No matter where you go to listen to music there is always at least one person in the crowd that yells "Play Free Bird"!  Here is my contribution.

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Today I participated in my second piano recital.  My first recital was last year and it was shortly after I started taking lessons.  This recital marks a little over a year since I started taking lessons with my current piano teacher.  I will say this, I don't think it ever gets easy to perform in front of people.  I was really well prepared, but still, when I sat behind the piano in the quiet building my heart was pounding and I was very nervous.  After about the first measure my nerves calmed down and I made it through with only a little mistake that I don't think anyone noticed :)

Here is a recording of the piece I played.  I recorded this in preparation for my performance.

I've really enjoyed the past year of piano lessons and I hope to continue my lessons from here on out.  I always regretted stopping my lessons back when I was a teenager so I figure it's never to late to continue learning.  Yes, at times when I get home from work I'm tired and don't feel like practicing my lesson material, but having a good teacher has made all the difference.  One thing I really like about my teacher is that she pushes me hard and she has high expectations.

Hopefully next year I can look back on this blog post and see progress.

After doing a lot of digging around on the Internet about Microsoft's free silverlight hosting service I realized that it was quite complicated to use if you just wanted to host a video.  It took me a long time to figure out that in fact it does support just hosting videos without the need for all the .js files and xaml.  Here is a post from Tim Sneath with instructions on uploading a video.  The method of video/application uploading described in Tim's post is used by Microsoft so that with every video you can embed some .js and xaml and then reference the hosting service in say an iFrame and it will pull down all the .js files and xaml you hosted with your video.  This is cool and all but if you created you're own solution for defining your video player and .js files and you want to host this solution and only use videos from the Microsoft service then you don't want to have to go through all these steps for just hosting a video file.

Microsoft's service does allow for hosting just video's, but it's still kind of a complicated process and not well documented at this point.  First you have to create a manifest.xml file and specify a dummy.xaml file.  Then you have to zip this up with your video, create a new application on silverlight.live.com and upload your files to your new application.

I decided this was way to much work for just uploading a video.  I was playing around with Vertigo's Video.Show and it provided a great example of how to upload video to silverlight.live.com.  So inspired by video.show I created a little windows app to do the uploading for me.  Here is how it works:

First, create an account on silverlight.live.com.  Once your account is created you will need your Account ID and Account Key.

Fill out the account ID and account key in the uploader.  When you click upload video it will create the manifest.xml file for you, grab the video you referenced, zip up the two files, create the application for you on silverlight.live.com, upload your zip, and then clean everything up from your local hard drive.  Once the upload is complete in the Video Location text box you will be provided with the location of your newly uploaded video.

• Account ID:  This is the account ID that you are provided with once you sign-up with the silverlight streaming service.
• Account Key:  This is the account key that you are provided with once you sign-up with the silverlight streaming service.
• Video: This is the video file that you want to upload to the silverlight streaming service.
• Video Location:  Once your upload completes this will display the streaming reference to your uploaded video.

You can download the uploader here.  Please keep in mind this is just a little utility I created and it should be considered Alpha. Enjoy!

I decided to create a plug-in for graffiti to allow for silverlight videos within graffiti posts.  This plug-in supports Microsoft's free streaming service as well as just placing the .wmv on your own server.  It is one graffiti.silverlight.video.dll and you just drop it in the bin of your graffiti web site.  Here is how it works:

Drop the graffiti.silverlight.video.dll into your bin and you will then see in your plug-in's location the option to enable or disable the plug.

Once you enable the plug-in it will automatically create 4 custom fields that you will use to configure video in any graffiti post.

• Enable Video:  If you check this your post will automatically include all the needed javascript files and XAML to support video in your post.  This keeps every post in graffiti from downloading these files by default and means that it will only embed these files if you've enabled video.
• Video DIV Style String:  This is used because I noticed that firefox does not like it if within a <div> you have an object tag and that <div> does not have any styling.  If you don't at least put a height on that div it will hide your video
• Auto Play Video:  If you check this option when someone visits your post the video will start to play automatically
• Video URL:  This is where your video is located.  This plug supports using Microsoft's free streaming video service as well as hosting the files on your own server.  (I will do a follow-up post explaining the Microsoft Streaming Service)

Now once you've set all your video options to set the placement of the video within your post you just type your post and where ever you want the video placed just put the tag

Here it is in action:

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MIDI was first proposed in 1981 out of the need to standardize a form of communication between electronic instruments.  1983 saw the publishing of the MIDI specification 1.0.

