Matthew Supert

Winter NAMM is coming up next week and normally I am pretty stoked to see what the world has to offer for musicians. The past couple years of NAMM's have been pretty boring though with not a lot on the horizon to get exicted for. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be following suit as the build up thus far seems to be pretty boring. Nothing really exciting is looming in the pipelines, at least not yet. 

I have seen two pretty cool new DAW's though that have popped up lately that seem pretty interesting. The first i heard about the other day is a new DAW called Bitwig. It looks to be an Ableton Live clone in many respects, but has some interesting fatures and Linux support. Not sure what to make of it yet as it still seems a bit too Livey to me, but it is nice to see another player in the live performance market. 

The next DAW (and I slightly hesitate to call this a DAW) isa  product called AGL. IT is completely pre-Beta at this point, but the visual and audio demo below blew me away. At first it seems likea standard modular audio environment, no big deal right? As you see later in the video though the author has expanded the system to a three dimensional automation layout. It looks to not only be incredibly cool, but also incredibly powerful. 

Let hope these lead to some better innovation from the "big boys" showing up at NAMM next week. 

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the dangers new legislation out there about SOPA and PIPA. I went the full gamut of writing lettes to my congressmen to signing a petition on Whitehouse.gov's website. It seems that the petition has at least attained enough signatures to garner the attention of the Whitehouse web staff. This morning I recieved the following response in my email. It is a bit tepid and doesn't clearly outline that the administration would veto PIPA and SOPA in its current form, but it does at the very least acknowledge that there are some serious problems with the current forms of the bills. Personally I don't think we should have any legislation like this, but if this is the first step to get these bills re-written with at least some due process in them, then I support that. I understand that in the end we will probably have to meet half way with other content holders. 

Wow,

I finally got all of my blogs from different sites imported into Posterous. I was having the worst trouble trying to get Posterous to import my Tumblr blog. I instead had to have it exported to a Wordpress xml file and then upload that xml file for the import. Everything seems to have worked though with only minor editing needed. 

I do have to say though that Posterous' help was pretty poor throughout this whole process. Let's hope that is not a hint of things to come for the future use of Posterous. I migrated away from Tumblr because of its downtime and issues I had with the site loading. 

I have only had my motorcycle license for five months and I am already grinding my teeth, thinking about another bike. Not that I need one of course. The motorcycle I have now (and my first motorcycle) is a 2000 Kawsaki ZR-7. It is a nice bike and I have to say I am really drawn to the streetfighter look. Apart from some minor work that I needed to do on it this fall it runs perfectly and only has about 7,500 miles on it. Now that I have had some time to ride though I am getting a better sense of what type of motorcycling I want to do. The streetfigher is excellent as a commuter bike and for riding on the weekends, but it isn't really something that was designed for longer trips or touring. My butt is certainly hurting pretty bad after a couple of hours just on a saturday ride.

Initially I caught some of the dual sporting bug and even went and test road a BMW F 800 GS earlier this fall. I'm only 5'8" though and that bike was a bit tall for me. I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it and after some more research I found that dual sporting is pretty difficult in the midwest. 

So here I am left thinking what I want to do. Do I keep my current bike and take it as an opportunity to learn more about motorocycles? It is carbureted so the possibility of me doing some work on it myself is totally there. As soon as I get into a fuel injected bike that has a computer, you can forget about me doing any tinkering. The Kawi certainly has decent power at ~75 bhp and although it only has a 5 speed gear, I never had a problem with power on it. Possible upgrades include the installation of an H4 relay kit for the front headlight, upgrading the running lights and taillights to LED, upgrading the seat, and getting new tires. 

Of course my research has still been going into the purchase of a new motorcycle. My top runners I think right now appear to be the Tiger 800 (not XC) or the BMW F 800 R. Both have the naked look that I like and both have the ability to get some panniers on the side to do some longer riding. There is of course some potential trade offs here for both. The BMW of course is a straight up streetfighter and doesn't offer much more more power (84 bhp) than my current ride. It does offer removal panniers from Givi in which the rack can quick release, making for a clean bike when just cruising around town. 

