…also marching band, WGI, etc. Well we did it again this year at Minnesota Brass. This season’s problem to solve: harmonicas. The 2023 Minnesota Brass production “Speakeasy” used Billy Joel’s Piano Man as the ballad. I thought it would fun to play a little ditty on harmonica, so I worked with our arranger to put it in.
Playing Harmonica
I had never played harmonica, so I did some research. I wanted to make sure it was achievable, and that whatever I ordered would be suitable. I started with this youtube video and some harmonica note charts:
Harmonica Joe provides an easy harmonica tablature on his site for Piano Man. Looking at the tablature (tab), it’s played using two holes at a time. This allows for a nice harmony in thirds. I double-checked the sounds from the youtube video on my piano (in the key of C).
Then I went to our score, suspected a Bb model would do the trick, and then verified with our click track against the piano.
Click Track: For studio recordings it’s a metronome click for folks to use to stay in time with each other. For pageantry it refers to the MIDI output file of the arrangement produced by the computer’s notation software.
I purchased one harmonica in Bb to see if I could do it. For our ditty we used the bottom line from Harmonica Joe’s tab, effectively the 2nd half of the phrase.
It wasn’t too bad to learn! At one point I thought I broke the harmonica but it just got too wet from saliva and the reeds stopped responding 🤤💦 I put in the case and picked it up later – relieved that it still worked after it dried 😰
Then I called my Sweetwater rep and ordered enough Fender Bb Harmonicas for the entire baritone section. $100 later they all had their own harmonicas.
Harmonica Storage
The next issue was going to be: where do we put the harmonicas in our uniforms so they’re easily accessible? A couple of our baritone players also have 3D printers and had some ideas. They skipped thinking about putting it in the uniform, and made a clip that goes directly on their horn:
Super easy! You don’t need to dig it out of a pocket. The harmonica slides right out of the holster and the holster clips to the first valve slide.
They all picked up playing the harmonica pretty quickly. The baritones would play on them at practically every break. It was like trying to get a batterie member to stop chopping on a pad 😅 In the end it paid off – it was a nice touch to our Piano Man performance:
After using an old Garmin GPS last year, I hinted that I might switch to (also owned by Garmin) the Navionics Boating app. To get the party started, I shopped for cheap tablets during Amazon Prime Day.
I have a perfectly good iPad that could do this job, but the thought of a $400 tablet at the bottom of the lake made me sad 😭 So I looked for tablets less than $100 that have GPS. I guess I’m ok with one Benjamin sinking to the bottom of the lake 😂
Cheap GPS Tablets
Cheap tablets mean Android, and there’s a ton of no-name stuff out there that might do the trick. The real pro-tip is: read the reviews! I started by ordering this FACETEL 10″ tablet. None of the tablets under $100 are going to have 5-star reviews, but this one had 4 out of 5 stars with over 1,000 reviews. It said GPS right in the title, so it’s all good right? Nope, searching the comments for “GPS” revealed that all reviews mentioning GPS were there to state it doesn’t actually have GPS 😞 Luckily I saw those before the order had been fulfilled, so I quickly cancelled and kept looking 👀
Another prime deal was a TELECAST 10″ tablet for less than $100. It had 4 out of 5 stars as well, but not as many reviews – only about 200. But the review results for “GPS” all state that it works well and they’re amazed for the cost. This is the way.
Combo sonar & map
I updated all of the Android software when it arrived, and then installed the Navionics Boating app and Vexilar’s Sonarphone app. Navionics and Vexilar have partnered to provide use of both Navionics Boating and Vexilar Sonarphone views while in the Boating app. Doing this on the tablet worked OK, but I found a solution I like better: Android split-screen. It’s a feature of Android version 10 and up, and the TELECAST shipped with Android 11. The reason I like Android split-screen better is because you have the full version of both apps running side-by-side, rather than a watered down version embedded inside another app.
Using split-screen allows me to choose how much screen real estate should be used by which app, and it can be adjusted on the fly. This proof-of-concept leads me to believe that I’m not tied down to the Vexilar & Navionics combo. If I want to switch to a different navigation software or a sonar unit like the Deeper Pro+ 2 – I’ll be able to without issue.
Mounting
I have an extra ram mount base from some kayak accessories I purchased, so I’m looking for mount options that can use that. I’ll post a further update once I have something workable. If anyone has mounting options for tablets on a boat (specifically a pontoon), I’d love to hear them. Seeing the screen during bright sunlight is definitely going to be a challenge 😎
I set out to create a setup similar to MBI Winds’ first season at home in miniature. I knew I needed at last a 4-channel USB-audio interface. I needed at least 3 powered speakers, which can oddly be difficult as many studio monitors are only sold in pairs.
Another quick call to my sales rep at Sweetwater got me to the answer. The JBL 308s are a very popular and highly recommended 8″ powered monitor. They’re sold individually and my rep even let me know when they were going to go on sale.
Then wrapped the cables with some white cable wrap so it doesn’t look terrible in the background when I’m on zoom calls for work.
For Work
It works well because I can use the mains for listening to music while working. How I get the signal from my work computer is via bluetooth to a new bluetooth receiver. That receiver has two RCA to 1/4″ TS cables going to analog input channels 1 & 2 on my audio interface.
For Winds
When I’m doing music stuff it’s sort of backwards as I’m facing the 3rd aux channel, but it’s the same experience the members would have on the floor, facing the audience. I plug my macbook into the USB audio interface for a multi-channel digital audio connection.
