Playing music via PC

yeah i am talking about music, again..

I never thought a pc/laptop have the potential of creating nice sound for my guitar & keyboard. since i just bought the usb midi interface for the laptop, recently I tried a few software which I think is very good for home musicians, ie musicians who play their music at home :). i also bought an audio-technica headphone to go with the interface so i got all the sound to myself without disturbing the family :)

Amplitube

It is basically a software based guitar multi-effect & amp modeller. It has all the effects a guitarist would want, like distortion, overdrive, chorus, flanger, wah-wah.. you name it. On top of that it also simulates the sound coming from guitar amps. so u don't have to buy expensive tube amp for your guitar. i don't know how good it is compared to the real ones coz i never had real ones anyway. but i can tell that it sounds good to my ear, at least. i do have an old multi-effect, the zoom GFX707 but this software certainly sounds better & with a lot more effects, more flexible settings & fine-tunings. i can tune it to try to match the guitar sound of certain songs, & then i just save the file name for easy recall. hey, now i have settings to sound like the police, carlos santana & sweet charity!. I learn that i can get preset guitar sound of famous guitarists as well by downloading from somewhere. but for now i'll be busy exploring the sound it already has on board. actually it is kind of learning experience for me as well to know what effect does what sound. for example, i'm quite sure that rosli muhalim used some kind of FLO filter for his sound, which i'm trying to copy. I am not sure whether this software is suitable for live playing or not. i might want to use it on my next jamming session. the only issue would be that i need to use the mouse to select the effect that i want instead of a foot switch. the company does sell a foot controller to go with this software but that would be beyond my budget.

Luxonix Purity

This software is what people call a soft-synth, which i think stands for software synthesizer. It has all the sound you can think of like your normal piano, organ, strings, brass & electronic synthesizer sound. it sounds much better than my yamaha keyboard. what i like most is it's user-friendly menu & UI. i can easily set things straight away without having to read the manual. in other words it has very short learning curve. the only thing i needed to refer to the manual was when i need to set different sound for my left & right hand. i like the "glide" setting very much. it sort of lets the sound change gradually & smoothly from one key to the next, & not discreetly like say a normal piano sounds. it's kinda like you press a key & play with pitch wheel. this is how synthesizer normally sound, like you hear in some sweet charity songs. talking about sweet charity (again!), i always want to find the synthesizer sound as in their sejuta wajah & now i think i almost got it! again, i donno how good it would be in a live environment but i certainly would love to try it out.

i look forward to explore more of this during the long break end of the year..

midi

midi has many meanings to me. it can mean the middle, as in size. my x-schoolmate also named midi. but what i meant here is of the musical variety. if not mistaken, it stands for musical instrument digital interface. it allows musical instruments to talk to each other digitally. i read about it back in '86, i think, & got fascinated by it. now with computers so advanced, it is used even more prominently. why is it important to me? well it's because i love music, & i love gadgets. i bought my yamaha keyboards back in '95 & i made sure it's midi-capable, eventhough i didn't even know how to use it. then, when i bought my first PC in '96, one of the first things i did was to find a way to connect the yamaha to the pc. then i learned more about midi & how it works. i also learned about soundcard & how it functions. then i explored more oabout wavetables & softsynth. how great it is to record music from your keyboard & showed it on the pc screen. nowadays, most people make music using their PCs. in the 90's MP3s were not that popular, yet. so people shared their music through midi files. these files contain music information which can be played back on any pc. i got hooked & got my hands on hundreds of midi files of my favorite songs. the beauty of midi files is that you can edit, change the notes, the tempo & even change the instruments. you can even change from a slow song to a rock song if you want. you can also mute any instuments you like. in most case, i turn off the guitar parts & play my guitar along with it. midi files don't sound that great actually. it's because the pc tries to emulate the instrument sound as best as it could. it depends mostly on the quality of the soundcard. the most difficult instrument to emulate is the guitar. piano, strings & drums sounds are quite OK, to my ear.

