Mini E-Kit, part duex

To start, I want to make some notes about the edrum offerings coming to the market - a sort of a note for the future.

Last year, PinTech offered a new hi-hat that has the controller between the cymbals, and is the first electronic hi-hat that works with a drop clutch. This is still unique in the market today. Here's a secret you'll hear only here. I might be getting one for free.. more on that later.

The Alesis DM-10 was released standalone at Winter NAMM, which was this past weekend. I am personally looking forward to this module. It's a lot like my Trigger IO, but has onboard sounds. AND it will have the ability to have uploaded sounds replace the sounds on the module. Not just stock sounds that modules come with - specially crafted VST sounds built for the module. VST companies like FXPansion and ToonTrack will be offering kit downloads. These 'high resolution' kits will take up the entire module's memory, so instead of 100s of sounds, you will be limited to one kit, but with the VST's quality, it should be worth it. Of course, you can load other kits and reset the module back to factory defaults.

Pearl has a new edrum offering, the "E-ProLive". Interesting, they have a module called the REDbox. but put the picture of it right next to an Alesis DM-10.. hmmmmm. Maybe Pearl didn't spend a lot to develop a new module, which matches feature-to-feature of the DM-10.

DM-10:

REDbox:
Anyway, Pearl has some cool features, 'drop-in' pads so you can convert your edrum set to an acoustic kit with just a head change. These look great for someone just entering the e-drum market but who still wants the look of traditional acoustic drums. They may just have something here. Then again, they may price themselves out of the market... Whatever; good luck to them, tho.

Also, Yamaha is entering the foray again with new drum heads. The last few years have been rubber (Yamaha and even some Roland kits) vs. mesh (Roland's claim to fame). Well, Yamaha introduced a new drum head - silicone! Check out Yamaha's DTX900 series.

Now, onto the regularly scheduled program. After my last post, New Year's Day came and went. I assembled the e-kit for a day of Rock Band / Guitar Hero. I added the cymbals to it and mapped it out for playing.

After a few hours of playing, I like Guitar Hero drumming better than Rock Band drumming. Guitar Hero differs slightly with 2 dedicated cymbals (yellow and orange) and three drums. They do some interesting switch-overs with the two cymbals. Both are entertaining, so we all win. Whitten got the most seat time on the drums on New Year's.

So, same kit as before, but with 3 cymbals added. For RockBand, I mapped the hi-hat to yellow (if you've played, this is obvious), the ride to Blue, and the crash to green. It pretty much matches the drum mapping, but you get the choice of what to hit now, a cymbal or a tom. I even tried something clever: in the game, Rock Band maps an open hi-hat to blue, so I mapped the hi-hat to yellow on closed, and blue on open. Realistically, it works, but due to extra triggering, it really messes up the game play.

For Guitar Hero, I mapped two toms (left and center) to the same color, and both the ride and the crash to Orange, hi-hat still yellow, and right tom to the low tom color. This worked out okay; there was some difficulty getting back to the hi-hat for some cymbal crashes during a ride segment of the songs. But, it still worked out pretty well.

The kit was sitting kinda close to the PS3 - I've gotten a longer USB cable. I am hoping that doesn't introduce any lag. We'll find out the next time I play.

Mini E-kit

I've been working on a new set of e-drums using acoustic shells. I am still working on the final arrangement for a full posting of THAT project. But, as was the plan, I was going to use part of the full kit to use as a mini kit for the PS3 - for Rock Band and Guitar Hero use.

Key to this was finding out that GH4 came with one of those cheap, lame drum kits, but it had a MIDI input in the kit. I figured if the drum kit came with a MIDI option, then a MIDI converter without a crappy drum kit would soon be an option. Well, not an official one, but I did find one. IF you are on the Rock Band or Guitar Hero forums online, you'll probably find the 'Seth' MIDI-PS3 adapter. Well, I did, and I bought it. It took me about a year to finally hook it up to a drum kit, and play with it. Basically, my existing drum brain (to MIDI) is an Alesis IO. This then sends MIDI to the 'Sethbox' converter, which acts as a PS3 adapter and controller - it's got all the buttons like the square, triangle, circle, x and the Start PS3 and select buttons. Much like the drum kit controllers for the PS3 or any other console.

