Goldfinger, piano at Crown Plaza, Hydrogen and practice

Hi everybody,

I've got a version of goldfinger going on--

 Goldfinger (Barry, Bricusse, Newley) by Malcolm81

That's played using the rhodes sound I mentioned in an earlier post.  Also, there is a grand piano at the crown plaza, and I figure I can go play it and get out of there before any one complains and I will be fine.  Problem is I realized a few of things -- my repertoire stinks.  And my leads stink.  And my rhythm stinks.  So, actually I think I will practice along with a drum machine for a while, using Hydrogen, which is actually really easy to use for just setting up some beats to practice over.  Maybe at some point I'll get some bass lines going too, but for now just the drum machine is probably enough to get me thinking more precisely about rhythm.

Anyhow,

Epistrophy

Hi everyone,

I was trying to make a youtube video, I have all the pieces but you know what, I don't know what I'm doing.  But while I was going I managed to get an ok take of epistrophy, so here goes.  It slows down a little bit at some point and I'm not so sure that was intentional, but what the hell.

 Epistrophy (Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke) by Malcolm81

So, I'll see about a youtube video soon too, not quite there yet though.

Anyhow, take it easy,
Malcolm

TASCAM US-100, Google Music

Hi everybody,

I got my TASCAM US-100 in the mail today, it worked no problems out of the box and it there is no hiss (well there is some at higher volume levels, but that's probably distortion from the amp and at a certain level all amps distort when you push them, so I guess that doesn't count.)  So I'm pretty happy so far.

Oh, but of course there won't be a noticeable difference in quality in the recordings that I'm making now, those are just staying in the digital realm throughout the production cycle, it's just better quality listening if you're sitting right here.

So why do you care?  I don't know.

Also I was just putting in google music because I was going to use it on my phone, and I guess they have an artist page as well!  Well isn't that swell, might give it a go someday.

Anyhow,
Have a good one.

Tune Up, python scripting

Hi everybody,

I recorded Miles Davis's "Tune Up"--

 Tune Up (Miles Davis) by Malcolm81

Starting to develop something of  a personal style I think, not really sure though.  I definitely hear the Thelonious influence in everything I do, I think most modern jazz pianist tend to take after Bill Evans more.

Oh to take over the chore of starting the jack server, starting linuxsampler for the piano sound (the maestro piano .GIG file available on their website), and jack-rack for the freeverb affect, and connecting them all up, I started putting it together in a python script.  I am going to do that with a munch of sounds, that will take a big chunk of the pain in the ass out of using linux for audio.  Also, I ordered a TASCAM US-100, it's in the mail.

Any thoughts people?  Feel free to comment, if only to tell me how bad I suck.

Thelonious Monk's "Straight No Chaser", new and improved set up

Hi everybody,

I just recorded Thelonious Monk's straight no chaser, let me know what you think!  Feel free to comment, e-mail, whatever makes you happy.

 Straight No Chaser (Thelonious Monk) by Malcolm81

For those of you unfamiliar with this song, or Thelonious Monk (he's da man), here's a youtube video:



This particular song, "Striaght No Chaser", comes after the introduction by the MC type guy.  The intro is something different, I think it's the last part of "Epistrophy", and that's what the guy who posted it on youtube says it is so that's what we're going with.

Also, this little recording session was super painless, the new interface I wrote about yesterday(and still no new cables, and I didn't mess with any of that software yet, so nothing new to review on that front) lets me just play linux sampler through my keyboard amp, so I can hear what's really going to be on the final tape, and the latency is totally acceptable--I completely acclimated to it pretty quickly, though I remember it was noticeable.  I also tried Qtractor instead of Rosegarden, and it was super easy to do everything, even never having used the program to record anything before.  I ran a couple takes, and then exported to an .ogg file which was ready to upload.

It doesn't have Rosegarden's musical notation editor, if I was doing something with a lot of composed parts I would definitely consider using RG again, but for recording MIDI and audio tracks, and maybe a little mixing and that sort of stuff, then Qtractor seems the easiest.  Still haven't tried Ardour 3 though, that might end up being the whole package.

Anyhow, glad I have a blog to make me record stuff, otherwise I would probably just spend all my music time playing the piano.  Well, actually that might be good.  Hmmmm.

Ok, take it easy.

House Guests are Gone, Behringer UCA - 222 preliminary review

Hi everyone,

My sisters and one of my cousins were visiting last week, so blogging kind of got pushed aside.  But yesterday I recieved my Behringer UCA222 interface, which is exactly the same as there UCA202 interface only with some bundled software, which I haven't tried yet.  The bundled software includes a DAW that says it works with linux, so I will probably give that a try very shortly, but it is going to have some stiff competition with Ardour 3's recent beta release, which includes MIDI functionality.

