Tales of Monkey Island: Episode 4
Quick little comment about this one. As expected, this episode was great. I won’t write much about it as I don’t want to ruin it for anyone that has not played through it yet. If you didn’t, GO BUY IT!
I will say this, in the words of Dominic Armato, “we’re really starting to get into some meaty stuff”!
I can’t believe there’s only one episode left! I really hope the LucasArts License Gods™ renew, or extend, or whatever the Secret of Monkey Island Franchise™ license to Telltale Games for another season, or two, or three, or more!
Also, a new full blown 40+ hour epic adventure game would be nice too. Hey, It’s possible! I can only hope that the games are selling a thousand times as much as I’ve enjoyed them. That way we got a chance! Right? Right???
Praying Mantis in the Backyard!
I have not seen one of these things in years! Pretty impressive insect!
Below are some photos I took of it. Enjoy!
Herman posing for the camera.
He loves the sound of the camera!
He didn't quite expect this last shot LOL!
New Gear: Roland Fantom XR
Check out my new Fantom XR page with photos and demos!
The Screen of the Fantom XR
Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been preoccupied as of late. Moving along, I have a Wurlitzer Organ. Model 4150, circa 1958 I believe. It was passed down to my father by his uncle when I was little. Anyway, I decided on a whim to try to record some new samples of it, with the goal simply being to record some sounds I like. It was not my intention to do any sort of complete sampling of the organ. Maybe some day though… 🙂
So, I took my MacBook armed with an M-Audio MobilePre USB downstairs, hooked into the organ’s phono plug, installed the latest version of Audacity and started recording. In total I got roughly 12 minutes of sample data. So far, I’ve only gone through about 2 minutes worth and made 3 SoundFont patches for myself, one being the ‘background noise’ you can almost hear while the tubes are warming up, which I amplified.
I wrote a weird little track using ONLY the samples that I’ve created, and some reverb. Have a listen:
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Download the MP3: Wurlitzer_4150_Fun
I will be sure to add a dedicated page to this organ in the future, with photos. Also, I may put up a copy of my completed sample pack eventually.
Very belated post, but I finished ToMI Ep. 3 not long ago and I got to say, It’s really good, as I expected! I’m hoping the little “love square” between Guybrush, Morgan, Elaine, and LeChuck, ends with Morgan and Guybrush together. Let’s see, what else? One of my other favorite characters plays an important role in this episode, which was fantastic!
I don’t want to spoil any of it in case you didn’t play it yet, which you should! So, I’ll just leave you with a few screenshots. Enjoy!
Peaceful on the outside, ferocious on the inside!
Coronado DeCava, possessed by the Voodoo Lady!
Will you sign this for me?
You better belive it, sister!
Manateeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...
I made my first WordPress plugin!
Woohoo!
Kind of neat. I made myself a simple admin-only plugin that should make debugging the site a bit easier for me. Simply put, I can now view some of my log files securely from within WordPress. This is good for me because now I don’t have to login via SSH to my webhost to view them.
Why did I make my own plugin? The main reason is that a quick search on wordpress.org yielded me nothing comparable, or at least as simple as my needs are.
Once I give it a few more features, maybe I’ll submit it to wordpress.org. Though, that would probably be a long way down the road…
Technical Site Update: Theme Updated.
Also, it looks like we have got nice image containers now! I’ve wanted this for this theme since I switched to it, so that’s great!
Inanis has done a great job with his theme in this version.
Other Changes: I have rearranged the sidebar in the hopes that it makes navigating the site a bit easier.
Here’s some images for example of the nice new borders…
Better caption borders...
One of my Roland D-550 Synths.
My bird Herman.
Technical Site Update: Permalinks Have Changed.
Just a note:
I have changed the structure of ‘permalinks’ throughout the site. So, if you have links to any specific posts, please update them.
Rocking with the XV-5080…
EDIT: Updated version with different patches with some more bite for “vocals”. What do you think?
Today, like many days, I was going through the thousands of patches in my Roland XV-5080 and came across a few replicating some of Jon Lord’s (Deep Purple) organ sound. So, I decided to remaster an old MIDI of one of my favorite Deep Purple songs on the XV-5080, Child In Time.
The two organ patches I used for this song are called “Fire Perc” and “HeavyTraffic” from the “SR-JV80-08 Keyboards of the 60’s and 70’s” expansion board . I customized both of the patches a little bit until I was happy with them.
Next, after spending more time than I would have liked to looking for a suitable guitar patch for the song, I gave up and made a new one. I wasn’t really going for emulation and just made something I thought sounded nice in the song. I spent a fair amount of time on the guitar patch. I’ll try to remember to write something about it later.
The next thing on the list was the drums, I used the “Studio Set” kit from the “SR-JV80-10 Bass & Drums” expansion board and customized some of the cymbals and crashes a bit. I also routed the drumkit to a separate audio output on the XV. So that I could amp it up a bit during recording, I set it to output from the XV dry, and added a different reverb and very minor EQ to it.
After that, I worked on the “vocals”. Normally I don’t bother using or keeping “vocals” in MIDI music. But, seeing as Child in Time is as much a great organ piece as a voice solo, I decided to keep it. I settled on a smooth mellow sound using a couple patches on the SC-8850 which I think does the job of keeping the melody of the song’s lyrics.
Here’s the recording, let me know what you think:
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Download My Updated MP3: Child In Time MIDI Remaster v2 (Roland XV-5080 & SC-8850)
Download My Original MP3: Child In Time MIDI Remaster (Roland XV-5080 & SC-8850)
Restricted Public Post Test…
This post should be visible by members only… ? Is it? Or, did I mess up?
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