So, on to the details and pictures!

Implements of construction: hacksaw and file for cutting and de-burring the strut, nuts bolts, washers, wrenches, brackets, braces, extra strut, flannel shirt (cutting strut outside in the cold!) and an extra 1/4" patch cable. And, etc.

This is it. I built the rack out of my typical Super Strut rack construction. The feet are 18" long, and the verticals and horizontal are 24" long / tall. The 18" bass drum (12" deep) fits in great, with some room to spare. I am happy how this ended up fitting together.

Rotating around a bit, you can see the toms and snare. I opted to use my e-snare on a snare stand like a typical drum kit rather than 4 toms mounted on the rack. Mostly for space reasons. I'd need a longer bar for 4 toms, and I like the visual of the snare.
The white caps on the strut are to minimize clothing and carpet snags from the cut ends of the strut - even tho I filed it smooth, can't be too careful for Meran!

Another angle. One tom head is white - it's the first mesh head I got - I bought it. Making the black mesh heads myself is more cost effective. The green 'dots' are nerf gun bullets (2" in diameter) cut in half to serve as a dome for the piezo underneath. Roland vdrums uses foam 'cones' and cost about $8 each. I got 10 'domes' for $5.

Mostly straight-on front view. I plan on making the back resonant head out of mesh eventually. I cut a hole in the mylar head because I was getting some resonant sound from it when it was whole. I'm trying to cut down on as much acoustical noise as possible.

Higher angle

Top view, it's pretty compact!! I plan to add my electronic hi-hat and 2 e-cymbals for more realism during play. All it takes is duplication of Rock Band / GH colors on the game to map to the additional bits. Example: Blue is used in Rock band for a middle tom, a ride and the open hi-hat sound. I can map the second (middle) tom to blue, my electronic ride, and the open action on the hi-hat to all blue, so depending on the song I can use it more realistically. Or not, choice is yours on which blue to use.

Left side, nothing too new here

The "bits". The Alesis Trigger IO - translates the piezo signal from the pad to a MIDI signal. This normally goes to a laptop, keyboard or other MIDI sound source to produce the sounds.
The little white box is the 'Sethbox' or 'sethmeisterg's EDRUM-USB adapter" converter. Built by a RockBand forum member named Seth. This takes the MIDI signal from the IO and sends it to the PS3 for game play. It's also got the standard PS3 controller buttons - Square, Circle, Triangle, X, Select, Start and the PS3 button. It's also got flashing LEDs to indicate mode, setup and hit registers. I am impressed; it came with 20+ pages of documentation for some super customization and setup options.

Who's ready to give it a try?

Playing Cards and Dice Tower

I tell people not to bother with gifts for my for my birthday, but I usually get a good gift from Meran. This year was no different, with an added surprise.

First up, Meran's awesome card decks she found; a bunch of really cool deck themes, with some really good art in them, too.

First up, the Pirate deck! Yarr! Really neat and clever deck. All the Jacks, Queens and Kings are famous pirates, and have an antique feel and look to them.

The rest of the decks are from Bicycle and are all from their 'custom decks' line. Or magic decks. If I were into card tricks, these would be great to play around with and learn. They are also usable for regular cards. Cribbage or Poker, anyone?

• Black Ghost
• Ghost
• Black Tiger
• Shadow Masters

And some I can't find reference to anymore:

• Black Spider
• Purple
• Guardians
• Black Scorpion
• Black Light Glow in the Dark

If you want a unique deck of cards, check out Bicycle's arcane line.

I hosted a Titan game in my new game room, there will be a post for that soon, too (The game room, not Titan). Probably after Thanksgiving. One of my friends gave me some passes to get into the Portland Chinese Gardens. We've been to the Japanese Gardens (mostly for the Bonsai showings) but not the Chinese Gardens - we are looking forward to going.

I got a package from UPS today. It was from my brother-in-law, Dennis. I had an inkling this was coming, but I wasn't going to expect it, but enjoy it if / when it showed up. It was a dice tower. I love dice games, rolling dice, and dice towers. I've never really gotten around to making or even buying a dice tower, or a rolling surface. Best I ever did was to line my dice box with a soft, rubbery surface that Meran got for me at a hobby shop. It's a great surface - I may line this dice tower with it, but the cork Dennis used is probably sufficient. Anyway, the dice tower collapses for better / easier transport. Many of my friends' nice wooden dice towers are all-in-ones that are bulky to carry. Other friends have collapsible dice towers made from cardboard or even PVC pipe. Enough squall, on to the pictures:

Pretty cool, huh?