Behringer UCA222 (and UCA202) preliminary review

Links:
Behringer UCA202
Behringer UCA222

Introduction and Setup

Anyhow, the Behringer UCA222 I picked up for a little over $25 off of amazon seems to be really worth it. On opensuse 11.4 (which I just upgraded since 11.3 was being phased out), you set it up by plugging it in, going to Yast->Hardware->Sound, then you highlight the device that is listed as "USB Audio CODEC", which said it was not configured.  Just click edit to configure, like it says, and you can use the normal configuration to set some volume and issue some test sounds.  Then afterwards, you can select it, and from the "Other" dropbox in the lower left corner, you can select the option to "Set as Primary Card".  Of course different distros will work differently, since YAST is just for opensuse, but hopefully they should be just as easy.

Sound Quality

After closing the sound configuration, it should save the changes, and your computer should  use the new audio interface instead of your old card whenever you do anything.  And there is a noticeable improvement over my old soundcard when listening to MP3's, I am thinking that is probably due to a better headphone amp in the interface than in the internal soundcard.  Additionally, it will be the new "system" entry in the QJackCTL connections windows.

There must be something I am missing in all this, however, because in a perfect world you could plug in a bunch of them and use them as different audio inputs within the context of a JACK session, but anyway this setup suffices for the amount of hardware I have, and constitutes a good basic install.  The device was listed as class compliant, so it is not surprising it works with the generic driver.

In addition to basic sound quality, I think I managed to test the latency a bit by using my digital piano, into a MIDI to USB connector, into the computer, into the linuxsampler program, out into the Behringer UCA-222, and into an amp.  There was some latency, but there was a noticeable improvement over my internal sound card.  This is probably due to the digital to analog converter in the Behringer device being better than the one in the sound card that came with my old, cheap computer.  It still felt a tad sluggish compared to the audio outs on the Yamaha P-85 (the digital piano I use), but it didn't feel nearly as weird as it does without using the interface.  It is hard to quantify latency without precise instruments, but subjectively it felt a tiny bit delayed but not so much so that you'd have to consciously compensate for it.  And I'm not so sure that any of that has anything to do with the device yet, it could be that it corrected nearly all the latency from the digital to analog conversion, and that the  rest of the problem is somewhere else, including my bargain basement MIDI to usb converter.  And for $25, with shipping, any reduction in latency makes it worth the purchase price.

Conclusion (or is it....)

Well I still have not tested audio input on the device, or the bundled software, so I am reluctant to recommend the product as anything other than a low hiss, low latency external sound card for playback.  It performs these duties pretty admirably for the price, and it works pretty easily with Linux, since the generic usb drivers work just fine for it.  Also the only output I have tested is the headphone jack, I can't really speak for the RCA or optical outs.

As a surprise, it came bundled with a program called energyXT (though I think it is something of a light edition,) which runs on linux.  Also it has a bunch of VST instruments on a disk, which I will probably try to see if I can use via wine.  The UCA-202 doesn't come with this stuff, but honestly I would have gotten that version except for the fact that I found the UCA-222 for cheaper.  Ardour 3 is coming with MIDI support, and it looks very promising, and in the mean time you can use Ardour 2 in tandem with Rosegarden or Qtractor.  Ardour 3 also currently has a beta release, which I will be examining shortly.

Anyhow, the majority of this product remains untested, but in all honestly just the improvements in playback would warrant the price, and even then just for the lack of hiss while playing mp3's!  At this price the only reason not to get it is if you already have better equipment.  For those of us putting together a bargain basement music production set-up, this thing looks very promising.

Pure Data hackery

Hi everybody,

Yes I am aware that "hackery" is not a word.  But also I am aware that pure data is really fun!  I have made a kick drum sound that is just filtered white noise, and something that sounds like a bell but it's randomly generated, so it sounds like a different bell every time you hit it!

Hehe.  seriously though, I have to figure out how to make a synthesizer that lets you save the settings, my biggest problem right now is I am just saving the program, but the program loads with all of the controls in their default positions, so that is really not good.  But there is a way to do it.

Anyhow, the difficulty of learning how to synthesize sound is mostly in the fact that I did not have a precise enough idea of how to describe sounds.  And while to some extend this is not necessary to be a musician, understanding something like that can only help.  Not sure I want to go anywhere near jazz fusion though, I think I prefer more agressive synthesizer sounds.  Anyhow, we'll see.

I am not really following this tutorial, but it keeps coming up in my search's and I have probably read through it all by now, but a bit haphazardly.  It's called  Six Simple Synthesizers.