Setup
The JBL speakers’ 1/4″ input supports both TRS (balanced) signals and TS (unbalanced) signals. Because I’m coming off the “Phones B” output for channels 3 & 4, I use the stereo TRS to mono TS cable and connect to the 1/4″ input on my 3rd speaker. It’s not a balanced connection but it’s only traveling 3 feet, so induced noise & signal loss should be minimal.
For the mains I use regular XLR cables which connect to the SSL audio interface with a short XLR to TRS adapter cable. I got enough extension cord to run them along with the XLR cables so everything plugs in around the same area, and I use a power strip to turn it all on/off in tandem.
Future
For version 1.1 I’ll probably upgrade my power strip to something that has USB-A ports and USB-C power delivery for the macbook.
I was previously using a Sony HWS-BTA2W bluetooth adapter from 2007 to get sound wirelessly from my computer or phone to a set of non-bluetooth speakers. It had a problem that only happened with my linux computer. I was annoyed with this device because as the workload would increase/decrease on my computer, the audio would speed up and slow down. You could hear the pitch rise and fall if you were listening to music. This is probably by design – as part of the base level Bluetooth SBC codec that everything supports. It makes sense that if you’re talking on the phone you’d want to hear everything someone said, even if it had to be sped up or slowed down for continuity.
The pitch bend happened on all of my linux laptops: 2008 Dell Studio 17 and my 2014 ThinkPad T440s, and my 2019 Developer Edition XPS 13. I wasn’t sure about the problem being in the linux bluetooth stack or the Sony device itself. I knew there was a better solution available – and it happened to be a combination of hardware and software.
Interestingly, aptX originated as a PhD thesis, then later became incarnate in a DSP chip. Then the tech changed hands though several companies (including Solid State Logic which makes my audio interface). Before finally becoming part of Qualcomm. AptX was first used in the Bluetooth stack with some Sennheiser headphones from 2009. My 2007 Sony hardware was definitely not using this tech.
AptX on Ubuntu 22.04
To make sure my computer supported these extra codecs, I had to install some extras. Partly because aptX has some patent issues (although it’s been reverse engineered), and partly because I upgraded my system to use pipewire. The best source I found was this gist:
Enable PipeWire on Ubuntu 22.04
This guide is only for original Ubuntu out-of-the-box packages. If you have added a custom PPA like pipewire-debian, you might get into conflicts.
Ubuntu 22.04 has PipeWire partially installed and enabled as it’s used by browsers (WebRTC) for recoding the screeen under Wayland. We can enable remaining parts and use PipeWire for audio and Bluetooth instead of PulseAudio.
Starting from WirePlumber version 0.4.8 automatic Bluetooth profile switching (e.g. switching from A2DP to HSP/HFP when an application needs microphone access) is supported. Jammy (22.04) repos provide exactly version 0.4.8. So, we’re good.
Based on Debian Wiki, but simplified for Ubuntu 22.04.
Check if you have other (like Pulse) configs in the /etc/alsa/conf.d/ installed by something else. You might want to remove them.
PulseAudio
Everything was done automatically by pipewire-pulse package, which should have been installed by wireplumber package as recommended. If not, install it yourself.
Bluetooth
Install the codecs and remove Bluetooth from PulseAudio, so it would be handled directly by PipeWire:
Unfortunately, aptX and AAC are not supported because of patents and other technical reasons. aptX is available starting from 22.10 via libfreeaptx0 installed by default there (22.10 uses PipeWire by default as well). If you really need these codecs in 22.04 you may use this PPA from @aglasgall which is based on universe, but rebuilds pipewire with additional packages for aptX and AAC from multiverse. Read the discussion here.
The important part in there is actually the link to the pipewire-extra-bt-codecs PPA for Ubuntu 22.04. I installed/removed the packages as expected and when I connected to the 1Mii B06S I can choose from all of the supported codecs in my sound settings:
I’m going to keep it on aptX HD for now and see how it sounds, but so far I’ve experienced zero pitch changes while listening to music.
Coming soon..
Next I’ll go through how I have everything hooked up in my home audio studio.
In 2018 I bought a gaming computer to replace my aging Dell 17″ laptop. The game I wanted to play was VRC – which didn’t require a lot of horsepower, but I wanted to potentially play other games. I found an Alienware Alpha with decent specs and bought it. One thing that interested me about all Alienware systems was the ability to connect them to the Alienware Graphics Amplifier (AGA).
Not really knowing what works and what doesn’t with the graphics amplifier in 2023, I just went ahead an ordered whatever RTX video card seemed like the best bang for the buck. I dropped $600 on an 4070 by ASUS. But when it arrived, I found the fans on the card were so huge that once installed into the graphics amplifier, the lid wouldn’t close 😩
So it was clearly time for me to do the research that I should have done earlier (besides determining what is the best bang/buck).
3000-series RTX
I found a few articles on reddit that indicated the 3000 series is the easiest road to plug-and-play with the AGA. The drivers work, the cards fit with the lid closed, and the power requirements don’t require an upgrade of the AGA’s power supply unit.
I ordered a used EVGA card from Amazon thinking I could save some $$$. At $300, the 3060 Ti was half the cost of the 4070. It fit nicely inside the graphics amplifier, but wouldn’t actually work – Windows always reported the dreaded “Error code 43.” Running several scripts didn’t alleviate the “Error code 43” problem, but led me towards some other troubleshooting tips. I used GPU-Z, which detected the video card but listed 0MB of VRAM 😥
I had ordered from Amazon on purpose because of their return policy, so back it went. This pursuit was getting old, but I soldiered on. Next I ordered a brand new 3060 Ti manufactured by ASUS. I didn’t have hard evidence that it would fit, just a hunch.
It fits with the lid closed, and it shows up in GPU-Z as expected, and it works just fine with the Alienware Alpha. 3rd time’s the charm!
