I had the morning off, so I took some time and grabbed a few more funny televangelist sound clips and imported them into the Ableton project I reference in the previous post. Lots of fun. I have solved a few little problems, and am gaining more understanding of the software — like maybe .005% of it. But enough to have some fun.

As you can see in the pic, the Akai controller has 16 drum pads, 6 faders/sliders, and 6 knobs. The drum pads can be used to “play” the software instruments, such as drum kits, synths, etc, that come with the software, or as I have been doing each pad can activate a sound clip you have imported. The knobs and whatnot can be assigned to control other things, like volume, effects, etc.

This is really pretty addictive.

And then there’s the controls of the Akai itself, that I haven’t even really gotten into. Apparently you can control the software from the Akai, if you know what the hell you are doing — as in calling up programs and profiles you have saved. It’s not a big deal since I will never be “performing live”.

So, here’s the really fun part. I’m running the software on my 8-year old 13″ MacBook. I got the 3rd party replacement battery from my mom’s old MacBook, and it will actually hold a charge. This machine has 2 gigs of RAM — the bare minimum needed to run this software. The software has crashed once, but overall I’m happy I can even run it. The 3rd party batteries are shitty. They aren’t quite the same material as the real Apple replacement battery, and they don’t fit as well either. But they are about $30 rather than $130. At this point I don’t think it is worth spending $130, or really any money, on this old machine, since a new MacBook Air is not that expensive. But man, given the bullshit we have dealt with on the broken MacBook Pro, I really really love this old computer. What a fricken workhorse.