The Tiger 800 on the other hand is a bit bigger with more horsepower. It also can have a clean look without the panniers, but does it lose some of the fun zippy-ness of the streetfighter? I would say 95% of my riding will be weekend rides.  

Not sure, but would love to hear thoughts from people if they have them. Then again, I could always buy a new motorcyle and keep the Kawai. Question is what do I go with then. Something big and cruisery? A BMW ST series which got a top ranking for touring this year? 

Not sure how many of you have followed the news as it relates to this, but on the internet there is a huge outcry about a new bill going before the house called the Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A) and before the Senate called Protect IP Act (P.I.P.A.). The crux of these acts is to allow the government to block domain names (website address) if they are accused of infringining upon intellectual property. On the outset that seems like it is a fairly decent cause, after all artists should be allowed to protect their IP. The problem with this law however is the inherent lack of transparency and due process that it lays out for the infringement process. A disportional amount of power is provided to the accuser and the law sets out a standard that assumes the accused party is guilty until proven innocent. What it gives private corpartions the power to do is accused a website of breaking intellectual property, accused it in a closed system and have the website immediately taken down. This could have potentially catastrophic ramifications on the internet as it pertains to freedom of speech, fair use, content creation and more. Perhaps more importantly is that this law becomes transnational in its affect, potentially preventing someone in France for example accessing a website because the U.S.D.O.J identified it as being infringing. 

The bill has been criticized by Abigail Phillips of Electronic Frontier Foundation for not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web site. For example, if WikiLeaks were accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to block search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page would raise free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site.

Overall I think this presents a tremendous constriction of civil liberties and unfortunately it appears to represent to the interests of corporations. Artistically speaking if you look back at history, the greatest achievements in the arts are often found, observed and created through the copying, remixing and reimagining of works. Part of the initial intent of copyright is that it would have an expiration date on it to allow the content to be freely avalible and accessible to the world for use and growth. There is no doubt that copyright has some issues. The debate of piracy actually causing harm in an online sense is a seperate debate entirely (I do not think it does), but to remove due process and create a system that assumes guilt is a terribly wrong step for the United States to take.

A couple of weeks ago my wife metioned that we should outline our goals for 2012. She got this post idea from one of her favorite blogs, a Beautiful Mess. So here we go, here are my goals for 2012. 

1. One Song a Month
2. Learn about Buddhism 
3. Skydive
4. Finish furnishing house
5. Personalize office
6. Donate at least $100 a month to charity  
7. Learn to rock climb
8. Cross country ski
9. Be a better husband
10. Zen
11. Go on a date once a month with wife
12. Go see a musical  
13. Pickup model building again 
14. Goto a concert 
15. U of I football game 
16. Ride more motorcycle
17. Don't look back in anger 
18. Replace valves in other 2 toilets 
19. Build a workbench
20. Take more quiet time
21. Expand my musical repitoire
22. Be patient

Wow, 2011 is done. There is so much that can be said about this year. It had some of the highest highs and the lowest lows I have ever had in my life. Let’s start off with the 800 pound gorilla in the room that for those who have been following me on Facebook and Twitter know was pretty devastating. On January 31st, of 2011 I lost my boss, mentor and one of my best friends. The impact of that event changed me immeasurably and catapulted me into a world that I was not yet prepared for. I suddenly found myself in my bosses’ shoes trying to figure out how to run a department and be the boss. It was hard and there were some points where I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. The situation at work was complicated even more by the fact that we lost the other member of our administrative team, so our department went from three to one in the matter of weeks. Emotionally I was tired and that situation only got worse when I found out that my childhood cat had died. He was fifteen so he lived a great life, but there are so many memories growing up that we had with him. This was my family’s first Christmas without him and I could see how he was certainly missed back home. He loved Christmas and was a constant pest during it, knocking over the Christmas tree, getting into the food. Funny how you miss those things when you no longer have them. 

I got to a point in the year where I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it. My stress levels were beyond comprehension and I was on the brink of a breakdown. Emotionally I was falling apart. I am not sure how much of my friends, family and colleagues noticed it. I put up quite a tough face, in part because I felt other people around me needed some sort of emotional rock to lean on. 

