keepin in real....thanks KAZI!
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Resurrecting an Ensoniq EPS classic sampler
Join me, for a journey into the world of vintage music electronics repair and modification...
Our subject, the Ensoniq EPS.
Don't know it? Sure you do!!! Ever heard Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers? You've heard this keyboard. It was the precursor to the uber-popular ASR-10.
It's a very characteristic 13-bit sampler beamed to us from 1988. Low RAM in this one (480k) means you gots to get real creative.
Anyway, I was given this keyboard, and immediately dug it. I already had a soft-spot for the ESQ-1, and this is basically like it's sampling brother.
The only problem with these old machines though, is that floppy disks are not much fun, the particular ones for the EPS are very hard to find (DD, not HD!), and they will eventually fail. The HxC Floppy Emulator steps in to replace your thousands of floppies with one, easy to find SD card.
The process:
I backed up all my EPS disks via OmniFlop. This creates a RAW img file, which, as far as I know, is just a byte-for-byte (or close to that) copy of the diskette. The beauty of this format is that the host machines don't need to be able to read it, they just copy the raw data off it. The problem is, you don't know if it's working til you've tried it. I did not anticipate this, and thought the software would read my *.img files easily...not so.
So in the HxCFloppyEmulator software, I can't do 'batch convert' (that expects *.efe files...i've got *.img raw files), I had to do "Load Raw image":
- Load Raw image
- You have to change the settings in this menu.
For 819200 byte images, use these parameters:
Sector per track = 10
Sector ID start = 0
GAP3 lenght = 40
Anyway, that converted all my floppies to images, and at that point, I just hoped it would work.
Finally found the EPS service manual, which helped me remove only the screws I needed to remove the disk drive.
Here are the instructions from the service manual:
Replacing the EPS Disk Drive
1. Remove all cables connected to the EPS, including the power cable.
2. Remove the four (4) screws that fasten the control panel with a 2.5mm hex wrench.
NOTE: These are machine screws.
3. Turn the unit over, top down, and remove the four (4) screws that attach the wheel assembly to the case. See Figure 12 for location of screws. Return the unit to an upright position and raise the control panel. Carefully lift the wheel assembly out of the case.
4. Disconnect the two cables from the Disk Drive, paying particular attention to the polarity. (See Important things to know - the disk drive, page 2).
5. Remove the four (4) screws and star washers that attach the disk drive to the wheel assembly.
6. Carefully slide the Disk Drive out of the wheel assembly. Remove the two (2) screws and star washers that attach the metal plate to the bottom of the disk drive.
etc, etc...
Got that out, got the floppy emulator in, powered up, and CRAP! it WORKED. Couldn't believe it. Scrolled over to the disk image for the OS, and the sumb*tch loaded up like nothing was wrong.
I made the above video while I was doing the upgrade, and then I created the soundtrack from the demo disks that came with the EPS.
So if you've got an old sampler, and floppy disks are holding you back, get over it.
DIY4LIFE. Read More......
Friday, February 11, 2011
Woolfy Interview, Cosmic Trigger Tonight!
....Special report from certified-homie Hayden Bagot....
Hayden from Flying Turns here. We caught a DJ performance from Woolfy last year during SXSW that left us throttled. He completely stole the show and then got off the decks to drink and dance with us while his label-mates on DFA records pushed on further into disco-house territory. We woke up the next day in pieces but knew we had to bring back the man who has killed parties, released on popular labels (DFA, Rong, and Permanent Vacation), and performed his records with a touring live band to do the business to Austin again. In anticipation of the party this weekend (and because I could) we had a quick Q and A session.
H: Let's pretend you are boxing for the title against George Foreman, What song do you pick to play while you walk out to the ring?
W: This is a very good question Hayden, for me I would choose "tomorrow" from the Annie soundtrack; there's nothing like a good show-tune before an ass whooping. For George I'd choose "Lean On Me" cause that's all he ever did in the ring.
H This is not your first time in Texas, do werewolves prefer Austin's tacos or barbeque?
W: Bar-b-que for sure. I want my baby back baby back baby back ribs. That works for the first question but it would of gone, I want my ribs back baby . . .
H What's your favorite piece of musical equipment and why?
W: My classical guitar, it releases a lot of demons for me; it also cooks me dinner, sends heart warming texts and is a big fan of Dexter.
H: The hard-drive with all your recordings on it crashed last year, have you been busy writing new material?
W: That was definitely a hard time for me, but I took it in stride. I thought I'd be writing make-up to break-up love songs due to my divorce, but it started a new genre of music; post angst computerism. The name of the album;s called KILL KRAFTWERK.
