Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Changes Coming

Recognizing that changes are coming may be the most important sensitivity a person can know during their life time.

Just sayin'.



—HHNET

Thursday, December 04, 2014

Irons In The Fire

Now that it's my holiday time and dogHOUSE is inactive until after new years I am asserting my efforts to finish constructing the new HHNET websites for 2015 and dedicate more time to recording songs.

HHNET

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Windows 8 Bit Me Again

After a smooth factory recovery of Windows 8, I installed the few apps I use and as usual DISABLE Windows updates and things were smooth sailing.

Then a couple hours later I made adjustments to a secondary Admin login and restarted the PC and suddenly Windows 8 is downloading updates and installing them. After the update and another restart, this 3.4GHz i5 turned into quicksand and had serious right.click context menu wait times and hangups! There was no escape other than to sign.out of the account, but even my Admin account desktop was trashed in the same manner.

So, I absurdly chose to try a System Restore. I chose the Restore point which would put the machine back to where it was at PRIOR to the Windows update. I CAN READ. Windows clearly displayed that to be the case.

The System Restore took 1 hour 5 minutes to complete for 60GB of 2TB HDD. Worse yet, System Restore did NOT reinstate my PC's status prior to the updates. It returned the machine to a new Windows 8 install. None of the software applications I installed, nor Stardock's Start8 or Fences was present. Further, NONE OF MY SETTINGS were saved as System Restore said they would be.

I performed a new Factory Recovery from DVD and was back to square one in LESS time than the System Restore screw up consumed! What a joke. Mac.OSX would never behave like this, nor HAS it ever behaved like this with regards to moving forward or reverse in time with the operating system.

So, for this install of Windows 8, I disabled Windows Update appropriately AND made registry edits to ENSURE that Windows CANNOT turn the damn updates on again!

And all I did was get on the PC to format two SD cards with SDFormatter. Sheesh.


HHNET

Monday, October 13, 2014

Learning Takes Time

One thing that surely has not been overlooked by me, is the sheer fact that it has taken me over four years to learn how to use the audio equipment that I purchased in order to record music.

Today, getting involved with recording music can cost less than the price of an iPad and about $500 dollars of gear. In fact, you can get started using the iPad's built-in mic. Of course, depending on the acoustics in the room or place you are recording can and will make a difference in the quality of what you are recording. However, there are a myriad of virtual synths that you can play and record directly on the iPad and will deliver stellar audio quality. So, if you're not singing, your music can sound highly polished and most of the iOS apps can share with services such as Soundcloud, YouTube; and of course you can share those to Facebook and other social services if you like. Additionally, it is easy to create your own website and publish your tunes there. I have somewhat lagged in this department for good reason. Soon, I will have a dedicated site just for my artist name of HappyHarryNET and NASAV_studios.


Wearing all the hats [one man job] takes lots of time and "learning".


HHNET

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Camping With Grand Kids

While the lake mountain weather is gorgeous, I'm gonna grab Jennie and go camping with Kathy and the grand kids.


HHNET

Saturday, August 09, 2014

01X and Facebook

Am disconnecting the 4416 [digital router] from 01X and jacking strait FireWire from both 01X and MOTIF.XS to LogicPro9 > the easy, strait forward way to dive into familiarity in order to bang out a new song. Where as this is my blog I will express a few details that I forego posting to Facebook which I am very close to fully disconnecting.

First, perhaps you think to yourself, he's a musician and recording artist and he's talking about disconnecting from Facebook? I thought social media was a publicly known component to marketing yourself online. But, that's really not true. Sure, perhaps you may sell a few more CD's or downloads based on the zillions of users you "Friended" but it was never about that for me; but I think there was a moment when I felt that mattered. For me now, Facebook was an opportunity presenting itself to me. 1)A place where grabbing copies of photos of family and friends without needing to get a hold of them, or take their photo or ask for copies of photos they showed me at their house. So this feature of Facebook interested me from the beginning. 2)Once creating my recording group on Facebook, it quickly grew into an additional musical playroom for me, with peers who work at the professional level that I do. Of course there are thousands of users who are in fact learning or trying to, or they bought equipment and have not learned how to use any of it > same for musical instruments. [again] Of Course, none of this has to do with writing a song OR already having a song to record. So grabbing family & friends photos and being useful and helpful to anyone in the recording groups; which now this is about 8,000 users. So, yes. Less than 1% of all users online sharing something about their interest or sharing a story with regards to their recording project, less than 1% of them are really doing it; or certainly have the ability to do so. In my personal 01X group there are five (5) users who are the real deal; I am 1 (one) of those 5 (five) >>grin<<


My late father & step-mother who passed 4 days apart, has certainly focused my lenses with regards to creativity, direction and production. I try to remain 24/7 in a mode where I am simply waiting for opportunity to present itself to me. This is a very powerful and successful space to live in. I have my sadness for obvious reasons, but I was gifted with sadness for the sake of music. I have always desired to write love ballads with the intention to write, create and record a song that emotionally rips your heart out and throws it across the street. I have always loved listening to somebody's song that does that exact thing to me. It's very inspiring; it's haunting.

