Korg M1 Piano Sample Pack (in SFZ)

Hey, guess what? I actually defended my thesis! That means its 99% of the way done. Just a few small changes as per request of the professors and then any typos the grad school can catch.

I realized I'd been holding out on both you readers. Sorry. I had a great project I did probably a year ago and never shared. Why? It was so simple I didn't even think about it as a project.

I'd been on a kick collecting free samples and found the shootouts on the Bedroom Producers Blog (BPB). These had some nice comments on each sample, though they didn't really provide any definitive better or worse comparisons. One of the samples was from the Korg M1 piano. The BPB comment was that this synth piano sound was the de-facto standard for house music in the 90's. Intrigued and uncertain what house music really was I downloaded them. Unfortunately these samples weren't in a format I could use in LinuxSampler (LS). However there were wavs there. Isn't SFZ the magical format that can turn any sound files into a sample pack? Why yes it is.

House it being a loan?

I love puns.

So with the new "big boy" job we were trying to decide whether to 1. move to a bigger apartment for a year or more,  2. Stay where we are a few months until we can buy a house.

You see in our modern spend before you earn society you can buy a house for as little as 5% down. There are ways to buy them for 0% down I hear. Anyway our credit union (America First) offers as low as 5% down, but for anything under 20% down (which includes 5% to save you the math :P) you must pay morgage insurance until 20% is paid and the closing costs are higher, as well as the payments being bigger (since you have to pay 95% of the cost rather than 80% in the same 30 years).

Well, we like money and would like to end up with a house and the most money possible (who doesn't?). So I made this matlab/octave script. It calculates the total amount paid in the end for your house including your rent for the time it took you to save up the down payment. Look after the break.

Rocky Roads

Logan city: WHY?

I'm all for routine maintenance and keeping nice roads, but really, do you need to leave so much loose gravel on the shoulders?

I've been riding my bike to work every day (haven't driven once!) and its been great. Then Monday I found that they'd repaved Park Avenue which is about half of the 4 mile commute for me. Thats ok I thought, though I missed the smooth black asphalt. They have to add asperities (rocky rough surface) to make it safe in wet conditions. But it wasn't long before I ran into large piles of loose rock on the sides of the road. Where the car wheels leave tracks is ok, but there are long channels of 2"-3" deep loose gravel. This is not safe for cyclists. I have nearly washed out a few times now and there are always rocks being flipped up by passing vehicles.

Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, right? Well I've tried several different routes to minimize my time on Park Avenue but there are several other roads in the same condition. I just hope this is temporary until they take around the street sweeper or something.

Seriously?

Problems with the Xrun

So... Once again I'm not working on my thesis. I should be. I always should be.

But I had some time to record a bit last weekend and it got discouraging. I'm on  a time schedule (got to finish before either the babies wake up from napping and/or my wife gets home) and every take has the annoying pops of Xruns.

All Mixed Up

It has been a long time, hasn't it? Glad nobody missed me!
My thesis remains incomplete. How much longer? I can't be sure.

Well on the music front things have been good. My wife spoils me to the nth degree so for Christmas I got:

-1 Presonus Firebox
-1 AT 3035 Condenser Mic
-1 pair AKG M80 Headphones
-1 Mic stand and cable
-2 Firewire cables

and so I now have a studio!

TouchMIDI

So... I'm back. Still working on the thesis. Or not working on it perhaps.

My wonderful wife bought me a keyboard last Christmas and birthday (she wouldn't let me play the upper two octaves until after my birthday ;). My criterion was 88 weighted keys. We bought the Casio CDP100 at Guitar Center for $275 on black Friday after a bit of shopping around. I planned just to use it as a midi controller for fluidsynth samples of grand pianos so I didn't really care about whatever built in voices it had. I wanted a real feeling keyboard so the weighted keys were a must. And it actually has pretty decent samples on its own. I love it. But I also love playing with synthesizers.

Rakarrack GUI

I volunteered this summer to work on a GUI for the Rakarrack Project. Then I had twins. And school started. And I'm trying to finish a thesis. And graduate someday.

Their needs are a better gui. They currently put ALL the parameters in front of you and it looks fairly cluttered and well.... not slick enough. Users like eye candy. I do at least. So the idea is make it fancier looking without being as fancy functioning. As an engineer I should be totally against it, but I like the project and its an interesting challenge. Problem is I'm too busy to work on it.

But this weekend I decided to hang all my responsibilities aside and work on it. I like