Father forgive me, I have not blogged in over two months.

So this little gem was worth sharing this morning. For those who have not known, I’ve pretty much wrapped up any and all musical ambitions that I’ve had — I don’t sell very many CD’s, when I’ve played out I don’t fill out the cafes, and I’ve lost interest for a number of other reasons as well. Suffice to say that I really don’t have a reason to play, so I don’t; and my guitars sit in the basement collecting dust along with any and all musical inspiration that I’ve had once before.

This morning the “red phone” rang when an e-mail arrived in my music-only e-mail account, saying “you’ve received a PayPal payment of $30.00 from…” and citing the CD’s that they’ve ordered. I thought, now that’s random. I haven’t received an order off the website in well over a year. Well, I guess I’d have to rummage through the boxes and dig out a few CD’s to send off.

Following routine, I fired off a ‘thank you’ e-mail, thanking my customer personally for the order and saying they’d ship later this week. About an hour later I received a reply:

Thanks Michael. It was a blessing to hear you on Sunday at Hillside. You are truly God blessed and very gifted.

Peace and goodwill,
name withheld

Zoinks! The lady bought my CDs thinking I was someone else — perhaps “Magic Banjo” Michael Miles? Perhaps another Michael Miles out there? Regardless, she bought ALL of my solo CDs thinking that I was the one who performed at their church that past Sunday.

For one moment, I had a small glimmer of light (not quite enough to call it hope) that someone out there that didn’t know me from Adam bought my CDs because they liked my music. Nope. They bought my CDs because they thought I was someone else. Classic.

Anyway, I thought I’d share that little gem of a moment with the world. If you do want to help me clean out my inventory of instrumental acoustic guitar music, please buy some CDs. It’s not like I’m using them anymore.

Filed under: Music
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It’s our first year watching the Super Bowl on our new Samsung flat screen LCD and Bose home theatre system. For the most part the picture and sound has been nearly immaculate, with the occasional bad pixelation.

And then there’s the half-time performance of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Tom Petty? At the Super Bowl half time performance? You’re kidding, right?

Well, then Fox’s audio department sure seemed to drop the ball this year — while the visuals were enough to keep me interested, the audio SUCKED. All you could hear was Tom’s voice, the guitars, and the snare drum. The low end was nowhere to be found and my subwoofer patiently waited for a little action, occasionally putting out a barely audible off-tempo thud.

FOX Network, you sure dropped the ball this year at the half time performance. You’ve had your fun, now I think it’s time to let the real networks do their job and cover the Super Bowl.

Filed under: Artists, Music, Performance
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I think that I have outdone myself with perhaps the longest entries that I’ve ever entered into my blog — but when you’re reflecting on over thirty years of personal music history, you ought not expect a short essay. But I promise that this will be the last part of this three-part series.

It was such a simple thing that really sparked this whole reflection, seeing my music out on last.fm and wondering why it is that I just cannot seem to pick up my guitar these days or pour myself into creating new music in GarageBand. The reality is, I’ve been thinking about this for the past few months and just have not nearly the same enthusiasm or drive to create new music like I have over a year ago.

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Filed under: General, Music, Orthodoxy, Performance, Recording, Spirituality
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I was chatting briefly with my friend Wes, and he was asking if I had used Last.FM before — not able to recall all that memorable an experience with them, I couldn’t answer for certain. Curious, I visited last.fm (a site about music essentially — listening to it, sharing it, and recommending it) and of course couldn’t resist searching to see if they were carrying any of my music through my connection in CDBaby. And sure enough, I have tracks up there. Which of course, prompted me to think about my music, where I’ve come from and where I may or may not go with it some day. I’m contemplative that way.

Music has always been an integral part of my life, past and present, and has often been a sustaining force for me when all other things failed. It has been inspiring, motivating, heart-sobering, enlightening, and even at times an amplifier for some of the most emotional times in my life. And like my friend Jamison has shared, there have been albums, songs, artists, and musical experiences that have become hallmarks in my life — things that will always remain framed and hung in my memories.

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Filed under: General, Music, Recording
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Well my holiday weekend wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped with regard to music — I just didn’t have much for creative inspiration, and it ended up becoming a time to just putz around with my new keyboard. Tonight, however, I managed to put together a little 2:50 piece featuring the Steinway, flute, three-piece strings, and a little hint of organ to spice things up. (Who’d ever think of an organ as an instrument to spice things up anyway?)

So enough talk — download tonight’s experiment. I tried to pay more close attention to execution on the strings and flute, so they’d sound a bit more convincing. Let’s face it, it’s hard to make strings and woodwinds sound convincing on a keyboard — it requires a great deal of skill and patience to pull it off. I have a long way to go before I could ever manage that. But regardless, enjoy.

Filed under: All Things Apple, Music, Recording
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So I have had my eye on a few MIDI controllers on eBay for the past week or so, since M-Audio has been EXTREMELY slow with any sort of Leopard-friendly drivers. This morning I happened to glance at a few options on the Guitar Center (a.k.a. “Satan”) website at my options for MIDI controllers. One controller in particular was the Korg K61 USB MIDI controller, but it was priced at $179.99 — a bit much for what I can afford to pay for. I did have about $120 that I saved up for in my budget, so I was prepared to get the smaller 49-key version at $99.

Well, when I arrived at Guitar Center (a.k.a. “the music store that drives out any healthy competition”), I noticed that their K61 was on sale… we’re talking big time on sale…

…for $99.00…

So I bought the controller and will get a chance to mess with it over this long, holiday weekend. I’ll be sure to post my thoughts about how well it responds and interacts with GarageBand.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Korg keyboards. I know that I just can’t go wrong with them, and am almost certain I won’t have any compatibility problems with the latest operating system from Apple.

