LightSnake USB MIDI Cable

Soundtech Profssional Audio has produced a quick way to hook that older midi device into your pc with ease. Its called the Lightsnake USB midi and its pretty handy to have around.

The LightSnake connects any standard MIDI instrument or controller directly into a computer's USB port. The cable's MIDI I/O allows your computer to control and communicate with a range of musical gear. It also has a feature called "live when lit" where the cable ends glow when properly connected.....Sweet.

They are around 80 bucks and are 10 feet long. They also come with a Sony Media Software Demo DVD that is compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.2 and later.

The Hang Drum ? Very cool indeed

I was sifting through Youtube a minute ago and saw something so cool I decided to post about it right now. I saw this video of a guy with this big metal biscuit looking thing sitting on his lap. He started tapping on it with his fingers and it sounded very similar to the steel drums (or piano drums) you hear in the Caribbean. It is called a Hang drum (pronounced hung) and they are way cool. Right off the bat I wanted one. I looked at some more videos and it just made me want one even more. So its off to eBay, I'm sure there will be some on there......nope. There was one but it had 2 days left and was already up to 3025 dollars! I cant believe an instrument Ive never heard of costs this much.
After doing more searching I found no websites selling them and only a few that even talked about them. I also found that the instrument had only been around since 2000. Its not every day a completely new instrument is created (at least one that is not electronic). The hang made its debut at Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2001. Its design is attributed to the instrument builders Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer. Supposedly their workshop in Berne is where every Hang in existence was made. They do not ship instruments directly nor do they sell them through any retailers. (makes ya want one even more now huh?)

Anyway I thought this was a very cool instrument but ill be waiting until others start producing the knockoffs I guess because I don't see me going to Berne or dropping 5000-8000 dollars on eBay for one in the near future.

Oh yeah This guy has a good idea. He made one out of a propane tank for 27 dollars, not even close to the same sound but fun none the less. Here is a video of his "Hank Drum"

IBook G4

Well I took the plunge last week. We all know I'm a PC guy who knows nothing about fruit but I got a good deal on an IBook G4 laptop last week that I couldn't pass up. I got it home and turned it on and it booted into the very unfamiliar world of OSX. I found myself with that same feeling you get when you cant find your car at the mall, just kinda staring at the screen with my face lit up all blue from the monitor.

Where is start ? WHERE IS START ?? ..... OK, no start. Click this thing.....OK Where is the Internet? ....WHERE IS THE INTERNET ?? My night went on and on like this until 1 in the morning. After a while I started picking up on the whole layout of things and its not as hard as I once thought. I did manage to get Garage Band open and play with it for a while. I must say I was impressed to see that no matter what midi controller I plugged into this thing it never asked for a driver.

Garage Band was pretty fun, especially for something that comes stock on a laptop. ( I assume it came stock, it is used so maybe it doesn't, I don't know? ) Anyway I am not planning on leaving Ableton Live anyway soon.

All in all this little trendy laptop is fun if for know other reason than it's something new to play with. I like the size (it's the 12 in screen) and of course I love the little glowing Apple on the lid, I mean cmon...IT'S A GLOWING APPLE.

Anyway, I'm not planning on switching my PC in the studio to a mac anyway soon but for 200 dollars I figure I couldn't go wrong. btw, its a powerpc 1.33MHz processor with 784 ram and running an OS called Tiger..........ROARRRRR!!

Circuit bending my Casio SK1

I was over at a friend's house last year (whaddup Shanthi) and he showed me something that I thought was really cool. He had an old Speak and Spell. Remember those things...." A...E...I...O....U......" even if you are too young to remember them I'm sure you have heard Dane Cook talk about them, If not just Google it. Anyway, this was not just any old Speak and Spell. It had extra knobs and switches all over it and had an Atari paddle controller hooked to it? ? ?

I stared at it for and while and then I just had to ask. What the heck is that? He got all excited and turned it on to show me what it did. "this is my circuit bent Speak and Spell" he said and turned it on and started hitting the buttons. At first it sounded just like a regular one pronouncing the letters of the alphabet just like normal but then.......(drum roll).......then he switched one of the toggles on it and started turning the Atari paddle and it started making some crazy, demonic sounds right out of a Crystal method or Prodigy album. I was blown away, I played with it for 30 minutes or so.

He said his wife found a guy on the Internet that circuit bends toys and little keyboards and she bought it from him. At the time I had never even heard of circuit bending but I bet you can guess the topic I googled when I got home. I spent night after night reading on the topic. I found that the instruments/toys of choice for a lot of people to "bend" are Casio keyboards. The one that is considered the Holy Grail of them to bend was the Casio SK1 sampling keyboard from the early 1990's. I was stoked to read that because, guess what yours truly had in his basement? That's right, I had a Casio SK1 from way back in the day. (brb, my bagel bites are done)

Alrighty, as I was saying I had an SK1. I had to build up my nerve to rip this thing open and start soldering on the board especially since I had done almost no soldering before. I got on eBay to make sure I could get another one if i fried this one. I found that there were a lot of them on eBay but The prices were pretty high and they all had titles like "ready to bend" in them so there is obviously a lot of people doing this. I tossed caution to the wind and dug in.

