Other Stuff

Newsflash (...and here's the News in English):

6-December-2001: MPEG
One of the oldest points on my To-Do list, was to provide MPEG samples on my site, in addition to or instead of Wave files. Yesterday I generated them with SamOpus on the Amithlon-Amiga. They are slightly larger than the low quality wave files (20 GByte). Since 30 GByte is the maximum space my provider allows me to use (without extra fee), the MPEG files will replace the WAVE files on my site. So MPEGs are now available for the sample clips from my first CD 'Man Without Hits'. The other clips (e.g. from the projects I am working on), are still WAVE files at the moment. This will change soon.

30-November-2001: Guitar for Carina
Today I bought a guitar for my niece Carina. She was doing well in the lessons, but her teacher wanted her to play silk strings instead of steel strings. Also the guitar I had lend her before, has too small gaps between the strings - good for hitting the strings, but not for picking them. So we decided for an early X-mas present. I had the chance to accompany my sister and her daughter to the lessons and I was actually impressed, how nice she and the other girl in the class played together. The teacher had agreed to bring along some guitars for us to select one for Carina. We went for a Spanish guitar with a warm sound. We had not been sure, whether she can use a guitar for grown up women, or whether we have to buy a kiddy guitar. We made the test with a grown up guitar and my niece used it in the lesson. As it appeared, she could handle it well. Then it was time, to empty my wallet. From the cheers in my niece's eyes the money was spent well.

10-November-2001: Sufficiently Soft
Hurray! I got my Athlon back - with a more expensive power supply (for which I didn't have to pay extra money) and it is now in fact generating less noise. In the meantime I have bought the new Amiga emulator solution Amithlon/AmigaXL for the PC, hoping to be able to replace my Amiga 4000 completely. The installation is not easy, due to the poor documentation, but it seems, all important (for me important) applications are running well. To be honest, they are not just running well. They are running much better than on the original Amiga. When I bought the emulator*, I hoped to be able to use it for maintening existing data (especially my complete correspondence of the last twelve years). But now that I see, how well it works, I reconsider. Maybe I will go on using one or another Amiga application in future. Switching between Windows and Amiga is done simply by rebooting with the choosen system. We will see.
*I call it emulator for better understanding. Actually there are two of them in the package, Amithlon and AmigaXL and Amithlon is no longer really an emulator, it is more a portation of Amiga OS to Intel processors, because it runs practically standalone on the PC. It will not require Windows or any other system (e.g. Linux) on the machine. This way Amiga OS becomes a native system, gaining enormeous speed.

31-October-2001: AVI Video
I have finally created the video that combines the title animation and the applicable sound (takeitoff_short.wav) as it was intendedright from the start. The video can be accessed by clicking at the animatedGIF. Unfortunately it currently has to be in AVI format, because I havn´tfound a way to convert or create the animation as an MPEG. Somehow it is ashame! The original GIF animation of 640x512 pixels needs 226 kB of disk spaceand the size of the sound file is 158 kB. The resulting AVI video that combinesboth, has a size of 2082kB, although it is rendered only at 320x256 pixels.

29-October-2001: Too Loud
Today I brought back the Athlon to the shop I bought it. They will have to replace the power supply or do whatever is required to make this computer less loud. I had invested 300 DM (150 Euro) extra to make the computer as silent as possible. It came with a special housing with isolation, which makesthe computer almost unhearable at start. However, after a couple ofminutes, when the inside temperature rises, obviously the cooler of the power supply starts ventilating with so much force, that the computer sounds more like anair-condition working with full power. At that state it is even louder thanmy Pentium 3, which does not have any special equipment to silence it. I hopethey can solve this problem soon. I don´t want any more delay with myprojects.

16-October-2001: Athlon 1.4 GHz
Today I bought the new computer for harddisk recording. It is an Athlon 1.4 GHz with 512 MByte RAM and a fast 60 GByte harddisk. It is enormous, how fastthe prices for computer equipment fall, why the speed and ability ofthe equipmentincreases. Good for consumers like me! Next weekend I will install softwareand hardware on this new host.

23-September-2001: Family Business
I am glad to hear from my sister, that her older daughter Carina (9 years) will start with guitar lessons. Of course noone knows, whether kids likea specific instrument or not and how long they endure playing it. So I lend her my small travel guitar (see note from 5-August-2000) for the next couple of weeks. If we get the impression, that the girl will have the patience to stay with guitar playing, uncle Gunter will buy his niece her first guitar for X-mas. The younger daughter Manuela (8 years), who already takes piano lessons, starts with violin lessons at the same time. She insisted on violin, because she got so impressed from the strings sounds generated by the electric piano, that I boughtfor my mother (see note from 29-May-2001). Since violins have no bars, it is very important that the size of the instrument matches that of the hand that plays it. Hence it does not make much sense to buya violinfor kids, because they will need a larger one in a year or two. Fortunately my sister found a shop which does not only sell violins, but also offersthem for rent. So after a couple of months playing the flute, my niecesnow both go for string instruments.

