Let's make this official.

No more empty promises, this blog has gone by the wayside because like most American adults my hobbies are being eaten by my life. Instead of maintaining a separate blog for these things, I'll just post them to my "professional" blog (now not so professional), which you will find at http://jkirchartz.com.

Thanks for all the page views, have fun ;)

nanoPad pt3: I give up...

Second nanoPad crapped out, Guitar Center changed product-insurance providers, so I gave up and got a Akai Pro LPD8 It's nice to have some knobs and really 8 pads at a time is enough. Not too fond of the method to change programs; you have to hit the program button, hit a pad, then hit the program number again. It's not an issue, and it's much nicer than scrolling through options... the x/y pad still works on the nano so I might just chop that down...

New Music

 Bhajis Loops by jkirchartz

The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk

If you didn't know The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk is a project that allows hackers & makers to share some electronics/components with each other. There's a ton of these things going around, but it seems like they move quite slowly.

 I received the box code-named Baltimore Bazaar a few days ago & busted it open immediately; nothing really caught my eye in there, a few motors, a batter charger and a bunch of small components EVERYWHERE. I had to pick a bunch of capacitors and screws out of one of the motors I decided to play with, but there was nothing in there I really wanted or needed.

I took a 2GB SD card out (I'm planning on adding the Homebrew Channel to my Wii), and replaced it with a couple old-school RCA transistors, a small geared motor, a 20Q game (needs a new battery), and a few ICs. I think I saw somewhere that you could hack the 20Q device, I'm sure somebody can find a use for it.

Hopefully I get another box sometime in the future, it was fun trying to figure out what everything is. Perhaps the next one will be more useful to me; maybe I'll even split it, I've certainly got enough junk!

Ableton Live 8 Looper & Korg nanoPAD

The music of Yoav is heavily loop based, due to the fact that every sound is either produced by his guitar or his voice. To accomplish this he has several looping delay pedals; In some of his videos on youtube you can clearly see the Boss RC-20XL. These pedals are fun to play with because you can loop and overdub anything placed into the input, then improvise over the loop creating nearly any sound possible. Recently Keyboard Magazine ran a 2-part article on using multiple loopers with live, but their instructions are a little unclear unless you're familiar with Live.

Over the weekend I've experimented and played around alot and produced this Live 8 set, and nanoPAD preset. I don't suggest using the nanoPAD with your feet, but for beatboxing in the style of BeardyMan this will get you there. To get instructions, tips, and download the Live set w/ nanoPAD preset, please continue reading.