Here we are, the second half of January....and I'm feeling it. The busy time at work is the last 3 months of the year and I'm feeling that burnout. I think a

vacation is in order, though I think I'll probably just throw a few mental health days in before the end of the month. I will have a week off in February for my cataract surgery, but how much you can call that a vacation is debatable.

Work in the studio continues on the live project. I have two tracks, but want a third. I want to be able to stream at least 45 minutes, and each of the two tracks I have are good for about 15 minutes each. I have a ideas for the middle part, but nothing concreate yet. I also need to figure out how I will transition from one track to the next without long pause while I load and configure everything. For the most part, this means switching banks on the MPC Live II, which contains almost all of the first and third song's content. I am going to try and avoid having to do a project load on the Octatrak, so perhaps the answer is to have it handle the in between time, or I need something else I can trigger something to go in between them. I have ideas about that...

Also, as always, I thought of a way of improving the organization of my studio, from a cabling perspective. When the weather gets nice, I want to build another tall rack that I will put between the two a-frame synth stands. My idea is that I am going to bring all of my audio signals there to one big set of patch bays. I will then just be running a few snakes from there to the computer desk. This should result in a lot less diving behind the desk to get at crap and make small changes easier to make. I'll also likely move all of my effects and samplers to that rack, so they are a bit more centrally useful. That can wait until spring.

On the workbench front, I've got the parts for the DJ-70 restoration and the replacement JD990 display. If I have time this weekend, I want to at least get one of them taken care of. I have this bent idea of getting the JD990 done and then trying to see if I can find a used Boutique JD-08 to run comparisons with (and also with the software versions, which I have through Roland Cloud). With the display as bad as it is on the 990, I can't really get into programming it much, but just doing a comparison of the presets was...interesting. My preliminary estimation is that the software versions sound maybe just a tad different than their hardware counterparts, but they offer a bajillion times the convenience level. Considering the legendary status of the hardware, and considering that mine will have a brand new display in it, do I really want to keep it around? The answer to that is..well..maybe...probably...we will see🙂

I'm also getting the itch to try to perform in front of actual humans in 2023. If anyone wants to book me, let me know. I'm cheap (will play for bourbon).