Messing around with Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta
On a whim I’ve started messing around with the current beta of Adobe Lightroom 3. I’ve “developed” some new photos of Herman using the software, and am liking the results I’m getting so far.
The image tweaking capability is quite good, despite the fact that some features are disabled in this beta. I don’t care for the UI much though, coming from only iPhoto, it will take some getting used to.
I like the export options available in Lightroom. Being able to set up a preset that will resize my images and add a watermark automatically is fantastic! Until now I have just been going through a whole procedure of having to drag images out of iPhoto to a desktop folder or external drive, run a shell script that that can resize all the images in a specified directory, or load them up one at a time in GIMP and resize them. I’ve never even bothered with adding a watermark before mainly because of that extra work I would have to do on each image.
The other thing that I’m liking about Lightroom VS iPhoto is that it appears to keep track of all my edits rather than just “overwriting” my images and leaving me only the ability to revert to the original image.
Finally, Lightroom runs on my main Windows workstation, instead of my laptop, which is the main reason I am interested in it.
Enough of the rant, below are a couple of my photos exported from the Lightroom 3 beta. You can see even more on the Herman page.
Herman Profile!
Sleepy Herman.
Are We Posting to Facebook?
As most of my friends know, I don’t really care for Facebook all that much. I have an account sure, but I hardly ever look at it. I prefer the simplicity of Twitter, the control of running my own website, and WordPress. So, hopefully with this new WordPress plugin called Wordbook the few people that I have “friended” on Facebook will be able to better see what I’m up to. We’ll see how it goes…
New Gear: Yamaha MG124cx mixer and Radial J33 Phono Preamp
My new Yamaha MG124cx Mixer!
Front/top of my Radial J33 Phono Preamp
I got some new gear to showcase: a second Yamaha Mixer model MG124cx, and a Radial J33 Phono Preamp.
First I’ll talk about the new mixer. Having been very happy with the MG102c, having a desire to be able to plug in more of my synths simultaneously, combined with the holiday sales at Sam Ash, the MG124cx seemed a somewhat logical step. I would have rather gotten a non ‘X’ model, as I will probably never use the on-board effects, but they didn’t have that model in stock. It’s basically the same great little mixer as my 102c, except it has more inputs and two stereo outputs. The extra output pair is really great because now it allows me to truly separate my microphone input from my synths from within my computer itself. I had an amusing yet headache-inducing time wiring this thing up for the first time. I had to draw up a whole spreadsheet of all my audio I/O’s, from my Two M-Audio Delta 1010’s through to both Yamaha Mixers until it all finally made sense.
Moving onto my new Radial J33 Phono Preamp, this thing is pretty cool. I’d been looking for an easy solution to allow me to ‘archive’ my LP records at a quality I saw fit, like 24bit/96Khz FLAC. So far it works great! I plan to have a dedicated page for the J33 sometime in the future with some example clips.
Below are some more photos of the new mixer and phono preamp.
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- Faders!
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- Faders and buttons!
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- Knobs!
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- Knobs AND buttons!
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- On/Mute and Pre-Fader-Listen buttons.
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- You can see the ‘Group 1-2’ and ‘Stereo’ select buttons here.
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- Lit-up buttons!
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- Input, HPF, ground, unbalanced outputs, and power lights.
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- Balanced XLR outputs and DC power input.
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- My new Yamaha MG124cx Mixer!
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- Front/top of my Radial J33 Phono Preamp
Happy new year!
I’ve been busy enjoying the holidays with family and friends. I expect to update more regularly again soon. I got some cool new gadgets to photograph and post up on the site.
That’s all for now, until then…
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Fantom XR Tricks: Guitar Amp Sim with “Flanger” Using 1 MFX.
This post has been in draft form for a few weeks now, I felt like trying to do something more with it, but now am just posting it as is…
I was working on a new guitar patch for my Fantom XR, generally messing around really, and I was shocked to realize that I can not apply a flanger effect to it after the “Guitar Amp Sim” effect in “Patch Mode”. I knew that I could only use one MFX in patch mode, but I guess I am just used to my old faithful SC-8850 which could do true flanger using it’s ‘chorus dsp’. Now some of you might say “well just use performance mode and do an MFX chain!”, that’s well and good only if you don’t plan on using the other MFX units for something else!
So, I came up with a workaround using Chorus on the Fantom. It’s the same old trick, but it works. Here are the basics of it:
- Setup your Guitar Amp MFX however you like.
