Greg Mein

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!

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!

So today my wife booked a new gig for June 5th, an outdoor show at a popular place outside of our town a short ways. We still have a booking for May 22nd that is not officially canceled and we decided that if the gig is a go we'll do it for free as a show of support for a business that's suffered badly like so many. Restrictions in our state begin loosening up May 1st in 77 of our 99 counties. In the rest (ours included) restrictions have been extended until May 15th. Our state stopped short of a "shelter in place" order and I've continued working all along as an "essential" employee at an "essential" job as part of Mission Systems at a company with huge government/military contracts. My wife has continued her medical practice from home and hasn't been to her office at the university for weeks.

If this all works the way I'm planning I'll not need any footswitches, I've already done some initial testing to verify that I can add automation right to the live thru guitar audio track. I'll jam away as the sequence plays without worrying about any tap dancing and with my wireless unit now inserted I can leave the stage and wander when not singing. In the end we're hoping to have an act that will fit right in at casinos and other places besides bars and pubs, be fun, maximize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses.

On the system I'm using for our live performances I'm managing to keep my track count very low and most will be midi that plays on my Krome keyboard. For live use I want the system running as efficiently as possible, nothing sucks worse than having your system crash while you're playing a tune! It can be a bit of a balancing act because you'd love to add more effects and plugins but you have to always be wary of how much resources you're using. I will add some sparse pre-recorded audio (mostly guitar) tracks on a few tunes and I can go all out while doing the recording but then they need to be bounced down so there are no unnecessary plugins clogging the works. I'm currently using Superior Drummer 3 for my drum tracks as a plugin and I'm not certain yet if I'll want to mix those to audio tracks or if it'll be fine leaving it as a plugin. Now that I believe I'll be running my guitar live through the system there's some more bandwidth I'll need for amp sim/effects but I'll not over indulge in those. At the end of the day this is for background support and my wife and I need to remain the primary focus for an audience.

[video:youtube] My replacement MOTU 828x interface arrived finally last Friday and I dove back into creating the tracks my wife and I will use when we get back to performing. Last night I also installed the Digital Performer 10 upgrade I'd been holding off on. Since to this point I've only had the 828x and a Furman in a 4 space case I decided to throw my Line 6 Relay G90 wireless in as well. That, of course, got me to wondering about running the guitar through the interface and eliminating the Tech 21 FlyRig unit I'd been using. Maintaining setup/teardown simplicity and the bulk level has been an important consideration from the get go and any time I can get the same, or more, functionality from software over hardware it's a win in my book. In addition to articles/videos I remember Craig having mentioned here and there how he was impressed with the guitar oriented software in DP so finally after all this time I took a look at a couple things and yes I believe it's gonna work great for me! Major points for already being included in the software I'm using. When it comes to guitar I generally go for a clean sound but with this setup I'll be able to boost for leads, add some drive/effects for certain song sections and have it all done automatically while the sequence is running. If I don't go too crazy I hope I can pull it off with the thunderbolt gear. Anyone else on a similar path?

Wow, talk about social distancing! I'd always told myself I was going to take some time and look at this, I wasn't even aware there was some other cool underlying technology to it.

It looked to me like Linux could have been a contender to break the Windows monopoly at one point but there must not have been much profit in development for it. I only ever used it a couple times and that was at work where some programs I used were designed for it. As far as for music creation there appeared to be a serious lack of hardware drivers or programs. My impression was that it was more of a do-it-yourself kind of OS.

It's a shame so many things have been cancelled. I wasn't planning on attending this year but have been to it a couple times, it's a great event and made for a great m/c weekend trip to get there and back.

Way back last July I received an email from Ableton about this little web program or course that looked interesting but then I never took the time to have a look at it. I was curious if anyone else had taken a look at it. Perhaps it's a bit elementary for folks here but if it's laid out good it might at least be kind of fun. Learning Synths

Blue Oyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The 'Rona

We used to have AXS as part of DirectTV but now we've switched to YoutubeTV because it's way cheaper. We've got most of the channels we had (I should say watched) before but darn it, not that one.

Perhaps the overall theme for 2020..... [video:youtube]

Me and Julio (goodbye Rosie, Queen of Corona)

Kind of a good question I suppose and how to know? I'd like to think people are not being forced into unsafe situations and acting responsibly but in the end your own safety in any circumstance ultimately falls upon yourself. Yesterday was my wife's birthday and I ordered some flowers and chocolates on-line to be delivered. I assume the florist shop wasn't crowded or unsafe, I sort of envision maybe a couple people working there to fill orders but I certainly don't know. It's probably safe to assume the delivery driver was out alone. I do know that it prevented my need to go shopping at the store which is something I prefer under any circumstances. Anyway when I made the order there was a small disclaimer I'll paraphrase as "due to current circumstances there may be a need to improvise but rest assured the arrangement will be delightful". When I got home the flowers looked great but the chocolates were in the shape of little frogs. I've never seen anything quite like that but they were tasty none the less!

I did indeed, she's a fantastic woman and an incredibly intelligent, talented and personable......person. We're very happy and get along great. We like to joke that I married her for her 1920 Steinway Model O baby grand and she married me for my Harley.

This brings to mind a situation I experienced late last year when a co-worker of mine was more or less forced out of the department. I took over his projects in different areas and one day soon after when I returned to my main "home" area I was treated like a conquering hero, it actually kind of weirded me out as I was heaped upon with praise and gift cards. I wasn't doing anything special or over and above, I was simply doing my job, the same thing he should have been doing! At my house my wife brings home nearly twice the salary I do but then she has post doctorate degrees whereas I'm barely qualified to change a spark plug.

