John K

Shane, Cool that you would mention the water treatment plants. Worked for awhile in Brookings, OR. Few miles north of the California border. Major unknown gems there are the Oregon redwood forests and the Chetco Sewer Plant. Incredible introspective trails thru the redwoods that never get on the map. Maybe why they are still there. The Chetco water treatment plant is an adventure with a warning. All you got to do is follow the path on the south side of the facility and hold your nose to not choke from the stench. Once on the west side a ways past the plant, there is fresh air and you can breathe again. The path follows to a fork, hi road or the lo road. At the fork, the hi road has a warning to proceed only if you don't value your life (and for good reason). Low road leads to a more protected landscape of crashing waves and a barrier from the raw ocean. Dangerous, but you could probably take your kid there and not get hauled away for child abuse. The upper road however ends in a grassy plateau with straight drops to death. 200 foot explosions of water and waves against the cliffs. We mapped out locations on the volcanic basalt where you could sit and grasp rock formations. All you had to do was hang on and hold your breath as long as you were under water. That's if you could take the cold shock. Not proud to say it, but almost lost my daughter on a hair brained adventure. If you got your will made out and all things in order, check out the Chetco Sewer and water treatment plant. Oregon's finest spectacle. Winter the best time for maximum violence. John

Hey Bit, Only wish I could share with you the beauty of the pending Oregon sunset over a wild Pacific ocean. No flying whales, but plenty of them that shoot out of the water trying to fly. Settled here because it was about as much a Paradise as I've found from my travels across the planet. Plus the real gems aren't in the travel guides. Think you live a few hours north of me in Washington. You got a respected invitation to wander down for a visit. Five star ocean front accommodations that will suck the breath out of you. Deal is, you give me a couple piano lessons and I'll take you on a real tour of Oregon. Stay safe dear brother, John

Iz dat wats. In English, may translate as “What is that?” Don’t expect a landslide of responses, because this infirmity only affects a subset of humanity. Mostly those who are old and have raised a family with kids. Then the affliction does not by nature affect all families. On top of that, it takes the aberration time to slowly develop, maybe over decades until the damage is permanent. Most of you forum members are probably young pups in teens or early 20’s. There are no words to express what may be waiting. I can only be a voice in the wilderness to warn you of what may be ahead. I only speak English, but suspect that this problem is inflicted on other languages as well. Most of us grew up trying to negotiate through the intricacies of our mother tongue. Then we get married, we have kids, who don’t give a fork about convention and no inborn respect for the limitations we are trying to impose upon them. As a result, some of us otherwise sane and assimilated adults inadvertently take up the language patterns of our ofspring. It can be more destructive if both the husband and wife collectively resonate with the distortions, and it becomes part of your normal vocabulary especially in public, in critical moments when you let your guard down. Me and the wife were in the grocery line and looked at something in the fast sell line. I asked, “Iz Dat Wats?”. Wife replied, “Iz dats cellular SIMS card”. The clerk was drooling with red eyes rolled up about to relapse into seizures in terror having to deal with a deranged 10 IQ elderly couple babbling in tongues. Would have been no use to blame it on my kid. In truth, it appears that the young child has a higher grasp on linguistic expression. Is dat wats was a question of what is it, but equally valid in the present context of “there it is” My daughter at 3 years old could comprehend the inquisition aspect, but also the fluid perception of a factual observation, one in the same expression. Lived in Marietta Georgia as an aircraft mechanic. Local focal point was The Big Chicken, a 50 foot high monument in the middle of the city. My kid could express Is Dat Big Chickens (meaning there is the Big Chicken) as well as delineating the parallel architecture to ask some mundane question like what is that. As adults, we have lost that ability. We got a grandson. Live on the coast of the Pacific. Beautiful and respected Coast Guard patrols the harbor. Coast Guard boat to the grandson was the Ka Ka Batches, meaning Coast Guard boat. Coast Guard has a rescue helicopter. Grandson calls it the Ka Ka Batches Hecilopter. Me and the wife have taken up reporting the sightings as the Ka Ka Batches Hecilopter. I know this is not within the radar of most, but can submit an addendum that may resonate with some of you with young kids. Not necessarily for the elderly among us that have had our linguistic expressions terminally distorted. Mangling of songs… From the secular. My kid at age four was listening to Credence Clearwater “Bad Moon on the Rise” Became “There’s a bathroom on the right” Less sensitive Christmas standards, 12 days of Christmas became 2 turtle dogs and a partridge etc… Then the more hallowed sacred songs of the season. Ripped to insane shreds. I recognized then that my daughter was a decent washed in the blood heathen, chip off of the block like her old man. Like said, probably no one can relate to this. Important thing that I wish, if having no personal control over. Stay safe. Stay inspired. Stay useful to our collective family. Stay involved. Stay relevant. Share the last breath of whatever talents and abilities you have to elevate our universal cause from crude to subtle. 2020 was a butt fork, but glorious days are ahead I hope. Hang in there. John

