The Durability of My Body

Posted on October 29, 2010 by jlegler

I can’t seem to find quiet in my life right now.  Things that I have historically loved are as stressful as the things that are necessary.  I’m trying to force myself to do some things specifically for me so I don’t completely lose my mind.  Anyway, as part of that process I finished reading Born to Run last night after working on music for the movie I’m scoring for 4.5 hours.  The book is wonderful and inspiring and I recommend it highly if you haven’t read it.  It inspired me enough to drag my skinny white ass out of bed at 6 this morning and go for a run.

I would really like for running to be as fun for me as it was when I was 16.  I used to run 6-8 miles a day on pavement and I don’t remember it really hurting.  All of my friends were good runners and we ran together and had a blast doing it.  Almost 16 years later I am 30 lbs heavier and equivalently out of shape and running just hurts.

The lung pain and chest cramps that accompany running never really bothered me; however, I can’t even get to that point.  I used to be able to run until I threw up but I can’t get past the joint pain to where that is even a concern.   My heart rate was at 144bpm when the pain forced me to walk.  I don’t really start breathing or feeling like I’m working out until around 170.  I have never had joint pain, but man my right knee killed me this morning.  I basically ran 1/2 a mile until it started hurting, and walked until it quit hurting.  Towards the end of my run I found that if I hit my ass with my heel on every step the pain didn’t start; however, that’s a lot of energy to spend literally kicking my own ass.  My heart rate was up around 180 in no time and I was barely covering any ground.  That isn’t going to work either.

It’s frustrating; however, the ass kicking exercise gives me a little hope that I can tweak my form until I can run without joint pain.  I’m going to go out again tonight and try to lower my body and bend my knees a little more than I am used  in order to see if the knee bend is what makes the butt kick work for me and see if that helps.  I am curious, if I am able to solve the outside of my leg knee pain, how long it would take me to get to where I could do a 10k.  Even in my current state I think I could will myself to do it if I had no joint pain.  With that joint pain though I just can’t get my head into it.  I guess it’s good that it quits hurting the instant I stop running and doesn’t persist at all afterwards.  I’m not sore from it or anything.  All the stuff I am reading online suggest that it’s an overtraining type of injury; however, if running 800 meters is overtraining I’m not sure I buy it.  I’m older and fatter, but I’m not that old and fat.  Anyway, I will keep writing about it I imagine so for the three people that read this, stay tuned.

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DDRUM4 Hi-Hat Controller “Fix”

Posted on October 7, 2010 by jlegler

Disclaimer: I’m not sure why anyone other than me and a handful of other dorks would care about this; however, it seems like a shame to not share it if there is someone out there that could use it.

I built a MAX/MSP patch for MAX for Live that will allow you to use the ddrum4 hi-hat controller with basically any drum sample library you can find.  This may not sound like a big deal, but this controller came out in ’94 and has been discontinued for years despite it kicking the shit out of every controller before or since it was created.  The patch does what it does by taking the CC:4 messages that the ddrum4 uses to determine hi-hat position to control which note actually gets sent to the drum sample library you are using.

You tell it the closed note for the hi-hat, the open-hat note, set the threshold you want to use, and it does the rest.  You can see your pedal position on the Hi-Hat Current Value slider and you can see what note it is sending to your drum sampler in the Output After Processing keyboard.

What this means is that you can use the ddrum4 hi-hat (which is my favorite hi-hat controller ever made, suck it Roland) to control whatever sample library you use without having to do all kind of insane configuration of your drum library.  I got sick of using BFD2 and jumping through hoops to get it to work and then having it all be for nothing if I wanted to use kontakt or some other library that had standard keyboard mappings.  You use this, set up your ddrum4 brain to send regular keyboard mappings, and rock out with your cock out (as much as you can playing midi drums in your bedroom).

At some point I plan to had another feature so you can get the tones of playing the hat with just the pedal with no stick.  It kind of works right now, but it could be better.  I was going to program it to do a splash as well so that if you stomp it and release it real quick it will make a sound.  I’ve found though that it already does that like a real hi-hat with the existing code because it’s using a real hi-hat stand and the abrupt stop of the pedal is what causes the splash… yet another perk of the ddrum hardware.  It just works.

Here is a screenshot of the actual “code” and here is the actual code if you are one of the 10 people on the planet who still use this hardware and want to use it with Max for Live.  Good luck and let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

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Wild Geese

Posted on October 6, 2010 by jlegler

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

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Fuck O’Hare

Posted on October 5, 2010 by jlegler

I haven’t updated in ages and I am sorry; however, this is so important I feel it must be said. Fuck O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Whoever designed this airport should be forced to go through it every day. I’m sure it looks cool from the air but it’s a disaster on foot, there are no plugins, and there aren’t enough places to sit. Fail. That is all.

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I am the night

Posted on July 2, 2010 by jlegler

I am the night

This is perfection to me.  You can see all of this guy’s artwork here.  He gets it.  I don’t know how else to say it.  I first saw one of these years ago titled “No One Wants To Play Sega with Harrison Ford.”  It cracked me up then and it was still awesome when I saw him featured in Newsweek recently.  I hope this guy makes a mint.  Pop art is a tricky game, but he’s a master.

Here is what he says about it:

“Remember these weird plastic Halloween costumes? When I was a kid, I had a Transformers one, and it just had a picture from the show on the chest. It’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Transformer Metroplex, and you can see that because I’m wearing a picture of him,’ ” Bird says, laughing. “With Philip Seymour Hoffman, it’s kind of hard, because a lot of his characters should just never, ever come close to kids. Like, a Love Liza costume? Magnolia is weird, but not that bad.”

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