1939 Ensemble

It's saturday night, my GPS isn't working but I am off to see a show! After some roundabout trekking through Portland suburbia I found The Know, a small club on Alberta st. Playing was a two person group called 1939 Ensemble consisting of Jose Medeles (of The Breeders and AKA the guy I bought my drum set from ;) ) and David Coniglio.

Here is a collection of clips from their show. It was pretty awesome. They also played with Old Light but I didn't stay long enough to see them play. Stupid getting up early for work and its negative effects on how late I can stay up any other time. :P

Canada EH!?

So... I can be random sometimes...
About a month ago on a Friday morning I saw a Facebook post that Todd Sucherman (who is one of my favorite drummers) was doing a clinic in Langley, BC on Saturday evening. Sooo.. Of course I want to go. Only problem was (besides being less than a day away to pack/plan) it was about 6 hours away.

I didn't have any time I could take from work so Saturday morning me, my mom and my sister (the poor people I suckered into going with me) left for Canada.
I had never been there so I had a ton of fun navigating (especially since I found out data roaming rates were $16 /MB so I couldn't use my Google Maps on my phone O_o). I had fortunately printed off backup "hardcopy" maps of the places we were going.

The drum clinic was in Langley but everyone else was more interested in visiting Vancouver. So we stayed in a hotel in downtown Vancouver. I found a cheesy tourist's map that was my new best friend for navigating the strange land of Vancouver, BC.

The clinic in Langley was awesome! Todd put on a great show and I wish it would have lasted all night. I even got to have him sign a drum head for me and I got a picture with him *fan girl flail* ...

HEY! I allowed to fan girl flail once and a while :P
*shifty eyes*

After the clinic was over it was back to Vancouver for a short night of sleep. In the morning we did some shopping around Vancouver and headed back home.

Overall, we spent more time driving and traveling than we actually spent in Canada but it was worth it *grin*.

EMP (round 2) and Music School stuff from May 2010

I am a little late posting this stuff but back in May I went up to Seattle to visit Randi. We had a ton of fun. We hung out for a while after hours at a Seattle music school she teaches at. I fail at every other instrument on the planet but they had an old beat up Chinese drumset in the corner that has seen one to many 4 year-olds beating on it and hasn't seen a drum key in ages (although it needed more than tuning and we didn't have anything to work on it with lol). The kick drum sounded a bit like GWAAUUUNNNGGGG when you hit it so I ended up sticking my sweatshirt in front of it. Helped a little.. We spent a lot of time just goofing around. She played piano and guitar and I screwed around on the drums. Here is a short clip. I make some silly faces heh. lol.


We also made another trip to the Seattle Experience Music Project. It was a monday morning which was nice because we got to spend a lot of time playing in their music rooms without waiting in lines. I love the DW drum kit they have.


This trip was a lot of fun. We did a lot of goofing off, shopping, playing music, and just hanging out. Don't get to do all those things at once very often.

Rube Goldberg Drum Recording Setup

So I thought it would be kind of neat to be able to record my playing of the drums without the need to have someone actually film or to have to actually record the sound out of the amp with the other room noises. I didn't want to have to obtain any new equipment but I didn't realize how many steps it would require to make it work.

So this is what I roughly ended up with.

The camera being used is a 'bullet' camera that I had from my Zero-G trip a couple years ago. It is velcro-strapped to a mic boom that I had from a Rockband game video spoof that I made a month or so ago. The feed from the camera goes to my mini-dv camera for recording and as a make-shift video monitor along with the remote camera's battery pack and the LANC for triggering the camera. The camera on the boom has a microphone but the only thing I use it for is to help sync the video when I edit later.

The audio comes directly from the Roland TD-6. I am taking both the line out as well as the MIDI into Garageband on the Macbook. I ended up just using the line out audio but having the MIDI data is useful. The music I was playing along with came through an iPod going through the mix-in on the TD-6 which made its way through with the rest of the audio signals to the laptop.

Putting everything together requires just about as many steps..

Exporting the audio out of Garageband to be usable in my video editing software requires converting the .m4a to something else (I used mp3 this time). The video is more complicated. My camera does not support USB/Firewire/etc. output so I had to go a more 'analog' route. Going from the camera to the computer I used a USB tv-tuner and a collection of various adapters and splitters to manually capture the data off the dv tape.

Randi spinning poi at the EMP

Random short clip of Randi spinning poi whilst we wait outside the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

Faith and the Muse with Soriah

Cool concert, I was there!