Only my opinion, but Meh... Love d16 stuff but was let down a bit by Devastator, however thank and respect the devs for a freebie. A bit too granular breakup. Gradient response to touch not great if you are cranking a guitar thru it. Can't see a use where I would jump to Devastator as first choice. This said, others have given rave reviews and the greater probability is that I am missing something. Can't ignore the coupon for 50% off something else. Installed, activated but will probably never use it. John

So cool !! Have not downloaded yet, but the ancient Tin Brook Tales plugs were one of the few ways to get a smooth and credible overdrive effect and sustain in that time. Plenty of square wave all or nothing distortion units were emerging, but Tin Brook was a sleeper to those with the ears to discriminate. So cool that the dev has returned. John

Thanks for all these hints. I like the one John Maar posted. May have to fork out 20 for Kontakted as well. There is a free converter available that I could never get to work (sorry, forgot the name) Regarding the video Larry first referenced, there is a simplification that can be done so you don't have to ping pong between versions every time you need to add a library that doesn't load properly. When Kontakt 5 is installed, the add library tab is linked to AddLibrary.exe in the main folder. This is not installed in ver 6. You can still use this standalone for 6 by executing the file and going thru the directions. Only for already made library files that don't show up and does nothing to activate them. If you got K6, revert back to 5 long enough to copy the AddLibrary.exe file. Upgrade again to ver 6 which will erase the file in the original location. John

Got to be upgrade to Bias FX 2 Professional and upgraded Bias Amp 2 LE to standard from the PositiveGrid guys. Programs integrate. Had both as an LE limited edition from some fleeting purchases or time limited giveaways but never put in the time to learn. I know how subjective the thing about amp sims and suites is. Bias is ahead of the pack as far as realism and gradient touch response. Leaves the likes of Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Scuffham, etc in the dust as good as these respected programs are. Led me to retire about everything else except for the P&M stomps and a couple compressors...one weak point of the Bias stuff IMHO. That said, if you got something that outperforms the Bias, please share and educate. John

Friends, One of the most hard core and sublime synths under the radar has been updated to ver 2.91. In my opinion, an unsung hero that should be in the keyboard arsenal. http://synthblitz.altervista.org/nitroflex.html Discount for the holidays. Major upgrade in sound quality and a must have especially if you are growing your own organ patches. Demo available to check out. John

Bummer for sure as we recognize that all things shall pass eventually. Leslie broke some rules. Way big towering man playing a single pickup Gibson Melody Maker. Giant cranking out incredible riffs on a toy guitar. When flash and speed were the virtues of a guitarist of the time, Leslie slowed it down, introduced precision intonation and vibrato to nail a note to your brain. Bad health in later years. Diabetes, amputation of a leg. Early transition was unfortunately in the stars for this great soul. RIP Leslie. John

The folks over on the IK forum are now aware of the resolution problem. 1920 rez on a computer screen is a bit tough on my failing eyesight. It looks like help is on the way though. Those wanting to test it out if you run into this problem could possibly as suggested, plug the computer via HDMI or such to a TV where the higher resolution can be set. Can say so far that the amps are more responsive to touch than in Amp 4. edit... Just saw Paul's response. Is the TV able to get the 1920 x 1080 resolution? Question then if the computer resolution takes priority over the TV.

In reply to Brian Walton's suggestion on increasing the screen resolution. This worked, thank you. Set the screen to 1920 x 1080 and Amp 5 launches. Slow but it comes up Now to see if I can get sounds from it.

