Copying drumkits into Hydrogen Drum Machine - Mac OSX

Recently I needed to move import some old drumkits that I had created from an old backup to my new installation on OSX.  I did not have prepackaged Hydrogen drumkit files, but rather had a directory with wav samples and a drumkit.xml.

It took a little digging, but here's the process I followed:

1. Locate drumkit audio files and drumkit.xml
2. Locate the drumkit name in drumkit.xml
3. Create a directory in /Applications/Hydrogen.app/Contents/Resources/data/drumkits using the name found above
4. From the directory where the drumkit.xml and audio files are located, execute the following cp * /Applications/Hydrogen.app/Contents/Resources/data/drumkits/GregsKit (but of course, instead of using "GregsKit" use whatever the drumkit name is)
5. Restart Hydrogen and find your imported kit in the Sound Library under "System Kits"
6. For ease next time, export your kit so that it is formatted properly as an .h2drumkit file

This was much faster than loading each instrument individually.  I think it took less time, even with the searching I needed to do to find the location of the system kits.  It was worth the hour, and I hope this makes things easier for me or someone else if I ever need to do this again.

No rest for the procrastinator

I've been planning to retake my Cisco Certified Network Associate exam for a few months.  The exam I passed before retires this September, so to keep the review to a minimum I'm working to get it done before then.

I've put it off long enough and the test is scheduled. 

Now I'm studying like crazy to be ready, so the truck gets put on hold.  Music gets put on hold.  Everything gets put on hold.  Every time this happens I resolve to be more dilligent in my skills maintenance, and every time I wait until I have to panic to get anything accomplished.  This appears to be a character flaw.

At any rate, check out my facebook page for announcements of upcoming gigs, who I'm playing with and where to find me next.  The next performance will be in Becker with Green Light Night, August 16th.  I believe this is a private party, but if you get in touch with me I'm sure I can arrange a guest list for your attendance.  Maybe some of my Twin Cities friends would like to make the shorter trip?

More thoughts as they come, otherwise check out my networking blog for the only thing I'm currently thinking about...

Zero to Awesome in 15 Minutes a Day

I never seem to have enough time to accomplish everything, so I never attempt anything.  After all, what can be accomplished in 15 minutes?  I may as well surf Youtube for old Saturday Night Live clips or cool Stevie Ray Vaughan songs I wish I knew how to play.  Maybe watching them would make me play better...

...and it struck me...

...I'm wasting what little time I have.  Not only am I wasting the little time I have, I'm wasting time I don't have because the things I spend my time on seem to run over the little free time I have.  Then I'm late for the things I must make time to do.  What a downward spiral to feeling like a "zero."

So I've recently started looking at time as if 15 minutes was a large chunk of time.  After all, in 15 minutes I can be out of bed, showered, shaved, dressed and in my car running to work when I oversleep.  In 15 minutes I can read 20-30 email messages, or look over hundreds of RSS feeds.  Fifteen minutes is a relatively significant amount of time in a day when you come to think about it.

The key is in focus and direction.  I always wish I had more time to play guitar, but when I get 15 minutes and don't have a plan, I sit there and wank out on things I already know.  I don't do anything new, or try anything outside my ability, or learn anything at all.  I leave the 15 minutes wishing I had more time and wishing I had accomplished something.  Well no more!

I decided that I would simply begin by planning 15 minutes a day to play guitar, and when I sit down I'm going to have something to actually work on to expand my capabilities.  I grabbed a copy of Sonic Visualizer which is an amazing free tool for learning guitar parts, ripped a copy of Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Love Struck Baby" which is a new song to be performed by Green Light Night in June, and looped through the solo section.  In 15 minutes, I had figured out the first 12 bars of the 36-bar solo!  I have always admired SRV's playing and always wished I knew more of his stuff but never got around to playing any, and here I was 15 minutes and some concentrated focus and I was 1/3 through a new solo.

I felt AWESOME!

And that is why I decided to call this post "Zero to Awesome."  It's not that I am suddenly an awesome guitar player, or that I think I'll ever be a master like Stevie Ray by playing 15 minutes a day.  I will, however, feel much better about how I spend my time.  I will also know more SRV licks than I have before. Since that day, I have completed the "Love Struck Baby" solo, as well as the Brian Setzer solo in Marshall Crenshaw's version of "Crying, Waiting, Hoping."  That's more note-for-note solo transcription in a couple weeks than I've done in 20 years.  Playing is becoming fun again!

So now I'm trying to apply this method to all sorts of things.  I have an upgrade to my CCNA certification due in June.  It's taking more than 15 minutes a day, but on those days where life gets in the way of my geekosity I still get a little in.  The continued return and focus cements what I learned yesterday and the day before and I'm retaining more.  It also helps me keep a head of steam going.

The things I am working on that are difficult to find time to accomplish:

1)  Renew my CCNA Certification by passing the CCNA/Voice test.  This needs to be done by June 24th.
2)  I have a gig to prepare for with Green Light Night on June 16th.
3)  I have a gig to prepare for with Malcolm Cloud's Urban Legend on July 27th.
4)  I have an entertainment center to finish building in the family room
5)  We hope to have some special guests coming to stay with us, and we have work to do on the house

I'll update more as these things take shape.  Either way, I'm actually doing something instead of sitting around, wasting time wishing I was doing something.  I feel good about it, and I hope to keep this momentum going.

Hope to see you at one of the shows this summer.  More on those as they arrive, but for now please hold the date!

