77 of our 99 counties were allowed to reopen May 1st. There was never a "shelter in place" order here.
As of today there are 22 C-19 inpatient cases at the U of I Hospitals and Clinics, down from a peak in the mid 30's with 161 total to date.
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Retired.......I'm so looking forward to that soon!
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For my current project of building backing tracks for live gigs it's definitely a la carte, I don't want resources going to anything that isn't essential. I took time yesterday to explore the DP amp/effect sims a little. I liked the Custom '59 best and also added the "Tube Wailer" to my live guitar track on a couple songs. Automation makes it easy to engage and minipulate the "dials" where necessary and increasing my signal level slightly on lead guitar sections can also be nice. Each setup is custom tailored to individual songs but I like to start simple with a base setup. Theoretically my whole guitar signal will be a hands off affair; wireless into interface, through DP channel and out to amp. The need or desire to have the emulations is that I'm using a Roland keyboard amp where I also have keys and acoustic guitar, don't want a second amp just for electric.
When I can ever get back to my own recording projects I'll definitely be trying the channel strip approach.
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That really sounds great and I'm looking forward to seeing some of that!
There was a time when I had three keyboards, a rackmount synth and extenal gear all connected through DP/midi at gigs. The instrument definitions sure were helpful when I was setting all that up!
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As a guy who has actually taken pots apart to clean out the wipers and such I doubt you'll get the results you want by just spraying them. May provide some short term relief but soon enough you'll want for a better fix.
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Something I miss are instrument definition files, with Sonar I believe they were .ins perhaps, on Mac there were midnam/middev files (except for Logic which did it different as I recall) where the patch names in your synth would show up rather than just numbers when you were making patch selections within your DAW. There were a lot of them available for a lot of different keyboards, there was a Mac program called Cherry Picker (I believe it was) where you could create/modify your own. The files themselves were some type of HTML variation perhaps.
Now it's been a while but it seems to me that all went away with the advent of Midi over USB. I vaguely remember that I was able to use those definitions with keyboards that were connected via 5 pin DIN through a midi interface but the definitions were a no-go when the keyboard was connected to the computer directly via USB. It bothered me at the time and I thought it was a step backwards. Maybe it's not even relevant in todays world. As I look at how I'm currently putting together my sequences I wouldn't mind having it but I don't see it being as essential as I used to believe it was.
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I remember building a computer midi interface from a Radio Electronics magazine article project that I used in my DOS PC, sadly it was soon over for that thing when Windows came along but midi was revolutionary then and I'm glad to see it still is.
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That's great news and no one is more qualified, congratulations!
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We had dinner and a couple drinks at a bar and grill tonight, had to ride over to a town in the next county to do it but it was a great day to get out on the bike and ride anyway.
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FWIW...was at a Shania Twain concert many years ago with the sound people, and saw the setup: two slaved computers running DP (one main, one backup). The band used a lot of Line 6 stuff, PODs and Variaxes. All the program changes, control settings, everything was programmed. Not one footswitch was hit all night. Of course, the set couldn't deviate at all from what was programmed, but the constraint that added was offset by the freedom of the performers not having to worry about the tech, so they could just play.
Yes I find that stuff fascinating, I switched to macs and DP after reading some articles in Keyboard by a couple guys doing the Madonna, Micheal Jackson and some other big tours.
I don't recall that I ever knew about the Gibson guitar with hex outputs. I've given thought to the Line 6 Variax line a few times but have kept from leaping, most my guitars don't get played enough already. I bought a Gibson with the MinETune a few years back at Gearfest and have since decided I could have done fine without it!
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But if your performance is sequenced, MIDI+amp sims is amazing. Forget about foot pedals, MIDI will increase the distortion drive or whatever without you having to think about it...just play!
I really enjoy discussing this stuff and am always interested in what others are doing at live shows. Our act is covering well known pop/rock songs, adult oriented stuff that can fill seats at public places. So overall our arrangements don't tend to vary from what's on the record but we do mix it up a little with some medleys and intros here and there. There are a few things I like to be more flexible with and I'm still thinking about how I might deal with some of those. The tracks must remain an enhancement and not a neccessity.
I've played in bands forever and have used my DP system with groups before but it's a bit different now that we're just a duo; there's no sound guy, we're not using in-ears and our overall volume is much lower. Initially I was keeping it all acoustic with my Takamine EF341SC and then later the Taylor T5 I bought at Gearfest but my wife holds down a solid rhythm on the keys so more recently I began taking my Tele as well which makes it easier on me doing leads and the upper register inversions and so forth. I'm nearly always playing a clean tone and can go along time without needing to alter my guitar sound much. That's what makes me think I can pull this off without adding much slag to the system. At the same time though my imagination leaps ahead and I begin to think about a lot of things I might be able to do!
OK, the Corona Virus Isn't Going Away. Now What?
in Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage
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The talking head media means nothing to me, The TV (and the government for that matter) talks at me, rarely to me. Most headlines I see are the equivalent of "Trump ran over my dog". Frankly I wonder how the vast majority of those people are capable of putting their underwear on with the front facing forward, assuming they do.
We weren't exactly sure what we might find when we rode over to Savanna, Ill today but if there were any closures or stay at home orders they sure didn't apply to bikers. The streets were lined up and down with bikes, bars were all open, booze was flowing, bands were rocking and nary a law enforcement official in sight. We had a fun time! I'm sure you won't see any news reports on that.