My music keyboard is placed underneath my window, making it a great platform for my cats to walk on. They would constantly step on the keys or buttons, disrupting my Logic sessions by changing MIDI channels or programs. But the last straw was when one of my cats vomited on the keyboard. I decided to take steps to protect it.

After stopping at two hardware stores, I couldn’t find acrylic sheets thick enough to protect the keyboard, but got a referral to Gavrieli Plastics, who were helpful and had what I was looking for. For about $200 I got enough 1/4″ clear acrylic to encase the keyboard, acrylic hinges, Weld-On 16 Solvent Cement, cuts to the dimensions I wanted, and at the last minute, holes drilled in the back of the case for the cables to go in.

I peeled off the masking, assembled the box outside using bookends and books to create the right angles, and applied the adhesive. The adhesive stinks and is toxic so it’s good to do this outdoors, though I’ve seen youtube users touching the stuff. Most tutorials recommend using gloves to protect your hands.

Now that I know more about acrylic, I would have preferred Weld-On 4 and a syringe-type applicator. There are tutorials on youtube on how to weld acrylic, and using a syringe and capillary cementing looks easier and more secure if you have clean cuts in the plastic, which I did. The Weld-On 16 proved to be more difficult to work with because it poured out of the tube quickly, and you can’t wipe off the remaining residue, so I’m left with a few blotches. However, it did the job. I essentially applied the Weld-On like glue on the edges and let it set. The solvent cement actually melts the plastic and fuses it together, which is why it is more similar to welding than to gluing.

The hinges simply welded on as well; I just held them in place for 3 minutes each. You just have to be careful to apply the Weld-On away from the moving parts.

After a few hours, my roommate helped me move it indoors (I was worried the cold night temperatures would expand the plastic and interrupt its setting–some websites recommend welding at temperatures above 60°F), and after 24 hours I installed it with the keyboard.

The case has a hinged top and an open front for playing and accessing controls. Its dimensions are 55.5″ long x 8″ high x 16″ deep for my M-Audio Keystation Pro 88. Because the Acrylic is 1/4″ thick, I had the sides cut 15.75″ deep (instead of 16″) so that they would be flush with the front. The drilled holes for the cables are 2″ wide and 5″ apart centered in the back. I left extra room in the back for cable clearance, and extra height for playing. For the most part, aside from plugging in the cables, because the box is clear, I can play and access all controls without opening the top.

The case does its job nicely. It can handle light objects on top of it near the hinges. If you have irregular shaped objects and not a lot of space, this is one way to get more surface space. It does feel a little fragile – the bottom bended a lot when I put it on an X-style keyboard stand, so I reinforced it with wood underneath. The top bends a little too, because it is only attached by the hinges. If you don’t need it to be hinged, it would be a lot stronger. I might have gone with a thicker type of acrylic, but I didn’t want the thing to be too heavy. At 1/4″ it is pretty light (I can move it around myself).

So far, the cats have stayed away from it.

I know I’m not the only one with this problem: You have this giant MIDI keyboard that doesn’t produce sound on its own, and most of the time, playing it doesn’t do anything. You have to launch logic, or mainstage, or ableton, or digital performer, open a new project, setup a new patch, and then start playing. In music classes, this can be a distraction, and compositionally, it can get in the way between you and your creativity.

I’d keep MainStage open all the time, but there are times when I don’t want a secondary keyboard sound when I’m using Finale or Logic. Ideally, anytime I’m not using Finale or Logic, I’d like MainStage to be running.

I’ve written a simple OS X application in applescript that checks every 30 seconds to see if Logic or Finale are running, and if they’re not, launches MainStage in the background. It takes up very little CPU and can run continuously. Here is the code:

If you’re on mac you can open that code in the script editor by clicking
here. (Thanks to Mac Developer tips for that trick.)

Download
I have created two downloadable versions, a regular version and a silent version that does not appear in the dock.

Note that the silent version is VERY silent, i.e. you do not see it in the dock, nor in the force quit window. A quick way to kill it is to run “killall applet” in the terminal, though this will kill other applescripts you have running as well.

