So I got myself another control surface (I'll take a photo of them all together one of these days), this time it was a Akai LPD 8.
I got it when me and Golden Rocket Pony drove 90 scandinavian miles to Bamberg, because that's where Thomann has it's show-house.
Anyways, the Akai LPD 8 is packed in a clear plastic, with paper for a back. You know, like the cheap headphones you bought when you where young. It comes with a CD where the manual and drivers are. I Installed the program to modify what button/knobs sends what where, but I dont think I'll ever use it.The USB cable that comes with is long, witch is nice.
The knobs are Akai LPD 8 has 8 pads and 8 knobs. The knobs are small, but spaced so that it's not really a problem. They do what they are supposed to. The pads are a bit numb. This wouldent do anything if you're launching a clip or to from Ableton Live, but when you try to do a little bit of finger-drumming (especially since you watched that guy with that awesome system on youtube that you wanna get as good as) it's a bit of a problem. I never had that problem at all with the Korg padKontrol, those pad's are awesome.
So far very good for it's price 510:- was what it cost when I bought it, but now the real bad thing comes in. I sometimes get ghost hits. I've located it to a special angle and the center of a pad. This is bad, it makes the drumming sound like hickups. I sent a question to the Akai support but haven't received any information back if this is a known issue or a fault with my unit.
It's pretty hard to search for this error on the Internet, all ghost tap and double tap etc just gives bogus information, I tried to find comfort in my multiracial homies back at #hexawe, but they where useless
Anyway's I'll probably keep it, wait for something to pop-up, maybe modify it (like there are videos of ppl doing with other akai - gear) I'll just use my Korg padKontrol for the fingerdrumming.
I made a sketch for critter and guitari's Pocketpiano Arduino-shield (it was the for the first Arduino I bought, and the reason I bought the first Arduino)
There is a video of me explaining it here:
So what I've heard that you get a quarter of a hundredth of a Swedish Krona every play you get from on Spotify. So I was thinking that I might try and get rich by doing very little.
I made some calculations on how much I could get if I played one song continuously, without further ado:
So I'm gonna go to cdbaby with a CD with 15 new songs, that all should be about one seconds long. So if I do this and only play the songs myself on repeat I'll make 78 840 Sek in a year, that's about 10 000 Usd or 8000 Eur.
To skew the results I'll try and skew the results in my favor by naming the songs to very bland and easy to find if you search for other songs, mohahahahaha.
Here are the 15 songs with my new band "Get RITCH QUICK!" and the album "The sound of money"
KeffMeff is a touchpad synthesizer. There are five different sounds, choosable by pressing menu. The sounds are crazy noisy noises. Control them by moving your finger around.
And it's for the Android, get it at the android market!
Android, why do I come back to this platform? It could be so awesome, but it's full of fail. Lately I've been trying to get a X/Y pad thing going on, Like a kaossilator thing.
While it works in principal, it does have some latency. about 100ms latency. That's not musicians grade at all! I have however managed to apply dirty trix and evil hacks.
Expect at least 3 touchscreen-driven musical instruments on the Android from me and Staffan, and since the Android market is a bad place to be if you want to charge for your apps, we'll try out Advertisement this time around.
In Sweden, you are not allowed to be good at anything, it's called Jantelagen and it comes sneaks up upon you even though you know it exists. One thing is that there are some "statistics" from a "survey" that everybody knows of (though I have not been able to find it) that say that "90% of the Swedish population think that they are better driver then most". This "fact" is often followed by a chuckle and and the appendix "that cant be true, because 90% is more then 10%, and that's not half". This kills anyone dead that think they are a good driver.
The important thing here I think is that Swedes as a people totally forgets to analyze why the alledged 90% think they are good drivers. (trust me, we are not a land of champion f-1 drivers). Is it because they think that everybody else does lots of mistakes and drive badly (perhaps because of stupidity)? Or is it because you think you're special (as the jante law tells you that you cannot be).
I know I make mistakes while driving, I know I forget rules from time to time, especially seldom used ones. I know I don't remember all the roadsigns. What I also know is that I do know these things and when I made a mistake or found something that I'm unsure of, I look it up. I try to improve, that's makes me a better driver then most other drivers I think. I avoid putting anyone in dangerous situations, or situations that I cant control. When it's bad weather (like loads of snow and stuff) and I don't need to use the car, guess what, I don't!
What I'm saying is that I try to improve, and I use common sense, and I think that makes me a better driver.
So I watched that Avatar movie last night and I spent way to much time thinking about how one of the people would taste like. I think they would taste best BBQ'ed. jumm jumm.
On a side-note I'm turning 33 today, Hooray for me!
I could not help myself, I made an Android OpenGL bedazzler port, for those of you that dont remember what it is, go here : http://www.larsby.com/johan/?p=429
Also the source is available, since you know, opensource and all. BedazzlerGL
And you can download it from the Android Market, at least for now.
