My very cool new guitar!
Tag Archives: Music
Given to me by my mum, who has been in my thoughts the past few days since her sudden health problems.
Make some noise!
This year I am doing something different. I am resolving to give something up.
I have many interests and hobbies as I suspect most creative types do, I have always been this way as I believe we owe it to ourselves to expand in any way we can. For me it has almost always been via visual challenges, photography, art and design with one notable exception being music, I have played guitar for many years now (I am going to guess around 20).
I am resolving to give up playing guitar this year to give myself more time and energy to focus back on my Photography and design interests, over the past few months I have found for some reason that I am struggling to keep my guitar playing at the level I have reached let alone move it further down the road. I am sure there are many reasons for this but perhaps the most obvious ones being time spent on other hobbies, work and life in general.
So in order to discover how far I can take my other interests I am willing to let go of one that has seen me through thick and thin to get to me this point. I will miss playing, the hardest part will be hearing blues licks and wanting to pick up the guitar and play along.
I do believe though that its time to focus on a couple of core interests and give them the attention they deserve whilst saying thanks and see you around to those that have become stagnant.
Should be a hard but interesting challenge.
I guess they need to get out more since apparently they’ve never heard the rather popular AC/DC tracks. And yes I did update as the dialog suggests. And I guess they are suggesting that AC/DC is not a group I should listen too.
‘Let’s Rock’ event rocked about as much as a Britney come back.
OK so no surprise on the new iTunes and the new nano looks just like the shots everyone has seen and clearly Apple considers the nano the new ‘standard’ iPod. One thing though…they sure are pushing the hell out of the Genius features in the iPod and iTunes. I’ve yet to find an application that can actually recommend music based on what you are listening too and actually get it right other than hitting the same genre or bpm.
However, the features to the iPod touch are what catches my interest.
This is probably obvious to many out there but for those that want an easy way to back up their Amazon purchases in itunes, this is the way I do it.
Yes I know that the Amazon files download to a folder as well, but sometimes we just forget to back up stuff if it’s not right there in our face, and you never know when that internal drive is going to die on you. You simply make a smart playlist that uses the ‘comment contains Amazon’ to select the files…assuming you have not altered the comments in the files this will work.
Playlist would look like this
And when burning them to a disk just use the mp3 option as below
This has worked for me, and should work for others.
As I have mentioned I recently brought an M-Audio Axiom 49 USB Midi Controller, well I have been enjoying it so much that I decided to upgrade my Logic Express 8 to the full Studio version. The Logic application it’s self is not really any different but it does come with a ton of extra sample loops (the full 5 Apple Jam Packs), extra synth plug-ins (some great classic analogs and outstanding sampler) and instrument control strips. However the one thing in the whole suite of tools that has really impressed me way more than I thought it ever would is the MainStage application, this great tool has proven not only to be a good live control box and instrument creator for my keyboard but has replaced my Digitech GNX guitar effects board. The Amp and audio effects are easily on par with the hardware based pedals I have replaced and much more. Although no software solution beats my Bad Horsie 2 Wah pedal!
So the way I have set things up is to create a series of audio patches that I tend to use for my ‘standard’ set of guitar sounds. For example distorted rhythm/lead and a clean rhythm/lead. And due to the outstanding way MainStage works I can use the tap pads on my Axiom 49 keyboard to turn on and off the pedals and change patches. The only problem that remains now is stopping my exploring the endless possibilities of sound creation and use some of them to just play with. What I need to do now is figure out the simplest solution to get my MainStage patch into Logic rather than recording the processed sound into Logic. I have found the list of defaults from MainStage in Logic but have yet to figure out how to get my custom ones to appear.
Thanks to Logic Studio Pro I have now replaced my guitar effects board with a software solution that can be tweaked after recording rather than before and edit the audio easily in Logic to get the recording I was after, because sometimes we all miss the beat a little 
As you may of noticed by now I am a big music fan and just for fun Guitar player. Well I needed to replace my Midi keyboard and after some research and basic requirements I settled on M-Audio’s Axiom 49 . My first requirement was it had to be USB powered because I really didn’t need another power pack hanging from the wall, the 2nd was that it had to work correctly under OS-X 10.5.2 and the last being it had to work easily without hours of configuration in Logic Express 8. This keyboard suited those requirements and more.
I have to say after using it I am blown away by it, the keys feel good and are touch sensitive, the 8 pads on the top right are essentially tap pads and are great for tapping out a drum loop or triggering sound effects. There is also midi assignable sliders and pots, truly everything you’ll ever need in a midi controller (for many anyway I suspect). Everything can easily be assigned or ‘learned’ on Logic and you are up and running in no time. One very nice feature is the playback controls for moving around the application timeline and just hitting the record button to start laying down the track. I look forward to learning keyboard playing with this thing and as a final surprise it turned out Guitar Center has a sale on it until the end of the month reducing the price by around $30 I believe.
