DM10 Followup

A few questions in the comments - I hope these are helpful:

Anonymous said...

With midi note editing...you are saying that the hi hat and ride can not be changed using VST's? So the hi hat and ride would be factory sounds while every other drum/cymbal could be vst? Thanks!

 

My Answer:
The sounds would still come from the DST.  They may not be the sounds you want, because you cannot edit the MIDI note.  You have to change the DST to respond to the MIDI note you are sending with the sound you want - remap the DST essentially.  Or, in my case, the MIDI notes happen to be correct (thank you standard note numbers) and it's not a big deal.

Anonymous said...

Hello, and nice review! Very helpful. I do have a question though. Can the inputs be assigned to any and all drum sounds? I play a 'hybrid' kit, with real cymbals, and muted acoustic drums with triggers on them, so I don't need cymbal sounds from the module. I noticed that the inputs are labeled, and I wondered if I would have any issues by plugging tom triggers into the inputs labeled for cymbals.

My Answer:
For the most part, yes, an input is an input. and you can edit whatever port you want to handle signal however you want.  The labels are merely for ease of use when setting up a standard kit setup.  Some cymbal ports are single-zone, not dual - like the hi-hat and the #7 main crash.  The Ride is 3 zone, but you can set it up as 2 zone, and get another aux port..

Portland Juggling Festival 2011

Geez, is this my fourth year, or fifth? Fifth.. I just went back and checked some older blog postings.. (I know I am a cheater..) This year I was, once again, Gym Coordinator. I let the Late Night Czar job go as late nights and early mornings are a bad combo for me. Gym Coordinator means to set up the gym(s) before the fest starts, and clean it up after the fest ends. And I get 2 grunts to help - usually I have my friends help. This year, I got two friends from Sacramento who have been to the Fest before - even stayed at our house. (I would have offered them a place to stay, but our house is in a major state of upheaval remodeling wise right now..) And Late Night Czar requires me to stay up until 2am, then kick jugglers out of the gym - which is like herding cats with a laser pointer that won't shut off. So, I shunted the late night gig, and was just the Gym Coordinator.

Friday
Gym setup goes great, 2 of the 3 vendors are setup and in place, and the potluck dinner goes on later (outside). Friday generally flies along well, I get some passing in with folks, work on my 5 ball (still...) and learn a few new tricks, too. Then off to the Friday night Renegade show, the show and tell for jugglers. With drinking.

Renegade Show
New high or a new low, I am thinking a new low. There's always some risque acts (unicycle stripping comes to mind..) and drinking and sometimes one or two things get a little out of hand, but this year, the show went on a stripping tangent like no other show I'd seen before - drunk jugglers just stripping to strip with no act behind it. But there were some good acts, like Luke's screen show of the names of tricks, every throw was in sequence and called out. The balloon 'muscle man' was hilarious - a balloon 'animal' of a man; it could be manipulated. 'Nuff said. Those are the things that immediately pop out in my head, but I am sure there were other things I laughed a lot at, but hey, if you want a full experience, you gotta come.

Saturday
Got in a bit late - I should be there by 10:00 am or slightly before.. I get there at like 10:15. No biggie, the gym is in full swing with a lot of folks already starting their day. I go to a beginning 3-ball juggling so that I can learn new teaching techniques. I usually run the 'beginner corner', so any helpful teaching bits I can use are great. I also attend a 5 ball workshop, which I learned one or two more things to get me back on track to improving instead of the crap I've been trying. I want to go to a club passing workshop, but I never made it to one.. I spent a lot of time working with a few beginners (all a little older than I - so it's never too late to start folks!).

Saturday Show
The show this year is on the Reed Campus instead of a few miles away - I thought this was great, as I don't need to trek a few miles away and find parking. I just need to shoo jugglers from the gym, call security to lock up, and walk up the hill to the building next door. I see a few friends in the lower chairs, but I decide I want to go up and get a view that is above the stage more. There's a lot of chairs on the main floor with what I consider a pretty poor view, so I want to get a better view, looking down. Other than the complaining / whining kids next to me, the seat was good. One of the better acts was a guy in a checkered outfit who managed to get a kid to stand still and hold a stick with spinning plate and spinning ball. Rhys and Charlie were fun, as usual. Leapin' Louie did the best act I've ever seen him do, and Sarah Liane Foster did a clown bit with a trombone that hit my funny bone. The hosts opened with a great co-op club juggling act (they're from Colorado!) and kept the show moving well.

Sunday
Day #3, and I worked on 5 balls, club backcrosses (getting pretty good at them!), club overhead tosses, and starting the club backcross with my left hand. Passed with a gal (Cindy) from San Fransisco, we had a lot of fun. I attended Kricket's stilt-walking workshop and managed a 3 ball cascade while on stilts. After cleaning up, getting the vendor's out and generally picking up and collecting for 'lost and lost' I loaded up my truck and went to Rhys & Maria's for the volunteer thank you party. Drink, eat and be merry.

Next year, I think I want to work on the public show in some way - stage hand, green room, something like that. and maybe I'll be better at 5 ball.

Savage Worlds in spaaaaaaaaace!

I think this post will be a lot of Savage bits, but the recent space stuff took hold of the title. That, and I liked the Muppet Show.

