EWI, BIAB, Pro Tools Fun

I’ve been getting back into playing/recording music in the last few months.  Normally I spend a lot of time just playing around with 30 second demos — trying to figure out how it all works.  This week I decided to try my hand at jazz arranging/composition.  So the goal was to write and record a simple jazz tune.

I started by entering a chord progression into band-in-a-box and choosing one of the bossa nova real styles.  I attempted to play a melody in on my Akai EWI-4000s via MIDI but that was mostly just frustrating in BAIB. So I dragged the audio files (literally) into pro tools and started to work over there.   After working out some of the latency issues with pluggins I played in a simple melody using the Xpand! solo violin sound via the EWI.  Surprisingly Pro Tools was staying out of the way for once, so I added some trombone doubling the melody and tiny bit of harmony in the bridge.   So simple tune complete!   After much playing around with making the simple tune better and failing, I put down a few improvised choruses on the EWI for fun and it was.

After all this was done I went back to band-in-a-box and exported the midi file for the drum track and replaced the original audio track with a BFD2 drum sampler.  BFD sounds so good.   Back to BAIB to apply a new style that changed the drum track to congas and percussion and then drag it in.

So shockingly, I now had an entire song to attempt to mix down.   I gave the BIAB bass and conga files a bunch of random EQ and put some basic levels and some semi random panning on the rest.  So I call it a successful test.

Bossa_Test_one

Oh and if you are interested in the EWI, check out this video of Michael Brecker playing one.

Day 20 take a plane

We got home.

Day 19 do the hadouken

Today we went back over to Akihabara to seek out anime shops.  We found multiple, multiple-story stores full of action figures. It was fun to have already been somewhere as it was much easier getting around.  The weather was much clearer and the views of the rainbow bridge were awesome.

One can climb a lot of stairs in Tokyo.

We found an awesome electronics store that had kits to build your own tube stereo systems.  They had a few of the kits fully assembled.  The coolest CD player ever, with a tube preamp. Wasn’t quite ready to throw down the 100,000 yen on the kit though.  Casey bought some VU meters for 100 yen each.  The store had a display of the meters alligator clipped onto a home-brew break out box.

We ran across a store specializing in old video console systems and games and it was full of people.

We had good tempura and cold noodles.

Heading home tomorrow, guess we should pack.

Day 18 Gundam Up close

We walked around the shopping center on the way to get some food this morning.  Then we visited the gundam. Later I finally got to see the new Star Trek movie.   There was a total of 5 people in the theater.  The movie was in English, with Japanese subtitles. Great movie.

We visited the gundam after it got dark as well, but it was raining so we didn’t stay long.  We watched some more cowboy bebop.

Yesterday I did some laundry in the sink but it refused to dry — thanks humidity.  So I used the hair dryer on it.

click for more

Day 17 Back to Odaiba

We packed up quick and caught the train back to Tokyo and  then over to the Odaiba area.  The hotel room is really nice.  There is a life size gundam outside the bathroom window.

We watched some more cowboy bebop.

Day 16 Steam Trains

Not much time to write today.

We rode to Nintendo headquarters for kicks.  Unfortunately, Shigiro Miyamoto didn’t run out and offer us jobs, nor did he offer us cookies or even a stuffed a giraffe.  So we cased the joint for later.

Then went to the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum.  Hardly anybody there.  We saw a lot of cool old steam engines.  Saw a train turn table working. Shot some video of the trains running around. We liked it.

We returned the rental bikes, so sad.

Somehow we managed to get sun burned today. I guess there was a lot less cloud cover, even though it rained.  Sad really.  Not too bad.

Heading back to Tokyo tomorrow.  Booked a hotel in Odaiba.

We  are watching the anime “Cowboy Bebop” which has great music.

Day 15 kamo river bike path ride

Casey was tired and took it easy today.  I went on 2.5 hour ride up the bike path of the Kamo river.  I’m not even sure which branch of the river.   Passed some small farms growing onions, cabbage, tomatoes and mystery plants. Saw some very tall bamboo groves too.

Later I pulled all the disjointed monkey live action stuff into this video:

Bikes are good. Monkeys are good.

Day 14 Rain and Shop Exploring

Monday here and it was raining and the train museum is closed on Mondays so it was off to explore some shops.  We decided to walk instead of ride with umbrellas like the locals do.  Walking and Subways aren’t as fun as riding, duh. We hit the Nishiki food market which was interesting.  I took a few photos but wasn’t really into the camera today.  Then we wandered through a bunch of shops.