I found many sites about circuit bending and one dedicated to bending the SK1 with exact directions on how this guy did his. It gave step by step instructions so I pretty much followed them to the t (or tee, or tea ???)

I worked on it for about a week, a little here and a little there and got it all wired up. I added toggles and pots at a lot of bend points and got it making some pretty crazy sounds. The only thing left I have to do is make a case for it now. Here is a pic of a stock SK1. Here is a totally tricked out bent one. Pretty cool huh?

I'll post a pic and some links to some of the sounds when I'm done with it. It's a lot of fun and you can start with any 2 dollar toy from a thrift store and work your way up from there. Give it a try.

Repaired my Electribe for $1.40 and some Research.

If you read last night's post then you know I was not a happy man when I saw smoke coming from my Korg Electribe ER1 last night. I spent an hour researching to find out anything I could about the problem. I found KorgForums.com (awesome site BTW) and got some answers just by reading older posts.

I found someone who had a Korg Triton that had popped and quit powering up. They found it to be a very inexpensive capacitor that had blown and had someone repair it at a local shop for a little over a hundred dollars.

I do not have a hundred dollars, I have 3 kids instead. I opened up the unit and the first thing I saw was a blown capacitor. Then I went to youtube and found some videos of people soldering ,then I went to some other sites to do the research on capacitors and replacing them. The next day I took the board with the blown cap on it to a local electronics store and showed the tech at the bench. He was nice enough to show me how to do the repair and I bought a new cap for 1 dollar and 40 cents.

It took about an hour for me to fix it but I'm sure it would have taken him 3 min. Anyway $1.40 beats 100 or so and I learned something in the process. I'm sure it is not always this easy but in this case it was so before you toss out an expensive piece of hardware just because it wont come on and smoke rolled out of it get on the web and do some research, It might be worth your time.

HELP! I think I toasted my Korg ER-1 MK2

Last night I went to plug in my ER1 and I noticed that it did not light up in its normal fashion. A couple of seconds later (like 10) I heard a pop and then saw smoke coming from around the jack where the dc9v adapter plugs in. I immediately unplugged it and shouted an array of words that I will refrain from typing in this post.

I called one of my friends from work who has had an electribe repaired around here before. He said it costs him around 80 bucks. I paid 150 for this at a pawn shop so I'm not sure I want to spend that much on it.

SOOOOOO..... I took it apart like any wanna be McGiver would do.

Inside I can see that the capacitor is popped. It is swollen on top and the plastic coating is ripped down the side. I traced it on the board right to where the adapter plugs in so it is the first cap after power from the adapter.

I am going to try and replace the capacitor if I can find one with the same values, It seems easy to get to and only has 2 solder points. My question is has anyone done any repairs like this before and if so do you have any suggestions before I jump in the water. My other question is do you think that is all that I will need to replaced or is the rest of it fried too. I wonder if since it was the first thing in line after power if it acted like a fuse and stopped the problem there. I also wonder why it popped in the first place?

Anyway any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Ima go cry now.

EZ-poly (1 more freeby)

Ok before I scare my audience away I promise I am not going to turn this blog into a once a week link to freeware. It has been busy around here because of the holidays and the last 3 posts or so (including this one) have all been links to free stuff. SOOOOO, Ill get back into the swing of things again ASAP and try to mix it up a little. This is not to say that when I find some crazy-coo software I wont let you all know about it, It just means that's not all I will do on the blog.

I ran across this little gem of a VST tonight. I played with it for 30 min. Its called EZ-poly.

It has an 8 step analog sequencer which syncs to your hosts tempo, or can be stepped with each new note. This little guy delivers full-blown leads, weird special FX or expressive pads. Its from a company called Krakli and you can get it and many other free vst's here in the free synths category. Check it out, you wont be disappointed.

The Levelator .... and oh yeah, Happy New Year

First post of Oh-Eight...Here we go

This next piece of software (which is also totally free, even for commercial use) is awesome. It's called The Levelator and it can make your podcast or speech or whatever....well....well it will just sound better.

It's software that runs on Windows, OS X , or Linux (Ubuntu) that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next. Now you are probably thinking I mean a compressor, nope. It's not a compressor. It's not a normalizer.It's not a limiter. It does contain all three of these though. It seems to do more than most of these tools with one drag and drop of a file. I'm sure you could do a better job by using all of the above mentioned tools one by one in a couple of hours but this is seriously "drag and drop" it does the rest and fast.

Have you ever recorded a conversation, interview or podcast and ended up with different sound levels because of variations in peoples voices or distance to mic, etc. Well this little tool will fix them in seconds.

Anyway, don't take my word for it. Try the Levelator yourself for free. Let us know what you think.