April 2006
Saturday, April 29
World Champs, and Pearl Drums sponsorship - WOOHOO.
That's my boy, above the "2006" on the WGI banner, holding up Number One:
Thursday, April 27
SKYLIGHTS!
Tuesday, April 25
The Gordon model 5 mic preamp arrived yesterday, personally delivered by the builder, Grant Carpenter.
I plan to test drive it with a couple other people's setups, but today, I did the basics of powering it up and tweaking the controls. I ran an AudioTechnica stereo mic (quite serviceable, not outstanding) into the Gordon, then into the Edirol field recorder, set up on my front porch. I also tested it with a Sennheiser shotgun mic.
Listening under headphones, the presence and realism are absolutely stunning. I'll be using it for vocals, acoustic instruments, drum overheads, and probably everything else.
The Gordon would be amazing for field work; there are battery packs available, and I'd have no problem wrapping it in plastic and packing it into a cave, of course with utmost care. I tried to get cave interior ambience last fall, and the technology at hand wouldn't cut it - far too noisy at the necessarily high gain settings.
I'm looking forward to everyday use, and imagine I will become totally spoiled.
For those interested, here's a favorable review (is there any other kind any more?).
Sunday, April 23
Drove to Dayton, Ohio for the Winter Guard International 2006 World Championships.
Music City Mystique took the Gold. WOOT!
Tuesday, April 18
The Eventide 8000 is a badass M@#*& F@*&@#.
I plugged a synth straight into it, despite the synth's unbalanced output, as the 8000 accepts 1/4 inch plugs. I disabled the synth's onboard effects. After consulting the 8000 manual for basic navigation, I started rolling through some patches.
There is not much point in trying to describe much of what I heard in a little over an hour, so I will plan to post soundfiles in the future...suffice to say, there is potential for untold hours of rich creative spark.
For some entertainment, here is a demo that an enthusiast put together, showcasing the 8000's basic capabilities. I came upon it inadvertantly one evening, on a German audio dealer site. Eventide soon got wind of it, and put it on their site two weeks later.
Tuesday, Apr 11
New music and sound machines.
The Access Virus TI keyboard, and the Eventide H8000.
The H8000 will sort of have to wait, as I don't yet have much of a way to hook it up and fully explore it.
The Virus is an amazing new frontier.
Tonight, I did a test. I set the Roland Handsonic percussion synth to "soft MIDI thru", then connected its MIDI out into the Virus. I set the Virus sync to external MIDI clock, and using the Virus' extremely handy search and audition functions, I called up a nice arpeggiator patch.
On the Handsonic, I selected a factory loop sequence, hit start, then held a chord on the Virus keyboard - and a perfectly sync'd virtual analog synth arpeggiator pattern ticked right along with the African percussion sequence.
HOOOOO BABY - WE ARE HAVING SOME FUN NOW...
Sunday, April 2
Welcome back, daylight saving time.
Usually I have some trouble with "losing" an hour, but since my schedule is rather loose at this time, I don't anticipate any difficulty.
A pleasant day yesterday, with a road trip for the evening to Chattanooga to watch Music City Mystique. They performed in a regional meet that happened primarily for scholastic groups to compete. MCM kicked ass as usual, except for a brief and slightly humorous stumble.
I'm glad Chattanooga is an easy road trip - there and back for an afternoon and evening, no sweat. The WGI finals in Dayton, Ohio will be an entirely different story.
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