It's the same one I saw people posting on facebook and it didn't do much for me either. I've certainly been fascinated however by what I've seen happen in the last couple months; the run on toilet paper seems to stand out as something no one could have predicted. I'm not overly surprised by the panic and hysteria, after all, a global pandemic ranks right up there with nuclear war or alien landings to scare the shit out of people. I've mostly continued to live my life without a great deal of concern, I go to work every day, order take out and go through drive-ins almost daily and if restaurants could be open I'd be the first person at a table. I'm a bit irritated by all the #StayHome stuff, people seem to have no problem telling me what I should do but I've yet to see anyone tell me what they are doing; are you staying at home, being safe, saving lives, cowering in the corner? I might respond to examples but likely never respond to dictates. The country has taken extraordinary measures and I believe at this point in Podunk IA I'm more likely to get stampeded by a herd of elephants than to contract covid-19. Don't take that to mean I'm not respecting anyone else's safety, feelings, values or whatever. The only people I come in contact with pose as much threat to me as I do to them. What it actually means is that I don't see running and hiding from the flu as a viable long term strategy. I'd be surprised if most of the people who've gotten it were not trying to avoid it also.

Perhaps it's just me since I'm at work with a crappy pair of speakers attached to my laptop but I really can't hear anything you're saying on your videos.

I made contact and, I thought, arrangements but then they left me hanging for a couple days, I attributed it to the weirdness that abounds and I know they were working with limited staff. I did get it mailed out and hope to get my replacement soon. The fee is $99.95 but they charge an extra $27 for return shipping also. I was told that they have refurbished units in stock and as soon as mine arrives they go ahead and send one of those out. There is a two year warranty but mine was purchased February '18 which put me a couple months over. Meanwhile I used my Line 6 KB37 (my records indicate this unit is 11 years old already!) USB interface with a USB SSD to continue my work. I managed to record a guitar track and midi bass track but then had the first "bog down" event I've had in quite some time where DP began complaining things weren't keeping up. A first hand example of the wonders of thunderbolt. It's possible that I could use adapters and plug in the Presonus StudioLive 1642 mixer/interface but that would be more trouble than it's worth for short term use. During the downtime I've been looking at thunderbolt interface options, there are a few and a lot of them are more expensive than I'd imagined. The UAD Apollo 8 went on my wishlist, with that I could turn loose my oldest MBP and retain my UAD plug-ins but with a $2100 price tag that is a big leap! The Presonus Quantum also looked like a nice option but still a $1000 price tag. I looked at eBay for used 828x units, saw a couple and am holding that in the back of my mind as an option to have a backup. In order to stay somewhat productive I spent some time working on the Boss VE-500 vocal unit my wife bought a while back. It was really frustrating trying to use the software until I discovered a firmware update for the box. After that we got a handle on creating some patches she'll be able to use for our performances. I'd actually bought one of these shortly after she did but installing the driver locked my MBP up tight! Boss support had absolutely no idea what to tell me so I sent the unit back and had to revert to a Carbon Copy Cloner backup that was several months old. There was no such problem on my wife's new MBP. Mine has had a lot of other music software and drivers installed over time. I have no idea what the problem was but I can't help but wonder if it had a conflict with the driver for my FA-08 keyboard.

Hopefully people are seeing this..... https://www.theblaze.com/news/la-doctor-hydroxychloroquine-zinc-coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR20u00A9-qQI_0hlFx8wradZhKAit38uISYHCuxC9H-eJGusVFikfP8hSM

Indeed, being born in 1960 the Beatles affected me deeply at a very young age and the Help! era is still my favorite memory of them. The exceptionally good piano teacher I had from the Hollywood Hills added Michelle and Penny Lane to my lessons during my single digit years but the guitar stuff was what really got me man! I've played a number of their songs in different bands over the years but on my own I often find the vocals difficult to reach especially as I'm getting older. At this point there is only one Beatles song on my set list and it's only partial; during our show I move over to the full size keyboard my wife is usually playing and do a medley with a verse/chorus of Let It Be into Beth and then finish out with the Layla outro.

I had it opened up, looked around for any burnt stuff and fiddled with the couple of cables in there. I looked for any type of battery as was a common problem with the midi timepiece units but didn't see one or see any info about that on searches. Without a display or computer comm there's no ability to try firmware updates, master resets or any "high level" troubleshooting and I suspect a power supply issue. This is the same thing I do on a daily basis but without schematics and parts layout I'm not likely to get anywhere on a unit with this kind of part count. I started a tech link at motu yesterday but don't expect to hear back over the weekend. A couple years ago when a firewire port on my 828mk3 died there was a $99 flat fee to send it in and I imagine that's what I'll need to do with this one. I actually bought this one when I sent the other in because it seemed like a good time to start using my MBP with thunderbolt.

Well damn, talk about interfaces I had the weirdest (I actually mean sucky) thing happen yesterday. I finally decided to go ahead and upgrade my Digital Performer to ver. 10. Literally minutes after I'd downloaded it I was setting up to do more work on my backing tracks wondering if I should install the new version or try to get more work done first, I flipped on the motu 828x and......nothing. The LCD screen was backlit but blank, none of the level indicators were lit and the 828 Audio Setup screen didn't pop up on the computer. After verifying it wasn't just a dream sequence I popped it open and looked around but didn't see any obvious problems so it'll have to go to motu for repairs/exchange. So today I've drug out the old Line 6 KB37 so maybe I can try moving forward rather than letting the whole weekend go to waste.

A lot of people, myself included, have never stopped going to work because it simply has to be done. Short of dying or becoming infected I'll continue to put on my big boy pants and do that.