Back to the Egg:

That's the Paul McCartney album I've been listening to. I'm finding my own sound, and it is interesting because I used to think my sound was just the collection of junk that I used to record with. That's no longer true.

I've still got all the same instruments. They all have their own sound but where's mine? I always thought that I should play the guitar through all the effect pedals because I had them, and they are there. I discovered the headphone jack built into my guitar. It has an overdrive setting. I can use that most of the time, and forget all the stomp boxes. I have so many choices.

The thing with guitar is making yourself conform to the fret board. I think my guitar is set up properly. I don't have any issues with it musically. There are some rough spots in the construction. Some people try to fix all that, but for what it cost, I can learn to live with it. If I live long enough to learn how to play this guitar, maybe I would consider getting a nicer one, but for now I have this one.

 

I've been keeping journals since I was about 15. For some reason, my mind exploded about that time. At first it was a good thing, being bright and ambitious. But I think I was confused at that age about what I really wanted in life. Maybe I would have been better off going to a trade school, but I went to UGA instead. I did well for the first 2 years, and then I started losing touch with the reason I went there. It was a gradual thing at first but by the end of the 3rd year, I felt like I was in the wrong school and I dropped out for a while. I went on a Carribean cruise and that was like a reset for me. I lasted a short time more and the whole exercise seemed like meaningless struggles to me. I became a professional student. I made over $50,000 in one attempt at finishing a degree, but it also eventually became an irrellevant chore. 

 The Sun has been shining on me this week. 

Again with the afternoon rain showers. I like it except the high humidity and proclivity for insects. This is the deep south in August, so you pretty much know what to expect. I think I've had enough sun for a while as my wounds heal from fierce bugs that lay in wait outside. Only 2 of the cats we have, well 3 of the cats we hve want to be outside. The rest of them never even think about it, but I left the door open one night and  had 6 cats wander outside. They weren't curious enough when I started closing the door.

I'm moving my diary here because it is easier to read. I've been working with the synth rack that I call my Rack of Spam. I am involved in some issues setting the midi instrument number on some of the ones that I have. I can mostly play them independently, but the confounded things overlap and won't behave logically. No pun intended.

It's been a hard slog, but we did it. I mean I did. Nobody else helped me. I accomplished 3 things: I set all the MIDI in numbers on my rack's synthesizers. There are some issues with it. Technical support is right on it. They said they could rush it through in about two months. Updates follow.

I discovered that some of my older computers have some life in them as sequencers. If that's all they have to do, maybe there is enough CPU in there to do some song processing. It's like having your legs kicked out from under you when your hardware fails. There's only so much you can do but it's worth the effort to keep going. I wish everybody could get along and not cause so much stress and grief in the world. All you need is cash to keep things going and make your enemies stop sabotage and their reprehensible hatred.

But I digress. The sun has been out enough to catch some rays and it is rejuvanative to get the radiation and just cook for a few minutes. 20 minutes, maybe a half hour. If you get burnt though, it will ruin the whole thing, so stick to the limits of about 10-30 minutes, even if it is cloudy, those rays are still beating down from the sky.

I'm just afraid of insects now. Diet Mountain Dew, European. Room temperature. That will keep you from sucking down those cold ones. When that appeal is gone,  there you have it. No matter where you go, there you are.

Chatbot Weather

Breaking down the ORB and smaller parcels.

Rain soaked days and dark clouds overhead have kept me focused on my system for using AI to let a more advanced chatbot teach more simple models so that good information makes its way down to the smaller bots. It was accomplished by changing the format of the chat log file in microrb.class and then having a chat. This produced straight code that can be copy and pasted into the younger bot.

microrb is ORB without the graphical user interface. It just appears in the terminal. It has the database that learns from your chat. There is also a program called mic that is just the scripting language. There is no database or data mining. Only EARL script technically.
The database is very compact. 

 Redux Here There and Everywhere

This blog has been neglected for a long time. It will probably be neglected again at a future time. This is probably as good a place as any to start my "Captain's Log."

Captains Log:

It feels like things are starting over in many ways today. I will talk here about what is going on with me, I feel like I have some music to make, but waiting for the right mood to start working on it in earnest. There are things to do around the complex today, and I have chores that must be accomplished. But my ideas are flowing and I feel a good atmosphere for creating.

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The Behringer rocks!

 Okay, well this is actually a picture of the Akai Professional MINIAK virtual MiniMoog that I play the Model D with. It has a good keyboard, and they sound good together. I have just begun to explore. Of course it is tempting to put a Moog on every song but I resist the temptation most of the time.

Someone gave me a Moog Prodigy many years ago because it had some broken keys, and they thought it was broken internally. I replaced the keyboard and it has been a lot of fun to play. The Prodigy is a simple 2-Oscillator synth and it definitely sounds like a Moog but the Behringer isn't a bonafide Moog either and having that 3rd Oscillator is great. It also has overdrive which is brilliant. It gives the synth some meat. If you follow my music you'll be hearing more of it later.

Behringer Model D evaluation

 We’re testing a MiniMoog boutique synth that just sits on the end of my Launchkey midi controller. It sounds righteous. Much better build quality than my Moog Prodigy. 

However, I'm starting to understand the great value of the Moog Prodigy. It has some hidden features, and some design choices that lend to the great oscillators and filters. It's a great companion to the Model D, and my prodigy has the CV jacks on the back so can take advantage of the MIDI to cv converter in the Behringer instrument. All around great value to me and my style of music if you can call it music.

I call it music, and I'm looking forward to a great day's novel writing ahead.

Distributed Digital Audio Recording

This is the first distributed music recording setup I’ve seen. The computer on the left (Dell XPS 13), with the 3 screens is the “tape deck” and the “conductor of the music.” The computer on the right (mac mini) converts my keyboard on the far left into MIDI signals and plays them on the mac, so they can be recorded on the “tape deck.”  I can do things like playing a track using Sam’s rack of spam with no plugging or unplugging of wires. That’s the take away from it I guess. My mixer converts the audio from the mac and rack into digital streams that I am recording on the “tape deck.” In some ways, this is very similar in function to the Fairlight computers that Kate Bush and Thomas Dolby used in the 1980’s to record their successful record albums. They used computers that cost $100,000 in 1980. My computers are far more advanced, because they are from the 21st century, and my system is modular, so that there are almost limitless possibilities for me to use as my “sound pallet” to paint my primordial “folk art” portraits of what my mind hears as music. I can literally transfer my feelings as a “song” that is more or less exactly the way I want it to be witnessed by any person who is willing to view my paintings as it were.There will be grapes and cheese plates with much rejoicing.