H Do you have any plans in the works to tour the Woolfy Band soon?
W: A lot of offers have come my way recently, but my main man (keyboardist) Dan's band ORGONE is blowing up right now and to start from scratch is a tall order. Chemistry's a fine art in the music biz, Match.com anyone?
H: Your release on Whatchawannado is under the name Sir Woolfy. How did it feel being knighted by the queen?
W: It was humiliating. They made me wear a Tudor wig and used a plastic sword. Sean Connery and McCartney were laughing during the whole ceremony, bastards.
H: What is the strangest thing you've ever been asked in an interview? and how did you respond?
W: See question 1.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Zen and the art of tape deck repair
Taken while replacing a broken belt in my Sony TC-K1A Cassette Tape Deck.
Amazing machine! My crappy pictures do this thing no justice.
Not to mention, built-in RCA cords!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Biggest Tool on the Internet
From bleacherreport.com.
I love to hate this guy.
OK, so I don't know exactly how, but I keep finding these links that are like "the 50 worst NFL coaches" or, this weeks edition "the 50 worst Championship teams in all of sports." The list is exactly what it sound like...some guy going "sure he won the superbowl, but his all time won loss percentage was a paltry .569 . Or something like that (one of the coaches even had a winning record, srsly). It is really absurd. He puts the 93-94 Rockets as the 32nd worst championship team out of principal because MJ didn't play that year. Oh and the Seattle Supersonics lost in the 1st round, thats somehow a black mark against Dr34m.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/530269-worst-of-the-best-50-worst-championship-teams-ever?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=outbrain#page/20
Oh yeah, how about you go out and win an NBA championship, then we can talk.
The Dream
Update: The Hakeem interview went well.
Aside from some audio fidelity issues (this was a phone interview) and a polite decline of my request for a voicemail drop ("Wassup this is Dream, shake out a message for my all-star friend Dan Gentile") the interview went pretty well. We spoke for 40 minutes (he talks fairly slow).
I learned:
Despite his website's statement that he has a "private palace" in Jordan it is just a small house. He was upset about this, seems like somebody's gonna get fired. He would also love to have Michael Jordan visit him in Jordan.
Hakeem's dream shake would be vanilla with strawberries and bananas ("you've gotta keep it creative, mix it up, use different combinations").
When asking him about the controversy behind his height (some say 6'11, some say 7 foot) I got him to admit that he is in actuality 6 foot 5 inches. This took some convincing and included me using the phrase "Don't lie to me, Dream!"
He's not familiar enough with the ninja turtles to pick one that he most resembles, despite Dwight Howard (who he called the best big man in the game today) constantly referring to him as Master Splinter in an adorable YouTube video of the two working out together.
He has never played NBA Jam, thus making my question about whether he used the unstoppable combo of Shaq and Scott Skiles irrelevant.
We had some taco talk regarding the double decker, which he starred in a commercial for with Shaq. He said he's trying to watch his weight so he could probably only eat two of them, and that he would not want to compete with Shaq in an eating contest.
The fashion equivalent of a dream shake would be wearing a cashmere sweater with jeans. This was without a doubt the best part of the interview, Hakeem spoke very passionately about his personal style at length and how the key to fashion is to make it look like you're not trying.
He still plays 3v3 pickup games with Clyde Drexler. God help the other 4 guys that randomly end up in that game.
Those are the highlights. I might chop up some of the audio and post it soon. Watch for the Thrillist piece sometime next week.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Vintage Sampler Floppy Disk Salvation
We interrupt these awesome basketball Dream posts to bring you your quarterly nerd report:
Having trouble backing up your Ensoniq EPS Classic (wiki) sound disks?
I was.
I've been using software called Omniflop which basically reads your non-pc formatted disks as raw as possible, then saves that as an 'image' onto a computer...which it can later use to recreate the floppy.
I ran into some problems with some EPS disks not wanting to read...hey, the most recent date on any of these 1989, so we can cut mother nature some slack in this case. Specifically, these disks WOULD load in the sampler, but would not load in my computer disk drive.
The solution:
Find a floppy that DOES load fine on your computer. This is going to be your 'transfer disk'.
Format your 'transfer disk' with your sampler. Make it fresh.
Take a 'problem disk', and load it into the sampler. Load the sounds as normal.
Now simply save the files onto your freshly formatted 'transfer disk'. If you could read the disk before, you can likely read it again, albeit this time with new data on it.
So it's a lot of insert disk, load, eject disk, insert xfer disk, save, eject disk, insert into pc, backup disk...over and over (more depending on your sampler, maybe)...but it is a way to salvage your material!
