Progressive Rock Artist seeks Audience
A few months ago I decided to spiff up the lighting in my office/studio. I happen to enjoy working in a cave with moody, ambient light, so a 24 foot amber light rope strategically draped behind the shelves works out just fine:
On my desk to the left I still use a regular desk lamp for a brighter intense spot illumination.
Until recently, the two front runners in the virtual piano race were TruePianos and Modartt PianoTeq. TruePianos was slightly more affordable and was generally thought to be more playable and realistic, while Pianoteq, although an impressively flexible and powerful piano model, suffered from artificial overtones. Since Version 3 of Pianoteq, this is no longer true, in my opinion. Pianoteq has seen some impressive upgrades and options and is definitely worth the additional expense, and these days I use Pianoteq in my projects most of the time I need a piano track.
However, I’ve kept TruePianos installed. It’s still a very inspirational virtual instrument.
[Note: Since moving web hosts, I have misplaced or lost the original color schemes that were made available here. Sorry! Instead, here are some SONAR 6.2 color schemes in .clr format.]
To celebrate completion and publishing of our latest track (Playing With The Big Boys), I am also releasing a couple of SONAR 6 color schemes that I have been using for some time:
Stickman Alternate.clr.txt
Prodigal ColorClips.clr.txt
Click on the image to see a larger view.
If you want to try the color schemes out, you should right-click on the link and select ‘Save Target as..’ or ‘Save Link as…’ and save the file on your local disk. Then rename to remove the “.txt” extension.
Then, in the SONAR 6.2 Color Options dialog, choose to import the scheme. (Remember to save the scheme with an appropriate name, because the name of the file is not retained in the options dialog.)
When I turned on the Korg M1 yesterday, the LCD window displayed “#24” which was followed by “Init Program – Low Battery”. Yes, the thing I’d been dreading for a number of years had finally happened: the internal patch backup battery had died, which meant that all the voice and combi patches had been lost from the synthesizer’s memory. And just when I need the “Melange” patch for my current project. Still, not bad for an instrument purchased in, what, 1989?
This is a scary thing for older synthesizers because not all of them are designed to have their internal batteries replaced. The Korg M1 is better off than most, in that the battery can be replaced, and it is of a common type: the ubiquitous 3 volt CR2032 Lithium “coin”.
First up, here’s what you can’t do: You can’t magically get the M1’s voice memory back. It has really gone. Even if you replace the battery, all the means is that the M1 will remember new patches that you program in. Even the “factory default” voice bank has been wiped. So if you don’t already have some kind of backup/restore method in place, there’s nothing you can do after replacing the battery to get your programs back. More on this subject below.
What you’ll need:
1 CR2032 3v Lithium replacement battery (about $5 from Radioshack – link)
1 medium Phillips head screwdriver
1. Clear off the kitchen table and cover it with a blanket or something to give a firm but gentle work space. You’ll need to work on the underside of the M1, so in order to protect the joystick from damage, build up a support on the right side of the table on which you can rest the top left edge of the synth. I used four DVD cases to make a roughly brick shaped support under the blanket.
2. Disconnect the M1 from power, MIDI, and audio, and eject any cards from the memory card slot. Carefully carry the synth over to the table and place it upside down with the front (keyboard) edge towards you. You should rest the right side on the support to protect the joystick underneath from pressure.
3. You need to remove the base plate from the synth. You do this by unscrewing it – basically every screw you can see except for the ones holding the rubber feet in position. You do not need to remove the rubber feet from the base plate! (There’s about 14 of these screws – I forgot to do an exact count.)
4. Slide the base plate towards you before lifting it off and putting it to one side. Now would be a good time to wipe dust off the inside surface of the base plate – on my instrument it had quite a coating of dust.
5. The battery socket is located on the underside (actually, the component side) of the large circuit board. You will need to unscrew this from the body of the synth in order to turn it over. On my instrument there were 5 short screws spaced around the periphery of the board, but there appeared to be holes for others, so check it over carefully.
6. You will also need to remove two longer screws from the interior of the circuit board. These attach the board to the memory card socket.
7. I found it impossible to flip the board over until I had detached the 4-wire connector on the left side, shown here. It’s a tricky type of connector if you haven’t encountered it before, so take care and gently pull up on the wires to detach it.
8. Now lift up the board, pivoting it on its back edge.
9. The battery socket is actually located behind the ribbon cable. There should be enough room for you to reach in with your fingers and remove the battery.
10. It will pop out quite easily if you push gently down on the top of the battery while simultaneously lifting up the edge with your fingernail. This is easier to do than to explain! Take note of which way up the battery was, and replace it with a new one.
11. After you have put the new battery in place, simply reverse the steps to re-assemble the instrument. Don’t forget to re-attach that 4-wire connector!
