DCYC 2010 – Never be the same.

February 4, 2010 in news | 4 comments

This past weekend was an amazing experience. One I will likely not forget. It was by far the largest motivating crowd of young people Soundwave has ever had the honor of serving. It was the most performing we’ve ever done as a band over a weekend as well. It started Thursday for us. We set up till midnight and was back at it around 8:00 AM. There was sound and lighting work, sound check, practice for the band and the Youth Animators, and things kicked off that evening. The Youth Animators actually taught movements choreographed to our song that we recorded in my studio to a crowd of over 1,800 excited young people. We then got to perform it live all throughout the weekend.  Friday, Karli became very ill and had to go to the hospital Sunday morning at 2:00 AM. We’ve been praying for her. Jeremy’s last tweet says she’s doing fine, but please remember her in your prayers. I hope this video will lift their spirits. After the stills at the beginning, there’s video. All of it was shot from my iPhone except for some of the pics Jeremy tweeted. I shot the video portion at the end while we were tearing down after a massively huge and motivating God-filled weekend!

Piano update:  It’s still not tuned, and I will be blogging very soon why -- sorry for the long stretch between podcasts.

Piano out of tune…

January 16, 2010 in Non-music blogs | 2 comments

I sat down at the piano last week ready to record the next podcast, and due to all the cold weather, it’s really caused my piano to get out of tune so 10 minutes into recording, I decided to wait until the piano gets tuned. It has been extremely busy at work the past couple of months because we are moving our datacenter to San Antonio and I’ve been put in charge of bringing up the network which is pretty complex so I’ve put in probably over 150 hours this week and last working and driving back and forth to San Antonio. I actually have to go in today to wrap some stuff up before Monday so I’m afraid that the podcast has been postponed yet again.  I hope the archives can provide enough music for prayer in the interim. God bless.

Podcast Thirty-six

December 26, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

I Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We certainly did hanging out with the family. I just realized that we didn’t take any pictures. We really need to designate someone to do that next time we get together because there are so many memories to be captured. This is the last podcast of 2009, and it is all original. I hope you enjoy it.

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Podcast 36 [30:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Over a month and no podcast? Here’s why:

December 17, 2009 in Family, Non-music blogs | No comments

The past few weekends have been non-stop family and Soundwave. We had the “Night of Worship” on the 21st of November which encompassed a day of practice, Thanksgiving with the family the following weekend, two entire weekends of Soundwave recording, mixing, and mastering here in the studio after that, and I’ll be out in Sonora, TX hunting at the deer lease with dad and all my brothers this weekend. My goal is to take down the buck I passed on last season. (see last year’s blog and Youtube video)  I’ll try and send out some tweets about the hunting experience if I can get online.  The best part of it is going to be chillin’ with all my bros, David, Adam, and Josh for the first time in a very long time. 

Here’s the song we recorded. Jeremy wrote it for the DCYC event we’ll be serving an entire weekend at in late January. It is going to be awesome!

New way of recording the podcast

November 27, 2009 in Non-music blogs, news, tech stuff | No comments

I mentioned in the last podcast that I would blog about the new method of recording used in the last podcast. Instead of the Roland R-09HR, I used a balanced pair of Rode NT5’s with the Apogee Duet as an audio interface. The results were pretty surprising.  Normally the EQ I use will have massive peaks and valleys throughout, but with the NT5’s, very little EQ or anything else for that matter was needed.

This is a good shot from the front. You can see the XY pattern used.

NT5_XY_Pattern

This shows the XY pattern from the back, and the placement inside the piano. I actually used Westone in-ear monitors, which completely block out any sound and listened to what the mics picked up using various positions over the piano strings and soundboard. This is what I came up with.

XY_Pattern_Back

Here’s the MacBook Pro running Logic Studio 9 with the Apogee Duet ready to go. This thing is so quiet!

MBPro&Apogee_Duet

A shot of the whole setup.

NT5_Full_view

Because of Thanksgiving weekend, I’ll be taking this week off from the podcast to spend some time with the family. Next Saturday, Soundwave is going to record one of our new songs here at the Maestro Music studio, but I’ll try to get another podcast recorded next Sunday after church. Happy Thanksgiving!

Podcast Thirty-five

November 15, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

This podcast, I used a completely different setup to record. I’ll blog more about it later. I used a number of familiar tunes. It was basically our set list for church this Sunday, and I think it turned out okay. There are some sounds in the background that got picked up by my new setup in the beginning, but they shouldn’t be too distracting. I hope this podcast inspires you to spend more time in prayer. LORD knows we all should be when you consider these crazy times we live in.

