i picked up a few more toys last week with the goal of experimenting with music composition this year. the first is the presonus firebox, which provides a firewire recording interface to the computer. i also bought a behringer condenser microphone , which got good reviews and was in my price range (read: cheap).
my computer is, as the kids say, pretty ghetto, but i had a firewire card in it and setup was very easy. put the CD in first, run the driver installation, it tells you when to plug in the firebox, do it, and let the installation complete. later, i actually downloaded the latest driver and firmware from the presonus website, which i should have done first. the CD that shipped with the device appeared to have an older driver.
once the installation was done, i pulled up m-audio session, which i had as part of my m-audio keystudio bundle and configured it to use the firebox as the input device.
next, i created a new composition in session, added a guitar and vocal track, and set up session to record both at the same time. my mic was in input one of the firebox and my electric guitar (a cheap one) was in input two. i configured the firebox to mix internally and send the mix to the headphones, which i plugged in. i hit record in session, and started playing and it did it’s thing.
i did have to mess with the levels a bunch. first, since neither the mic nor guitar were amped, i had to to turn on the “48V” internal amp. then i adjusted the output nobs on the front of the firebox to boost the mic level a bit and trip the guitar. i also had to adjust the latency in the firebox control panel on my computer, since my computer is, as i said, ghetto.
after that, it was just a matter of playing with session. i copied and pasted sections, added effects, adjusted volume, etc. the one thing i still need to figure out with session is how to get the overall audio output higher; it’s pretty faint with the current settings i have. and with the midi controller i have, i want to add some other instruments, and harmonies, etc. it’s all very exciting, and as soon as my voice instructor/wife gets me up to speed, i’ve got big plans! until then, i’ll likely stick to just instrumentals…
i’ve been catching up on all the photography podcasts that i have been neglecting (there is a list on the right hand side of the blog), trying to get motivated again (especially after dropping the cash for the new d700 and now a new lense). i pulled up the photography piece of the site and the last picture i put up there was posted in december, and it was of a picture i took on our honeymoon in october.
i have been putting a bunch of stuff up on flickr, though. so i guess that’s good. but none of them were really of the quality that i would put them in the gallery. i think i need a project…
the decemberists, one of my all-time favorite bands, has a new album out today. and kerri is super excited because we have tickets to see them on her birthday. how lucky is she?!
i spent some time tonight working on a poster for the school’s production of fame. the inspiration for the poster is the one on the cct website, although admittedly this looks nothing like that. i think i need to find a different picture of the kids. in the real fame poster, the actors have this “pop” that i don’t think is in the picture i’m using. there are also a lot less people in that poster. but i wanted to go through the exercise of working with the picture, photoshoping out the background, and generally going through the basics steps of recreating the whole thing.
in the picture itself, a few things are noticably problematic. one, because we tried to get all of the kids in there (19, i think), we had to do a different angle and got the bowling pin-like formation. the particular picture i grabbed also has teh girl in front looking in a different direction than everyone else. also problematic, and looking through the other shots, by the time we did the full body group shot, the kids were tired and stopped looking at anything in particular. something to remember for next time. the other problem was the background. i had a few strobes, and the place we took the picture was the stage in front of a wall that made it difficult to crop out. it proved impossible to throw enough light on the group without some of that light falling on the background, given their relatively short distance from the background, so i had to spend more time in photoshop than i would have liked.
for this draft, i also left the background black instead of blue. i can probably tint it using photoshop, but i’m afraid of some of the artifacts that show up when i do that from having to hide the background.
still, i think it has some promise. of course, we’ll have to wait for the wife to get home to be the final judge.
i finally processed some of the headshots for fame over the weekend. some of the shots were with the old d70, most were with the new d700. it was amazing how different the RAW files were. once again, portrait professional did a nice job with the basic blemish cleanup.
, which provides a firewire recording interface to the computer. i also bought a 
, which got good reviews and was in my price range (read: cheap).
bundle and configured it to use the firebox as the input device.
and now a 
). i pulled up the 
