This post is about the room I play in.  I only ever play by myself and this is completely a non-pro hobby for me.  I created a video for this post to show around the room and the equipment I am using.  I don't know if anyone really care, to be honest, but wanted to post something and was inspired by some recent posts on forums like "show us your room", a little new video from Rick Beato, and another from Justin over at 65 Drums going over his kit.  So I decided a video is worth at least a few extra words, so pulled this together real quick this morning.  Hope you enjoy - welcoming your feedback in reactions or comments below the post.

Here's another cover.  I LOVE Cheap Trick.  This was a quicker tune than I typically do.  I usually labor seemingly endlessly over the recording, the parts, the mix, etc, but this one was a lot faster than usual.  There are a few others that I have started - The Dream Police and Their cover of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour - but I was able to actually get this one finished.  I really would like to cover "If You Want My Love" or "Tonight It's You", which I might get to at some point, but this was a bit simpler to get down than the others and probably one of the more energetic tunes I've done, so it was a good bit of fun to record and mix.

This song was recorded with:

• Presonus Studio One 4
• Pearl Mimic Pro - Kit #38 Gasoline
• Epiphone Les Paul Traditional Pro-II
• Presonus Studio 1824
• Rode NT1 Mic
• A number of built-in Studio One FX plus a number from the Line6 Pod Farm for the guitar and vocals
• Arturia Analog Lab 3

I hope that you enjoy it.  If you have any comments or just a Reaction, it would surely be appreciated!

Here's the tune - Thanks for all the GREAT music, Cheap Trick!

It has been a little over a year since the announcement that Gibson was sending Sonar to its grave.  But it's been exactly a year since I took advantage of the cross-grade pricing from Sonar over to Presonus Studio One and while it hasn't been the most prolific year, I've learned a lot, moved on successfully, and have learned that Studio One IS still my preferred DAW over the (now) Cakewalk by Bandlab offering.

This is a post about the Presonus Faderport 8 and how to use it in Cakewalk by Bandlab.  There is a video below that you can watch where I go through at least some of the basics of the use of the hardware in the software.  There are a LOT more features, but this is as far as I have documented in Cakewalk.  In Presonus Studio One, the unit definitely goes deeper and is more intetgrated. 

DW 13" x 5.5" Snare - Converted to an edrum

I did a conversion of my old DW 13" x 5.5": maple snare.  The thing had been sitting in the basement on a shelf for a decade.  So when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I said "a snare drum edrum conversion kit".  I had already looked at the UFO Drums.  I put together a quick video that shows the drum and explains a few things about the process.

 After thinking through a number of things, and having gone back to using Cakewalk last night to revisit and old tune/mix, I was asked on the Cakewalk forum why I felt as I do, so I wrote a post that I thought would be worth repeating here.  So, here is most of that post, edited only for context in my Blog:

I used Sonar through Platinum including lifetime updates, so I was even up to date until right when Gibson tanked the brand. I understood how to work the application. Even if not a Full-time professional power-user, I definitely knew the ins and outs of getting things recorded and mixed and dealing with the hardware and software, drivers, configurations, system tweaking, etc.

But when I came back yesterday and opened up an old project, it left me wanting. Yes, I changed my audio interface, so there were things to adjust, but even that was painful, even being experienced at the same. I also added the FaderPort 8 device since I left, but I wasn't even trying to use that in CBB.

Here are a few things that are quite simple in Studio One that were a pain for me yesterday:

This post is about Joomla! - a content management system.  This is an alternative to the very popular system called WordPress.  I prefer Joomla! for a number of reasons, familiarity being one of them.

In a series of video and text lessons I hope to share the information needed to help you understand how you can take your knowledge and apply it to creating custom Joomla! sites yourself.

You will notice that you will see the company name "Technical Resource Solutions" show up in these videos here and again.  This is my own company that has been in business since 2003 providing Website design and development services along with IT services for businesses in the North Georgia area.

Certainly, by the time you see this video, some of the screenshots will be out of date, the websites I refernce will have changed, and likely, I will have decided on the use of different tools.  For example, I no longer use FileZilla as my FTP client, instead opting for WinSCP since it still allows drag and drop from the UI to folders in Windows Explorer.