My physical life is very good and is a blend of usual arthritis, aches & pains, temporary mobility conditions and toss in some 60 hour screaming headaches to frost the cake. But [again] none of this has to do with hearing songs in my head, or writing a song from scratch or recording any of that material.

Anyhow, I said what I said and now I'm gonna go reroute three (3) pieces of gear and bang out this song. I think you'll really like it, because I really like it. It's not my song and I like getting excited to record another artists song; and I have some big surprises for the author when they hear my version!


HHNET

Thursday, August 07, 2014

The Times They Are A Changin'

Nothing about me is required or needs to be said > Stay the course.


HHNET

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Rearranging the Studio


A lot has happened since 2010 and exiting the motor home. Project studios take time to hand-craft and make your workflow. After moving three times [since the RV] my workflow has really been compromised. Landing here in the mountains has been a blessing. It is great to have an improved dedicated space to set up my gear and hand-craft my new workflow here.

I'm rearranging how I do things. When technology changes it can be both good and bad. In my case it's both. In 2007 I bought into Yamaha's mLAN and 01X. This hardware took me over two years to learn how to use. By the time I became fluent with the digital mixer, mLAN drivers had already become incompatible with both MacOSX and Windows. In order to keep using 01X I elected to stay with MacOSX 10.6 and Logic Studio.

2010 was the, "Year of the iPad". Now everything has changed! iOS audio recording became an easy, intuitive, way to capture and process audio. Additionally, there is a plethora of iOS synthesizers, virtual instruments and effects. Enhancing this creativity are class compliant (CC) USB and HUI control devices which make controlling the software easy.



Now the issue is, "integrating" my legacy hardware to be useful with the new iOS technology. In order to accomplish this, a Class Compliant USB audio interface is necessary. I chose to use the Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 which is a eighteen (18) channel input and eight (8) channels output, MIDI IN/OUT, S/PDIF and ADAT.

Connections are:

Yamaha MOTIF XS6, MOXF8, Korg i3 and VoiceLive 2 all connect to AW4416 INputs. These signals can be routed to the four (4) OMNI OUT to the Focusrite 18i8 XLR INputs OR they can be routed to four (4) of the eight (8) channels of ADAT OUT to the 18i8 ADAT INputs.


This enables all of my hardware to be included in my audio and MIDI setup while enjoying the convenience of having both FireWire 01X and Class Compliant USB audio interfaces that can be used with both my MacBook to Logic OR directly to my iPad using Auria.

This is a significant improvement to my workflow and doesn't kick any of my gear to the curb simply because it's old or there are no drivers available. Instead, this maximizes all of my gear and makes the recording process much easier as well.

With this new arrangement of audio, MIDI and control surface routing I can:
  • directly to iPad via Class Compliant USB audio interface with Auria, Cubasis and Garageband on iPad3 and having total compatibility with Core Audio iOS apps
  • to Logic and Cubase using 01X mLAN digital mixer
  • to Logic and Cubase using MOTIF XS via mLAN and peer-to-peer FireWire
  • to Cubase and Logic using MOXF with USB HOST
  • to iOS iPad Core Audio apps using MOXF with USB DEVICE Yamaha i-MX1 MIDI
It is my intention and hope, to power up my project studio by March and get back to recording my tracks. Nearly three (3) years ago I left the studio with three (3) songs done and scrapped one (1) of them since finding better ways to achieve things. 2014 is going to be a very musically, exciting, banner year for me!

HHNET

Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Winter At Cobb

We're really enjoying life here in the mountains in Cobb. It's absolutely beautiful every day. Was hoping for a White Christmas but that did not happen. Weather has been Spring-like but I am sure this will change soon enough.

NASAV_studios construction per se, is nearing completion and I am looking forward to powering up in a month. I have been saying this now for a few months. I am having some challenges with my arms and hands since both surgeries.

Stay tuned.



HHNET