So!  I made two improvements to my DIY Live footswitch.

First I pulled out the white springy parts on the surrounding keys so you don’t accidentally hit space when you’re trying to hit B.  (In case you’re not a Live user, space is the default key to stop all audio.)

Second I gave up on gluing the discs to the keys and elected to screw them on instead.  Drilling a hole in something as small as a computer key is a bit tricky, but it’s nothing a pair of vise grips can’t handle.

Now the footswitches don’t slip off all the time.  Truly, this dismal hack is road worthy.

Here’s the basic, stolen idea: take a keyboard.  Rip out most of the keys.  Put something big on the remaining keys so you can mash them with your foot.  Map those keys in Ableton.

Here are my supplies:

• An old keyboard.  The computer kind, not the MIDI kind.  I have tons of these kicking around; you can also find them easily at thrift stores.
• A pack of those rubber discs that go under furniture to keep from scratching your floor.
• Rubber cement.  The latter two cost a combined $7.10 at the hardware store.

First I pulled all the keys off the bottom rows except for Z, V, M, and /.

After looking at the keyboard, then looking at my giant feet, I realized it would be impossible to hit just one of the middle buttons with shoes on.  So I gave up on a four-switch model and decided to go with three: Z, B, and period.

Next I used rubber cement to attach the keys to the rubber feet.  After a false start I found it necessary to use a giant blob of cement on the keys, enough to fill the whole indentation where your finger goes.

After letting it dry, I put the keys back on the keyboard.  I flipped them upside-down so the new footswitches would tilt down toward my feet, making them much easier to reach.

Finally, I plugged the keyboard into a spare USB port and mapped my footswitches to clip slots.  That’s it!  I have a super crappy but functional footswitch.  It cost less than ten bucks and took less than an hour of effort.

At any rate, if you don’t have another room to put your computer in, the next best thing is to make it quieter.  You can actually spend a ton of cash making your PC dead silent, but I recently got most of the way there for well under a hundred bucks.  The worst culprits are the things the move the most: the power supply (with its built-in cooling fan) and the CPU cooling fan.  Here’s what I got.

Nexus NX-3000 Real Silent PSU:  Well, “Real Silent” is a straight-up lie.  It’s very quiet, but 19 db(A) is not silent last I checked.  I still recommend it.  Some people might suggest that you need more than 300W from your PSU, but I don’t know if that applies to musical setups.  I run about a million USB-powered devices with no trouble.

Zalman CNPS9500 CPU fan: This is quite a monstrosity; the photos on the web site don’t really show how big it is.  Basically, the main way to make a quieter CPU cooler is to make the fan bigger and slower.  But of course a big slow fan doesn’t cool as well, so you need a bigger heat sink with lots of surface area to compensate.  This fan supports dynamic speed controls; in other words, the fan spins slowly at start and only increases in speed as needed.

In general, End PC Noise has a good selection of quiet computer parts.  I noticed that most web sites about customizing your PC are geared toward people who play video games, but musicians stand to gain just as much.

Personally, I will be shaking butt along to one of my all-time favorite techno songs:

And why don’t you kick back with this 808-flavored tune I wrote a couple years ago?

Download audio file (of001_05_kevin_ferguson_bonus_track_1.mp3)

OK, my work here is done.  See you in a year + a month + a day.

Tech note: I would like to make more video demos, but I need easier screencasting software. Suggestions?

Recently, Korg seem to have made a point of releasing small, fun musical gadgets in addition to their usual megabucks workstations. Perhaps they have discovered that this is an excellent way to separate me from my hard-earned cash.

(Thanks to Darius for the pointer.)

Update: video demo and more details here.  Two notes from the video:

1. You can apparently use the DS touchscreen as an XY controller, Kaoss pad style.  (Or really, Wavestation style.)

2. You can apparently draw patch cables with the stylus, which is just plain badass.