Brian, Thanks for the feedback. Will try different resolutions and have a feeling that it might be video related. Installed on a second laptop computer but same result with a barrage of new error messages telling me everything is screwed up. Standalone crashes itself. Vst and vst3 crashes Reaper and Bandlab. Think they sent this one out of the barn too quick. IK forum has a lot of similar issues reported so hope they are on a fix. For now, glad I didn't buy the thing yet. Sorta envy those that can get some part of the program working. John

Same problem here Brian Win 10 i5 machine. Standalone crashes. Vst and vst3 crash both Bandlab and Reaper 6. Tried uninstalling, reinstalling, reactivating. Too much time wasted. Guess it must be nice otherwise. Deleting and sticking with Bias FX 2. John

Thank you Aidan, Random and brainless circumstances had me looking deeper into the band a few days ago, and realized I'd missed a whole lot besides hearing a pop hit fly by. Realized how cool they were. Yeah, RIP Maria. John

Four nuns are driving cross town to go to the Wednesday night bingo game. Unfortunately a head on collision with a truck. All were immediately killed. Next thing they know, they are at the gates of heaven looking at God. God said, there was a problem since with instant death, there might be sins unforgiven that would keep them from getting into heaven. Since they hadn’t made it to Sunday confession, they might have to go to hell. However, God was there to hear their confessions. If the sin was very minor, God would forgive and they could go to heaven. God would take their confessions in order. The first nun said, well… I did do a minor sin. I saw the private parts of a man. God trembled and almost passed out. When He regained consciousness, He told the nun that this was no minor sin, but was the mortal sin of lust. She had to burn in hell for all eternity. God called his devil assistance and told them to throw her over the cliff into the brimstone pit. The devils were prodding the nun with their pitchforks toward the abyss. The nun pleaded with God. I know you are all forgiving. I just walked into the room when the priest was getting out of the shower. I didn’t mean to watch him. I felt terrible and was going to confess on Sunday. Can’t you do anything? God told the devils to wait, and went into a deep state of introspection. He waved His hand and there appeared a large vessel of Holy Water. He told the nun… Sister, come forward and put your face into the water. Open your eyes and the sins of thy transgression will be washed away. The nun did as directed and her sins were forgiven and she went to heaven. The second nun was up for confession. Well it was like this. I…uh.. I mean… I touched the private pasts of a man. God went into a seizure. His eyes rolled up and foaming at the mouth. He blacked out and fell off His throne. The angels came down flapping their wings to revive Him. God woke up somewhat shaken and didn’t even talk to the nun. He told the devils, go get her boys, she’s yours. The second nun was about to be prodded over the ledge. She cried to God… Hey God, you are supposed to be able to do all things. I’m really sorry for what I did. I felt bad and was really going to do confession on Sunday. I promise I won’t do it again. Please, please. Please… God went into a profound trance. He told the nun that her sin was almost more than even He had the power to forgive. He told her to come forward and wash her hands in the Holy Water that her grievous sin may be forgiven. The nun washed her hands and went to heaven. God said, next. The third nun was about to come up for confession when the nun in the back cut her off and came up next. God was a bit confused. He told the nun that her action wasn’t according to proper protocol. Why did she cut ahead in line. Nun said, I wanted to gargle before she sits in it.

Same here. Slurped up the 100 buk upgrade a month before and out of the grace period for the free upgrade. Wisdom says to wait til the last minute before impulsively firing up the plastic card.. John

Nice surprise, Ain't gone thru the whole thing yet, but the overdrive stomp needs to go back to the design crew unless bit crush breakup is what you are after. Terrible. Critical thing (for me) is the Octaver stomp. Don't know how many companies have done their best to inflict a lower octave tracker. All have ended up in mud and artifacts . Not that IK is immune to lingering problems, but a breath of fresh air as to where we are currently trying to get it right. Got to be the best so far. Free download and worth every free penny of it. Thank you IK. Might get my Byrds 12 string together after all. John

Kinda generic cool, but some serious latency going on.

Thanks Billy for the heads up. Komplete owners can upgrade to ver 12 for $99. Hard to pass this up since more and more new libraries are requiring Kontakt 6. John

Big update regarding the means to shift the basic reference frequency. All the new upgrade hundred atonal scales is a waste for me. Never used these from any developer. Probably from not understanding them and too much challenge already trying to just keep the 12 tone scale straight. Really excellent synth. John

Ain't sober yet, but got 3 macho reverb IR's that will knock your sox off if I can find them. Comin' soon. John