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Podcast 35 [28:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Podcast Thirty-four

November 1, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

I decided to change the naming from “week” to “podcast” since these will no longer be weekly. However, I will attempt to record one every other week.  This podcast was actually recorded last Monday, but I wasn’t able to finish editing and mastering till this evening. The only recognizable song used is “Revelation Song” which I think I’ve done a few times. I also had issues with the R-09HR so I’m about to move to a traditional recording platform, which I will blog about sometime this week. This podcast is probably not as inspiring as previous podcasts partly due to the sound issues. If it’s used during prayer, it probably won’t be that noticeable, but I apologize for this. Just know that the best is yet to come.

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Podcast 34 [32:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Soundwave makes it in the top 25 again!

October 30, 2009 in Non-music blogs, news | No comments

DSCF0542 [1280x768]

We did it again! With your support, we would love the chance to become #1 this year in the Austin Artist Showcase.  Please check out the song we submitted, and vote for us – we would sincerely appreciate it!

http://www.theriver1023.com/pages/riverpages.html?feed=139053&article=6240204

 On a side note.  I recorded the podcast on Monday, but have been having issues with my Mac so I’m still trying to get it edited and mastered. Sorry for the delay.

First weekend back in the mix

October 26, 2009 in Non-music blogs, Site Updates | 1 comment

This was one very busy Soundwave weekend.  It started with shopping for “Soundwave” clothes on Friday night, a long practice and a photo shoot on Saturday, and a show right after church on Sunday. Each evening, I was left too exhausted to record a new podcast. I’m going to try and give it a shot this evening. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that after the big exam, I’d go back to weekly podcasts but I’ve decided to shoot for every other week for a number of reasons. I think this will help each podcast to be more unique and creative. Stay tuned for podcast #34!

Week Thirty-three

October 12, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but it has been a very busy weekend.  I thought that after the exam, I’d have a lot more time to do stuff, but that certainly is not the case. At any rate, it was certainly a change in pace to sit down at the freshly tuned grand piano and worship for 30 minutes. I played a number of familiar melodies, but they’re all kind of mixed together so I won’t try to mention them all. It sure is great to be back to living life! Have a great week!

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Week 33 [28:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Praise God! I got it! CCIE#25612!

October 8, 2009 in Family, Non-music blogs, news, tech stuff | 2 comments

CCIERouting_and_Switching_UseLogoThanks to everyone for their support. Below is the story of my journey I posted on one of the CCIE study groups I followed for years while preparing:

My journey began a little over 5 years ago.  I had already obtained some Cisco professional level certs and figured the CCIE couldn’t be much harder so I booked a lab and a bootcamp with IPexpert.  I had some experience, but nowhere near the skills necessary for a CCIE candidate, which I realized the first day of Scott Morris’s bootcamp back in 2005. That was back when ATM and ISDN were still on the exam. At any rate, I barely made it through layer 2, and got stuck on layer 3.  I knew I didn’t have a chance. 

 3 years later after gaining some valuable experience on the job, and putting together a lab of 7x 2811’s, 5x 2600 series (2 of them XM’s), 3x 3560’s, and a 3550, I started hitting the books.  I purchased the IPexpert Blended Learning Solution, and worked through all 3 volumes (Volume 1 I worked through twice), watched the videos and listened to the audio throughout my study time, and read the following Cisco Press books:

 Cisco QOS Exam Certification Guide

CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Quick Reference Sheets

Routing TCP/IP, Volumes 1 and 2

Internet Routing Architectures

CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide

Developing IP Multicast Networks

 I started studying on a regular basis after I passed the written back in October of 2008, but really started hitting it hard the day they announced the change and I scheduled my lab date.  For the OEQ’s, I used the IPexpert as well as the Internetwork Expert Core Knowledge sims.   I’ve studied for more than 500 hours since May.  I put everything on hold – the band, my “music to pray by” blog (http://www.musictoprayby.com), and my wife and 1 year old child.  The only thing that didn’t go on hold was God and serving at the church.  Yoko and I sacrificed celebrating our 10 year anniversary on September 25th so that I could wrap up preparing for the lab.  My wife is awesome – she did this without complaining once.  I couldn’t have done this without her support.