Tuesday is "Guitar Night"

Because man does not thrive on EIGRP alone, I'm trying to designate a couple nights a week as "Guitar Nights." I'm cutting my study short tonight, doing some reading and blogging at "Greg and the Network" on what I'm learning to keep it all in my mind and engage a few different senses, and then playing some guitar and forgetting all about it for a while.

I'm dying to play my SRV strat tonight, so I'm keeping this short. I'm currently reading "Soul to Soul" by Keri Leigh. It's amazing to read about the life of such a gifted guitarist and one of my favorites of all time, and at first I spend a lot of time listening to SRV's music, followed closely with never wanting to pick up a guitar again. After that, I feel the excitement I felt in 1983 when I read about this Texan who played on David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album and released his first solo album after performing at Montreaux as an unsigned act. I didn't know what I was in for, but I knew it was something I needed to know more about.

Almost 30 years later, I still want to know more. I still want to play more. Every time I hear SRV play a note, I think "Yeah...that's what I mean."

Goodnight. I need to play.

Goodbye. Hello.

Tuesday, I said goodbye to an old friend of mine. I affectionately called her "Chocolate Lucy" since the time we met in 1998. I walked out of Willie's American Guitars in St Paul, MN with a 1975 Fender Stratocaster, mocha in color, maple of neck. We made beautiful music together for the past 12 years. I've spent some of the finest musical moments of my life with her, starting with the heavy jam-band "The Phat Sells" and ending with "Green Light Night" here in 2010. She is beautiful, and I know she'll make another player extremely happy. Here we are on our last official gig together.

As you can see, she was not without blemish, but I loved her just the same. But for the last 12 years I've been keeping a secret from her...


When we met I was in love with another, but just couldn't make it work. I walked into Rock Town Music on Monday and found her again, but where she was out of my league and reach in '98, this time she was available. Tuesday, we made the deal and I brought her home:

From the first caress of her oval neck and Pau Ferro fingerboard, I knew this was it. I'd wanted her 12 years ago, and have been waiting all this time for the right moment.

And now she's my #1 axe. She screams. She sobs. She wails. She's smooth as silk and edgy as could be - all within the same solo. She inspires me to play again.

So goodbye, Chocolate Lucy. You've been a great friend and I'm forever grateful for having you. But our time is up, and now it's on to the future.

NoBelly Rolling is back, ladies and gentlemen. Watch for new music here.

Waiting for Vizzini

When things look bleak and you don't know what to do, you go back to the beginning.

I've been feeling a strong longing to play more guitar. I think about it while I'm at work. I think about it when I wake up. I have dreams that I'm performing again. Then, when I have opportunity, I pick up my Strat and...blah...

I started thinking that the problem is that, in my mind's ear I hear myself playing like I did when I played hours every day. I'd go to all-night jam sessions and when I left I'd feel great. Now, I play for 15 minutes and my hands hurt and are tired. I can't seem to get the sounds out of my head into my hands. I drop the guitar in frustration and the cycle starts again.

So, I go back to the beginning. In 1988 I graduated from what was then "The Professional Guitar School (A Division of The Guitar Center)." It was not the retail giant, but a small music school in Minneapolis that eventually became "Music Tech" and now I see that the originators are McNally Smith College of Music. Awesome. Anyway, in 1988 there were about 20 of us in the second graduating class. We spent a year playing major scales, learning music theory, how to read music, the difference between harmonic minor and jazz harmonic minor scales. I played every day, and played a lot.

So, as I was thinking about that time in life, it just so happened that I stumbled across the green photo-copied text "Fingerboard/Theory and Improvisation" written by Jeff Wressell. I opened it up and started running my major scales through the circle of 4ths using a metronome. Wow. I used to be able to do these at a pretty high tempo, and my fingers don't quite do what I'm asking them to do as cleanly as they used to. But like I did in the beginning, I practice them daily now. I write down the tempo I start at and the tempo I end at to measure my progress. I'm improving again...

It's not exactly a weekend performing at Carnegie Hall, but it's greatly therapeutic and I'm having fun. Thanks Jeff Wressell - your influence spans 20 years and your legacy lives on.

A break from our regularly scheduled program

Last night I turned off routers and spent a couple hours just sitting with my wife. It was refreshing and amazingly good for my attitude. Time slips by too fast, and when I hyper-focus on temporal things, it seems that ball stays in motion once it is in motion.

So this morning I was planning to get back to my regular program of networking-related topics. I sat down, dug up some info on frame-relay, started reading about virtual circuits, DLCI, LMI, BECN, FECN...picked up my guitar and started to play a bit.

I find that playing is what I'm wanting to do with my time more than anything these days. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, maybe it's just what I'm actually programmed to do. Either way, it's what I want to do and at this point in my life I'm too old to do anything I don't want to do any more. I figure if you don't get to do what you want when you turn 40, what good is turning 40?!

So I started a little discipline that I hope to continue through the rest of the summer, if not the rest of my life. I'm trying develop my song-writing to be productive at the moment I pick up a guitar. I play and sing whatever comes to mind, recording on my phone (until I can actually squeeze some time to have my home recording system actually worked out and always available) and not discriminating or editing. I'm just pouring it out and later I'll go back to edit. Granted, the editing needs to happen or all you have is a bunch of free-associated drivel, but for now I'm longing to get the creative juices flowing again.

So, I say a most heart-felt "Thank you" to my lover, my song and my best friend for supporting me through the nonsense, loving me in spite of myself and always reminding me gently and lovingly what is important and lasting in life. Sandra, I love you...and don't forget, I'm your density...