{"id":1257,"date":"2013-02-09T23:18:56","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T04:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=1257"},"modified":"2014-01-24T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T21:23:10","slug":"coursera-sera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=1257","title":{"rendered":"Coursera-sera \/\/ Nektar Panorama P4"},"content":{"rendered":"

I signed up for Coursera<\/a> today, mainly because I was interested in an Intro to Sound Design class taught by Steve Everett of Emory University. I’m coming in a little late, but I’ll still have time to finish it and get my certificate, if that’s what I want. What I really want is to learn how to do sound design.<\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to get more and more into music production, but it’s always a question of time. I don’t seem to have enough of it to figure this all out on my own, so I’m hoping I can pick up some knowledge here and skip ahead a few steps.<\/p>\n

I like the offerings in Coursera, but I wish they had more of a Udacity<\/a> model that lets me pick up and finish a class whenever I feel like it, kind of like Khan Academy<\/a>, only with certificates if I want one.<\/p>\n

All three sites are pretty amazing in their own way, but it’s still a matter of making the time to get the work done.<\/p>\n

Nektar Panorama P4<\/h3>\n

I keep forgetting to mention this. A few weeks ago my patched-together Edirol MIDI controller was dying again, and this time, no amount of pencil work could bring the dead keys back.<\/p>\n

So I started looking at new MIDI controllers. I first went to the local Large Music Supply chain store, and tried a bunch of keyboards out, and just wasn’t impressed with any of them. Some were too mushy, some were too hard, none were what I was looking for.<\/p>\n

I could have spent $300 now, and wound up buying another new keyboard in six months when I got sick of it.<\/p>\n

So I kept looking, this time online. I decided to give the Nektar Panorama P4<\/a> a try. Amazon is good about taking returns, so why not?<\/p>\n

The P4 has really tight integration with Reason, and the keys feel great. There’s some weight, but not full weight. The display and rotary knobs\/sliders mean that I don’t have to fiddle with the computer as much.<\/p>\n

Nektar also says that they’ll be doing frequent updates to keep up with the growing number of Rack Extensions in Reason. If a RE isn’t mapped, you can’t do anything with it from the P4. That’s kind of annoying, but it only affects the latest REs.<\/p>\n

I like this growing trend of creating instruments that feel like instruments, and pull me away from the monitor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying out an Intro to Sound Design class in Coursera. It looks pretty interesting. I’m really getting more and more into music production (as a hobby for now), and I want to learn more how to do it. Having a MOOC teach it makes it easier than wading through thousands of YouTube videos. Also, my Edirol MIDI controller finally gave up, so I replaced it with a Nektar Panorama P4. I love it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[655,664,120],"tags":[698,902,667,702,666,699,903,767,769,768,736,700,701],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-music","category-technology","tag-coursera","tag-education","tag-keyboard","tag-khan-academy","tag-midi","tag-mooc","tag-music","tag-nektar","tag-p4","tag-panorama","tag-piano","tag-sound-design","tag-udacity","category-655-id","category-664-id","category-120-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}