Hi Kevin, You right that there are some differences. I looked at the wasteland of my IR's hoarded over time. Tried to reconcile the insane number of files I have accumulated versus the utility, or really the end point using of any of them to make a difference that justifies the excess. Realized that I had to break the box. Gigabytes of a thousand lexicons that sound the same as a thousand biscottis, that sound like a thousand other die for impulses that no one can make music without. Jeez... Getting too old for this, but realizing that a very few basic IR's cover about all the ground needed to actually produce something without getting lost in the wasteland of chasing the perfect tone before we can create anything. Will post a download site once I sober up enough. Took a long church cathedral and warped the hell out of it. Reversed, pitch shift, flanged independent rates right and left stereo. Not your father's IR. Then did an inspiring IR translation from a university project to record the longest reverb trail so far discovered. Took the thing and done an IR about half a minute long. Cut off the last minute or so. Going back to the ancient rock n' roll masters and what they had to work with. They had a Fender spring reverb and a couple tone controls. Only so much time to micronize the settings. Had to create. Not the luxury we have today to get lost in the wasteland of chasing the perfect sound without actually creating the perfect sound. On that note, saw a good word of wisdom somewhere that advised that the idea of perfection will never happen but the chase can keep us strangled trying to reach it. Idea was, get it out the door while we still can. Will never be perfect but if we try to realize perfection, nobody will hear us. John

Got to agree with ensconced. Mostly maybe because ears and brain are too deaf of not sophisticated enough to hear the glory. The amp sims and cabinets always hit me as some eq variant that never gets near the mark of the real thing. Doesn't matter what designer cab I chose, what mic or where it is placed. Just eq and a few millisec delay L/R to mimic change in mic position. Can do the same permutations with a decent parametric eq and a generic stereo "enhancer". Probably missing a lot, but same thing became apparent as I went into a dead end feast amassing my gigabytes collection of reverb convolution IR's. Got to a point where I realized that they all sound the same, just a difference in short or long. John

To Michael, don't want to downplay the severity of this. One death in New Jersey or anywhere else is too many fatalities for some grieving family. We are in a crisis but all is interwoven into a dynamic where sensible and appropriate response often spills over into a wider reactivity that in itself can cause harm if not balanced. My point is that we are experiencing damage both from the virus and our reaction to the presence of the virus when the social response is maladaptive, based more on fear than fact. Everything across the spectrum from hoarding toilet paper to scams preying on the fear factor and everything inbetween. I am an optimist. We will soon come out of this. Permanently changed somewhat, but stronger for it. I can predict that we will within a year or so have a vaccine to prevent, medications and technologies to treat. Individual health hygiene will include a yearly COVID shot along with the flu shot because I don't think this thing is going to go away. Neighbor and friends are sewing masks and came up with another great idea. Sewing two pipe cleaners into the upper part of the mask. Evidently takes two to bend and hold shape. John

Thanks Sheens, and pray that you, loved ones, family are safe. Masks definitely help stop some spread from the infected to those not infected. Protection for the not infected public is something we have not worked out yet as far as carved in stone recommendations, but masks make some sense in that logic as long as we don't wallow around in the residue we take home on the mask, courtesy our last trip to Walmart.. Advice always in flux as we try to learn more. Latest and greatest three months from now will not be like it is today. No lawsuit failure of our professionals. We are just learning in a blind sided challenge. Best we can do is best we can do at the time. Social distancing is currently twice what I had to adhere to in a hospital setting when somebody was exploding from some god awful plague. Was 3 feet (barbaric English foot-pound system). 6 "feet" probably okay for COVID even if an overly explosive specimen can shower the area in bliss for nearly 30 feet. Still, wash hands after an outing and don't touch your face before you wash hands. Harder done than said, but you can have the bug crawling all over your skin and likely not get infected. Transfer the bug from hands to mouth, nose, eye membranes, and you may got problems up the road. These are the portals of entry. Plain hard core dish washing soap breaks down the viral encapsulation and kills the bug. Would advise a normal 70 percent isopropal alcohol in a spray bottle to disinfect at home. I know they say 60 percent isopropal, allowing you to dilute the Rite Aid generic brand a bit with water, but don't fork with it. Just use straight out of the bottle. Just because someone has not slobbered all over you, does not mean that her or she has not slobbered all over the produce and even canned goods you are walking out of the store with. Please rinse incoming goods thoroughly, rotgut tap water okay. My opinion only. The bug is causing more fear and economic damage than the bug itself. Not to let our guard down, but there is light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Given the vast number of mild and asymptomatic cases NOT REPORTED, the bug is guardedly less lethal than the death statistics we read in the morning blog. Not to downplay even one death as a statistic since even one COVID death is a tragedy to some family. We will get through this as a planet and I think come out stronger for the lessons we have learned. All stay well. John