Machinima movie I worked on years back. We won some prizes in the “Make Something Unreal” contest. I’m glad to see it made it to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnJxzt9jkUU
bot movie
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Rhodes Miracle Mod, Back Check, and Hammer Tips
Most rhodes electric keyboards I’ve played have terrible action, usually sluggish and bouncy. I’ve installed some mods on mine from vintagevibe.com which transformed it into something very playable:
- Miracle Mod
- Back Check Mod
- New Hammer Tips
Most of the techniques for installing this stuff can be found in youtube videos from vintage vibe. But there are a few techniques I found that can help out as well.
Miracle Mod
The miracle mod is by far the most important mod for improving the rhodes keyboard action. This mod places a small bump between the key and the hammer making the contact area between the two smaller. This makes it so there is less friction between the two parts giving a faster and lighter action. Keep in mind this mod should be done BEFORE the back check mod. I didn’t do it this way and had to re-adjust all my back checks since the hammers actually sit a little higher up with the miracle mod.
Back Check Mod
The back check mod keeps keys from bouncing back allowing for better articulation and feel. The instructions from vintage vibe are ok. However, there is some extra things that can help:
- Drill pilot holes in the keys, I had a few keys split a little bit around the screw. Even though the video instructions say the pilot holes aren’t needed, do it anyway.
- Sand the back of the hammers where they touch the back checks with fine grid sand paper. Make em smooth with no burs. This will ensure the hammers don’t drag needlessly on the back checks and slow your action down.
- Bend the back checks so they sit as high up on the hammer as possible. Adjust them to avoid the hammer sliding on them to avoid extra friction. The bottom back check in the pic is how I was able to add height.
- Add the back check mod AFTER the Miracle mod if you are doing them both.
Hammer Tips 
Changing out the hammer tips seems to give a more consistent even tone across the keys.
Chopin op 28 no 4
An embarrassment in the grand scheme of things really. But a milestone for someone in their 30′s trying to learn piano. Once I “learned” it I realized I hadn’t really at all and it will take the rest of my life to get the feel right.
Sk8 or Die
Here is a small movie I made of skate clips from about three years ago and beyond. The last clip was about 10 years ago while I was in Indonesia visiting my buddy Sal. I really need to get back into skating!
A Conversation with the Universe
This song was actually created before “A Conversation with Kawita”. Primarily a free improvised session with just me and the universe. Some of the ideas were fun but didn’t really work out that well (speeding up of certain elements out of time). The song was primarily inspired by learning my first beat on a real drum kit and of course the approach of Yesterdays New Quintet.
Grilled Cheese
I created this song last year after wanting to express some funk on the cheesy side of things. I was also eating a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches at the time 
The song was mostly sequenced drums, bass, and rhodes with improvised clav, lead synth, and organ and was very fun to play.
The lineup:
- Beat: sampled hits banged out on a roland sp-555
- Bass Synth: Gforce mini monsta (mini moog emulation software)
- Lead Synth: Korg R3
- Rhodes, Clavinet, B3 all played with a nord electro 2
- Shaker
Ill Ruby
A few months ago I built the bassman version of the Ruby headphone amp into an Altoids tin (http://www.runoffgroove.com/ruby.html). This put me on the constant lookout for project boxes of similar sorts. Once I eyed the illy espresso can (damn good coffee BTW) sitting on my table I new it was the right thing for the next version which could also house a small speaker.
The build out started with the electronics and I wanted to build the amp on to a perf board half the size of the one I used for the altoids amp. As always, soldering all these electronics together is a tedious job. The more planning you do the easier the job is. However, I have a tendency to just start building without planning very much as this seems to be therapeutic and is why I do electronics in the first place!
The speaker I bought was about an inch smaller in diameter then the can, so I needed a large “washer” type of thing which could bridge the speaker to the can diameter. I went through a few iterations. Trying to cut a sheet metal ring resulted in a jaggy nasty thing that cut my fingers up. A CD jewel case was too brittle and shattered when cut. I finally settled on the plastic from a DVD case which was soft yet rigid enough for this purpose.
Battery Box
The tricky part about this amp would be its 9volt battery accessibility. The bottom is a nice logical spot but how would it be housed and accessible? I looked online for plastic battery boxes which could potentially be inserted and slide out for changing the battery. I really could not find anything that would do what I want or was way over priced. So I opted to build my own using sheet metal. The design is to wrap the battery with the metal but have two tabbed edges stick out of one of the sides that could be screwed into the bottom. I first mocked up the design with paper and used it as a template for cutting out the sheet metal. An important part of this was to line the inside with some left over static foam I had laying around. This kept the battery from rattling around.
Cutting out the bottom of the can was easy enough first drilling holes on the corners and then slicing it up with an exacto knife:
Installing the electronics in the can was harder then I thought. Since the knobs and jacks were located at the bottom and my hand didn’t really fit inside the can very well, it was seriously difficult tightening it all up. I broke wires off the board on more then one occasion. I decided the top of the battery box was also nice location of the electronics board since I could pull the board out fairly easily for potential maintenance.