The year turned around on me though sometime in June. Megan and I headed up to Quebec City for our delayed honeymoon and I somehow found a bit of relief in that experience. Sometimes running away is the best way to help you prepare to confront your demons. May be I just needed to step out of the fray to prepare myself for the reality before me. I guess I could say I matured, but perhaps I found a sense of calm instead. I was still plagued by the loss of Bill and thought about those events in January on a daily basis. It is one thing to lose a grandparent who you know has their days numbered. You can prepare yourself for that, but to lose someone who is forty one to suicide, at work, when you just saw him hours ago……I was left with nothing short of rage. Disappointment. Bewilderment.

Those thoughts thankfully have begun to reside over the summer. My mind is not constantly occupied by them as they once were and they now exist as an image in the back of my mind rather than a trauma in the front. 

After I returned from my vacation the rest of the year opened up tremendously. My wife found a new job, and I received a substantial pay raise from my promotion. If you really look at the bigger picture I am sitting in a better position than most people in this economy. I have a comfortable disposal income now and I have to say I intend to leverage it. 

I completed in Tough Mudder in late July. Tough Mudder is a 10 mile military obstacle course. It was hell, but it was a test of my physical and mental capabilities. It was a very high accomplishment for me. It was an opportunity for me to focus my energy and in some respect a test for me to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. A course like this is designed to break you and the true test here is your willpower. I am very proud that I was able to complete that event. 

Also in July I made one of the best decisions I have ever made and obtained my motorcycle license. I cannot fully explain the profound impact this had upon me this year and is one of the things that got me through the past twelve months more than anything. The motorcycle has allowed me an emotional and physical escape that I desperately needed. Because of the inherent dangers of a motorcycle, it demands your full attention, so I am unable to be bothered by the trivial issues stuck in my head. There is something incredibly calming in the raw mechanical nature of the bike as well. No radio, no gadgets….Just four carburetors, a hot engine and the white noise of wind. It is serene and an experience I opine for every moment I am not riding. 

As the summer changed to autumn I began to find my place at work once again. Things were slowing becoming mine. We hired a new employee for our department, which I can honestly say was a godsend. Not only was he willing to jump in feet first, but his personality fit with the organization so well you would have thought he worked with us for years and not weeks. 

As I approached this holiday season I was a little unsure how I would handle it all. I turned 29 on November 2nd.  29!!!!!!! Not sure how I feel about that, but the birthday was one of the best I have had. Low key and just spent with family. Exactly what I needed I think. 

My first wedding anniversary was in November, right before Thanksgiving and I have to say it was great. I am incredibly lucky to have the wife that I do and our compatibility constantly amazes me. Thanksgiving went off wonderfully as did Christmas. I have traditions that my wife is becoming more a part of and we are also developing some of our own. The holidays overall were a nice grounding for me and a good way to round out the year. Everything was simple and it was just a bunch of people basically hanging out together. 

While this year started off as one of the worst possible, it ended as one of the best I could have hoped for. It was  growing period for me for sure, but it also gave me a great opportunity to re-focus my life some. I have found a new peace of sorts with myself (Thank you Yoga!!) but have also identified the types of things that make me happy. I have a new found penchant for adventure. I want to make sure that I get he most out of this life and the passing of Bill has reignited that. I saw first hand some of the problems he dealt with and corners he backed into. I am determined to not let that happen to me and I want to make sure I get to experience everything I can. I want to make sure I don’t say “No” to an opportunity as it arises and I want to make sure I get to experience all that I can. I am the type of person that needs to be challenged and I find reward in completing those challenges. My wife suggested that we both create a list of things we want to accomplish in 2012. It was a great idea and I hope to have that posted tomorrow to outline my thoughts moving forward. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful year. I still miss you Bill. 

Love You all Matt. 

The wife bought me a #model for Christmas and I am totally going down the rabbit hole of my model building days as a kid. Went out and bought all of the tools again. (Taken with instagram)