This video is an introduction to the tools that we use to build our custom templates for Joomla! using the Joomlart T3 framework.

This is a great song written by PFR, a Christian group that is (unfortunately) no longer. together  They had a number of albums that never got the "praise" that they deserved, in my opinion.  This group is everything Power Pop that any band would ever want to be.  There are so many influences in here that it's hard to name them, but a few obvious ones come to mind, like Queen and Jellyfish, who are two my favorites.  But you have to go beyond just who influenced them to really appreciate the music they made in their brief time (relative)  on the spectrum.  There are so many of their songs that I'd love to cover, but one day, while driving and listening,this one came up and I said "Hmmm...I think I can manage those parts".  If only I could write a song like this!

You can still buy their stuff online for sure, so if you haven't had a chance to check them out, you really can't go wrong with any of their collections.

I like "firsts" and this one has a few:

1. It is the first song that I have completed using Studio One.

2. It is the first song that I have completed using my Presonus Studio 18|24 (https://bit.ly/2QG5CSz), which replaced my aging Echo Audio Layla 3G.

3. It is the first song that I have completed using my Pearl Mimic Pro as the drum Module (https://bit.ly/2QMGucJ), recorded using the DB25 output and a few other analog input channels on the Presonus device, recording the drums from there to multiple tracks in Studio One 4.1.1.  I love the Mimic!

Most of the mix was done with stock Studio One plugins except for a few plugins for the guitars (Line 6 PodFarm - I simply like it better than anything else I've tried, even if there are others that are "better"). I used the Presonus "Fat Channel" for a bunch of the channels, the built in Chorus and ProVerb for the vocals and a few of the drum parts, and some other stuff sprinkled in here and there.  

I used my trusty old Rode NT1 for the vocals, a Variax 500 guitar to do the acoustics, an Epiphone Les Paul for all of the electrics, an old Peavey bass, and a real tambourine, of course. 

Here is my rendition of "Anything" off the album "Them" - Best I can tell this is Copyright 1996 Sparrow Records.  I hope you enjoy it.  Please comment, like, or simply "react" below" so I know what you think!

(And if you want to listen to it or better yet, support PFR by buying their albums - here's Them: https://www.amazon.com/Them-Pfr/dp/B0040ESJNC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546659480&sr=8-1&keywords=pfr+them)

So along comes Bandlab - to resurrect the software previously known as Sonar.

By now, I'd selected the option of looking at Studio One, even though it didn't "check all of the boxes".

Why? Because.  Really - that's the best I can come up with.  Yeah, there are a lot of things that I really like about the way that Sonar worked and I was very familiar with it, but after trying out Studio One, I have found it to be VERY responsive to my needs.  It doesn't feel like it's going to crash at any moment, which is something that has really plagued Sonar for a while now.  I just didn't feel like I could depend on it.  As someone who doesn't get a lot of time to "play" in the studio and also someone who does computer troubleshooting for a living who also doesn't really want to do it while trying to get a part down, I really want reactive software that doesn't crash, doesn't feel like it's going to crash, and just behaves "like an appliance" to a certain degree.  Studio One does that.

So now what?!?

I am a hobbyist.  I don't get nearly enough time to spend on music making.  I am a drummer for the most part.  The rest of my musical endeavors have been around playing around with other instruments, learning how to use the technology side of the recording process, and having to play the other instruments well enough to be able to do that, which means trying to write some songs, doing my best to cover some songs I like to the point of not being embarrassed to play them for others, and just generally enjoying the process.

November, 2017 - somewhere in the middle of the month.  I was "forced" to make a decision about what DAW software to use. Why?  Let's start there with this Part One in a series.  I'll get to the details of where this goes from here in later posts, but this is a good starting point.

Gibson owned the software Sonar for several years.  I took a long break from updates to the Sonar system due to lack of time to dedicate to the hobby and lack of funds to go with it - I simply couldn't justify spending the $15/month for a hobby I wasn't really spending any time with.  I'd been using Cakewalk/Roland/Gibson Sonar for many years, updating pretty much every year until the X-series came along, where I got X1, din't like it, skipped X2, got X3 and saw as an improvement, but couldn't get with the program on the Platinum releases.  I wasn't really convinced that the monthly updates would amount to much or at least not often.  So I stopped updating for about 2 years.

