Blog, the first. New music stuff!

So most people who know me know that most of my spare change goes toward an abysmal black hole I like to call my "music hobby."
Just recently I dropped some dough on some meaty purchases.

First Purchase!
Since I got rid of my M-Audio 410's, I've been stranded from making some quality recordings. I got a little Tascam Audio Interface, but it really just didn't cut the butter. I'm probably going to keep it for on-the-go laptop production, but a few weeks ago I spied a sexy MOTU Ultralite on sale at Guitar Center. It was used, and a little scuffed up on the casing, but I'm not shallow like that. I bought it and was downloading drivers for it when I realized I was charged for a used Ultralite MKIII. So I go back to the store, and got $100 refunded back to me.
The Ultralite works amazingly. It's like having the old 410's back except it sounds way better, has more in's and out's, has a much better software GUI, and the ASIO driver includes MONO ins and outs along with Stereo (the 410 only let me record in stereo, which was obnoxious when recording a guitar, vocal, monosynth, etc. track).
I've even hooked it all up into my mixer and patch bay, everything is sexin' to go.

(the box in question is the scary/sexy black thing with the green LCD screen in the lower left hand corner!)

Second Purchase!
Last Saturday, me and Curtis went down to Guitar Center (yes, my blog is just an advert for GC) and talked to some cool guys over there about some electronic drums we've been looking at for the past month or two. They hooked us up on a decent price for the set and we went half-and-half on it. We got the set (a Yamaha DTXplorer), a Pedal, and sticks for $70 less than the set costs.
It was really painless setting it up, and I even interfaced it with my old Electribe ES-1 sampler (so we can load our own samples) and the rest of my MIDI gear. It was a huge pain in the ass, because for some reason Yamaha thought it would be funny if, instead of labeling the MIDI chart note data as "A#5," they would just say "note 42." This leads me to believe that drummers just read notes that way. One sits down at a piano, and plays his composition: "23, 35, 23, 27, 26." Of course, after each note they have to go back to "note 1" and count up to the next one.
Now, a lot of people might think "Will, you're such a choad for getting an electronic set!" Yeah, so what? Here's why:
1) I make electronic music. Now I can play drums for an hour, record all the MIDI data, and chop shop all the parts I like into a badass track. It can be sped up, interchange sounds, etc. ad absurdum. Total possibilities.
2) We live in an old folks home. Well, a retirement community. Real drums are TOTALLY out of the window, so we decided to get an electronic set. This is ironic because seconds after we got it set up we have angry neighbors knocking on our door. It's 10PM, totally understandable. But the next day while practicing same dude comes up and tells us that it's so loud that the pictures on his walls are rattling. I told Curtis that our floor must be made out of tiny microphones, the insulation is really just a cascade of Amplifiers, and our downstairs neighbor's ceiling is just made out of subwoofers. This has led us to seek Exodus and the B.Ultra&Basic beat machine may be moving to the spare room at my mom's.
So that's pretty much where my money is. I've been eating bologna and cheese sandwiches for five days now and the taste just isn't going away.