Filed under: All Things Apple, Gear, Music
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Tomorrow, it will have been three weeks since Apple released their new operating system Leopard to the public — OS X 10.5 — and it was no small event. Apple had been shouting from the hilltops of Apple.com since June, that they were nearly finished with Leopard. That means that software and hardware developers should have had access to the operating system guts to begin working on driver updates for the new operating system.

Now five months after Apple made that announcement, “pro” audio hardware manufacturer M-Audio continues to drive their reputation further into the ground with a blanket statement (*cough* lazy excuses *cough*) for why they have yet to release updated drivers for their products for the new Mac operating system. This statement released by M-Audio said:

Due to the nature of software and driver development, we are not able to provide exact dates for when specific drivers will become available—but please rest assured that supporting Leopard is a top priority for us. As soon as Leopard drivers or updates for any product become available, our Web site will be immediately updated to reflect this.

In other words, they have no clue as to when we can expect our audio devices to function.

Frankly, I’m tired of going back to M-Audio’s website and checking for updates — after three weeks of checking for updates and seeing nothing new (at all), I’m beginning to think that M-Audio would rather keep its customers in the dark than thoroughly informed. If it was really going to take this long to get some simple updates to their drivers, they should have set up an e-mail listserv or subscription to be notified when said drivers are available.

I don’t know about the rest of their products, but even the simple MIDISPORT 1×1 MIDI controller is not functioning in Leopard. I honestly can’t imagine what has changed with how Apple handles USB and MIDI interfacing — not a whole lot by my guestimation. When I look through all of the 300+ new OSX features, I don’t see anything that indicates a change in how USB or MIDI is handled.

So I hope M-Audio pulls up its bootstraps and gets a release out soon or I’m going to have to leave behind my M-Audio days in favor of a pro audio company that stays current on operating systems updates and doesn’t rely on telling the end user what to do…

…If you choose to install Leopard on your system before your M-Audio product has been qualified for use with the new OS, please be aware that your M-Audio device may not function properly…

Let’s get it in gear M-Audio.

Filed under: All Things Apple, Gear, Music
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It was definitely a strange Sunday. I slept in with Natalie until around 11:45 and just had to get up at that point — she still slept on from her long night shift. I got up for awhile, but then a killer headache, nausea, and small fever came on and rendered me useless for nearly five hours or so — even haven taken four Excedrin. But by about 8:00 I was feeling a bit better (and doped up with caffeine from the Excedrin).

Armed with a donation of new instruments from a good friend, I decided to spend a little time with GarageBand this evening and try out some of the instruments. And because I don’t have the capacity to put an expression pedal on my cheap-bought-off-craigslist-for-$25-Yamaha keyboard, I know that some of the instruments are invariably going to be difficult to play without them sounding like they came from a keyboard. But I digress.

I am a sucker for emotional [I can't believe it, but I almost typed "e-motional"... I think I should trademark that.], orchestral tunes, especially when you bring in the organ for dramatic effect. It really has a way of lifting up my spirits sometimes — inspirational.

So I started out with GarageBand’s Orchestral Romantic Organ and slowly built on various instruments to build some different colors along the way. Download tonight’s little experiment. (5.5 MB, 3:58, 192 kbps)

With the tune I developed this evening, it’s lit a flame inside to try and assemble the liturgically-influenced album I’ve been thinking about inside. I’m not sure if it will be an instrumental or with words (I’m leaning towards a little bit of both in it), but since I’m not really tied into any church at the moment (and am a bit “hungry” from my isolation from the Orthodox), so this may be my temporary means of communing with God — through writing a few songs of inspiration and reflection in remembrance of Him.

Which this leads to a whole different topic that I wrestle with.

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Filed under: Music, Orthodoxy, Recording, Spirituality
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Okay, one more for today. This one’s for all the Mario Brothers geeks out there.

And yes, he’s not just playing the flute but providing the most stellar beat box to it.

Filed under: Gaming, Music, Performance
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My last post, which reviewed GarageBand ‘08, might have come across the wrong way, sounding a bit like I’m poo-pooing the application as being substandard to the industry and severely lacking. Well, in some ways it is and other ways I must admit it impresses me.

I was messing around with it a bit more this evening; and though my first composition was fine, I felt myself finding the edge of creativity with the instrument voices that I had available to me — with the styles that I was trying to pull off. But I decided to persevere and try something totally off the wall and go dance/techno style and see what I could come up with just for the sake of fooling around.

The end result actually surprised me: audio file (192 kbps, 5.4 MB, 3:56). It’s got kind of a dance-funk-charlies-angels theme-phish kind of thing going on with it. Kinda fun.

It did start out to be a techno-type tune, but then I started throwing in some a few things, changed the beat up a bit and then despite my laurels, I even used a “fake” electric guitar in the tune and it actually sounds good for a GarageBand tune. I was VERY surprised.

I still hold my ground that Apple REALLY needed to include a lot more instruments in the default packet—I mean seriously, they don’t even have a clarinet in the list of woodwinds. While purists and clarinet players alike might prefer it that way and use the real thing, I don’t play clarinet and can think of times I’d really like to use a clarinet sound. Or a nice oboe or french horn. I LOVE the french horn. But none of those nice, real instrument sounds are available in the default package.

Anyway, I like the latest tune I came up with—it’s fun, upbeat, and something I could probably listen to a couple times and not get sick of it. Enjoy!

Filed under: Applications, General, Music, Recording
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