Nova Luna is performing at Jazz Minds Art & Cafe on November 29 at 8:30! The night will start with some solo piano by willi around 6pm, with the band playing from about 8:30 - 11:30pm. It's going to be a trio arrangement with Ian on the electric bass and Jason on the drums. I'll probably bring a keyboard to get some electric piano and other sounds in with the grand piano they have. Jazz Minds is pretty nice inside with some cool decor, full bar, stage, and DVD projector.

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I've released a modification for the Llamasoft game Gridrunner++ which replaces all the sounds and graphics with characters and effects from the Mario Bros. series of games by Nintendo. It's good for a quick laugh if you are familiar with Nintendo's ability to place Mario characters in seemingly any type of game, or if you are a fan of Gridrunner++. It works with both the Mac OS X and Windows PC versions. You can download here, or visit the games section for more info.

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-willi

I'm working on a new music album in the studio, and hope to have it done within a few months. I've already got a couple of tracks in progress, although it's difficult for me to leave things well enough alone -- I want to tweak and edit on and on and on, and I'm not totally satisfied in the end. At some point I just have to wash my hands of it and consider the work to be a 'snapshot' of my current style and stuff. The album itself is a mix of some older songs of mine that I'm finally getting around to doing a full production version of, as well as some new songs I'm coming up with as I'm working on the album. There are also going to be a few 'atmospheric' sounds and stuff between tracks, hopefully helping to bring it all together into a complete work. I'll be working with some friends of mine to fill out the sound, including Tavana on guitar and the infamous Ric Gonzalez on bass.

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-willi

After having reworked the layout slightly, as well as having integrated a variety of new gear, Particle Storm is back in production mode. I'm working with some different music producers on a few small audio projects, and doing some early planning for a few upcoming video productions.

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-willi

I've archived the news updates from the past few years since this page was starting to get a bit long. They are now accessible by year, from 2002 onwards.

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-willi

Well, the site has been online for a few weeks now after recovering from some downtime. I had some problems with phpBB hackers messing with the forums again, which was sort of to be expected given that I was once again behind on updating the phpBB software to patch some known vulnerabilities. Fortunately they have implemented a version checking feature in the Admin panel, so you can see a little more readily if there are any updates available (hmm, it seems there is one now..). I've also enabled a image-code generator thing that is required in order to create an account now.. it's another nice new feature in phpBB, and should hopefully help cut down on the amount of annoying spammers that Newt has been kind enough to help deal with.

I also got my servers here back online, so hopefully the site will be stable again for a while.. You can post your condolences or suggestions in the forums! (presuming the forums are working at the time )

-willi

NAMM continues on, and I've had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Kay (programmer of the awesome KARMA2 features of Korg's new OASYS keyboard) as well as the legendary Bob Moog. It's the first time I had a chance to play a Moog, which has plenty of knobs and has gained a touchpanel in the latest iterations. I also 'played' a theremin, although it is a bit confusing and quite sensitive.

I've also played with the Hammond XK-3 a bit, and it's nice although I've also become quite interested in the Nord electro 2. The electro doesn't have real drawbars, so I hadn't been considering it, but it plays very nice and sounds great. In addition, it's pretty light weight and not too expensive. In comparison, Korg's OASYS is scheduled to be available around April 2005 at a price of about $8,000.

It's not really a fair comparison though, as the OASYS may be more expandable and capable in the long run. It already features built in audio recording and sequencing, CD burning, etc. It's running on a Pentium 4 CPU and supports various types of software synthesis, which could theoretically be expanded down the line. It supports at least 1GB of memory, though it's unclear whether the 256MB included is soldered in or if that is in a single DIMM slot. There is a 40GB hard drive inside, and there are two built in mic pre-amp/combo inputs as well as two additional 1/4" inputs, for use with the built in 16-track audio recording. Audio recording is integrated with the built in sequencer.

I'll have more impressions and photos from the show soon. Post a question or comment here!

-willi

The retro action shooter game Gridrunner++, which features some of the sprites I've created and released, has been ported to Mac OSX. The port actually has some upgraded graphics features, like bilinear filtering at high resolutions and a native widescreen mode. The game also has web-enabled internet high scores now, so you can compete with other players around the world for the best score. And perhaps best of all, the game runs extremely well on a Mac, enabling the "TurboNutterMode" which runs about twice as fast as the game used to. It's quite intense, and there is a free demo available. Check it out!

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-willi

I'm currently in Los Angeles for NAMM, the big music trade show. I'm going to go get my badge and finish my registration soon, and the actual show starts tomorrow. It lasts until Sunday and I'll be back Monday night. It's been pretty cool so far, and there are going to be a lot of cool things at the show. Hopefully I'll make some good contacts for my music and studio, and I'm particularly looking forward to the Moog, Hammond, and Korg booths. I've been told by a reliable source that the KARMA might see an update at the show, and hopefully I'll be able to play a lot of keyboards I've been trying to decide amongst based on specs and catalog photos alone.

The website is working again, although there are of course things I'd like to change, upgrade, or add. My DVD project that was giving me replication headaches has finally passed mastering and duplication phases so that is a big weight off my shoulders. I'm looking at doing a couple of new studio projects when I get back, including new Nova Luna and turbowilli++ albums, and some recording/producing projects with some friends bands back in Hawaii including West Coast Boys, Big Trouble Rock Band, Andre Derizans & Zion Band, Freesound, and a few others.

-willi