Last modified on 03/26/18

kotay.net - Keith - Guitar - Update: January 18, 2002


Quote of the day: "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." --T. H. White, The Once and Future King


[1-18-2002]
One year later... First of all, I'm still playing every day! I believe this is the first time in 20+ years that I've played consistently for a whole year. As far as the DAW goes, I waited for a year to buy any new equipment because I wanted to make sure I was going to keep playing. For Christmas 2001 I bought myself a Zoom PS02 Palmtop Studio. This little gem incorporates a drum/bass rhythm section, a guitar effects box, and a 3-track audio recorder in a unit that fits in the palm of your hand (3.58" H x 3.26 W x 1.32 D)! The recording format is 16-bit @ 31.25kHz, which is below the CD-quality format of 16-bit 44.1kHz, but the quality is actually quite good. Although it is possible to produce complete songs with the PS02, I decided to use the PS02 mainly as a capture device--doing the mixing on my PC. So my next step was to get a decent sound card. I had been looking at pro-quality recording cards for several months but there always seemed to be a problem--my PC wasn't supported, I couldn't find out if it was PCI bus mastering, etc. Also, most recording cards are used for recording only--they can't be used with PC games and most of them don't have MIDI sound generation capability. So because I already have the PS02 as my recording device, I decided to get a "jack of all trades" sound card since all it had to do was mix prerecorded audio and play MIDI files. I eventually chose the Soundblaster Audigy Platinum because it has a lot of features (including the Audigy Drive with loads of connection possibilities including a headphone jack with volume control) and a great software bundle (including a version of Steinberg Cubase VST designed especially for the Audigy--so you know it will work!). The Audigy card also has ASIO drivers which permit low-latency recording--giving me ability to record using the Audigy if I want to (at 16-bit 48kHz). So for about $500 I have a decent setup that will let me record some songs. Here is my first attempt at recording--it's really just a test of the functionality of my setup:

Chicago ...This is a 30-second cut using the PS02 "Chicago" backing tracks (originally 5.3MB uncompressed, now 400KB compressed using MPEG Layer 3 @ 96kbps)

Hopefully I'll be able to put some more original compositions online in the near future!