I was hoping to find some cool things to bring home for the rest of the family, but haven’t really found something cool enough, although the Johnny Cash action figure was pretty darn awesome.  Also the metal origami models of airplanes and airships were neat.  I looked into a fabric store to get some silk for my mom and basically failed.  Saw some awesome kitchen knives.

My back was not good today. Then I fell down some stairs — rain slicked precipice of darkness stairs .  Strangely my back felt a little better after the fall.  Darn good thing I had my messenger bag on my back or it could have been bad.

Also I’m not Aquaman, enough with the humidity already.

A bus got mad at a taxi.

We saw the aftermath of a bicycle domino parking incident and helped pick them up — maybe 15 bikes down.

I was lame ordering dinner in the bar place but the sashimi was good and so was the stew.

Also, Dear Japan smoking is totally bad for you, OK?

We watched a movie on netflix with a proxy hack.

Here’s another monkey pic:

Day 13 Stare at the Monkeys DON’T stare at the Monkeys

Day 13 started with a breakfast of gummy candy and water, just enough to get us over to our breakfast stop in the Sanjo Dori street mall.  Unfortunately, it’s sunday and most of the shops are closed, so we continued on to the Arashiyama District. We had ice cream for 2nd breakfast. Sanjo Dori winds it’s way over and is both wide and narrow at times.   Street names are in Japanese here but we were rewarded for staying the path. We reached the river and then the Togetsu Bridge.  After banging the left instead of hanging the right we parked the bikes and headed to Iwatayama (Monkey Mountain).

Monkey Mountain was awesome.  These are all wild, uncaged monkeys. It’s about a 2o minute hike up from the river on a tree lined trail.  At the bottom we recieved our instructions: don’t stare a monkey in the eye and don’t touch. OK got it.  At the top of the mountain there was a small building with wire cage for windows.  This is were you go to feed the monkeys.  The humans go in the cage and the Monkey’s reach in for the food.  Panoramic views of the Kyoto basin.  The staff was very nice and we had our picture taken with a monkey.  It cost a peanut for the monkey.  The staff picks up all the monkey poop so it cant be used as a weapon. Monkeys have scary teeth.

We played with the pay per view telescopes a bit.  One of them had an audio program that was powered by cranking it’s handle 30 times.

We got lunch/dinner at an excellent noodle place.  I had the cold soba noodles and tempura and Casey had udon with beef.   We rode back to the hotel, it’s a goodly distance.

I went to the public bath in the hotel for a late night soak. It did not suck.

We decided to stay in Kyoto another 3 nights.

Day 12 Golden Pavilion and Zen Rock Garden

After showers we headed off on the bikes to Kinkakuji Temple (Golden shrine).  We rode a few backstreets and grabbed breakfast from a small shop. I led us astray a few times and we end up going the wrong way through the western part of Sanjo shopping “mall” — it’s a neat place.  We needed a post office for stamps and cash, but we found out the post office is closed on Saturday afternoons — the post cards will need to wait. As we got closer to the temple, car traffic increased, but in Japan the bike paths are on the sidewalks (for the record it’s ok to ride on the streets too and we did often).  The nice men in the blue jump suits pointed us to the bike parking. Free bike parking here.

It was fairly crowed at the temple and it felt a bit touristy.  The temple is indeed golden and quite pretty.  A nice Japanese man offered to take a photo of us.  Note the lighting rod in that picture.  We hit lots of vending machines for fluids.  There were people with chainsaws.

Next stop was the Ryoanji Temple with it’s famous zen rock garden. The nice folks out front warned us that the temple is currently being repaired, but we went in anyway.  There was a wonderful garden around a small lake before the temple.  We heard, but could not find some frogs.  There were some ducks/geese on the pond and lots of carp/koi of various flavors.  We haven’t seen many song birds in Japan so far, but we have seen and heard plenty of crows and ravens (probably not a coincidence).  I took at least 100 photos of the garden.

The Ryoanji rock garden was iconic, but really paled in comparison to the gardens around it.  The were a lot of people on the viewing platform so it made it hard to contemplate the meaning of life there.

On the way out, there is a small side temple? garden shed? I found it to be the most beautiful thing we saw that day, although I really liked the boat on the lake.

We rode back to the hotel semi-randomly.

After some rest at the hotel, we headed out for a late dinner at an Italian place that’s in the heart of the shopping district. It was way crowded and we parked our bikes amongst hundreds of others, although we do think we parked in a it’s ok to park zone.  There were hundreds of bikes parked in front of no-parking zones.  The restaurant was really good and the service was the best we’ve had in Japan.

Fun day!