I just want to thank my LORD and Savior, Jesus Christ for being my inspiration and giving me the abilities I have.  I also would like to thank IPexpert for putting together some of the most challenging material I’ve ever put myself through.  After working through all the labs and understanding the solutions, I actually felt a little over-prepared, which is certainly not a bad thing.  I would also like to thank everyone in groupstudy for helping me out with the questions I posted.  I didn’t participate much compared to a lot of the other professionals who are a part of this awesome community, but I’ve been reading religiously for over a year now, and that knowledge gained from yall has been a tremendous help!

Here’s a little bit about my lab experience:

I flew into San Jose from Austin on Wednesday just so that I’d have Thursday to relax and get mentally prepared for the big day.  On Friday morning, we met the proctor – I actually remembered him from my last lab date over 4 years ago.  He showed us to the lab, and to my surprise, there were these really nice Dell 24” displays at each station.  I remember them being junky CRT’s the last time I was there.  The OEQ’s were not super easy, and if I would have relied solely on my lab experiences, I probably would not have passed.  I think the reading I did certainly prepared me for these more than anything else.  The irritating things were my keyboard’s space bar made this squeaky sound that was really annoying and the guy next to me had this habit of humming, but once I started my lab; I zoned in and finished in a little over 4 hours.  At this point, I’m freaking out thinking there has to be a page missing or something.  So I took a little over 2 hours going over everything again very carefully and found a few mistakes.  At 3:15, I figured it was pointless to stay any longer so I did another round of tclsh pings and write mems and left.

Thanks again to everyone who has already congratulated me.  Now, it’s on to the SP track before they add OEQ’s!

Well, I just got the piano tuned yesterday, and I can’t wait to do the next MTPB podcast!  Look for it to be posted sometime on Sunday.

Some huge improvements to the podcast coming…

August 4, 2009 in Family, Non-music blogs, Site Updates | No comments

For the past 2 weeks, study time was cut in half, but I’ve started picking up speed again for the 2 month stretch I have left.  During this time off, I spent a bit of time researching the new Yamaha Disklavier Mark 4 System.  I even went to the local dealer and played one of the grand pianos that was built with the system.  5 word summary: It completely blew me away! They recorded about a minute of my music, and the playback was exactly what I played – sustain pedal and every meticulous keystroke made.  There’s a lot more it will do.  The benefits would be huge for my family, the Music To Pray By ministry, and me:

  1. The chance to playback the MIDI from the old Music To Pray By Album on an unbelievably sounding Yamaha 7′ 6″ Acoustic Grand, record it, and make it available to you.
  2. The ability to record MIDI first, not having to worry about the bird, the dogs, or anything, edit out the mistakes, play it back and record the flawless audio.
  3. Huge built-in teaching tools for SanBan.  I plan to start teaching him as early as 3.
  4. SOUND!!! THE UNBELIEVABLE SOUND A HUGE 7′ 6″ YAMAHA GRAND PIANO MAKES!!! :mrgreen:

Needless to say, this is something very exciting to me.  Upon further research, I discovered these things aint cheap.  They are basically the cost of a new Mercedes ML500.  During my research, an opportunity to buy a used one grabbed my attention. It was an S series which are crafted with much finer wood, it was only 2 years old, it was the pro version, which normally costs substantially more, and it was practically half off due to the seller’s circumstance. I came very close to making a very bad decision by going into debt, but thanks to some very wise counsel from my father, I turned down the offer and decided to start saving up for it.  In the meantime, I’ve thought about doing the podcast with a keyboard instead of the Yamaha C2 Grand. This way, I could go back and record those podcasts with the Yamaha DC7M4 when I get it.  What do you think?

Here’s a picture of it:

Yamaha DC7M4 Accoustic Grand Piano

Week Thirty-two

July 25, 2009 in music blogs | 4 comments

This day last year was my first post to the Music To Pray By Blog and now, a year later, there have been close to 30,000 downloads of 16 hours of recorded piano music to pray by.  This is truly a God thing.  This week was kind of a half-way point between when I started really studying for the CCIE and the dredded date of October 2nd so I took a break.  Since mid-May, I’ve put in right at 300 hours of study, and I’ve made a great deal of progress. It may not be the 40 hours a week I was shooting for, but it’s the quality of study that has helped. This podcast, I used the following songs: “Audience of One”, “God With Us”, “Mighty to Save”, and a small piece of “The Motions” at the tail end. It’s been so long, I’m starting to feel a little rusty. Gloves will be off after the exam.  Jeremy has already booked some Soundwave gigs right after so I’m looking forward to getting back to my normal life.  2 more months to go!

