“One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords, and you’re into jazz.” – Lou Reed
Archive for December, 2003
Since I’ve been using my Midiman Radium-61 MIDI controller keyboard exclusively these days, I’ve found a lot of things I with they’d designed better. A week or two ago, I was inches away from just giving up on the thing and buying a different keyboard. So I spent a lot of time reading reviews and specs about every MIDI keyboard I could find. In the end, there was at least one fatal flaw with every one of them – some feature they neglected to include or something they skimped on that an existing user was complaining about.
So I decided to take the time to write up the features of my ideal MIDI controller keyboard. If anyone ever makes one with these specs, I’ll buy it in an instant.
all settings are retained in memory even with power off
61 full-size plastic, semi-weighted keys with nice action (preferably like the Alesis QuadraSynth Plus Piano)
solid (not flimsy) pitch bend and modulation wheels
4 to 12 knobs or sliders – can be programmed to send any MIDI command
4 to 12 buttons – can be programmed to send any MIDI command
2 separate dedicated buttons for program change increment/decrement
input for sustain pedal
input for volume/controller pedal
velocity sensitive with aftertouch
selectable velocity map
interface: USB in/out to PC, MIDI in from another device
power: uses USB bus power or wall wart
price: $200 to $400
I just finished watched the 2nd of the two-part “miniseries” of Battlestar Galactica. This is a brand new one, featuring Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama. It was produced for the SciFi Channel, where it was first presented last week. I really enjoyed both two hour episodes, even though they didn’t really wrap anything up. That was on purpose, of course. Just like with their production of Riverworld, they’re hoping people liked it enough to warrant further episodes, either as a miniseries or a regular series.
Well, it’s done! Last night my band 404 Not Found played our first gig since August. That was a 5 month hiatus from live performance. The event was our CD release party for “Paper Cuts” and it was at the Somewhere Else Bar & Grill in Denver. I liked the venue, although the sound system fell short of expectations. One of these days we’re going to have to just get our own PA and live sound engineer, I guess. It’s really tough to play these kind of places and get Scott’s voice to be loud enough to be well understood by the audience without causing feedback. We sold a lot of t-shirts and CDs – more than at any other gig ever. My cousin Darlene and her husband Dean even came to the show. Sadly, though, not a single one of my friends showed up. Beth says it’s because none of my friends are really Friday night party people. They were probably all at home taking care of their kids or watching TV.
Yahoo! News – U.S. Says Saddam Held Under Geneva Convention Rules: “‘He is being treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions and provided protections of a prisoner of war,’ McClellan told reporters.” This contrasts to the situation with the Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, who are not being held in accordance with the Geneva conventions. It’s nice to see we’re abiding by international covenant in at least one case.
Yahoo! News – Saddam Hussein Captured Alive Near Tikrit – Woo hoo! Finally, some good news regarding the Iraq occupation. Hopefully this will signal the beginning of the end of the resistance movement, and the Iraqis can now put together some sort of new government. Now if they could just find Osama, who had 100 times more to do with September 11…
Yahoo! News – Pentagon Audit Finds Halliburton Overcharged – What a surprise! A large corporation with tight connections to the Commander-in-Chief wins a huge no-bid contract with the DoD and then fraudulently overcharges? There surely must be some sort of misunderstanding here. That sort of behavior would be flat out un-American!
Yahoo! News – Report: Qaeda Shifting to Iraq from Afghanistan – I thought we destroyed both these organizations – al Qaeda and the Taliban. And yet Osama bin Laden is still funding the Afghan resistance to the tune of $3,000,000 per month?
Holiday Snowglobe – I think you’ll like this. Grab and shake. Or just watch the little people.
In other news, I got rejected by the 2nd blood bank in a week. They both said they could accept my blood donation since my doctor said it was OK, and then when I went in to donate, they both said, “Oh wait, we were wrong. You have to wait 6 weeks.”
Oh, and one other little thing. “Paper Cuts” was officially released today. It went on sale at www.cdbaby.com. “Paper Cuts” is 404 Not Found‘s new CD. We’ve been writing this material for over year and a half and worked on recording and mixing the CD for a half year. And now the end product is done and ready to entertain you.