Last November I was trying to decide whether to get a midi controller or try the USB version of the Creative Prodikeys keyboard. Well, my urge to save space and combine a regular keyboard and a midi controller keyboard won out, and I bought another Prodikeys. At least this time it was only $49 as opposed to the $99 when I bought the original PS/2 version. The original keyboard worked great with my original DAW, an Athlon XP 1600+, but the drivers never could load correctly on my new (and current) DAW, an Athlon 64 3000.
Well, if anyone is thinking about buying the Prodikeys--don't. It's a piece of shit. It's a great idea and it would be wonderful if the stupid thing would work correctly. I've got a bunch of keys that just stop working. On the top row, the 5 and 6 have problems. Also, the left CTNL key will stop working, too. I went on Creative Labs's forum and saw a ton of people having the exact same problem. Other people have it worse though because they have actual letter keys that stopped working, which makes it impossible to type. I guess I'm lucky that the problem doesn't really interfere with midi recording, but it is annoying as hell when I am on that DAW doing other things (occasionally).
I also have an X-Fi in my main gaming machine, and truthfully, I'm not at all impressed with it. I don't think I will ever buy another Creative Labs product again.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Music and Lyrics
I just recently watched Music and Lyrics. I downloaded the rental from Amazon Unbox. It's not bad. I enjoyed it. It's a nice romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
What I found really cool was the scene where Hugh Grant was making the demo of Way Back into Love (which is a really catchy song, by the way). They showed him working on his computer, laying down the tracks one by one, and then Hugh and Drew sang the vocals. I couldn't tell what program he was using though when they had the shot of his computer screen showing the waveform coming across as he was playing the keyboards.
Unfortunately, the movie company had decided not to sell the tracks of the soundtrack individually on iTunes. I guess because they know no one wants to buy the whole CD. I sure as hell will not buy an entire CD when I only want one or two songs. Those days are over. I guess they figure that they will make more money from people who will eventually buy the complete download--even if they only want one or two songs--than they will lose from people like me who want to buy just one or two songs, and end up not spending any money because they can't buy it individually. Let's face it--they only need one person to make up ten other people like me.
What I found really cool was the scene where Hugh Grant was making the demo of Way Back into Love (which is a really catchy song, by the way). They showed him working on his computer, laying down the tracks one by one, and then Hugh and Drew sang the vocals. I couldn't tell what program he was using though when they had the shot of his computer screen showing the waveform coming across as he was playing the keyboards.
Unfortunately, the movie company had decided not to sell the tracks of the soundtrack individually on iTunes. I guess because they know no one wants to buy the whole CD. I sure as hell will not buy an entire CD when I only want one or two songs. Those days are over. I guess they figure that they will make more money from people who will eventually buy the complete download--even if they only want one or two songs--than they will lose from people like me who want to buy just one or two songs, and end up not spending any money because they can't buy it individually. Let's face it--they only need one person to make up ten other people like me.
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