bfields

The Casio PX-560 has 88 keys, pitch & mod wheels on the side, but still isn't especially wide, at 52". So it's possible to make them a lot more compact than most do.

Hm, somebody that's better than me at stats could crunch the numbers, but no, actually, I suspect the error bars are pretty tight there (assuming random sampling). My memory is that the way this works, the absolute size of the sample tends to matter more than the ratio of sample size to population size. (It's the "assuming random sampling" part where things are more likely to go wrong.)

There's 8 billion people in the world. There's an ocean of artists out there that are excellent and have large followings and that I've never heard of. The thing that jumps out at me when I look at that list is that I know too many of them, not that I know too few.... I find it sort of hard to believe that anyone who made a real effort to look for the best 10 albums of all time would include *nine* that I've already heard. People want to argue about stuff they already have opinions on, I guess.

I got my Behringer X18 in part because I thought the 18x18 USB interface would be handy for live band recordings. But in practice, time is always tight, and I rarely get around to setting up a laptop. It occurred to me that I'm already hooking up a computer to my mixer every time, in the form of a wireless router--why couldn't it do this job? It took a few days to figure out how, but I hacked something together, and it ran successfully and captured a few hours of audio at a show Saturday night. Show night, the only steps required were to run a USB cable from the mixer to the router and plug in a USB drive. As soon as the router detects both of those things, it starts recording automatically. It produces data at about 3.5MB/second. I don't think that's too fast for your average flash drive these days? That comes out to about 12GB an hour. I formatted the drive with ext4 because I was worried about hitting VFAT's 4GB filesize limit. You could modify the script to break up output into smaller chunks instead. But, it's probably very specific to my hardware. You've got to reflash your router to OpenWrt, install some other software, then manually copy some scripts into place, and probably do some other configuration I've forgotten. And although it worked fine Saturday night, it aborted after only 8 minutes at a Friday night rehearsal, and I haven't yet figured out why. So, all in all, it's just a fragile hack for now. Still, maybe it's useful to someone else. And if it proves to be reliable, it should be doable to package this all up in a more convenient form: https://github.com/bfields/openwrt-recording

Maybe this is already obvious and you've already done it, but: what made a difference to me, besides buying a separate set of cables and pedals, was labelling all the at-home cables and tying them all to my at-home stand. So when I plug everything back in, each cable is already hanging right below the spot where it plugs in.

100% of my gigs are in places with no stairs and if anything an oversupply of nearby parking. But, also, as a hobbyist, the "gigs", as far as I'm concerned, are mainly a way to give direction to the practice. It's the playing with friends part that I like, and that's always in somebody's basement. Back when I had a bulky 55-pound RD500, I did that once. It involved an extra pair of hands and a certain amount of worry about their walls. Twenty years later I swapped it for something half the weight and started playing a lot more. I should have done it earlier!

I remember the first laptop I bought was in 1999, a Sony 505tr to help me write my dissertation.... I'd listen to music while I worked, and wow was that thing noisy. I felt like I could hear every hard drive seek through the headphones. Audio and video playback is a core function of laptops these days in a way it was only just starting to be then, and nobody would accept that kind of flaw any more. The built-in audio on every laptop I've had since has been great. It may not be "professional" in the sense that it doesn't have some features you might want, but if all you need is a single unbalanced stereo output--I've never noticed any serious problems. (To answer the original question--one Zoom recorder, an x18 mixer, and a Scarlett 2i2 that I need to pass along to someone else, as I never use it. And I think my Zoom b3 effect pedal also does USB audio. Uh, and I think any android devices can work as USB interfaces these days? Alas, none of my keyboards support USB audio. The x18 is the only one I actually use as an audio interface.)

Since the 80s, I think? Seems like the obvious comparison, and weird not to mention it, even if only to explain how Spirio is fundamentally different somehow, if it is....

I only ever get paid a small amount of cash--hard to imagine the IRS in practice caring much about the few dollars of taxes involved--but I'm a stickler and the schedule C is easy, so I always do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Those days I spent a lot of time at the house of my friend across the street who had MTV, and I got a lethal dose of that song. My first reaction was: a feature-length documentary on that one sappy earworm? So I skimmed through it. Then I caught some of the actual recording scenes. It's a lot of fun seeing them all together, working out parts, redoing takes, troubleshooting problems. Planning to give it another go from the start.

The closest thing I've done was just a couple student productions without real scores and such (music was either entirely the band's, or just chord charts, so more like playing in a cover band). But I really enjoyed it. We got to be part of a bigger team and put on a fun show. I'd definitely ask some more questions. Keyboard players are sometimes hard to find, and a high school production may be glad for whoever they can get, who knows. Good pit musicians are amazing, but that may not be what their next best alternative is.

Since rule changes in 2020, I don't believe that any US airline gives emotional support animals any special treatment. https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-department-transportation-announces-final-rule-traveling-air-service-animals Yes, you can bring animals as carry on if they're small enough, but that's nothing to do with whether they're claimed as emotional support animals or not. Also, service animals that have training to help a person with a disability *do* still get special treatment, but my understanding is that that's a much harder standard to meet, compared to getting a letter stating your pet is an emotional support animal. (And I expected the same to be true for rental housing, but googling suggests that US landlords may actually be required to make exceptions to no pet policies for emotional support animals?)

In fact, I've always seen "ra" and "me" used for the flatted second and third, which makes for an odd melody in this case.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfège#Major

Looks like a reasonable stand. I think I'd find that pretty awkward, though, to carry around and to fit into a car.

I wonder if there's any potential for heat buildup if you attach the "external" power supply to the case. Seems to me one of the advantages of an external power supply could be that heat dissipates more easily.