Today MIDI plays an important role in all musical applications and is used every day as the conduit between electronic instruments and music production systems.  Up until fairly recently the only way to send and receive MIDI data between instruments and the PC was through an audio interface with MIDI or a dedicated MIDI interface.  Most electronic keyboards still require MIDI cables to send and receive MIDI but I suspect we will see this to change in the coming years allowing for the transmission of MIDI data via Ethernet from musical instruments to any other device on a LAN.

The way in which we are sending and receiving MIDI data between computers has recently seen a change.  No longer do we have to run multiple MIDI cables between computers.

With computers decreasing in price almost daily it is not uncommon to see multiple computers sharing the demanding load of recording music and sample instrument playback (see Connecting Multiple Digital Audio Workstations for more details).  This sharing of computer resources is similar to how the animation studios render complex 3D animations.

One important part in connecting multiple computers for the purpose of sharing in the load produced by the demands of digital audio recording and sample instrument playback is the way in which these computers talk to each other via MIDI.  Most computers are already connected to a local area network so it only makes since that we should be able to send the MIDI data over this already existing connection.  This is where ipMIDI comes into play.

What Is ipMIDI:

ipMIDI allows any MIDI application on the LAN to communicate with any other MIDI application via IP network.  ipMIDI sends MIDI data over Multicast UDP.  The fact that it uses Multicast UDP means ipMIDI broadcasts MIDI data to all the connected MIDI applications/computers.  There is not a separate client and server application, just one application that you install on all the computers that you want to communicate.

So far I've been very happy with ipMIDI.  For $79 you can connect up to three computers.  I still think $79 is a little pricey for what is essentially a driver and I've even thought about developing my own solution and re-selling for cheaper.  Out of the two leading products, ipMIDI and MidiOverLan, ipMIDI is almost half the cost and you get one extra computer connection so it gets my vote over MidiOverLan.  I did try MidiOverLan utilizing the 14 day trial and it's a solid product but in my opinion it is way over priced.

ipMIDI offers a trial for download here, so if you're not sure it will work in your environment you can always give it a test run.

Click here to view some pictures of my play room aka home studio.

I finally got around to setting up some photo galleries in flickr so I decided to add them to my blog.  I'm using the silverlight graffiti plug-in that Kevin talks about in his post here.  I'm also using Rich's flickr side bar widget.

This is another quick little sample video using EastWest Quantum Leap Pianos.  In this video I'm playing "Let It Be" on my Yamaha S90ES triggering the samples of the Bechstein in Quantum Leap Pianos.

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Well the much anticipated piano sample library of 2008 EastWest Quantum Leap Pianos shipped last week.  This library is absolutely amazing!  This sample library consists of 35 DVDs of samples from 4 different high dollar pianos.  You can read more about it here.

I created a quick demo video where I'm improvising using this library.  The specific piano samples in this video are from the Steinway.  Enjoy!

The term DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is just a fancy name for a computer that is optimized in both software and hardware to be used in the production of music/audio.

There really isn't that big of a difference between a DAW and the standard home computer.  The differences usually come down to configuration and hardware choices.

In my home studio I have two DAWs both of which I built custom so that I could have the utmost control over all the critical components.  I found that while today you don't save much by building computers from scratch you do still save a little.  For me the reason for building from scratch is not so much the little bit of cash you save as it is the flexibility in configuration options.

Main PC (DAW #1) Configuration:

• Windows XP SP2 (32 bit)
• Intel Quad Core CPU
• Gigabyte P35-DS3R Mother Board
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE Graphics Card
• Presonus Firestuido 26x26 Audio Interface
• 4 GB RAM with 3/GB Switch
• 4 SATAII 300 GB 16 MB Cache 7200 RPM Hard Drives
• 1 10,000 RPM Barracuda HD
• 650 Watt Power Supply
• DVD ROM
• Gigabit Ethernet
• SIGG Firewire 400 PCIe Card
• 2 x UAD Cards
• CUBASE 4

Slave PC (DAW #2) Configuration:

• Windows XP SP2 (32 bit)
• Intel Quad Core CPU
• Intel DP35DP Mother Board
• ASUS EN7300GT Silent Graphics Card
• E-MU 1212m Audio Interface
• 4 GB RAM with 3/GB Switch
• 2 SATAII 420 GB 16MB Cache 7200 RPM Hard Drives
• 3 SATAII 300 GB 16MB Cache 7200 RPM Hard Drives
• 650 Watt Power Supply
• Gigabit Ethernet

Hardware Choices:

A couple things you probably notice are that on DAW #2 I'm using a different mother board, different graphics card, and different audio interface.  Let me explain...

