Updated the Vanity Wall
Now with the Guitar Wizards Vol I and II CD’s featuring Thiago Trinsi, George Lynch, Chris Poland and many more
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Kailua Music School Summer Recital May 17, 2014
Kailua Music School’s 2014 Summer Recital will be held at Kealoha’s Hawaiian Food Restaraunt at 120 Hekili Street, Kailua, HI 96734 from 12-2
That’s in the Pali Lanes bowling alley parking lot.
Great, free Metronome for you!
For many instruments, the dreaded metronome is something you absolutely MUST make friends with. Finding one that handles all your needs can be tricky, especially for free.
NCH TempoPerfect Metronome is available for Windows, iOS and Android
Here is their homepage and the download for Windows
Here is the iOs version from iTunes
and Here is the Android version from Google Play
As you can see, it allows you to set tempo freely, but more importantly allows you to chose subdivisions, making hearing 8th notes and 16th notes or even triplets a breeze.
I strongly, and can’t stress strongly enough, encourage my students to make frequent and intimate use of metronomes. Usually starting at a very slow speed and then going up two Beats Per Minute once they can play a part right twice in a row. If it starts getting ugly, go down 1 BPM at a time until it is comfortable again.
Learn it slow and perfect, and just go up slowly, 2 BPM at a time, and before you know it, you are FLYING. I like to say “you just put in the time, the metronome will do all the work”. Speed is almost always easily reduced to spending time with the metronome, so have at it, this one is great! I’m still looking for a decent one for OSX
Coated String Corrosion Test
If you play any sort of steel stringed instrument in Hawaii, changing strings is a constant nightmare. I’ve lucked out with Elixirs, but getting them locally can be tricky. I went out looking at tests of brands we can find at most shops here and came across this video by Ryan Bruce
FYI Coconut Grove music store in Kailua carries the cleartones last I checked – (808) 262-9977
Random Weirdos at the Hard Rock Cafe 4-6-2014
The Random Weirdos played the Hard Rock Cafe in Waikiki today with special guest singer Darvin.
Here are some pics from the show
Kimo Hussey Ukulele Seminar starting April 29th
World Ambassador of Ukulele, Kimo Hussey and some special guests will be giving a six week ukulele seminar at Kailua Music School starting on April 29th, 2014.
If you would like more information or to register for the workshop, please call us at 808-261-6142 or email us
Modding a PZM
Recently I wrote a post about mounting a pair of PZMs in the big room at KMS. They worked well, but the bass response just want quite would it could be. Opening them up I saw a capsule of questionable origin run thru a transformer of very dubious quality.
A google search revealed this schematic which allowed me to ditch the transformer and change some things around.
After a trip to Radio Shack I came back with a handful of capacitors, some zeener diodes and this capsule
RadioShack 270-090
I got out a breadboard, my soldering iron, glue gun, wire strippers, basically the regular gang of friends and went to work
So here’s the workspace ready to go
Soldering iron is on and heating up and I’ve placed the first capacitor in the breadboard
Here goes, inserting the rest of the caps, resistors, zeener diode and the leads for the mic element. I tried to lay this out in the most compact space I could
Now I’ve inserted the mic element and attached the mic cable for testing
Yay! It works, and no smoke when I hit the phantom power switch!
Time to gut the old PZM’s innards.
I chopped up the breadboard with some side cutters and made the circuit board as small as I could.
I got out the hot glue gun and cut the old foam to fit the new, larger capsule
Stick everything in the case, screw it together to look for shorts, flip the phantom power back on, test again and its ready to go!
And now its back where it belongs
“But, what was the point of all this?” You ask, in extreme aggravation waiting for all the photos to load
Well, see (or hear) for yourself:
First the unmodded PZM
And now the modded PZM
Listen for yourself. The modded PZM has WAY more bass response, more gain and less noise. Win win win all around!
KMS adds some PZM’s for easy audio recording
Wan’t to record your lesson or practice with ease? No problem. We just added a pair of PZM’s right to the front wall to capture whatever happens in the room. Its as simple as plugging the (nicely labelled) XLR’s into whatever you are using to record.
Done
Rack-n-Roll Baby!
Finally got a rackmount computer case for the mobile rack
even got to try running a Roland TD-3’s MIDI outs into it, controlling Steven Slate SSD4 Platinum in REAPER
