musc@> $daniele.rant | Out-Blog

I composed another song. For now a single post is good enough to let you listen to it. But later I'll probably create a specific page to collect these songs (the first one was here).

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I have been playing music again, something I had not done in a while. I can certainly improve my equalizing skill, as the piano got distorted (among other things) in the MP3 conversion… and I would like to add a singing voice to it… but if you're curious, in the meantime, you can listen to the first test of a song I did with the new setup:

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After several years not touching my midi keyboard not my guitar, this is the natural evolution of having bought a new PC, I suppose: I got inspired and wanted to play music again. Sure, I also study and test stuff on it, but I also want to do something that really is for myself. And something that makes me help relax, instead than working around the clock.

It is then that I figured out how much has changed in these few years: cheap soundcards don't come with MIDI interfaces anymore, these days. That's probably because they were shared with the so called "GAME Port"…. but since most joysticks these days are USB…. also the MIDI disappeared.

Therefore I did a bit of research, and I found an interesting external sound card that does everything I want (and more) and (most importantly) has drivers for Windows Vista x64. I am actually using this on Windows 2008 Server, but since Vista and 2008 really have the same kernel – it just works.