The new project

[Jerome]

The process of composition is a strange one indeed and inspiration and ideas can come from the most unexpected places. I got up at around three this morning to work on Zen Frequencies - part two. I already had the framework for the piece but I could not figure out how to transition from that to part three. Part 2 is quite slow and part three is quite rhythmic. No matter what I tried it just did not seem to fit (BTW this has been going on for months). Anyway, whilst trying different patches and different synths - all to no avail, my master keyboard controller decided to stop playing a particular note (F sharp in this case) in one particular spot on the keyboard. So because I was getting nowhere with the piece, and amidst much cursing and cussing, I decided to strip the keyboard and found a bit of dirt on the conductive rubber pads (yes you heard that right - rubber that acts as a conductor) that send velocity/note on-off information to the CPU of the thing. While I was doing this I had the original piece playing in the background on a small stereo system that I use for checking basic mixes, trying to subconsciously think about how to go about changing the music to suit the next track while I was working on the keyboard. Once I had the keyboard repaired I had to try out all the keys and I happened to have an arpeggiator setting on, on the selection switches when I hooked it up to an audio interface to hear if the keys were working correctly.. And hey presto - the keyboard synced perfectly with the stereo and I had my solution to a problem that has bugged me for ages. Bizarre.

Morale of the story - rubbers have always got you covered!

http://www.openmusiclabs.com/learning/di.../keyboard/