(In fact I took the show pics in the link).
http://musicartery.com/showreviews/FATM.php
Go forth and read about it.

^ Soriah (in the pic) is awesomeness.

Massive update of updateyness

Soo I have been kinda slacking off on putting stuff in this thing lately..
A couple weeks ago as part of a work thing I had the opportunity to participate in the regional FIRST robotics competition. I was a volunteer in their "machine shop" area tending to the needs of the ~61 participating highschool robotics teams. It was pretty straight forward.

Something broken: fix it.
Something that doesn't work right: figure it out.

For the most part it was pretty fast paced. Every kind of job from cutting off pieces of wood, plastic, aluminum to figuring out how to make shaft A fit into bearing B with very limited equipment. Fab work, machining, and a very small amount of welding. Our "shop" was basically a few tables with some fab equipment and a motorcycle trailer with a Grizzly mill/drill and a lathe along with a MIG/TIG welder.


It was pretty cool seeing all this happen. People running around everywhere, lots of enthusiasm for the science and technology end of things and just an all around fun (and tiring) time. Wish they had this program when I was in school.

I am working on a video of my footage from this event. I *plan* to get it done soon. But we'll see.


This last weekend was a ton of fun. I visited my friend Randi up in Seattle. During our travels we ended up at the Experience Music Project / Sci-Fi museum. Two things for me to nerd out about. Music and Star Trek.. The sci-fi end of it was pretty cool but I ended up doing most of my nerding at the EMP end of things. Upstairs they had soundproof studios where you could play instruments for 10 minutes at a time (as to not hold up lines forever) and I tried my hand at some real drums. I love my electronic drums to pieces but there is something just downright cool about a real acoustic kit. My friend Randi (who I did my best not to blow her eardrums out with the drum noise) has the nifty talent of being able to play just about any musical instrument she picks up and we spent 10 minutes goofing around. She flip flopped between guitar and bass and I did my best not to mess her up too bad and played the drums. It was pretty awesome. She worked around my in-experience and for a short period of time we sounded not half bad. I wish I had been able to record our goofing around.

If you have never been the the EMP I *highly* recommend it. It is a blast no matter how much (or little) musical ability you have. I have more to post but that's it for now!

Practice, practice, practice...

Well it has been a little less than a month since I decided to try the insanity that is learning the drums. It is a ton of fun. I'm not real good and I usually look pretty dorky but whatever, at least I seem to be improving. With the continued help of my friend Dave I have been learning some of the basics and practicing them daily. One of my biggest challenges seems to be getting my left leg to not effect what my other limbs are doing. Things go much smoother before I try adding all 4 limbs together. :)



BTW: Ask the dog what she thinks of all this...
















I thought I was my worst critic... :D

Roland Drums

I got my new drum stuff today *happy dance*
*runs off to play*

Real drums!

Ok.. so.. it was only a matter of time right?! Rockband addiction -> drum addiction?
Sounds good to me.

So I have decided to give drumming a shot. With the aid of my friend Dave and his ultra shinny drums (sorry.. drooling...) he has been attempting to teach me the basics of drumming. I have only had about a single days worth of real training on these crazy things so I have a loooooong way to go but here is a video of my first shot at it. I am looking away because I would mess up every time I looked at the camera. (although I did manage to mess up plenty of times when I didn't have an excuse ) :)


edit: I know the video has issues playing... Appearently it is a known issue and Blogger is "working on the problem" so when the link isn't being stupid I will take this note down. It works sometimes.

UPDATE: As of 2/24 the videos seem to be working again. Give it a shot.

I have no musical background whatsoever besides about a month and a half of playing drums on Guitar Hero so there is a lot for me to learn. I am pretty good at blindingly following directions on a tv screen with little colored dots floating by but have never tried just playing along with something. Plus, my left foot has always just been allowed to be lazy while my right foot does all the work in GH, now there is this funny thing called a hi-hat pedal for my foot to deal with. Just some of the fun things of starting to learn something new.

I am having a lot of fun though so I am looking forward to learning more and improving as time goes on.

New Trick

Teaching the dog all my bad habits...

If she starts forgetting her chores and leaving things around the house we're in trouble.


oh.. wait..

nevermind. (btw.. 50th post! woo!)

How to fix a Guitar Hero Drum Controller

So, much to my surprise the problem was as expected. A bad wire. Last night I noticed I was missing a ton of red notes (I don't suck *THAT* bad :P) and thought it would either be one of two things: a loose/broken wire or a broken transducer.

