Coda on the Nord G2 Engine

Interesting result on the G2 engine - listed on ebay.comau at $599, with a buy-it-now at $999, the auction was won at $1167. How does this happen?

I guess two or more people wanted it very badly, but worried they would overpay buying it now, and also worried they might not win it without bids well over that price. Effectively, they priced the saving if the auction settled below $999 against their unhappiness missing out, and both bid over $1150. Even the winner can't be happy at wasting $170.

The disappointed runner-up might find relief at musicswopshop.com.au, where an identical item is $1100. Or in the UK, where gumtree.co.uk lists two identical items for £650. Or using the free mono software version from Nord.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Gear Junkie

Have I told you about my home studio in detail, and how I acquired it? It's a sad tale, and dull.

When i was 22, i took up a little music production. I spent, over a few years, probably $3,600, on:
A roland xp-10 starter keyboard (disposed of)
A kawai k5000w 'advanced additive' digital synth (now wish i had bought the s variant, but never mind close enough)
a roland jv-1010 sound module
And a Guillemot ISIS maxistudio soundcard, bundled with a version of logic audiopro 3.6.
And evidence of how stupid I was - I never got out of the general midi soundbanks on any of them.

In the mid 2000s I bought a microphone and a preamp ($400).

Since completing the desktertainment unit, I've added (in order of importance):
An e-mu 1212m sound card (great card, great bundled software, great price)
Two korg nanokontrols and a nanopad
An m-audio 2x2 usb-midi interface.

There are a number of sad parts. The main one is that i am a very poor musician: my hands and ears are joined by nervous tissue that has about a second of jitter, and i lose the beat on the third repetition of it.

The other one is that I have now called in every conceivable birthday and christmas present but can't stop shopping. I see a Nord Modular G1 ($700) on gumtree and begin to fantasise forlornly about the email I could send to its current owner, about how much I would care for it, and how its value is significantly reduced by software instruments, doesn't he know. Sheesh.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Two Korg Nanokontrols for DAW on win7 64-bit

Yes I have two Korg Nanokontrols (not ver 2s - these are the pure breeds with 9 sets of controllers, not 8) working in Music Creator 6 (and presumably any DAW).  Who wants to touch me?

I said who wants to friggin' touch me?

When I first tried to use one nanokontrol with the Korg drivers, it didn't work at all.  Getting rid of the Korg drivers revealed that the windows default driver for usb midi devices works fine.  I added the second with some trepidation, but the windows driver registered it cheerfully enough. Midiox could open both devices and register input from them, but Cakewalk Music Creator could not.  The nanokontrols would get dropped from the Midi Devices immediately I hit 'Apply'.  Midi-yoke is not going to work on Windows 7 64-bit, but Loopbe1 by the wonderful nerds.de can serve as wiring betwen two programs.

The working config is:
1 nanokontrol as the selected input in Midi-Ox, with the output mapped to the loopbe1 'virtual cable
No other midi input selected.
Now, when I open Music Creator 6 I have 3 midi devices for the two nanokontrols - two of them are 'nanokontrol' and one is loopbe1.  By ticking loopbe1 and one (the correct one, which is a bit of a guess) of the nanokontrols, I have two nanokontrols, working perfectly to input to my DAW.

I don't think the Korg Kontrol Editor will like it much, but I might be able to use Midi-ox to tie up one nanokontrol and edit the other.  And yes, it is surprising to be reduced to such chicanery in these days.

(Of course, now I have no excuse for not making music.  Nuts.)

Better than Music Creator 6

Owing to some difficulties with MC6 (notes played back through Synth1 were often dropped, and I was able (and prone) to hide tracks but not unhide them because MC6 borrows code from big brother Sonar X1, and hiding has been blocked out less completely than it should have been) this morning I switched back to Music Creator 5. 5 has less of a 'pro' UI look and feel. On the other, quite important, hand, MC5 plays all the notes you give it to play, and it genuinely doesn't know how to hide tracks.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7