2-September-2001: Improved Guitar Play
I don´t know why, but after all those years, I am ´suddenly´ able to perform quite nicely two songs with my accoustic guitar, which seemed never to sound right before. The songs are ´Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds´ from the Beatles and ´I can See for Miles´ from the Who. Both are not ideal for a single accoustic guitar, but they are two of my favourite songs. Therefore I always tried to play them, but every time I gave it up with disgust. I cannot even say, what I am doing different now, but somehow I found a nice way to play these songs, when before I didn´t.

26-August-2001: A Breakthrough
Finally some promising path. One of the staff at Musik Oechsner who uses AudioLogic himself, believes that it does not make much sense to work withthis program with less than a 1 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM and fast harddisks. To verify the statement, I transfered the equipment to my other computer, which is normallyat my ´secondary home´ in Munich. This other hostsis a Pentium3 with 1 GHz CPU. In fact on this host the sound is clear -no crackles. Iwill have to replace my Pentium 350 with a faster host, then step by stepsolve the other problems and develop a new working strategy.Poooh, when will I beable to do creative work instead of dull installation and testing?

29-May-2001: Electric Piano
I always liked my mother playing piano when my sister and I were kids. But the piano was old and finally could not be sufficiently tuned anymore and was beyond repair (at least for a reaonable amount of money). Later we had an electric organ (typical ´80s model), but it lost some electrical contacts over the years, so that we had to dismiss it, too. For some years the only keyboard at home was my Roland E-16 in my music room in the cellar, but my mother very seldom played on it. Somehow she didn´t like doing the necessary preparations before playing, even if it was only to plug in the power cord and to unplug the earphone connector, used to mute the internal speakers of the keyboard (because I normally use the line out with the stereo equipment instead). So it got rather quiet in the house, when I was not there. Since I knew that my mother still liked to play, I decided to buy her an electricpiano for birthday. From friends I had heard of a large music shopwith ahugehall full of pianos at cheap prices. So we went there and I had my mother tryand find a piano she likes. First she was skeptical about electric pianos. But soon she got persuaded, that modern electric pianos really cangive you the feeling of a real piano - and at a price of about 1/10th ofan equally sounding real piano. Of course she was concerned that I pay toomuch for a present, but I persuaded her that I might use the piano as well for my recordings. But the truth is: I like music and I always want to support friends and family in making music. And I always have problems in selecting useful and worthy birthday or X-mas presents. So for me this present really seemed worth a littleextra expenses.

20-May-2001: Quite some lllusions Lost
All my hopes, that modern technique will help me into happily recording without further disturbance, has been abandoned. The sequencer configuration is very complex and even after hours, sometimes things happen, where I have not the slightest idea why they happen. Sequences are muted and I don´t find a way to unmute them (all settings appear to be correct). Also the playback with the expensive digitzer board is very bad. Even two track (stereo) playback of an existing wave file contains crackles (which are not in the wave file, of course). Finally I can´t set up 24-bit recording in Audio Logic. A call to the Audio Logic hotline did only increase my frustration. Theydid not have any idea, where the crackling sounds come from and they toldme that Audio Logic Gold is designed only for 16-bit recording. To use 24-bit,one will have to upgrade to Audio Logic Platinum. Why then did they sellme this combination of software and hardware at Musik Oechnser?

18-March-2001: Logic Audio
I did it! I went to ´Musik Oechsner´ my favourite store for musical equipment to inform me of recording solutions for PCs. They recommended a program named ´Audio Logic´ which is sequencer and recorder software in one, using a very modern approach with functions to configure a virtual studio with all types of equipment and effect generators that get connected with virtual cables. The program also contains a couple of features I always wanted to have, but never got. One is a tool to generate MIDI from recorded monophone voices. I had startet programming something similar 6 years ago, but never finished it. So it was easy for them to bait me with this software. Of course I needed a MIDI Interface and a digitizer as well. I followed their suggestions and bought a Waveterminal 2496 board, a 24-bit digitizer. The ´Gold´ version of Audio Logic should be able to handle the digitizer board well. The minimum requirement is a 233 MHz CPU, I have a 350 MHz Pentium 2, so it should be OK for the beginning. If I notice, that need more power, I can still buy a better computer.

26-December-2000: Late X-mas Present
Seagate has repaired my harddisk. They promise a 5 years warranty and only 4 1/2 years have passed since I bought the disk. Consequently they have fixed it without fee and without hesitation. I hope that the fixed disk will now do it´s duty and not only until the end of the warranty - first tests appear positive. However, I fear that there will always be a shadow of adoubt lying over my trust in this disk. I begin to think of switching toa PC as a realistic alternation. The problem is to find tools I can workwith. I have developed a kind of working style, that fits me very well. Ifear that itwill be difficult to establish something similar on a PC. Afterall I haveevendeveloped software myself, to fit all components of harddiskrecordingtogetheron the Amiga. On the other hand, there must be some software,usablefor recording. A lot of people use PCs for that purpose. And it ispossible,that new programs will show me alternate, maybe better ways tocreate songs.

