I just installed the new EMG 81x series pickup and the Afterburner boost knob with the 18 volt mod, and I’m really digging it. It has so much definition and headroom no matter how much gain I dial in, and the clean tone is definately a lot better than the regular 81 series pickup. It’s solder less too. Check it out!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Making beats is what got me started on running a musical instrument store.

It has frustrated me that the very thing that got me into this (making beats) is something I just don’t do anymore.  I was feeling pretty bored and tired of making beats until this new toy by Korg came along.  I am too busy and lazy to make beats, but this thing solves that problem.  You can chop up samples and sequence a song before you could even turn your computer and get a DAW up and running or load a sound set from an Akai MPC.

It looks like a toy by Fisher Price, but it is a lot more fun than any other sampler I have ever used, and it is lot easier to learn and is more intuitive.  I am super stoked on banging out beats on the Korg Microsampler.  It is the greatest sampling device I have seen made in a long time.  It even runs on batteries.  I sampled the beats on these videos using two tracks by Tom Waits from my iphone (just added a track at the bottom from some cuts by Bebel Gilberto).  Some of the drums are me beat-boxing into the mic.

The greatest feature is the key gate feature.  You can run a sample through it, and when you hear something you like, you just press the key down.  Pressing it down starts the sample on that key, and letting it go ends the sample.  You don’t have to assign anything.  The sample is just there and saving happens at the press of a button.  I think it would be great for chopping up soul samples, rnb, and now Tom Waits.

You can also download the free librarian editor, and tie the microSampler into your computer for easy sample editing (it is pretty darned easy on the unit without this though) effects editing, and using your computer as the storage for all of the banks you will create (you can only save 8 banks on the unit itself).  I downloaded it last night, and it was a snap to get going.  You can drag and drop samples right onto the keys on the editor and transmit them directly to the unit.  It is a blast!

After listening and participating in Von Baron’s goal clinic last week, I’ve decided that my goal this year is to make a 10 track album.  With my new sampler, I think that is a definite possibility (update – I am up to five pretty catchy beats after just hours of use).

This is the first purchase I have made in a while.  I think it is worth it for a starting beat producer or for a guy who already has every toy out there (Jimmy P….I’m talking about you my friend).

I’m a dork….I know.  The sound quality is not good because I filmed this off my Iphone, but you get the idea.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Reposted from Madskill’s website, Easy Music Center was featured in this music video featuring a compilation of local businesses and people.

Our previous website was built on Joomla 1.5, a popular CMS (Content Management System). It was useful, but I found it to be a bit limiting and hard to utilize.  Just changing the font size was a difficult task! Although, struggling with that system forced me to learn a bit about HTML and CSS coding.  One day as I was trying to format a picture in a post, I got the idea to look into a WordPress format for our site.  I personally use WordPress, another CMS, for my blog, and I know it was easier to use and had a host of plugins to make things even easier. Joomla is great if you have lots of “modules” and things you have to have on the webpage, but I felt our site didn’t really need that much of a modular approach.

I also wanted to bring the latest information to our customers ASAP! I knew a blog format would be the best way to do this. I struggled with updating our homepage with Joomla: I had to post the information first in its own category, Events, for example.  Then I had to copy that data, get into the frontpage editor, move everything around and paste the data there.  Then when that Event was done, I had to remove it from the front page, remove it from the Events page, and then copy it to another page called Past Events!  It would take so long to get “simple webpage updates” done. If my only job was the webpage, well, that may not be a problem, having all day to do that. But I handle a lot here at the store.

So there I was, at a proverbial fork in the road.  Do I continue to struggle with our Joomla CMS, or do I take some extra time now to build a new site that may or may not save me time in the future…

Well, I’m always up for a challenge and love exploring technology.  So… um… yeah. I immediately began looking for nice WordPress Templates and installed a basic copy of WordPress with our host.

I first found a great template called Sliding Doors. I’ve never seen anything like that on websites that I visit, and I thought it’d be perfect for us.  I started to build a mock site and showed it to a few people at the store.  So far, so good. A step in the right direction.

At this point I was about 20% committed to making the new site.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?  Well, I’m the type to take things apart just to see how they work and see how fast I can get it back together, so of course I continued on.

I added more and more content and reacquainted myself with CSS and HTML.  I stumbled upon Firebug, a plugin for Firefox. It lets you alter any website’s code to see how many pixels wide that line should be, or how to position things, etc.  That saved me A LOT of time. (I suddenly remember spending hours one night editing our old Joomla site to make it wider by just altering things in the style.css file and looking at the live site to see what had changed… bad idea!)

More content added. 49% committed.  It was starting to look good, but people weren’t digging the black background – a little too simple.

So back to the Template search I went.  Then I found a theme by The Cloisters. It seemed too perfect! Brown to match our header images, great layout, multiple columns. This was it.

80% committed.  Dang it! Now I have to hurry up and finish.

So… how to get the Cloisters’ theme with that Sliding Door thingie.  Well, that took a bit of work and trial and error. But I eventually got it!

So you now see the new website that’s been live for almost a month.  We’ve been getting lots of hits and people seem to enjoy the new layout. I’ve been looking at other sites for ideas and reading a lot on the Social Networking push as of late.  Integrating Twitter, Facebook, Myspace is a must for companies these days, and I think WordPress allows me to do that much easier.  Maybe I’ll talk more about that in a future post.

I want to throw a shout out to Jared Kuroiwa, Director of Interactive Strategy at KGMB9. His blog has given me a few ideas and I really like the layout of KGMB9.com. (Funny thing, their main site is a Joomla CMS! Looks great and I’m glad it works well for them.) I’m friends with one of the station’s Weathermen, found his blog on their site and noticed it was WordPress CMS. A little digging clicking around and I found Jared’s blog.  He was writing about some of the same things I was going through – improving a current website, working with different CMS, integrating Social Media. It was refreshing to see that I wasn’t alone in this struggle. So thanks, Jared, for your blogs and personal touch to the website. It really looks good and I think you have one of the best news sites out there!

Well that’s it for now. I have typed way more than I intended. Get used to that haha!  I’m currently updating our Product pages to be more consistent and to include more and better content. So thanks for visiting and reading.

- webmaster@easymusiccenter.com

Posted via email from Easy Music Center’s posterous

]]> http://www.easymusiccenter.com/2009/08/mmr-article-january-2009/feed/ 0 http://www.easymusiccenter.com/2009/08/music-trades-article-august-2009/ http://www.easymusiccenter.com/2009/08/music-trades-article-august-2009/#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:38:22 +0000 Chris http://www.easymusiccenter.com/?p=794 Easy Music Center will be featured in August 2009's issue of Music Trades magazine. Click the pics... Read more