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Week 32 [28:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Life and podcast on pause…

May 11, 2009 in Non-music blogs, Site Updates, news, tech stuff | 2 comments

Something unexpected happened last week. I found out that the CCIE Routing and Switching Lab Exam  is in for a huge change on October 18th. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Sr. Network Engineer at AT&T WiFi Services. A simple description of my day job is basically building and maintaining the Internet. It’s fun and very complicated. In order to further my career, I’ve committed to passing the CCIE R&S Lab exam.  My plan was to take the 8 hour exam sometime in December, but that all changed the day Cisco announced the changes coming in October. I registered the day it was official, and the closest date I could get was October 2nd, which is 2 months earlier than I had planned on taking it. This certification has been compared to a doctorate degree, and is referred to as “the MBA of Networking”. Candidates literally spend hundreds if not thousands of hours studying for the exam, and I have less than 5 months to get prepared.  My plan is to spend at least 40 hours a week from now till the day I take the exam which means I will have no social life. This also means that the podcast and any music or recording outside of Sunday morning church will not be possible if I intend to get in the number of hours of study I need to pass. Part of my plan was to spend a few hours a day at work studying but due to the AT&T acquisition, there are a number of projects on my plate that are due over the next few months that will likely reduce if not eliminate any free time I had at work to study. I truly am sorry about this, but I believe that the reward at the end of this journey will be well worth it.  As soon as this is over, I will do my best to go back to weekly podcasts. God bless!

MTPB podcast post missing???

May 5, 2009 in Family, Non-music blogs, news | 1 comment

Sorry for missing this week. Yoko and San Ban have been gone for a week now and I’m missing my inspiration! They have gone to Okinawa, Japan to visit family. I sure do miss them. 1 week down, 3 weeks to go. Needless to say, I probably won’t do another podcast till they get back. Jeremy is coming over on the 17th to do accoustic versions of two Soundwave songs so I’ll be sure to post audio of that. Also, I promised my dad that I would record and post the theme from “Terms of Endurement” so I may try to get that done as well. Please keep us in your prayers.

yoko_and_sanban

We’re opening up for Robbie Seay Band tomorrow!

April 30, 2009 in Non-music blogs | 2 comments

I know this somewhat of a short notice, but Soundwave is opening for the Robbie Seay Band tomorrow in Lockhart.  If you’d like to go, you can buy tickets at the door or at lockhart.org for $12. I’m looking forward to seeing Michael Lisenbe in action.  I believe they call him “Tank” now…  We used to serve together a while back at The Ark Family Church. Please come if you can – it is going to be freakin’ awesome!

posterrobbieseay

Week Thirty-one

April 18, 2009 in music blogs | 2 comments

During this podcast, I used the songs:  ”Hosanna”, “Mighty to Save”, and a new song called “Forever”. We’re doing it for the first time at church tomorrow.  It’s a great song and it’s not the one yall might be familiar with – it just happens to have the same title. Some of the songs are repeats, but we’ve done them recently at church and it just seemed right. It was truly a joy to sit down at the grand and worship our Savior today. I hope and pray this podcast inspires you to spend some time in His presence.  God bless.

 
icon for podpress  MTPB week 31 [31:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Week Thirty

April 4, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

This one is a little longer than usual. I just didn’t feel like stopping. I used a number of familiar melodys and chord progressions in this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoy it.

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Week 30 [35:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Home Improvement

April 3, 2009 in Family, Non-music blogs | No comments

Below is an album that captures pretty well what I’ve been going through the past month. Our home has been literally transformed by all the improvements we’ve made.  Check it out:

Week Twenty-nine

March 21, 2009 in music blogs | No comments

The bi-weekly podcast is here. I decided to get it done today so that I can focus on studying for the CCIE tomorrow after church and group. I missed the “record” button again. I ended up playing for over an hour today so that I’d have something to post. The first 30 minutes may have been a little better than the later 30 due to a little bit of frustration after realizing the first 30 minutes didn’t get recorded, but hopefully it doesn’t show in the podcast.  I used “Mighty to Save” and “Lead me to the Cross”, with some original stuff. I’ve been meaning to blog about all the home improvement that’s been happening here at the Johns residence, but haven’t had the chance.  I should get to it either tomorrow or Monday. God bless!

 
icon for podpress  MTPB Week 29 [31:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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