i wish i can compose my own music but i guess i don't have the talent. so the next best thing is to re-create other peoples songs on the pc. normally what i do is just do the drums, piano & strings part on the pc while the guitar part is from, well, my guitar. this has become sort of a hobby for me so that i can play alone in the house haha. thankfully now i got friends to jam with!

i just got hold a USB midi interface for a few hundred bucks. what does it do? well, it will enable my keyboard to connect to my notebook. you see, notebooks don't have many connection like their desktop counterparts with their PCI thing. so the only connection the notebook has to the outside world is via USB. the thing is, my kids have taken over my PC for their games & internet activities. So i'm left with my notebook (which actually belongs to the office shhhhh). in order to continue my craze for music, i bought this interface & manage to link my yamaha keyboard to the notebook. now my keyboard is alive again & i can have new sounds with it via the notebook. who knows i might bring the notebook for the next jamming session & see if it fits in. my next agenda is to buy a nice & small midi controller to replace the keyboard. then i'd be so easy to carry around.

jamming time again

We had our jamming session last weekend at our favorite studio in Bangi. This time our guitarist came all the way from penang for this. well, actually he came down to KL for something more important but then he brought together his new gadgets to town so we rocked for 3 hours. We had a lot of fun. i can't tell how many songs we did, must be like 20 songs or so. we started of with some slow numbers, out of respect for the ladies perhaps. yeah, ladies. one of them even brought her mum along, or so i heard. they left after singing 2 songs. i think it's too loud for them.

we moved to more hard-rocking numbers from sweet charity & dio, among others, before calming down to our normal jamming songs, ending with an alleycat's favorite. musically we didn't hit the notes right but who cares as long as we had a lot of fun. i fell that i've lost touch with the guitar & keyboard, having stopped practicing for sometime. i guess i need to practice regularly at home again...

btw, i'm really impressed with our guitarist's new gadget. a boss (i think) multi-fx & the sweet looking & sounding (& expensive!) epiphone les paul prophecy

Garmin Mobile XT

I just installed Garmin Mobile XT on my windows mobile phone. What can I say, this is definitely the best software I installed on the phone. Previously I used the old & trusty Garmin Que & Mapking. GMXT is way better, especially if you like to use yr finger on the touch screen. It works exactly like a garmin standalone GPS unit.

For those into GPS navigation, I definitely recommend this software even if it's expensive

But wait...if you think phone screen is too small, you can opt for Garmin Mobile PC, it's PC equivalent, with even more features. Then you can use your big laptop screen for navigation! If those 17" laptops are too big for you, then go for the cute netbook variety like the asus eee pc series.

Shortcuts on Windows Mobile

Do you know that you can make shortcuts to do whatever you want on a windows mobile? Let's say you want to run a few programs one after another & click the menus, change settings or even rename & delete a file, you can do all that in a single click. Interested? Well, get yourself this great freeware called mortscript. You can get it here.

I use mortscript to start my gps programs. This is very important because when you are driving on the road at 110km/h you can't let your hand & fingers running around your phone looking to open a program & menu, can you? So this is where mortscript is pretty useful. I just press one button on my today screen & mortscript will do the rest, opening several programs & mouse-clicking the right tab & buttons & in a few seconds i have my gps navi program ready to go showing me the way while another program running in the background telling me about the incoming speed traps. Or how about getting your mp3 player playing your favorite tunes in the background as well. How cool is that??

You gotta know basic programming actually, but you don't have to be an engineer to do it. Just simple statements like "Run", "Sleep" or "MouseClick" will do.

Try it yourself & have fun..

Bulan Raya again

Yeah... it's that time of the year again. I purposely say bulan & not hari raya, because we in Malaysia celebrate it for the full month, not just on the first day. But of course by the first week, we have gotten tired of listening to the raya songs, while we continue visiting open houses all throughout the neighbourhood.