A more precise way to kill it is to run this command in the terminal:
ps -ax | grep -i “keep mainstage”

Get the first process number listed (usually 5 digits) and then run:
kill XXXXX (where XXXXX is the process number)

You can point to either of these apps in your System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items to have them run automatically when you start your computer.

You should set MainStage’s startup action in preferences to “Open Most Recent Concert”. I have a simple concert with just a piano that I keep open.

Included in the download above are instructions on how to make the silent app run in the background again if you modify it.

Known Bugs with 1.0:
For some reason you have to force-quit the non-silent version, quitting alone does not work.

MainStage has an annoying behavior of grabbing focus once a concert has loaded. The script hides MainStage after it does this, but you will still see it briefly pop up when it launches.

The script will not launch Mainstage if you have Logic or Finale running but with no documents open.

The script may launch Mainstage at annoying times (such as shutdowns or software updates). I’d recommend just shutting down with mainstage running, and clicking “don’t save” if it asks.

Camille, the programmer of OSCulator, got his program working with the Velocity-sensitive Guitar Hero drums. Download OSCulator here:
http://www.osculator.net/wp/

I’m still using JunXion to receive MIDI from the Rock Band Drums. Check out my other tutorial for setting JunXion up.

I created a Logic environment with a switch that is triggered by the MIDI note that the Rock Band pedal is sending via JunXion. It transforms the closed high hat to the open one when the pedal is released. I’m also using another transformer to amplify the velocity of the MIDI drums by 30, because the GH drums are pretty quiet otherwise.

Download the Osculator file, the JunXion file, and the Logic file here: gh_rb_setup.zip

Props to Camille for his help, Maeve for me stealing back a loop from her song, and Samantha and Fred Tesche for Dark Matter.

iGog is developed by Wave Machine Labs, the same people who created the flagship drum replacement program, Drumagog. It is $5 and available in the iTunes store and also here.

I downloaded the demo and tried it out. The mic trigger mode is amazing! I made a demo of it on youtube:

It goes crazy when you sing into the mic too, which I forgot to demonstrate. The program saves MIDI, WAVs, and allows you to loop and sequence, so it’s a great program to have on the road or to create realistic sounding drum loops.

The only drawback with this app is that it requires headphones for mic triggering mode, and performance degrades in pad mode if you use speakers, which limits the possibilities for live performance. Mic triggering only works with one instrument at a time – it would be nice if, like Drumagog, it used frequency analysis to trigger multiple samples at once. Still though, for now the sequencing and looping make up for that.

With sequencing, I would like to see an undo function, or a track editor – once you’ve recorded, it’s added permanently, so it’s easy to mess up a good sequence with a bad take. If you’re recording on different instruments, then this is easy to fix later in the MIDI file with a piano roll, but it would be a handy feature on the road.

I always wanted to create a similar drum pad app using the iPhone’s accelerometers. I would have used the three axises to trigger different samples, so that you tap on the top for bass, side for snare, and back for hi hat. I’m pretty sure this app works better than my app ever would – it also works if you tap on the iPhone body. If they could combine accelerometer data into this app though and separate samples per axis, and also allow you to transit MIDI or OSC over WIFI, this would be the ideal drum trigger.

Still though, what an incredible app, and a great value for $5! In-app purchase of free and pay per download drum kits are also available.

Thanks to this post by Camille, developer of OSCulator, I finally got the Wii World Tour drums to work with velocity sensitivity. Unfortunately, as the video demonstrates, they don’t work too well. Either they’re not sensitive enough, or bluetooth doesn’t have enough bandwidth to transfer notes fast enough.

I also talk a little bit about being out in LA for our summer semester program.

Osculator can be downloaded here. It is free to try and costs $39 to buy. It’s a great program, though I’m disappointed with what seems like hardware limits on the drums.

Not really. It still works ok, but it definitely slows down the more apps you install. I actually found that FreeMemory ($.99 in the iTunes store) helps, but I think all it does is load 20 MB into memory forcing other daemons out and then unloads the memory it just loaded, freeing ~20 MB. I tried loading a memory intensive app like google earth and then quitting and it does the same thing (~20 MB memory free, according to FreeMemory). It sucks when you get down to <4 MB free and FreeMemory doesn’t have enough memory to free memory.