Mercenary Breed
Recently, I had the opportunity to playtest a new space opera 'mini-setting' called 'Mercenary Breed'. The short pitch is that your characters are an alien band of mercenaries, and it seems to me that the designer meant the more alien, the better. But keep 'em humanoid, or create edges / weapons for unique body structures. When I first read the blurb about it, I thought "Space Opera, mercenaries, hmmm.. Firefly with a bit more machismo." Not that I thought that this would be something I'd really want to play over and over, but I am always interested in source materials that might enhance another game someday. So, I got one of the 6 slots and got 2 groups together to playtest this thing.

First, alien creation - we got some real creative races (A Dargo-like alien from Farscpe) and not-so-creative races. (My friend tells me about his dark, brooding alien race, and I comment, "so, how is this not a Drow?". "Shit," he says. But we played him anyway.)

Reading through the source materials for the playtest, I admit I wasn't as thorough as I probably should have been, but neither were most of my players. We got caught up on a particular line of "Law enforcement is 95% effective". This was posted in comments to the authors, and I got back some clarification that we somehow linked this line from a PLANET description and we unabashedly applied that to the planetary SYSTEM. Oooops. So we were basically a little lost thinking that if law is that effective, what are mercs for? Well, we'll slide that bit o' info under the rug and move on to the adventure.

Space infestation of a bug race. Kind of a fun scenario but my first group were ill-equipped and struggled with the swarms, but making use of some creative weaponry, they managed ok. Swarms in Savage Worlds are both fun and annoying, they swarm over an opponent and don't even have to roll a 'to-hit', just start with straight damage, and, oh yeah, ignore armor because the swarm is in your clothing biting precious bits of your, ahem, self. Eventually, they meet the big bad bug, and fight it out. Then the adventure ends there, all happy and done. I decided to have the aliens have another ship show up so we could test the 'Chase rules' that Savage Worlds provides.

So, I guess this is turning into a review. What did I think? I think that the sandbox might be too big, but I think that the right group could have a LOT of fun with making aliens and forming a mercenary group, and having a lot of firefight action. If you have a group that wants high-action, fights and imagination, this might be up your alley.

The developers are going to continue creating content for this setting, so the source material will only expand, I think that's a great thing, an ever expanding universe.

Savage Space 1.0
Right after this playtest of Mercenary Breed, I ran across an announcement for this Savage Space generic source / setting. I thought it was funny that I found 2 space opera sources within weeks of each other, and since the SS1.0 was a FREE download, I snagged it and browsed it. This has more stuff, and less setting, but I felt it was meatier and fit what I was looking for in a space setting / source material.

• Gear - it defined some great setting weapons, armor, cyberwear and gadgets.
  
• Ship as a Character - the Serenity RPG had this concept, the ship as a character, and this setting had some guidelines on how to go about using this as a feature in your game. These include skills, stats, equipment and even ship Edges and Hindrances.
  
• Random adventure generator - always a plus to get the creative juices going.
• New Edges & Hindrances - One beef I had with Mercenary Breed was the new skills - they were basically just Knowledge skills that didn't need making. This setting did a little better - they brought up good Knowledge skills, and 'futureized' other skills. Lockpicking is security, healing is medicine, etc. It wasn't necessary, healing would still work, and most players/GM's would apply Lockpicking in the future to electronic locks and such, but I think that if you DON'T do this, you'll get some pin-headed goofball saying that lock-picking won't work on a card-reader, wahhhhh. I digress.
• One of the BEST indexes I've seen recently in an RPG.

47 pages of goodness, free and pretty cool. If you want to run Star Trek, FireFly or even a Traveller game, check this out.

I think my next blog will be more Savage Worlds goodness - Savage Worlds Deluxe and the Savage Insider fan magazine.

Patrick Rothfuss book signing

While in Brooklyn for work, Meran asked me to get to a book signing for her newest found author; Patrick Rothfuss. I was tasked because when he was in Portland, she hadn't heard of him yet. A co-worker and I braved the crowds (not too bad) and stood in line for about 2 hours.

Kelly took the photos, I was mostly unaware of it, although I should have known better.

Distractions!

Making sure he spells Meran's name correctly.

Since then, I've read both of his books that he signed that day. I liked them a lot.
The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. Some of the best new fantasy I've read in years!

Brooklyn Bridge

All my gaming blogs are up to date, and I'm not blogging anything. I feel I haven't done anything important enough. Well, I walked the Brooklyn Bridge this week. I've been in NYC on a contract for a while now (generally traveling every-other week..) and I've not said word one about my adventures.. Not that I've had many, mostly restaurants and work. I've managed to find a juggling group and a gaming group for my time during the week. I think that these pictures of my trip across the Brooklyn Bridge are pretty cool, even if they are from my Droid camera. Tim had a better camera, and I might update some photos when I get a copy of those.

We started from our hotel in Brooklyn, I didn't start taking pictures until about halfway across.

Half way across the bridge, looking back at Brooklyn. The pedestrian walkway is above where the cars are, so its a really nice walk. There were a lot of bicycles, but the walkers and the bikes have separate lanes.

Looking towards Manhattan, the bridge is under some maintenance, so the metal sides were there for some of the walk.

These arches are great!

Looking towards the south side of Manhattan.

Looking at the Manhattan Bridge.

I am sure someone knows what that building is.

More of the Manhattan bridge.

Arches up close!

Again!

This building is cool: all the metal is twisty and interesting. This is to the left as we were reaching the end of the bridge in Manhattan.

That's it. the bridge is 1.3 miles long, and with all of our exploring on the Manhattan side, we probably walked 4-5 miles. And overdid dinner.