The Pearl Mimic Pro is the newest electronic drum module to hit the market, with some being received as early as June 2017. I received my unit in August of 2017 and have spent a good bit of time using it, practicing with it, tweaking it, and most importantly, ENJOYING it! 

This is a video of the Pearl Mimic Pro module and some practice time which was recorded to show off the new tom pack that came out this week.  These are the Pearl Reference Series Toms.  I added these toms to the Venice preset kit and changed little else about that preset.  I don't know why my Samsung S8 camera went on a mission of making everything blurry several times during this video, so sorry for that!  Anyway - plenty of mistakes and unusual groove things, but hopefully you will get something from this.

As always, please leave me some comments here on the website blog.  Or at least please choose a "Reaction" below the video if you don't want to take the time to post.

This video is some practice time on the "Origins" Preset kit (#44).  This is a tight kit with a layered kick (A 20" Ludwig + a 22" Pearl), a layered Snare (Hur 7 CST (?) + Pearl 5 CSM).  The toms are DW Maple, and a mix of Zildjian Hats and Soultone Crashes and Rides + a Sabian splash.

This is my first video with the Mimic Pro.  I'm still getting used the triggering, the sounds, and the process of recording the unit, but so far, after about 1.5 weeks, I am really impressed with how great it sounds, how flexible it is, and how well it works.  I will be posting more videos as time goes by, hopefully with better quality each time.

In this case, this is the "Studio" kit, which is number 54 (coincidence?).  It is a generally usable kit that I think would work pretty well with many genres.  It feels like something that would be in a studio, setup for whatever session might come along.  This is a fairly generic kit, but seems well versed for about any occasion.  I'd like to hear your thoughts about the kit, the Mimic, or whatever else (though criticism of my playing abilities is not really what I'm looking for).  

What else do you want to see?  

Look just below the video and Please leave a "reaction" or comments!

​While neither these products are new or ground-breaking, I did an unboxing video for both.  This is for the purpose getting ready to welcome my new Pearl Mimic Pro that I'm expecting in the next week or two to arrive.  Expect that there will be some videos coming for that unit once it is here.  Please enjoy my excitement for these two great birthday gifts.

This is a video showing the custom created kit I made on my TD-20 with the TDW-20.  This kit is called Phatty.  I created this video using my Droid Turbo phone (about 1 hour before it had an end-of-life experience with a faceplant to my wood floor.  This is now replaced with a Samsung S8 phone for future videos.

I also anticipate that this will be the last or nearly last video I create showing the TD-20.  I will be receiving my Mimic Pro unit hopefully next week and I anticipate posting many videos with that module in place.

That said, this is a just a practice session that I did with a focus on trying out my picture in picture options.  While you don't see them in this edit of the video, I was able to get them to work as hoped, so I will be able to get two video streams together in future shots, with the hope of showing off some module features.

If you liked this video or have any comments, please feel free to share with marking your impressions with the "reactions" below of leave your comments.  Please note that this is a non-perfect practice and I know it.  I have a lot of playing experience, but this was for fun, I don't have much in the way of lessons/training, etc, so if you have comments on technique, they will largely only serve to educate others.  If your aim is to insult me in the process, please don't.

Enjoy!

This video covers the basic uses of the BCF2000 in Sonar. I will cover the basic modes that the BCF2000 can be put in, how to use those modes in context within your Sonar tracks. This will also include the very useful EQ mode 3, though this is not as useful in X1 and X2 like it was in Sonar 8 and previous. 

This video covers the Behringer BCF2000 and how to install and configure it for use in Sonar. This is a somewhat older video, so no doubt the Behringer website has changed since I made it. You should still be able to find the appropriate drivers on their site, including 64-drivers now, so that part of the video may be out of date, but I believe the rest is still relavant.

Please note: If you are using Vista or Windows 7, you do not need the drivers from the Behringer site. When you plug it in, Windows will automatically detect it. There's still some other useful information in this video, so don't just skip it.