19-November-2001: Harddisk Failures
Was it really me, who said "Now there should be nothing left to stop me from finally recordingagain!"? Nothing but harddisk failures, would have beenmore correct, I guess. Three times within 2 weeks the whole data from thecomputer harddisk been lost. The disk simply got unreadable and had to bereformatted.The second time was the worst, because it was at the end of myfirst record session after 2 1/2 years and I lost all recordings I made thatday. Since I always store all data after a day of work, more than a dayswork cannot be lost.But one day is still one day too much. It is half ofthe weekend and I haveony the weekends to work on my recordings (that isthe drawback, when youhavea ´real´ job). This is extremelyfrustrating. Not only didI loose a day work, also it costs me time to restorethe backup data to diskand worst, after the third failure I know, that thismay happen again at anytime.

20-October-2000: Now I really Startet again!
The plan is to program the background for two or three new songs, then start recording. It is hard to begin programming again after almost two and a half years of abstinence. However, fortunately I have made a lot of notes in the past about what to take care of and how to proceed best. Now it pays.

14-Sep-2000: Lyrics Completed for 3 Songs
Last week, I finally completed the lyrics of 3 more songs. It was ahard piece of work - lyrics always are to me (I rather develop 3 new songsthan write the lyrics for one of them), but it was necessary. 2 of thesongs are already programmed and ready to be recorded since weeks. I justhad to finish the#@$! lyrics.
Now there should be nothing left to stop me from finally recordingagain!

5-Aug-2000: New Guitar
I bought a nice little guitar today, extremely small, light and cheap,for travelling. I will take it with me onto my 2 weeks summer vacationon a Sailing Boat at the coast of Croatia. 2 years ago my good old (40years !) travelling guitar, I learned the first chords on, finally gaveup. The plastic handles of the screws to tune the guitar had aged so much,they fell into pieces.So I went on my vacation last year without a guitar.Bad idea! There is nobetter time playing guitar than on vacation. So Ihad to get me a new onefor this year. It is perfect, like my Ovation,just smaller. And once I ambuying music equipment... I always find somethingmore: Since the guitar wasreally cheap, I spent the saved money in a smallpickup and battery poweredamplifier.

16-Feb-2000: News Section Installed
Today I added this news section to my homepage in order to give regularvisitors a way of accessing new sections directly. Together with the 'lastupdate'info on the Front page, it should help them to decide, whetherthere is something new and worthwhile to check in.
The News Section will basically contain news on projects and everything,that may affect them.

30-Jan-2000: Latest Versions of Recording SoftwareInstalled
Well ... this is probably nothing of interest to you. However, it isa sign of my commitment to the Amiga platform and for me, it is importantto know, that I have the optimum of technical equipment. I installed SamplitudeOpus3.5-R9-4 and SoundFX3.82.

8-Jan-2000: Gunter Starts Recording Again
I did it! After more than one year of recording stop, I finally startedagain. The first song of the year 2000, that I am producing, is called'Across the Table'. The programming is almost done, but while doing it,I couldn't ignore the fact, that I was not in the shape I used to be. Ihad to redo the drum sequences over and over - and I am still not satisfiedwith them. Actually, it is no wonder after more than a year of 'rest',but it still hurts. On the other hand, I could also notice, that the moreI worked on the sequencs, the more the buried skills seemed to come back.So I guess within a couple ofweeks, I will be producing again, as if Inever had stopped for longer thana couple of weeks.

1-Jan-2000: Happy new Year
My resolution for the new year: Get back into recording, after a breakofmore than a year.
It's a shame, but I havn't done any recordings since 1998. The pileof songs, I've written, but not yet recorded, is getting larger and larger,becauseI did an almost average amount of song writing during that time(a total of20 within the last 2 years).
The first recordings for my next CD had been done immediately afterthe first one was completed. Then I put all my efforts into the implementationand completion of this web site. After that was done, I somehow couldn'tmanage to find the spirit and urge to record again. Probably an evil hurtingback (the fate of probably most people working with computers) was themain reason, why thethought of programming MIDI tracks for my next projectswas nothing to makeme cheerful of. Also, the ongoing decay of my hardwareplatform of choice,the Amiga, and hence my errant for alternatives withWindows98, wasn't veryhelpful at all in getting me back on the track ofproductivity.
I am feeling better now. And I have made up my mind: My platform forthe coming time will still be the Amiga, but I will have a an option tochange to the PC in future.

Be sure, this page will be continuously updatedand expanded , as will be the rest of my web site .

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