It's the same routine for me this year. Went to my wife's kampung in Melaka on the last days of Ramadhan & celebrated the all-important hari raya pertama there. Actually it feels more like in Negeri Seremban, since everybody speaks the negeri slang & they still follow adat perpatih in some ways. This year was a bit special in 2 ways : We cooked our own lemang right behind the house & we did a kenduri on malam raya where we invited the imam to do doa selamat & maghrib prayers followed by the takbir right in our living room. As usual, the food leftover was so huge even though many kampung folks turned up. When will they ever learn to make just enough food which is not so hot, I wonder? But I do love my sister-in-law's black rendang, although it's still too much on the hot side. For the raya prayer, it was full house again at the kampung mosque. People prayed on the tarred surface while I managed to squeeze to get to the main hall. Next year I'll remember to bring a big roll of house mat for the whole family to pray outside. My family's theme this year was green. I got myself & my boys a nice hijau pucuk pisang baju melayu while my wife & the girls got matching, darker green baju kurung. We visited my wife's many uncles & aunties with plenty of nice food on offer. & normally I'd take just a small portion, thinking that there were more food to come. On the second day morning we travelled north to my kampung in Kuala Kangsar. Thankfully the traffic wasn't so bad. On the way there we were told to make a transit at Chepor where my eldest sister was having an open house for the whole family. So off we went. We decided to take the Sungai Siput way, where our former Works Minister has kindly widened the whole federal road to KK. I don't know why but we just visited one house for the whole 3 days in KK, & that was my aunt's. May be we were too tired & also we only have 2-night stay & on the last day it was Saturday & we must start our journey early to avoid the dreaded jam. Thankfully my mother managed to order our favorite laksa kuala & we brought some home to Bangi.

Getting home again, it was time to visit our relatives' houses around the Klang Valley & we took turn to visit each other. Being close relatives, we just went on an adhoc basis by simply call & say "kita nak datang..". Then, there are our friends' raya gathering to go to & this is normally more of a planned arrangement, with fixed date & time. We just had our ex-schoolmates' raya gathering last Sunday where one of our mates has kindly offered his restaurant as the place to meet up & we brought our food pot luck style. It was also the most tiring day because we also went up to Serendah & Batu Caves on the same day.

For next year, I want to make rule that we would only go to maximum 2 open houses for the day... we'll see whether we can follow that rule, yeah?

Melamine? What the..?

For people still blur on what this issue is all about, I got an email explaining in simpler terms so i'd like to share it here...

1.What really is poisoned milk？

It is the milk powder mixed with "MELAMINE"





















Melamine is use for？It is an industrial chemical used in the production of melawares.


















It is also used in home decoration. "US resistant board"




















Do you understand？Melamine is use in industrial production，it cannot be eaten！

2.Why is Melamine added in milk powder？

The most important nutrient in milk is protein. And Melamine has the same protein that contains "NITROGEN"

Adding Melamine in milk reduces milk content and it is cheaper then milk so it lowers capitalization. It can give the business man more profit!

Below is Melamine，doesn't it look like milk？it doesn't have any smell, so cannot be detected.
















3. When was it discovered？

Year 2007. US cats and dogs died suddenly, they found that pet food from China contains Melamine.
Starting 2008, In China , an abnormal increase in infant cases of kidney stones.
August 2008 China Sanlu Milk Powder tested with Melamine.
Sept. 2008 New Zealand gov't ask China to check this problem
Sept. 21, 2008 Lots of food products in Taiwan tested with Melamine

4.What happens when Melamine is digested？

Melamine remains inside the kidney. It forms into stones blocking the tubes. Pain will be eminent and person cannot urinate. Kidney will then swell.




Although surgery can remove the stones, but it will cause irreversible kidney damage. It can lead to loss of kidney function and will require
kidney dialysis or lead to death because of uremia.

What is dialysis？In fact, it should be called "blood washing"
it is filtering all of the body's blood into the machine and then go back to the body.

The whole process takes 4 hours and it is necessary to dialysis once for every 3 days for the rest of your life.

Why is it more serious in babies？Because the kidney is very small and they drink a lot of milk powder.