I wanted to add custom decals that somewhat matched the style of the existing labels on the can. It took about a week of searching and trial and error to find the right type of thing to do the job. I ended up ordering ink jet water slide decals from: http://www.papilio.com These worked great and were far better then anything I found at retail stores (office depot and a handful of hobby/model shops). One thing I did get from a hobby shop was “microscale liquid decal film”. I used this as a clear coat after printing the labels. The instructions that come with the paper are pretty good but here’s some extra trial and error I went through.
- Ink only needed to dry for about 15 minutes after printing (these are small labels)
- Microscale film needed to dry for 15 minutes
- Print extra copies of the label as you can easily screw them up when sliding onto object.
- Use brand new exacto blade to cut out the labels. Otherwise the edges can stick up a little once the decal is dry.
Some of the thoughts I had in regards to usability of the amp:
* No switches. All functions are triggered by plugging cables into the device. For instance, power turns on when the input cable is in. Speakers are switched to headphones when headphones are plugged in.
* Keep audio jacks at the the bottom of the can. This would keep the can from tipping over when a cable is gets pulled on.
* Knobs should be positioned above cables so that the cable does not get in the way of turning the knob.
* Hide the speaker under the lid.
These were the primary thoughts I had in regards to usability for the device. I also had thought of somehow hiding all the controls under the lid or on the bottom. But this would have been difficult and I think it looks cool with the knobs sticking out the sides allowing the original label to be fully displayed. However, it is a little hard to use this way because the knobs are hard to turn with one hand (using your right arm you have to twist your arm to turn the knob on the left side or vice versa). Having the knobs close together would have been a much better decision as would allow you to easily tweak combination’s of gain and output volume to get different effects.
Final pics:
Using Colors for Interface Associations
The usage of color in user interfaces is often times used in ways to associate items with meaning which can help minimize complexity of data representation (by avoiding a lot of text everywhere). For instance, the usage of a legend where a certain color can mean something special. The problem with this usage is the color and its meaning are usually of arbitrary correlation. Legends in general can help solve the problem of complexity at the expense of usability. You have to keep track of impossible to remember icons or colors in your head and constantly have to look back to the legend while scanning data.
Similar problems exist between correlating input controls with the devices output. We are surrounded with devices that have terrible design in regards to input and output associations. The classic example being the kitchen stove burners. The knobs are generally layed out in a horizontal row while the burners are in a grid. Making an intuitive correlation impossible between knob and burner. To aid this there is an icon next to each knob, however, there is still the problem in that the user needs to translate the vertically positioned icon into the top down space of the burners for the icon to have meaning. Essentially, all this results in everybody constantly choosing the wrong knob for the burner they want. I still get it wrong everyday and I am cognizant of the situation!
I was equally annoyed after purchasing a Roland KC-350 keyboard amplifier. Like all the other crap I’ve purchased based on bullet point feature lists, I found it had some serious usability problems. Particularly, the four channel stereo mixer was difficult to use do to its lack of input knob to input jack correlation. Generally this is fairly intuitive with mixers as each channel strip is arranged so its input jack is directly in line with the channel controls. In the case of this amp, the knobs were obscured and offset based on odd numbers of knobs verses jacks. The first three jacks are associated with the CH1 knob, the next two jacks are CH2, etc… They attempted to associate knobs with jack grouping by using numbers… I consider this a serious design failure on rolands part. My bass player gets it wrong every time and needs assistance after plugging in his bass and trying to figure out why the volume knob does not do anything for the channel he’s plugged into.
A buddy of mine was showing me this funky piece of gear: Maestro Woodwind Sound System. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw audio electronics which used color very successfully to correlate groupings of buttons to a grouping of knobs. It is immediately obvious and and intuitive which volume knobs affect which sound group buttons. No need to read a manual here. And it gave me an idea that a similar technique could be used to correlate lots of seemingly dissconected UI elements in general. While this example might not be considered the most tasteful (personally I love the 60′s and 70′s look), the usage of color is not visually distracting which is the case with a lot of UIs that utilize color. I believe color can be used tastefully in certain cases to denote association and make things very intuitive.
A Conversation with Kawita
I created this song while out sick last week in a three day solid block (not sick enough to play and record!). It was truly great experience attempting to play all the instruments myself and it really gave me perspective. Drums, Bass, Organ, Rhodes and Vibraphone. Interestingly, most of my time was spent trying to learn mixing and mastering techniques which I still don’t have a clue about after the fact!
Lord Quas Cubeecraft
What a pain to build but quasi is awesome.
- Print out the PDF
- Get out the exacto and elmers glue
http://www.stonesthrow.com/news/2009/04/quasimoto-cubeecraft-by-rbst