Isn't this cool?

I've been looking at using my computer to do effects for my guitar. Specifically Max/MSP. I haven't really put it into place yet, because I don't want to burn off my 30-day trial on days when I'm not going to be able to play with it. The number one thing I'm seeing with that is that you would have huge programmed music filters that you'll want to switch between, and you'll have a guitar in your hands and thus you won't have anything available to switch things around. I suppose people making music with laptops are more keyboard people.

The image shows Whitecap visualizer. It's visualizing the output of my multieffects unit plugged into the audio-in plug of my XP box. I think this could be a cool thing, but I'm thinking about the psychedelic Joshua Light Show at the Fillmore. You'd think that someone would make a music visualizer for computer media players that tries to look like the Joshua Light Show. It seems like a no-brainer.

Played Out Last Night

1) Remember my headphones? Well, I had some sound problems last night. At core, acoustic guitar on Wednesday and not on Sunday, sound guy not available, so I was turned way down at the board. I had my right earbud in and my head turned a little left, playing in soundcheck and trying to munge my gear, and I could barely hear myself. Later, after everything worked out and I could hear, I found myself turning the drummer up. Normally, with the old headphones, I'd turn the drummer all the way down and still have too much drums, because of leak-through.

Them Skullcandy 'phones are a major win.

2) Once we got someone who could mix me in, my new D/I box worked fine. Great, even.

3) During the instrumental parts, the other guitarist and I switched off each verse. First time, he got caught a little flat-footed in the switchover, but he stepped up. Amped-up electric guitar switching with clean acoustic. I would love to hear what it sounded like out in the house.

4) The other guitarist is building a home studio. He has the PC, which has much memory and a 120GB hard drive, which should be fine for now. He has a Tascam 2488 which he would like to use as the front-end for his recording. He's not like me. He's not a geek. He's OK with MIDI and he likes his VG88 and all, but when it comes to computers, he's totally n00b. Can anyone suggest a good, cheap recording package that won't choke on Vista?

... She should at least find you handy

This is something that recently came up, and maybe you'll benefit from this.

There's a local coffeeshop. They host shows, including a band a friend plays in. I've seen them there twice. This was also where I saw Chaconne Klaverenga.

They have a mailing list, through which they announce their upcoming events.

I signed up.

When the first mailing came, it came to me, to Johnny, to Clem, to Jenny, to Anne, to Trey.... Basically, there was a big list of email addresses, and she put them in the To: line of Gmail and pressed send.

And now I have dozens of email addresses of people that I could now spam, if I was the scum of the earth.

Here's the trick – BCC. It stands for Blind Carbon Copy. If you send something out with someone BCCd, that person receives it without it being addressed to him. If you send something out with two people BCCd, neither can tell that the other was sent it.

Subject: My Coming Midwest Tour!
From: Sans Direction <foo@gmail.com>
To: Sans Direction <foo@gmail.com>
BCC: everybody@gmail.com, I_know@gmail.com

Just a tip from your old friend Sans.

Beg for Software Pointers

One way to learn something is to try to teach it. If you have a fuzzy knowledge of something, it has to be sharpened in order for you to teach it. And, as part of my How To Not Suck series, I need to get into talking about music. There's words for it, but there's also a written language, which I have a very fuzzy knowledge of. I want to sharpen it, and having to think things through and write about it will sharpen it.

So, I will want to be able to make images of staff notation. Unless there's a way to write it in HTML. So, please, are there good Free or Open or even just free ways I can write out something in musical staff? I'll more than likely be doing it on my work laptop (don't tell anyone) so XP-friendly choices are preferred, but not required.