China currenty has 13,000 infants hospitalized

It does not matter how much a human being took Melamine. The important point is "It cannot be EATEN!"

5.What are the foods to be avoided?

Foods that contain dairy products should be avoided.

Remember: Foods with creamer or milk originated from China should be avoided.

6.What do we do next？

Avoid the above foods for at least six months。

If you have snack bar, restaurant or coffee shops, stop selling dairy products for the meantime.

If you have infants at home, change to mother's milk or find other substitutes.

GPS re-visit

do you know that you can do much more with GPS than navigation? here are some other things that I do with the help of GPS :

• digital speedometer. i'd say it tells your car speed better than your car's speedometer

• prayer direction. yeah, pretty simple & make sense really. since muslims pray in the direction of mecca, just make a mark of mecca (or kaabah to be specific) on your gps map & point your current location towards it & walla you got your qiblat direction accurately, much more reliable & accurate than your magnetic compass. the gps location for kaabah is N21deg 25.351min, E39deg 49.573min

• speed traps warning. get your latest speed cam location from malsing map (yeah, them again!) downloaded to your phones. with the right software, you will be warned of your coming speed cameras on the road. pretty cool, yeah?

Musically speaking...

I listen to music, all kinds. I was exposed to music at a relatively young age. At the time, my brothers & sisters were into 70's discos, & listened to the bee gees, boney m & abba. We also listened to local pop songs from the likes black dog bone, alleycats, carefree. my brother was also in a band playing at small functions like kenduri kawin. my brother teached me how to play the guitar when I was 7, i think. Then, when my sister got married, my brother's band would play. that's when my brother teached me piano a bit. after that, i learned my own, mostly from reading guitar chord books & listening the guitar sound. In 80's i turned to rock since everybody's listening to that & the names deep purple, scorpions & more locally, sweet charity came to mind, before some heavier stuffs from iron maiden & black sabbath took over.

Since I love the guitar, Van Halen became my obsession since the guitarist, Eddie, was regarded as the best at the time. Of course, my school friend would always say that Tony Iommy is better...well. I got hold of all the early van halen albums & really fascinated by the guitar sound & technique. Album-wise, I still regard their "1984" as one of the best all times, followed by "Fair Warning". The best album of Black Sabbath is "Heaven & Hell", ironically without the original frontman Ozzy. To me, Dio has the best rock vocals & it shows in this album. I don't leave out Ozzy however, as I also like his solo albums in the 80's, when Jake Lee was his guitarist. Oh yeah, apart from discos & rocks, I do listen to popular music from Madonna, Kylie & the likes back in the 80's & 90's. I still have a few full albums of them, but not so much of their recent offerings.

Sadly, now I don't have a favorite among the active singers/bands. I have stopped buying full albums nowadays. There are songs that I like to listen to but they are all scattered here & there.

Alma mater

I'm sure everyones loves their former schools. Mine is STAR, Ipoh. It has been many years since I left school but the memories still are fresh in my mind. I guess it's because of the teenage, growing up years that built our characters. The time between child & adult, the time to get to know the world & who we are. This is also helped by having great ex-schoolmates whom we always meet, for teh tarik, gatherings & for jamming. mind you we even have our own band where I play guitar & keyboard. I was the lead guitarist in our school band back then. After all these years only the drummer & I manage to comeback. Thankfully, we got able replacements for the bassist. For the other guitarist, well, he was our singer who have grown into an acomplish guitar player. He managed to record an album with his 90's rock band. So I don't mind giving him the lead guitar part while I do the supporting role. I thought at this age I never got the chance to play in a band again. haha..