Here it is collapsed, ready for transport!

Close up of the dragon graphic.

That's my gift synopsis. If you don't know how old I am, I won't divulge that intel in this post. You'll just have to figure it out on your own. Here's to another year on the planet.

Green Chile

Green Chile - This is by far my favorite dish. I was introduced to it by a friend of mine (Brooke!) at a Rock Bottom Grill in downtown Denver. It was only offered as an appetizer in a cup like soup. I was hooked. I was constantly on the lookout for green chile in any restaurant. I found that it varies from a watery greenish sauce to a think, hearty stew. I tend to like the thicker stuff, not so much the watery stuff.

I've learned to cook it to the capacity where I enjoy it immensely, although I usually forget the cumin until late (usually Meran reminds me to put it in). We've done variants with potatoes instead of pork for a vegetarian green chile, and changed out some of the ingredients, but it is pretty consistent of Hatch chiles, tomatoes, pork, onions, garlic and spices to taste.

Whenever I make it, I am always trying to do different things with the end product; smother burritos, nachos, or quesadillas. Eat it alone as soup / stew, with flour tortillas. Huevos Rancheros. And during my last gallon of chile, it got me thinking. When I see (or saw) kids eating french fries, they didn't really eat the fries. The fries were mostly a ketchup delivery device. So, with all my burritos and various dishes, was I really just delegating them to a green chile delivery system of my own? Well, yes, I guess so. Although, I do eat it on its own, I also use it as a gravy or condiment of sorts.

With the last batch I made I committed a holy sin of Green Chile - I used canned chiles. I just haven't found a source of fresh fire-roasted green chiles in Oregon. I've heard rumors of an occasional farmer's market, but I haven't found anything solid. Oregon is a 'Chile free' zone, it seems. It's even tough to find big cans of green chiles. I can find big ass cans of jalapenos, but not green chiles. (I finally found them at WinCo and Cash & Carry.) This last batch, along with the cardinal sin of canned chiles, I used tomatillos instead of tomatoes, and that kept the green chile green! Boy howdy! It was a good experiment; I've seen recipes with tomatoes and tomatillos, and the tomatillos are a keeper. Now I gotta find fresh ones because, alas, these were canned, too. This whole batch was the 'canned chile' recipe. It still came out really good, tho.

What do you like YOUR green chile on?

New Carport

Remember my post about the 30" of snow that took down our carport? If not, remind yourself of the carnage here. I'll wait while you go look.

Back? Okay, so, here's the NEW and IMPROVED carport. It's much sturdier, so we've upgraded its status to a shed. (Candy calls it a "garage extension".) We've got a concrete block base wall (there is a small hill behind it, so we wanted some water / soil proof barrier wall, but it didn't need to be the full height, so a 3-block-high base was built. Then the framing was put on top of that. We hired someone, so don't get all impressed that I did this myself. It went up while I was in Florida at a customer site. It was nice coming back and seeing this:
Here's a quick shot of our temporary storage area.. not covered.




The new structure sat there like that for a few weeks as I was still traveling. I finally got some siding on there. Kudos to Matt who came over and held up the other end of the 12' Hardie Plank siding.
Below is the old metal roofing, cleaned up for reuse.





Again, a few weeks pass. Then, the roofing. I recycled the original metal roofing. This time, Since I am an equal opportunity friend abuser, Jacob came over to help with the roofing. Candy took some action shots. Also, this was the first time I put my new Ryobi impact driver to some real work. I was impressed.

We put in two sections of some clear plastic roofing for some light. We'll see if the theory holds out.



That's the end of the post. I guess I had one more 'done' picture, but I don't. It's not that much different from the last shot here, though. There's still some work to be done, but for now, it is functional as an outside rain-free storage zone. And, I can move my table saw and use it as a work shop for the multitude of other endless projects.

Stay tuned.. the Game Room is reaching critical mass...