- Set your Guitar Amp MFX “Chorus Send Level” to 127
- Set your Chorus to “01:Chorus” and start with the settings below.
- Output Level: 32
- Filter Type: off
- Cutoff Freq: 8000 Hz
- Pre Delay: 0.0 msec
- Rate: 0.10 Hz
- Depth: 54
- Phase: 0 deg
- Feedback: 72
I made a guitar patch based on the “Fingr Tap’n” patch from the SRX-03 Studio SRX board I called “Priest HiWay” using the technique above.
Here is a short clip of me screwing around on my keyboard with it.
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As you can see, it sounds pretty much like a flanger thanks to chorus being a pretty similar effect anyway.
Till next time…
Ho! Ho! Ho! After struggling for a while to fit this all onto one CD, I finished my Christmas MIDI album! I have to say, I had a lot of fun making these recordings. All tracks were recorded using my Roland XV-5080, Fantom XR, and occasionally D-550 or SC-8850 synthesizers. The album is pretty much all orchestral, big band, and jazz music. Merry Christmas to all, and to all: Enjoy the music! 🙂
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A special thanks goes out to Gary of GaryW0001’s MIDI Home Page for letting me use his excellent MIDI’s and post my remixed recordings of them.
Track Listing / MP3 Download Links
- A Most Wonderful Christmas (7:35)
- Good King Wenceslas (2:37)
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (3:32)
- The Bells of Christmas (6:49)
- Christmas in the Round (10:33)
- Jingle Bells Fantasy (4:09)
- The Wonder of Christmas (5:23)
- Santa Songs (1:32)
- Chestnuts Roasting (4:32)
- Now Rock, Ye Merry Gentlemen (2:38)
- Christmas -That Special Time of Year (6:17)
- Santa Baby (3:21)
- A Rhapsody on Christmas Carols (6:40)
- Greensleeves (3:44)
- Snow! A Holiday Medley (4:11)
- White Christmas (3:35)
- Auld Lang Syne (2:40)
Download entire album as .ZIP archive.
- Track length indicated in parenthesis
- All source MIDI’s used with permission by their author or are considered public domain.
- If you enjoyed this album and would like to show your support, feel free to make a donation of any amount to my hosting bills.
Busy working on a new Christmas MIDI album.
I’ve been laying down track after track on my Christmas MIDI album for 2009…
I made one back in 2004 that the family seemed to really like, that was using only my Roland SC-8850. This time around I am using mostly my XV-5080 and Fantom XR, with some D-550 and other synth’s thrown in the mix for some tracks as well. It is shaping up nicely so far. At the time of this writing, I have 12 tracks completed.
Here is one track to give you a taste of what’s coming: Now Rock, Ye Rested Gentlemen, a ‘big band’ take on God Rest, Ye Merry Gentlemen.
This song was re-mixed and recorded using my Roland XV-5080 and Fantom XR with multiple SRX Expansion boards each. Enjoy!
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The source MIDI file was used with permission from Gary of Gary’s MIDI Home Page. So be sure to check out his website for some more great MIDI music.
Borderlands, WoW Raids, Job Hunting, and the holidays have put a damper on my previously frequent updates. I’m still here though, and plan on having some cool new stuff for the upcoming holidays. So check back here soon! 🙂
Moving along, Borderlands is pretty good, despite it’s many flaws, and the co-op play is awesome. It reminds me of co-op Quake in a way. The annual New Years Eve LAN Party I have with my friends ought to be great this year with Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2 (which I should have by then). Now that I’m thinking about it, I think I want to repackage my modded builds of Quake, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D too… We’ll see.
~Andrew
I’ve been doing some back-end changes to the site lately, mostly in the spam removal area. I use the Akismet plugin which catches pretty much everything, and now I also let the spam folder build up a week or two, check for IP’s that tried to post spam more than once, and ban them from accessing the site at all. I will have to add a new HTTP 403 error page with email address or something just in case a legitimate person gets blocked. Though I might do better to just clear the ban list every few months.
I also removed the glossary plugin, it was causing some php warnings and I don’t feel like trying to correct it. I might go back to the idea when a newer suitable plugin is developed.
What else? I am also still working on some new audio material to post and I’ve started work an a Roland Sound Canvas page, I’m just waiting to arrange all my SC’s on a nice table and take some neat pictures first. I suppose I should also take some photos of the inside of my XV-5080 with RAM and it’s new expansion board and my Fantom XR also.
Torchlight: The best Diablo game since Diablo 2!
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