This is my little hobbyist site. I work on it to get experience with new technologies and expand my horizons. It gives me an outlet to talk about tech and music, when the feeling strikes.
It is grossly neglected, but lately I’ve put a little work into some housekeeping:
Note-taking software is evidently important to me. The amount of notes-software angst I experience could be chronicled in volumes, but I’ll spare you.
The fact is I haven’t used Bear in years, despite my infatuation. I departed silently, feeling there was no need to call attention to my departure from what was really a very good product, albeit one that did not quite meet my needs.
I have a fairly nice synth workstation.
Well, it’s alright. I like that I can load DX7 patches in it. It has some convenient knobs and serves as an audio interface and midi controller. It does everything just well enough that when I contemplate selling it for a different solution[1] I’m restrained by the fear of seller’s remorse.
One of the things it does ok is piano sounds. They’re good for quick, immediate auditioning of ideas[2], and bad for recording a decently-accurate piano. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but when I try and record a superlative performance I come up disappointed.
After some years of saving[3] I realized my dream of owning a baby grand piano, and I think it has a really warm, lovely tone. (My piano tuner agrees with me.) Wouldn’t it be nice if I could somehow record an actual piano rather than settling for a digital facsimile?
Somehow I stumbled into an obsession with headsets. Specifically gaming headsets. I’ve owned probably a dozen. The intent of this post is not to examine my problem, but I’m acknowledging it. The upshot of my semi-exhaustive survey of headsets is that I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes for a good headset. Now I invite you–willingly or not–into my world.
My latest acquisition is the Arctis Pro Wireless premium gaming headset by Steelseries. It makes sound and has a (retractable!) boom microphone. It connects to my PS4. But the luxuries are where it starts to distinguish itself from the pack…
I am weirdly fussy about note-taking apps. My requirements are…quirky.
I have experimented with no fewer than five note-taking apps: Notes, OneNote, Evernote, Agenda…
An online resource like Bobby Blues Yamaha DX7 soundbanks can help with this. You can, for instance, download a zip of the ROM that shipped with the DX7.
Once you have the .syx (Sysex) file containing the patch(es) you want, drag-and-drop it onto Yamaha’s FM Converter.
It will show a list of the available patches in the left column, and you can select the ones you’re interested in.
Click CONVERT and download the converted file to your computer.
Unzip the file you downloaded. Rename the .x7l file to what you with the Bank name to be, then copy to a USB flash drive that has been formatted for use on the MODX.
UTILITY.Contents->Load tab.Congratulations! You just loaded a DX7 ROM onto a MODX. To find your new patches, click CATEGORY, tap on Bank/Favorite, and select the new bank. You can now browse all the glorious DX7 patches and process them with the powerful layering and effects of the MODX.
The MODX restricts user libraries to eight; this is almost certainly a limitation due to the bank select UI space and not system memory (an entire DX7 ROM takes only a fraction of a percent of the available user memory on the MODX). To get around this I suggest copying multiple .syx files to the FM Converter. For instance, I grabbed all the DX7 Yamaha official ROMS and converted them to a single .x7l (Montage) lib file. Now I have one gigantic Bank of DX7 patches, and still seven free additional available library slots.
I am super jazzed to finally be able to import DX7 patches onto a modern Yamaha synth! With that said, I do think they could streamline the process, either by adding the capability to MODX Connect or building it into soundmondo.com. [2]
Who knows what software (both cloud and firmware) features are coming our way in the future. For now I am eager to play with a literal billion DX7 sounds.
Keeping the back of your synth accessible, or using a USB extension cable, makes this process much easier. ↩︎
If there is a way already, I’d love to hear it! If you know of one tweet me at @skrvnmusic and I’ll update this guide accordingly. ↩︎
At some point the tabs in my browser reach critical mass:
And I asked myself, “How can I live this way? Am I a tab hoarder?” That’s when the despair hits. What can I do about this? Am I beholden to forever live with these tabs, hopelessly trying to dig out my social media from a stack of Stack Overflows?
I still struggle with my tabs; I’m not perfect. But I have found relief with a few key strategies for tab management.
My wife created a lovely website for herself using Squarespace. It took about ninety minutes. And she built a blog for herself using Wordpress; that was around an hour’s labor.
I’ve had my first unoccupied vacation time in ten years this past week and immediately set about occupying it in the construction of this site. (Relaxation is a young man’s game.) In the time it took me to develop skrvn.com, Whitney could have created forty websites. (To save you a math, I spent fifty hours on this basic[1], buggy[2], alpha-quality product.)
So why’d I do it?