Jim Alfredson

Macs still have harddrive failures. I agree with impossible. Get your valuable stuff off it as soon as possible. It sounds like the directory table might be on its way out. Never a good thing. Rather than re-format and hope it doesn't crap out again, I'd just buy a new harddrive and put it in the old case once you have everything you want off it.

Awesome!

Pistons looked good against the Magic tonight without Rip or Tayshaun. Big Ben looks rejuvenated. Celtics look scary good, too. I think the East is the power player this year.

Hey, I've got a laptop!

I was just trying to figure out why slsmcgrew's post was not displaying (I think I fixed it) and scrolled by Evan's new signature picture. My wife just happened to walk by at that moment and said, in a very accusatory tone "Who are you looking at?!?" Thanks, Evan.

Thanks, everyone, for the support! The board is doing fine. I'm trying to find a good time to upgrade the server, which is going to require some "babysitting" time from me.

Jim Colando dropped off high-res scans of his images this morning. I'm really excited to see these printed. They are going to look great.

I just heard his latest, Wiley Ave. Great stuff! I still can't figure out why he isn't more well known.

Yep.

Don't worry, Joe. I'll still talk to you. I'm going into to Glenn Brown's to master the disc next week. I have one more idea I'm going to try this weekend on one of the tracks involving a prepared piano! But otherwise I think I'm done. I've been tweaking the mixes and getting things where I want them. This has been a very rewarding project in many ways and therapeutic for me. These 100 copies will be signed and numbered, by the way.

And scary!

Anybody with eyes can see that some games are rigged. It would not surprise me if 100% of what they quoted in the link above is true.

Is it still adding shipping? There are two songs in 5/4 on the record, totally by accident. I don't sit down and think "Oh, I'm going to write something in such-and-such time signature." Usually I don't even notice that an idea is in an odd time signature until I try to play it to a metronome!

Zora had it. She missed a week of school and only stopped coughing yesterday. I might have had a mild case; no fever, but the same nasty cough and congestion that Zora had. It is no fun.

Ah crap, you're right. I thought I had unchecked that box, but now I see I unchecked the local sales tax box (which is good, too). I'll fix it. Anyone who wants a refund for the shipping, let me know. Thanks!

Got some samples up. Click here to hear them and to pre-order if you are so inclined. Thanks!

Thanks, everyone. I'm going to get some samples up soon; I need to finalize a couple of the mixes.

Hey hey...For those who are on Facebook you may have read that I've been working on an album of electronic-based music, decidely not in the jazz camp. Nor do I play any Hammond organ on it for that matter (again, on purpose). It's all synthesizers and (gasp!) drum machines / samples!The project really came into focus a few months after my father passed away in May of 2008. In the early spring of 2008, he called me and inquired about an old Yamaha synthesizer that we bought (well, I was 13 or 14 years old at the time... so he bought it!) and mentioned he wanted to get back into creating ambient music again. I had played that Yamaha (the SY77 for anyone who cares) every day all throughout middle school and high school and even used it on some very early gigs with Root Doctor. I replaced it with a newer Yamaha (the EX7) in 2001 and rarely touched it after that. It had some broken keys, the screen was dim and barely legible, and many of the buttons were flaky. In short, it needed some work, the poor thing! Brief history: My dad was a guitarist but also played a bit of organ/piano. He made his living on the road up until 1980 or so when he began practicing the art of piano tuning and repair. After leaving the road he devoted the next several years of various late nights to recording all his own tunes using a very humble home studio set-up in our living room. All seven kids and my mom would go to bed and he would quietly record his songbook, consisting of hundreds of original songs which he collected under the name Gabriel's Horn. After he finished he sort of retired the guitar and got into synthesis and ambient music.This was right around the time the venerable Yamaha DX7 was becoming very affordable, so he bought one and a four-track cassette machine and away he went. This was also right around the time I started to get into writing my own songs and so I spent countless hours on that synth. We eventually sold the DX7 and a bunch of other gear and bought the SY77 in 1991. Anyway, my dad in the spring of 2008 wanted to use the SY77 again. I told him I would fix it up for him because he couldn't use it in the condition it was in at the time. Of course, I never got to that point before he passed away. After his death, I felt an urge to pull out that SY77 and start playing it. I found some user groups on the web, downloaded a bunch of sounds, and ordered new parts to fix it. I became hooked on synthesis again, as when I was a kid. I was already feeling the synth bug on the last organissimo recording, which features some cool Moog work (if I do say so myself!). I started to piece together snippets of ideas late at night over the next few months. After finishing Greg Nagy's solo album this past spring, I really dug in and arranged my studio into an all out synthesizer haven (and nerd fest!) and dove heavily into finishing these tracks. Here's a shot of the studio and my setup: Ok, long story kind of short: The album is almost done. It's all electronic and synthesized with the exception of the use of my Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos on a couple tracks. I used various Yamaha, Korg, and Roland digital synthesizers as well as some nice analog synths from Moog and Studio Electronics. There's rhythmic stuff (but not techno or glitch), some very ambient stuff, some floaty sort of old Tangerine Dream-esque stuff, etc. but its all very melodic; that's one thing I wanted to bring out. Barely anything is sequenced; a lot of it was played live into the computer and I would just overdub this and that until it sounded good. The songs were inspired by random memories of my childhood and growing up with two hippie parents, especially my dad who was very creative and loved weird sounds. Its my tribute to him (and to my mom) and the home they made for me. It's called In Memorandom and I'm hoping to have it out by my dad's would-be 69th birthday on December 6th. Here is the cover art with a beautiful digital photographic image by local artist Jim Colando (who also supplied the image to organissimo's Groovadelphia): Since I know there's no market for this thing, its going to be a very limited edition run of actual CDs. Like 100 at the most. I can't really afford to do much else nor do I think I'll sell many anyway. If you're interested, I'm thinking $25 for the CD, shipping included to anywhere in the world. The packaging will be first-rate; four panel full color Digipak. I just love that image of Jim Colando's... it's going to be very beautiful. The music is just about 70 minutes total, with no piece longer than 7 minutes. Lots of different moods and sounds. It's really a headphone album.Anyway, contact me if you're into this kind of stuff. Click here for some samples and to order. Put on some headphones and check it out! Thanks!

Post of the year.

Ok, we're done here. I think all that's been said is sufficient. A lot of you guys can be a chore when it comes to a board like this, not just Allen. Not naming names, nor complaining, it just goes with the territory. The funny thing is that those of you I've met in person are real genuinely nice and pleasant folks. So let's try to keep that in mind when we read into things. Okey dokey? And yes, I edited the posts... I thought the "edited by" line would automatically show up but it looks like I need to click a box for that. If we can refrain from direct personal attacks on each other, I think we'd be far better off as a community.

Seems to me its Mike's list, he can do whatever he wants with it. If you don't approve, then don't be a part of it. Kind of like here. Let's try to stay away from personal attacks, please.

No, I'm saying we need to upgrade anyway in order to use the latest release of the software, which fixes some bugs and security holes.

We need to upgrade the server. I talked to CI Host about a month ago. It's not going to be terribly expensive (around $200 for the setup fee) but then I have to make sure everything actually transfers over and works. So its going to be time consuming on my end and I'm trying to find the best time to do it. This will solve a couple of issues: The slowness, which is due to the massive size of our database and the old version of MySQL not really being able to handle it and it will also allow me to upgrade to the latest release of IP.Board, which has some snazzy new features.

I love Gary Versace's playing. Adam Nussbaum sometimes posts here. Wonder if he'll chime in.

Sounds like its going to be way cool!