Car Clubbing

I have been a member of this great car club called mychevy club, by virtue of having owned a chevy car. Since Chevrolet is not a well known car brand in Malaysia, we need a club to bring owners together to look for ways to get better parts & service for our car. We have somewhat achieved that objective & more. We have a great internet forum where we discuss mainly on the subject of cars, food, travelling & families. Did I mention food? We have succesfully done many interesting activities like convoys (the farther so far was to hatyai), sports, & eating expeditions. So if you own a chevy, why not join us at www.mychevyclub.net

GPS Navigation on my PDAphone

I have been fascinated by this GPS thing for quite some time. I like to explore things that could be done on my PDA & find ways to utilise its functions. At the same time I also like to travel & found that the maps from books & internet are inadequate to show me the way. Then I stumbled on this GPS thing, i forgot from where, & started to search for GPS maps of malaysia. To my surprise, there is this group of enthusiasts making their own GPS map of malaysia & singapore called malsing maps. You can check them out at www.malsingmaps.com/forums/. I learned so many things aboug GPS through their forum & am still learning.

I just want to share what I do on my phone to make GPSing work. I prefer & use Windows Mobile phone hence I can't tell much about symbian phones, except that GPSing also works on symbian.

GPS basic

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. You can google it for more info. We have many satellites around the earth courtesy of the US army, which can pinpoint your position, with the GPS receiver. If you remember your geography, the earth has virtual horizontal (latitude) & vertical (longitude) lines which tell positions on earth with respect to another. as a reference, the equator is the horizontal line with 'zero" latitude while the vertical line crossing Greenwich in England is the "zero" longitude line (for lack of better words). The GPS location will tell you how far North are you from the Equator & how far East are you from the Greenwich line. Hence, you'll see something like N02...E101... coordinate which is somewhere in West Malaysia

The Ingredients

First, you gotta have a GPS receiver (GPSr for short). previously I used an external GPSr (holux 236B) which I connect via bluetooth to my PDA. But now since I have a PDAphone with built in reciever (HTC P3300) , I don't use the external one anymore.

Second, get your GPS navigation program. I use Garmin Que because it's free, small size, quite easy to set up & most importantly, can take the free map from malsing. I also use mapking 2007. this is another program which can use malsing map. For Garmin Que to work on my phone, I also use another program called gpsgate. You see, Garmin Que is supposed to work with garmin GPS receiver, the 10X. So, since I don't have that, I need gpsgate to make the que sees my internal gps receiver as garmin's. Alternatively, you can use program called gpsproxy.

Third, the map. what is a gps navigation program without the map, right? so this is where malsing come into play. without them, we won't get so many people in malaysia exposed to GPS. Through their effort, we have such a great, detailed map for the whole of Malaysia & Singapore, for free. I have also contributed in a very small way to make the map & forum better, by answering newbies' questions, informing new POIs (that's point of interest) etc. So, you can download the map from their website, after becoming a member. by the way, there is also a group (spinned off from malsing for some reason) which starts another website for the free map at www.malfreemaps.com. So you can also get the map from there.

The Set up

Now, install garmin que to your phone. It'd be much better to install it on your memory card, since most PDAphones have tiny space in the main memory, but this applies to most programs as well. you'll see garmin folder on the memory card (\storage card\garmin). but in my case i also see another garmin folder on the main memory. just ignore it.

Put the map file (gmapsupp.img) that you downloaded from the map providers (malsing etc) to the garmin folder on your memory card.

If you run garmin que without gps set up, you won't get to see the map straight away. This is because, as default, it will show the location somewhere in USA, probably where garmin's HQ is located. TO see the map, you gotta locate Malaysia by scrolling the map away. Malaysia is just above the equator which is zero in latitude, so it won't be so hard to find it.

In order for garmin que to see the gpsr other than garmin 10X, you'll need to install gpsgate or gpsproxy. Previously I used the free gpsproxy on my old PDA but somehow I couldn't make it work on my new phone. Hence, I switched to gpsgate which is better (but not free) & easier to set up. Basically, you gotta set the input by letting the program detect your gpsr. Then for the output, select "virtual com port (garmin emulator)".

Back to garmin que, you gotta set that the gps device communication port to "franson...". This can be found under menu -> system setup -> Interface tab. If you are unlucky, you can't even find interface tab, but there is a way around it .

You should be able to get a gps fix , after sometimes depending on the strength of the signal, & you should see the malaysian map & ready to navigate!

Happy GPSing!