For the past week or so the 16-story atrium fountain here in the Compuware building has been turned off for maintenance. It’s actually rather weird to not hear that white noise in the atrium; I noticed it much quicker than I would have thought.

I’ve heard it off before now. They stop it late at night, but it’s more interesting during the work day. The massive open space without that water to dampen the noise lets everything echo quite a bit. Just walking to the gym on the second floor you can hear people across the lobby near the main entry talking; the acoustics aren’t so much pleasant as they are interesting.

In general there’s something about running water that’s soothing though. Most people will agree to that, but the reason why I think has to do with white noise in general. Maybe because it’s harder to hear our own thoughts, or for some easier to focus. I guess it depends how much you like thinking.

I remember back in college my buddies and I would often pick the section of the library near the ventilation system because that background noise helped to soften other conversations and let us retreat into our own thoughts. Something about that background noise (even when we had headphones on) was very conducive to concentrating. And it was also nice if we had to talk to each other we didn’t have to feel like we’d be disturbing everyone else.

I’ve always liked the water feature here at work quite a bit and I hope they hurry up with whatever they’re doing and turn it back on again.

Music is one of those hobbies that can consume all your time and money and leave you smiling happily about it. The thing is that there’s just so much to be done with it. Any direction you look there is more that you can learn and accomplish. I like that because I never feel backed into a corner and always have new things to try. That’s one of the reasons I like cooking so much as well (and the software field, now that I think about it).

I took care of my pesky subwoofer issue a couple weeks ago by buying a new KRK Rokit 10s. It’s considerably better than my M-Audio BX-10s, which is now just sitting in my basement. Maybe I can sell it for a few bucks on craigslist or something… Anyway it’s nice to have that taken care of. I’ve also started refining my studio a bit more, getting all the pieces setup properly. I finally fully integrated my RD-500 and JV-1080 into the setup as well. Oh and while buying my new sub I found a brand new Evolution X-Session for (I kid you not) $20 bucks. I guess they’re clearing them out or something, but it’s a perfect companion to my setup. (Finally! A real crossfader.)

After I got the Firebox audio interface (which has a couple quirks but in general I love) I toyed around with the idea of selling my Ozonic (which is sort of an all-in-one 4×4 audio interface and 37-key synth action keyboard with a good assortment of knobs, sliders and buttons). But I’m glad I held off. I may not be able to use it as an audio interface right now, but I can still plug it in with the power adapter and MIDI cable and use all the great functionality the board provides, plus, I have a second audio interface that is wrapped up with all that other goodness. Convenient for traveling. (A pain to manage all those MIDI mappings though.)

As I mentioned I am now using my keyboard and JV-1080 more (which is a great piece of gear, despite being a bit old). I actually managed to snag the House expansion board for it for real cheap (for comparison this place wants $140 for it) just a couple days ago and I’m currently winning another auction for the Techno board which is quite rare and hard to find for a good price.

It’ll probably never end. You hear of it from other producers. The gear just keeps coming and coming…

(P.S. Someone buy me a Korg OASYS. Or a Korg Zero8.)

I found a nice audio player plugin for WP called - oddly enough - Audio Player. It looks exactly like what I wanted; more actually. So without further adieu here’s a test of it playing an old little experimental clip I did back when I was first learning Ableton Live 5 (I happened to have this uploaded already).

Edit: Seems to be working perfectly. Exactly what I was looking for!

I need to find a small Flash application that I can embed in posts to play audio. I’m getting to the point where I’m eager to really start getting my music out there. I’ve sort of reached a critical mass in terms of gear and now I really have the components to just start playing and letting some creativity spill out.

So I want to get/make a small flash application that I can use to play mp3’s right in my blog posts. Anyone know of anything nice like that? I could make one without much trouble honestly, but then I’d need to get a copy of Flash… Maybe I’ll just sign up for MySpace Music or something.