Anyway, I tried installing my 145th app today and the iphone didn’t draw a page 10 for me to scroll to, even though it looks like it has room for 18 pages, given the dot spacing. The application store showed the new app as “INSTALLED” but I had no way to run it. When I deleted an app it didn’t show up to replace the last spot, but it did show up after I rebooted the phone.

I’m sick of the phone still taking forever to sync, apps crashing, and not being able to jailbreak, so now that I’ve hit the app display limit I think I’ll start deleting some.

It’s 2012. President Palin has been unable to stop the collapse of the global economy. The catastrophic Ginger virus has the ability to spread between humans and computers alike. It has taken over the world bank databases and it produces devastating isolation among its human hosts.

This was a story idea by Andy Hill, director of the Music Composition for the Screen program at Columbia College Chicago. I realized the video with additional footage from College Humor and YouTube. This was shot on a Canon Vixia HV30 and I did the post production with Photoshop, Swift 3D and Final Cut Express.

Filmmaking is a hobby of mine and I’m enjoying the new HV30. I had to take several portfolio clips down because of copyright issues, so look here in the future for ‘Sweeded’ films my friends and I are making to go with my music.

Modern digital projectors are getting smaller and smaller, and HD digital camcorders are already tiny. 118 years later, when the heck is someone going to combine these two devices again?

If you’re a venture capitalist and want to make this happen, let me know.

There are circuits out there for converting the 5V to the proper data pins and voltage, but I already had a 12V car adapter that would supply them. So instead, the goal was to supply 12V to my car adapter with batteries.

The solution:

2 6V lantern batteries
Alligator Clips
Female Car Adapter
iPhone Car Adapter
Cardboard Box

If you wire the batteries in series you get 12V. It works fine, though the adapter whines pretty loudly which worries me a little. Also, I am aware that batteries encased in paper and cardboard are a slight fire hazard. I’m only going to charge this outside while I’m watching it. (Any advice is appreciated, this isn’t much different than how the iPhone charges in a car is it?)

Thanks to Fred for his help conceptualizing this.

In 2007 I decided to go with a T-mobile Wing instead of an iPhone and for the most part did not regret it. However with the release of the 3G iphone and the app store, I recently made the switch to the iphone 3g. In general I think the iphone 3g blows the wing out of the water, but there are things I miss. After spending a day with the phone, here are my initial thoughts.

User Interface

The iPhone is sleek, sleek, sleek. Windows Mobile is not. Although I’ve customized my Wing with the wonderful slide to unlock program, overclocked it, customized my today screen, and more, the iPhone is still faster and better at navigating. The wing came with a cumbersome 50 MB of program memory and 40 MB of internal storage memory. You had an external storage card of 2 GB, but with program memory limited to 40 MB, you’re hit with lots of limitations. Compare that to the iphone’s 8 GB of shared storage and program internal memory. The iphone staff thought of everything with accelerometers, proximity and light sensors, and multitouch gesture controls that make it a joy to use and faster to get around.

Windows Mobile is extremely customizable with both more options in the OS and any number of applications, registry hacks, daemons, and today screen plugins. However, some simple navigation was impossible. I remember on my Nokia 6800, if I wanted to quickly send an SMS, I just had to open the keyboard, hit the left nav button, and I was writing. On the iPhone, I hit power, unlock, click SMS, and then compose. On the Wing, I hit power, unlock, messaging, text/Multimedia, menu, new, SMS. Plus you have to wait for it to redraw the screen and load. It drives me nuts.

Winner: iPhone

Speed

Along the same note, the iphone 3g has a much faster processor than the wing. So did the original iphone. Because you can only run one application at a time and the applications are quick to launch and exit, it’s much faster getting around. Windows Mobile by default likes to leave applications open; it suffers from memory leaks and other slowdowns that make it painful. Opening and closing the keyboard, which rotates the screen, takes forever, even overclocking it. I have often wanted to throw my wing against the wall–it often would be so slow that it wouldn’t allow me to answer a call even though I pressed ‘answer’. Sometimes you could see what it was trying to do; like the display would come on and you’d know you’d be getting a call, but it would take 10 seconds to ring and you had no hope of answering.

Winner: iPhone