I will be posting soon about my experience into installing an HxC SD Floppy Emulator into this same EPS, so I don't have to go through this failing disk / drive nonsense again.
You may now return to higher caliber journalism.
-j
BONUS POINTS: Save an image file of the formatted disk, and instead of formatting in the sampler later, simply load the formatted image via the PC.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Smooth Jazz
hey there Blogermanics! or should i say "Legomanics"!!
I thought there was no point to smooth jazz music....no environment where it was like "oh yeah, thats the stuff". I am happy to report I am wrong. When looking for video evidence of this: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=6037737&sportCat=ncf on youtube (amazing) I came across this:
ps howd that hakeem thing go? Everything you dr34med about?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Hakeem Update 2
The Dream has agreed to let me interview him. Bloggermaniacs keep your eyes peeled for the full story next week.
Read More......Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Hakeem Update
So I'm trying to interview Hakeem Olajuwon for my other blog. The reason for this post is to let you know that Hakeem's PR representation casually calls him Dream, as in, "I will speak to Dream today about this matter."
Keep your fingers crossed bloggermaniacs.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Space/Time 001
Hey there bloggermaniacs, I've missed you. I've got a few epic posts I've been sleeping on, mainly a review of the Kanye record, but in the meantime here's a mix my DJ homies and I put together.
Flying Turns - Space Time 001 Mix
Sunday, January 2, 2011
J's 2010 - Non-2010-released-but-thoroughly-jammed-in-2010 best of
01. Chemical Brothers - Further
Originally released 2010. BLEW MY MIND. Over and over. Again and again. Absolute best thing that's been released in years. The DVD is also worth it, and in a pricing mishap, I got the deluxe double disc version for less than the cost of the standard cd. This album is the most banging, psychedelic, dadgum beautiful thing I have heard since...damn maybe when I first heard those Bran Van remixes (more on that later). A MUST-JAM.
02. Toro Y Moi - Causers of this
Originally released 2010. This one sneaks in on a technicality, because even though it was actually released in 2010, I already had used it on my 2009 list. It's that good, let the thing rule the top of lists for both years. A MUST-JAM.
03. Soul Mann and the Brothers - Shaft
Originally released 1971. I just listened to this record so much this year. This is the origin of the very popular guitar sample found in Erykah Badu - Bag Lady and Dr. Dre - Xxplosive. Also this gets props for the massive GIGs of bounty it pulled filling a request on what. Works very great as bed music too when doing announcements on air.
04. The Rip-Off Artist - Copper Blue EP
Originally released in 2002. This is record I found this year that not only completely satisfied my expectations, but blew the doors off them. Some of the best, no bullshit, minimal/micro house you can find. Every track is killer and I mixed this with everything I could find, from Roy Acuff to Venetian Snares.
05. Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys - Great Speckled Bird
Originally released 1958. The godfather of country music had a huge share of my needle wear this year. A voice that resonates straight from the throne, and melodies that remind you why home-grown american music is the defining force it is. Also, props to to the title track for inspiring my search to find all the songs that actually share that same melody (save that for a later post).
06. Tom T. Hall - Homecoming
Originally released 1969. Man, this dude can write a damn song. Sometimes slim-pickins to find his albums, but having a hits comp and the album 'Homecoming', which travels the distance between silly-country-story songs to full string section psychedelic-awareness-country-story songs, I'd say I played Homecoming straight through more than the other.
07. The XX - XX
Originally released 2009. Just a little late to the game with this one, this record has one of the most unique and bold sounds I've heard from a pretty popular band in a while. It's refreshing to hear this stuff coming out that sounds totally un-copycat from anything else out right now. If you don't know, it's super mellow.
08. Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in L.A.
Originally released in 1997. FLASHBACK. Found this record still sealed in Seattle and it stayed in my active crates for the rest of the year. You forget how good 90's jungle was then you hear these epic remixes and it hits you. SHIT WAS GOOD. (loosely related...)
09. John Tejada - The Matrix of Us
Originally released 2000. Whenever I need something smooth - but banging, distinctive - but familiar, analog - but digital, fast - but slow...you get the idea...I turn to this wonderfully edited vinyl EP. Tejada has range.
10. Joy Orbison - The shrew would have cushioned the blow
Originally released 2010. Another one I can't throw enough positive adjectives at. Songs usually 8-12 minutes, a big slap to the face to the trendiness of new genres...as this takes those elements and creates something completely it's own. Something for everybody in these tracks...bass, vox, beats, atmospheres, melodies, LFOs, shuffles...for technical refinement this guy takes the cake.
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