First, the mother board.  A lot of people will recommend the Gigabyte P35-DS3R mother board, but I don't, and here is why.  After about 15 days my P35-DS3R shut down and would never come back to life.  The motherboard would never make it to the bios post process.  It would power on, beep 3 times and then restart over and over again.  I did a search on the Internet and found out I was not the only one having this problem.  Apparently it was an issue a lot of people were experiencing.  Luckily I only had the board for 15 days, but since I didn't have my receipt I had to exchange it for the exact same board.  So far my second P35-DS3R has worked great.

Second, the graphics card.  Do not buy the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE Graphics Card.  This graphics card fan is so damn loud and I mean very very loud, it's ridiculous.  The ASUS EN7300GT Silent is SWEET!  It is exactly that, silent, it does not use a fan.

Finally, the audio interface.  In my slave PCs I only need ADAT since I'm sending ADAT out from the slave to the main PC.  The E-MU 1212m is a heck of a deal and a great sound card, although patchmix is a little confusing at first.

How it's all connected:

DAW #1 handles all the recording and sequencing as well as all the effects processing.  DAW #2 is simply a powerful VSTi host that consists of just instrument sample libraries.

I'm using Midi-Over-LAN to send MIDI information from DAW #1 to DAW #2 over my LAN.  Midi-Over-LAN words great and I highly recommend it.  I tried FXTeleport and Steinberg's V-Stack and Midi-Over-LAN plus ADAT has worked the best for me.

It's important when working with multiple sound cards that they are in sync and share the same clock.  DAW #1's Audio Interface, the firestudio, uses internal clocking and sends the clock signal across S/PDIF to the 1212m on DAW #2.  I send ADAT (8 mono audio channels) to the firestudio's ADAT IN connected to DAW #1 so now I can record all the audio from DAW #2 without having to go through any A/D D/A conversions.  It all stays in the digital domain and latency is kept to a minimum.  NOTE:  Sending clock from the 1212m to the firestudio did not work for me, for some reason the firestudio could not stay locked.

I recieved an email from my Sister-in-law this morning about the son of a friend of hers and I wanted to post it here in hopes of reaching others that might be able to help.  Here is the email:

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to reach out to you regarding my realtor’s son that was killed in Iraq just before Thanksgiving.  He was a 2^nd Lt. in the Army and felt called to leave his corporate job to serve his country.  He left behind his parents, a fiancé and 3 siblings.  In tribute to him, his mother is sending packages over to his unit for the holidays, a wish that Peter had asked her to do just days before he was killed.  Please go to the link below and see the write up on him and the list of things his  soldiers wanted.  You can also donate postage for shipping – it is only $8.95 flat rate per box – an amount most of us would spend on lunch any day of the week.  Contact information is on the site if you need it.

Once again, we should be so honored and humbled to have men and women serve the best country in the world.  Political differences aside, they deserve our support and are owed the reassurance that we truly care about them not only during the holidays but everyday.

http://www.lovelifefoundation.com/New/fallensoldier/fallensoldier.html

Thanks so much to everyone and I wish you and your families a blessed Christmas.
p.s. Feel free to forward as I know I left people out on this list unintentionally.

pps.  On another note, if anyone has connections in the homebuilding industry, please let me know.  One of my best friends who was recently diagnosed with *** Cancer and starts chemo today, just found out her husband is losing his job the end of December.  He is a Division Manager for a custom homebuilder.  I am not looking for a placement I just want to help them out in any way I can.

Love,
Philana

Philana Martin
President
PDR Partners, LLC 
Executive Search Professionals
(972) 588-1806

Here is a little video clip of me playing the holiday classic Linus & Lucy. Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and don't forget to give thanks to our troops!

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Now with live Zune stats in the side bar.  I also updated my facebook to include my zune tag.  Pretty cool little addition to the new zune.

The new zune launches tomorrow and I'm excited.  I've had the first generation zune since it launched a year ago and I've been extremely happy with it.  1st gen zunes will get the new 2nd gen firmware with the launch tomorrow and if you buy a new 2nd gen zune online you can choose from one of twenty seven different artist engravings and up to 4 lines of custom text all for free.  At first I was like, "ok, that is kind of cool", but then I took a look at the available engravings and they look sweet!  I think this is going to be a hot addition.

Dad, congratulations on your new venture. I'm very excited for you and I know you will do great! Even though you didn't tell me until yesterday I forgive you :) I know you're going to miss Cisco, but sometimes stepping out of the comfort zone can be a great thing. I'm proud of you, you're a great man!

Today we remember and thank all the men and women who have served this great country and sacrificed more than any of us could ever imagine.  Your sacrifices will never be taken for granted.  Thank You Veterans!

Have a look back at all the veterans day posters from years past.