Food... It's Just Another Way To Share Yourself

One of the biggest things Sarah and I were excited about with our new living arrangements, was having more margin in the kitchen and dinning arenas.  Less than month and a half into our new digs, we've settled into a 2 dinner per week cycle, (tues and either sat/sat).  Last night we had some Chicken Cacciatore with a good old-buddy, now a new Grad Student at UNL, and her missionary mother (fresh in from New Guinea).  This week will see us host a friend from work and his lady, and on Sat we are doing brunch with a couple we friended at Panic a few years ago.  We love the intimacy of our wooden-floored dinning room, no TV, no phones, just good company and good food.

Conflict surrounds us in this day and age.  Facebook and the American-Media-Beast will always have something new and exciting to either fear, distrust, or rail against.  A home filled with Love and Good Food, opened to weary wayfarers, is but one way to Fight the Hate in the World.  Sarah and me? we're fighters for Love :)

The Something Missing From My Music

The 3 basic elements of music are rhythm, harmony, and melody.  My harmony and melody chops are decent, but rhythm is the least developed of my skills.  To remedy this, I've been studying up on the elements of a good drum loop and elements of the groove.  "Sound on Sound" has a great 4 part article on this:
https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb98/articles/rythm.html
Here's the .pdf with all the examples:
https://www.soundonsound.com/pdfs/DrumProgramDiags.pdf  (will take a bit to download)

I'm currently using a program called Hydrogen to program my drum loops.  Hopefully within the next week or so, I'll be more comfortable creating basic drum rhythms for my looping.

Getting Acquainted With the World Of Linux Audio Production

I've recently begun learning how to do Audio Production on a Linux Platform.  The bulk of the music I make could be classified as "looping", which is where I record short sections of sound and then play them on top of each other (mostly just guitar, with a loop of rhythm, loop of bassline, loop of melody).  In the past I've used Mobius Looper on Windows, now I learning SooperLooper on Linux.  Learning my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is probably the most difficult part of "Music" that I've attempted, save the initial decision to learn music theory.  Now I'm in the weeds of EQ, arranging, filters, plug-ins, routing of audio, ect.

I've gotten past the first hard part of just getting things set up.  On the Linux Platform, a program called JACK is used to route audio signals around inside the computer, for example connecting the output of my guitar to the input of the monitor speakers, or the output of my Looper to the input of the Recording Program.  This is very powerful, but takes some getting used to.  SooperLooper wasn't too bad to get started with, I'm not sure if I'll like it better than Mobius Looper or not.  I'm still learning how to control the sync functions to keep my different loops playing together in time.

The two biggest challenges I am facing at the moment are getting comfortable with my DAW, which is Ardour, and also learning how to use a Drum Loop program (I'm thinking I'll use a program called Hydrogen).  I'm pretty weak when it comes to knowledge of rhythm patterns.  I'm a bit nervous that it will be quite difficult, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.  If I turn out being successful creating my own percussion loops, I'll have most of the tools I'll need to begin composing original songs, arranging them on the DAW, and EQ'ing them well enough to share with the world.

I'll keep the blog posted with my progress.

Arduous Learning with Ardour DAW and SooperLooper

I was successful downloading and installing Ardour, a Digital Audio Workstation.  Not sure why I was crazy and thought I could use it right out of the box :(  Today I'll be studying up on how to get JACK, Ardour, and SooperLooper working together.  Time for a few hours of youtube videos, LoL.  I'm not super looking forward to it, but gaining the ability to really EQ and produce my music will be nice. ~ On a separate note, I also need to figure out how to use Pandora Radio as a Source to Winamp so I can play pretty visualizations on the TV while jamming to Pandora at home.

SooperLooper, Mobius Looper, Jack, and Linux

Well, I got my desktop up and running a Linux Debian distro.  Went over fairly well.  Yesterday I installed sudo, which doesn't come installed, and also a number of other small programs.... including a new looping software, SooperLooper.  Linux uses a program called JACK to manage audio in and out.  I had some pretty grave concerns about getting it working, but wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined.

At the moment I miss Mobius Looper, which is what I cut my looping teeth on (but doesn't run on Linux).  Over the next few days I'll be trying to learn SooperLooper, and I'll also be looking into a DAW to process my recorded audio.  I'll post back with the results :)

Computer Work and Home Networking

My desktop PC died a horrible power-supply death a few months ago.  A good buddy hooked me up with a spare PC he had laying around, sans a hard drive.  Today after my mentor meeting, I'll be getting started trying to get the old HD installed in the new PC.  After that, I'll be setting up a network for my home, so any device can access storage on the server.  I've been wanting to have a "home network" for years, but never really had the gumption to make it happen.  Let's see if I succeed on the first shot :)

Settling in to New House

We're still in the first month of our new rental.  Things are progressing nicely.  Although there has been a high amount of stress getting all the responsibilities met, Sarah and I feel very blessed.  I've got the room to work on my Mustang (got new battery in her, running fine, going to replace serpentine belt today).  We've got an oven that sits level on the floor and heats quickly and evenly (also has a self-clean mode we can use to recondition all our cast iron, soooo excited about this).  The Central Heat/Air has been keeping the house nice and cool despite the heat wave.

We still have some setting up to do on the Music Room and Dining Room.  We also have all the "extra" stuff in the basement to sort.  Sometime in the near future I'll have to get my Electronics Lab created in the Basement, so I can get back to programming and making cool stuffs with Arduino.

God is Good.  My wife is Awesome.  The Woody's are doing well.