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The rise of the SweeTango apple is now on the radar. The season is somewhat short due to the apple harvest in MN as well as the local popularity of SweeTango apples, but the apples are making it out past state and regional borders into the nation and beyond.

I wish I could publish the link to the article, but the source (New Yorker Magazine) requires you to be a subscriber or to pay for access to the article. However, they do have a short video which summarizes the author's article, as well as showing his visit to Pepin Heights Orchard, one of the "big boys" for apple orchards in Minnesota. I've included a link to the video below in the "related link". It'll give you a good idea about the Next Big Thing (the official name of the tree/plant).]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry111012-094959
The song is in the "related link" below. Give it a listen and see what you think. It's titled "Ubud".]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry110728-103412 ]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry110621-122714
Speaking of music stuff, I plan on posting some of my finished stuff here, I will do so fairly soon...]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry110518-091242
Anyway, I should hopefully have some more to post here soon, been up to a lot and should have some things to post as well as updating the site a bit.]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry110218-095503
So I was recently moving some things around in my setup and I was trying to get the rack box nice and close the the keyboards for easy editing. I planned everything out, laid out all cables and cords, got my rack box all locked up and got everything transferred over to its new location successfully. As I was taking the front cover off my rack box, I lost my grip, and happened to catch it as it was hanging off the data entry/control knob on my Proteus 2000 module.

As I started powering everything up and playing around a bit with my synths, I noticed that the control knob on the Proteus 2000 wasn't acting right...it lost it's 'click' demarcation between two choices, and the knob had a definite sickly wiggle. Since this is my primary synthesizer, I was pretty upset at myself for breaking it.

I did happen to remember that there was a spare parts site I happened upon a while ago that had a lot of specific E-MU parts. Fortunately, I did find two different options for replacing the module, one requiring soldering and some more in-depth know how, and another that was the complete board assembly that literally just plugs into where the old one is. Since the board assembly was on sale (and due to a mentally traumatic soldering injury in my distant past), I opted for the plug & play option.

I seem to be writing a lot more lately about repair than actually using musical equipment, so I will post more in-depth here if people are looking for some info on how to do this. Suffice to say, it wasn't terribly difficult, but requires some considerable deconstruction and reconstruction to get everything installed. On the plus-side, I know that all my connections are clean and secure now, as well as having all chassis screws nice & snug. Also everything functions just as it should after reassembly and booting up.

If you happen to be looking for some replacement parts, I would strongly recommend EPR electronics (please see the "related link" below). This isn't an ad or anything, I can just vouch for them that they're a legitimate company that was good to deal with. It's also a much better option than trying to buy an old working/not working Proteus 2000 just for one part. They did supply me with a genuine E-MU part, and new as far as I could tell.]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry110120-094318
I did finally get a serious buyer, and I had the keyboard packaged together with the PG-10 programmer. As I was getting everything together, I was sturck by how everything was original, including the original floppy disk, the original manuals, original instrument cable, even the original box. It was probably as close as you could get to getting it new, even though it was 23 years old. It was truly difficult to let it go, since I saved up and bought it new way back in 1988 and moved out to SF with it. It was my last remaining piece of equipment from my busy music days. My solace was in the fact that the buyer was extremely excited and had done his homework, he was very happy with everything that was included with the keyboard. It was going to a new, but just as good, home.

So I am no longer a D-20 owner. I can still offer information and advice to any current D-20 owners out there, of course. I will also be leaving the posts on the D-20 up on the site here for reference...I might be reorganizing categories, but rest assured they are here to stay.

Incidentally, if you have a Roland D-20 and are interested, I do have a complete set of three Voice Crystal sound cards for the D-20 which also are fully compatible with the Roland D-5, D-10, D-110, and GR-50. Each card has 64 sounds, so this is a serious expansion of sounds for your synth. More info on the card set can be found at http://www.voicecrystal.com/roland.htm. A full listing of sounds on all three cards can be found at http://www.voicecrystal.com/rold20.htm. I’m obviously not selling them at their "new" price of US$260, but if you are interested please contact me.]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry101213-101922

I've had a couple e-mail messages from other D-20 users about a strange lockup with the synth, so I thought I would post my own solution here. This is kind of labor-intensive, so if anyone has an easier way to recover from this, please let me know. Please also let me know if you know of the actual reason the D-20 does this.

So the best description of this is when you turn on the synth, you will see the display screen light up with all characters on the top line light up, but the bottom line of the display will be dark. They keyboard is completely unresponsive with only the power switch working.

So I found that if I left the keyboard on for a while, it would finish booting up and would play normally, but then after turning it off and back on again it would do the same thing. I was able to get the keyboard fully functional again by doing a full reset. You will need to open it up, take out the backup battery and let it sit for a little while, maybe an hour or two. Put the battery back in after that and initialize it when you start it up again. Make sure that you are comfortable both opening the keyboard and locating the battery as well as backing up your data and know how to initialize they synthesizer. I have posts describing all of this, just search for D-20.

I've been lucky since doing this, the keyboard has been behaving itself. It really is no fun constantly opening and closing the keyboard body, so if you do have an easier way to deal with this freeze definitely let me know either by e-mail or a comment on this post.

]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry100920-094200


I got this immaculate E-mu Pro/Cussion unit on the cheap to add several drum kits and sound effects to my TDW-10 kit. It actually works pretty well, although the MIDI programming on the unit proves to be a bit more complicated than I originally thought it would be. Still kind of figuring that out, but I fell in love with the effects and sound sources, and it got me thinking about the original E-mu Proteus synthesizers. I did some research and found several people selling them for a ridiculous amount, with a few sellers who were much more reasonable, but those deals were very short-lived as other people were jumping on those as well.

I finally did get some more research done and found this:



It's a Proteus 2000 with the Composer ROM soundset installed and also the World Expedition ROM installed as well. All I have to say is: wow. There are so many sounds available, and also software for programming and alteration of the unit that it's nearly endless. I do realize that I'm treading dangerously close to equipment less than 10 years old here, but it is truly amazing.

Everything is currently controlled by either my drum pads through the TDW-10 or from the D-20 keyboard. The breadth of the Proteus 2000 and also my Yamaha sampler have both been getting me thinking about getting myself an 88 key keyboard controller to fully utilize both units and to free up the D-20 for its own wounds.

Funny enough, it has me thinking of looking around for the Protozoa ROM for the Proteus 2000 which is a 16MB ROM soundset of all the sounds from the original Proteus 1, 2 and 3. If you happen to be reading this and have such a ROM chip, please do get in touch with me.]]> http://www.jasonchristiansen.com/rdf.php/index.php?entry=entry100528-084822

I'm actually a Roland guy synth-wise. I recently started looking around for a sampler, so naturally I was checking out older used Roland samplers. However, I got a lead on a very reasonable sampler, a Yamaha A4000. After making sure it would boot up when powered on, I decided to take the plunge and get it, even though it was as-is without any of the sample discs or even a power cord.

Fortunately I found someone on eBay who sells backups of the sample CDs, and being that this sampler is about 10 years younger than my D-20 synth, I found a bunch of resources online for it, including user-written software.

So I will most likely be posting some info, tricks and tips on this sampler here, hopefully of use to some other users as well...

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