whatz on your mind

Bought a Roland Handsonic 10 a few months ago and it was worth every penny! The unit is like a sectioned drum practice pad and each section makes a different drum sound. The unit has many drums and many kits from djembe and conga to 808 kits and tabula. To buy the many ethnic drums included in this kit in acoustic format would cost way more than the $700 I paid out the door at Guitar Center. The unit has midi hookups and each tone and kit can be altered to create a slightly different sound. My friend Earley played the unit for a few times and he enjoyed it so much he purchased one of his own. The unit takes a little time to get used to where each sound is located and hitting it in the proper sequence similar to the SIMON game. Earley recently put down a nice rhythm on the unit and after a couple hours of sweat perfecting the beats and myself adding some synth/keys we got a song Oriental Breeze. Although not as easy as sequencing drum patterns or loops from your computer this unit gives the real feel to your beats and with all the ethnic drums included is great for meditation or relaxing tracks…. hope you enjoy the tracks!

Studio One is Music recording and editing software from PreSonus who manufacture many interfaces for recording Music from your instruments to computer. My Friend Earley and I both bought different interfaces but both came with Studio One Artist software. My Firestudio Mobile adapter and his Firestudio Project adapters work well. Probably the biggest problem is that most laptops and many desktop computers no longer have firewire ports. Blame the computer manufacturers for not having at least one on every computer especially when they only cost $50 or less for them to add!! They instead are moving to USB3 which cannot daisy chain and really doesn’t have the abilities of firewire and although it may be faster than firewire 400 is NOT faster than firewire 800!! But the adapters work well. Studio One software also works well once you get it installed and THAT is the BIG PROBLEM … registering and installing the software is almost a 3 hour process .. and although they have online instructions they often DO NOT WORK … Their support group did help me through an upgrade to Studio One Pro but that took 45 minutes and even he had trouble walking me through the steps since some of his ideas did not work either. If you are buying the interfaces which come with the free artist version then going through the process is worthwhile since it does work to record your instruments very well.. The interfaces work better that all but the most expensive Pro tool ones from Avid or digidesign who really do not even support any older models .. I have an M-box and they have not even put downloads of drivers for this so you can use it with vista, windows 7 or snow leopard. But to buy this for use with other interfaces or upgrade to the Pro version is too time consuming …. Unfortunately most music recording software  is like this with 25 character keys to enter … numerous downloads of the software (most really have almost none of it on the disks you buy instead expect you to download it) and upgrade fixes! I do recommend the interfaces with the free software which works well but time consuming installation should be fixed if PreSonus really wants to support their products properly.

I have a Gibson CO Classical Guitar which I paid $400 for. This is a really nice smaller and less expensive Gibson guitar. I like to practice scales, slides and blues runs on it since the nylon strings don’t wear my fingers down as fast as steel strings. These guitars were produced in Kalamazoo Michigan from 1961 to 1971. Most classical guitar experts do not consider this a classical guitar but a Folk guitar especially since it was produced during the folk music revolution period. If you would like to see and hear this guitar in action just click here!
These guitars have a spruce top with mahogany back and sides.

Had a wonderful Jam session with Friends Jimmy J., Kathy and Earley last night. Jimmy J. came up with some nice 60′s style chord changes of G to E minor and when we played up to the break in the chord progression all was well but the break that was originally done with just 4 beats on the A chord really did not let the music flow out and then back into the chord progression. By adding another chord to make it A to D and the A to D again (could add Em here too) and doing this over 5 bars the flow became smoother and it also made it easier for all four of us to make the chord transitions together. So if you are having trouble keeping your songs flowing add a couple more beats and maybe another chord or 2 to the break … this may be your solution too!