Once you have put the M1 back together and put it back on your keyboard stand, you may be dismayed to realize that all 100 or so voice programs say “Init Program” and sound the same (a nasty piano sample with a square VCA envelope). The instrument does not magically restore the “factory default” programs. You will have to get these from another source.
Just for once, I had “done the right thing” a couple of years ago, and backed up the M1’s program and combi memory banks using SoundQuest’s MidiQuest software SysEx librarian. Thankfully, I could restore all my custom patches – including “Melange”. (All I had to remember was to adjust the M1’s global settings and unprotect the memory, enable sysex, and put the instrument into “dump” mode. Yes this took a few minutes of panic to figure out why the restore wasn’t working.)
Things for you to try:
You can get the original factory sounds here:
http://www.vintagesynth.com/patches/m1patch.zip
Inside the ZIP file are several .SYX files. I think you can use MIDI-OX to load these. See: http://www.midiox.com/
There is a lot of good information here:
http://www.hitsquad.com/vocal/about2837.html
I hope this information helps someone else out there.
Every September the buzz about Cakewalk’s latest upcoming version of their flagship Digital Audio Workstation application, SONAR, gets stronger. Lately they’ve been on a 12 month release cycle (which is pretty aggressive if you ask me). SONAR 6 was released last week and I, having pre-ordered my upgrade copy as per usual, received the package promptly. So far I think it is pretty cool. Like SONAR 5 before it, there are some major features that warrant the version number change, but I probably won’t make full use of them. There is, however, enough in the box to make me happy and (hopefully) keep me productive.
To celebrate, I’m making some Track Icons available. “Track Icons” are a feature added in SONAR 5 but in response to a flurry of activity on the SONAR Wiki, I re-created track icons for some of my instruments to celebrate the arrival of Version 6, and I am making them available here. (Just right-click and save each image into the Sonar track icons folder.)
Here’s the pattern: It all starts when someone (Tony!) asks for a CD of my music. So I start compiling the tracks that I want to include, and I hear something in one of the pieces that was supposed to be finished and completed, and think, “I’ll just open up the project in SONAR and tidy up that glitch.” Well, the first thing that happens is that the project is from SONAR 2.0 and I have to migrate it to SONAR 5. No biggy… but there are a few features in SONAR 5 that really make things easier – like track folders and effect bussing and improved effect plug-ins.
Then I realize how much I like actually playing this music instead of just listening to it. So I break out one of my guitars – these days usually the Carvin HF2 – and mute an instrument in the Track View, and play along. Then I make a mistake, or play something different for a change, and suddenly I really want to re-record the entire track. Because I can play it better now. Or this newer instrument sounds better. Or the timing was off a little, before. Or I have a better microphone now.
Which leads me to my current project, a piece called “Strange But True”. The excuse for firing up the studio on this one was that SONAR 5 included a plug in called “V-Vocal” which provides sophisticated pitch correction for monophonic audio sources – such as vocal tracks. I can usually sing in tune but being a perfectionist, I am never completely happy with the results. I think of V-Vocal as spackle – applied judiciously it is pretty seamless and improves an acceptable performance to one where it can sound like the vocalist was just “on” during the session. I like it.
If only I could stop there. But no… As I listened to the mix, it seemed to me that the Ovation steel string guitar was out of time in places. So I break out the Ovation and put some new strings on it, tune up, and start to play along.
Then I have an idea – instead of just tracking the built-in piezo acoustic pickup in the guitar, why don’t I simultaneously record the natural acoustic sound using my new MXR condenser microphone? (Yowser… I say “new” but I see I got it more than a year ago…). Seemed like a good idea.
Oh boy. I didn’t know what I was missing. Or to put it another way, I did know but I didn’t care. Well, now I care. The acoustic sound is way better than the internal pickup. It has “more wood” in it. Also more finger noise, but hey, that’s part of the performance.
Several weeks pass as I regrow callouses on my fingers, and practice playing the notes cleanly.
To cut a long story short, starting with the much improved acoustic tone, I’ve re-recorded all the guitar parts. I’ve also replaced all the synthesizer parts with sounds from my Roland VK-8 virtual tone-wheel organ, because it sounds so good. Much less artificial and, well, electronic. It’s not a real Hammond organ but it’s as close as I’m ever going to get. I didn’t realize how suited it was to this particular piece of music, but once I started playing around and trying things out, it was a no-brainer.
Now I’m working on re-doing the drums and percussion. Real tamborine, real shaker, real doumbek.
I know this doesn’t get me any closer to finishing the other various songs and bits of music I have in my head, but this is too much fun. The final result is going to be awesome. And this time, it’ll really be finished. No, I mean it.
Why are you looking at me like that?
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