I pulled the thing off the stand and disconnected the cymbal pads, Wiimote, and anything else that would come off. Fortunately, the screws that hold this thing together are simple Phillips head and besides there being a zillion of them there was nothing else holding the case together (don't forget the screws under the little adhesive no-skid pads on the feet )(the feet you would use if you wanted to play it on a table instead of a stand). The pic above shows the rather sparse interior of the drum controller.

This is where I found the answer to my questions... As soon as I started inspecting the wiring to the red pad the wire just fell apart. Easy enough to fix. Kind of a pain to get to. To remove the pad from the rest of the assembly, take the 4 screws holding the red (or whatever color pad your trying to fix) housing onto the frame out. Now you have the pad free (or dangling by the wire if it is still attached at all) but now you have to get the silicon pad off the hard plastic case. There are three "one way" grommets (I guess you could call them) holding the two pieces together. I used a small screwdriver to gently shove the edges of the wedge shaped plug/grommet/thingies through the hard plastic holes. Patience is important here. After you have the pad free it is a pretty simple setup. Two wires. From the factory there is some goop covering the solder contacts and the wires to try and keep them secure. I used a pair of pliers to pull up (do it gently!) the old wire from the goop. I then de-soldered the little remaining wire-stub.

All you need to do now is solder some new wire to the sensor. take note of the original wire positions to maintain polarity (I didn't check to see if polarity was an issue but I try to put things back the way I found them). I made my wire pigtail fairly long compared to the old one. It gave me more room to work with when putting it back together. Fish the new wire pigtail back through the hole in the red pad case and then back through the hole in the drum stand. Then solder the new wires to the ones left inside the case (alternatively, you could replace the whole length of wire and put the connector on the other end and plug it back into the board but that is kind of overkill.)

I waited to push the rubber grommets in the drum pad back in until after I tested it to make sure my fix worked. (I didn't want to have to pry them out again). I carefully flipped the whole thing over (notice in the pic the pad still isn't attached to the red hard plastic case), I plugged the cymbals and wiimote back in, and did a quick functional test to make sure everything is working.

Once I was happy with the results I unplugged everything again and flipped it back over and started putting the pad and case back together. I used a little bit of heat shrink tubing to pretty up my splices. It goes together the same way it comes apart so I won't discuss that process.

Fix seems to work great! No more missed notes due to bad wires. (Just missed notes due to bad playing ;) )

They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To..

Soo.. *cough* I broke one of my Guitar Hero drums... I do admit that I am fairly hard on them but come on! It is supposed to handle the abuse of kids/adults (and me) of all ages and I have only had them about 2 months (ok.. 2 months of me abusing them = probably a year of normal use).

Too late tonight but I will be doing some surgery on them sometime when I get off work tomorrow. I am hoping it is just a loose wire. It is the red (snare) pad though which seems to get the most abuse. I am not sure where to find spare parts for it if I broke it. O_o

*hoping for loose wire...*

new drum pedal sensor mount

This is my latest setup for the Guitar Hero drum kit mod. I made an aluminum bracket to hold a small drum practice pad with the transducer mounted behind it. I added some foam to reduce vibration. It just clamps to the kick pedal and seems to work pretty well. (need to do something about that rusty chain sometime *eh*).

Guitar Hero drum pedal mod

So lets see here.... One plastic Guitar Hero drum pedal + one used real drum pedal + screwdriver and a lack of remorse for voiding warranties = FUN!

People who know me have noticed my obsession as of late with Guitar Hero / Rockband... (probably ended up that way due to my lack of *real* musical talent). Drums being my favorite mode of annoying people, I got to be rather annoyed with the stock pedal that came with the drum set. It isn't too bad but it isn't very responsive when you get really complicated stuff thrown at you. Plus, I can't seem to leave stuff alone. I have to find some excuse to take things apart and "fix" them.. *cough*..

Anyways, this isn't a new idea (in fact I saw someone else do this on the internet and pretty much went "cool.. I could do that..") I found a used in-expensive pedal at a cool music shop Portland today and took a screwdriver to my old pedal and swiped the transducer out of it. That is pretty much it. To determine how well it was going to work I grabbed a couple things I had lying around plus some electrical tape and zip ties (yeah I know, real professional) and stuck the transducer up to something I could hit. I played a few songs with it and with the exception of being rather loud and thumpy due to how I have it mounted it works really well. I plan on coming up with a more elegant (and quieter) mounting for it. Probably as soon as I get tired of hearing it in its current setup.

The dog is rather confused by it *shurg*. That would be her "WTF?" look.