Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum 30 days to Quarterly Recital #64!

Sam, thanks for doing this!!

ETA: now I really have to make sure I have something to submit for this one!!

Oooh, I've got a recording! Not perfect, but when was perfection ever attainable?

Last time I was quick on the trigger, submitting within 20 minutes of the starting shot, and was 11th. This time I will be even quicker ... and probably enter as 15th. 🤣

Apple killed my Mac.

A month ago my mac went to the Apple Repair to replace the swelling batteries (known issue with apple...).

However instead of just doing that, they completely erased my drive and put Catalina on it.... it's not even set up, it's only asking what language I'm talking as first step of further installation. Besides that it seems they also replaced the screen, the keyboard, did a complete cleanup, I don't know what they were thinking there...

All my software and settings, worth thousands of $ is gone. I can not reinstall it on Catalina because it's for an older OS. This includes my audio drivers.

In short, thanks to Apple I can not make a recording of my fully prepared piece on my fresh tuned piano...

Wouter, that sucks. I hate when that happens. Backing up my PC now.

Sam

Sorry to hear. I have backup plans to make sure I don’t lose my music. My pieces to be performed have a printed copy & a pdf stored on my Email & my phone. My keyboard has a record button. I’d save my recordings to a computer. The final soundtracks backed up to my Email & phone. If I recorded a video, a version would be on YouTube set to private until I’m satisfied with the results.

The last thing is making regular backups to my portable drive. Once got a computer soaked in the rain. The next day the processor was toast. The programs can be reinstalled but don’t want to lose any data.

Just to clarify I did backup my data and software. The problem is restoring the software.

This might be important for people on mac here. So I'll elaborate a bit. You can NOT back up mac drives byte-by-byte anymore, it's all forced encrypted and the restored drive won't even boot. Even the programs that I could copy unencrypted would not start because the security manager found that they were "broken" and wants them to be removed from the system (there's nothing wrong with the apps but it's just that the security manager did not approve this copy) Finally new macs have a different CPU alltogether (M1 "Mac silicon" instead of intel).

Painful as it is, I try keep my mac up to date with app updates and new versions of the operating system. Sometimes it seems they update for no reason, and the updates are gigabytes of data, so they take forever. And I have been burned before when an old program stopped working after an update. But I think that is better than having a machine that is "locked in time" and might stop working at any time. Cloud backups are not an option for me, since my internet is painfully slow at home.

6 days left until the recital opens for submissions!

Sam

@Sam indeed, all the problems you already mention.
Plus apps keep changing their user interface. This is a big problem if you use the program only occasionally. Also some programs tend to get worse instead of better. Some suddenly disable until you have paid the "new license fee". Some functionality that you rely on sometimes gets removed. etc.

All these make auto updating unworkable.

So I decided to freeze the software in time.

If the machine crashes, I want to swap over my drive into the new machine and immediately continue there.

Wouter, how horrific! Do you use a time machine? My Macbook Air crashed and with the help of my time machine, I got everything restored, including apps and my settings for them, except for what I had done during the last 17 days, because my latest back-up was 17 days ago.

People tend to rely on a computer to do just about everything. When it comes to making recordings, we have other choices including portable digital recorders like Zoom, phone, camera & video recorders. For the upcoming PW recital, all you need is a reasonable recording and extract the sound file on a computer and convert it to .mp3

I don't need to backup everything on my computer. The data files are more important than the programs. In the past I lost a few computers due to accidents. There is a Toshiba laptop I bought years ago that worked for about 10 years and all of a sudden, the old version of Windows wouldn't boot. Luckily most of the data was backed up. The programs I got are less of an issue. In the past programs are installed with CDs. Now all the programs are downloaded online. When I pay for a program, there is a serial # the company sends by Email to be entered during the install. I'd keep the number on a separate folder on my Email. I can download & reinstall a program on a new machine and use the same serial #. Even newer versions of the program or a different version for PC / Mac would accept the same serial #.

Some programs like Photoshop from Adobe are paid by monthly subscription on a credit card. The program can be reinstalled or upgraded to the same or a new computer at anytime when a computer has problems. I just need to go to the company's website and login to download software to reinstall.

FAIK Time machine is useless. It only backups the system drive files which is almost empty. I want to restore the entire situation, including other drives, OS etc. I never could get it working as I need.

>When it comes to making recordings, we have other choices including portable digital recorders like Zoom, phone, camera & video recorders

Unless you want to make a high quality recording. Then it comes down to a separate AD converter that connects... to your computer... and needs drivers...

>The data files are more important than the programs

Data is useless unless you have the programs to open it.

As I already said I use a frozen system. That includes Photoshop etc.

I am so sorry for you! Such an ordeal. Time machine worked fine for me, including apps. Even for instance, my personal settings on Pianoteq.

Boo! Three days until the recital opens for submissions...

Sam

I can never figure out the time zone stuff . . . . .reckon I'm about 5 hours out. (British Winter Time soon, clocks go back an hour)

I am currently at GMT -4. So 6AM here is 10AM GMT. Does that help? But for the Feb recital I will be GMT -5. I think. Nobody said there would be math. I only need to count for music, not subtract, right?

Sam

Okay, this is beginning to get hairy; let's just get things confirmed. Here in Europe, which in this particular case includes the worlds smallest continent (Great Britain), daylight saving time (or "summertime" as we refer to it in Denmark) ends this coming Sunday in the very early hours of the morning. We set the clock one hour back.

Does Georgia (the American one) have a similar daylight saving thing going on, and ending also this Sunday?

There is a way to install older versions of Mac iOS over Catalina. It requires you to make a bootable macOS install program onto a USB flash drive and downloading the iOS that you want to downgrade to. You can find older versions of Mac iOS on the Apple website but you have to search with the Safari browser and with the App store application closed. From there you use Terminal to create the boot drive with some simple commands and then clear the permissions folder from the installer program to take out any expired certificates.

Anyways it might seem complicated but it isn’t. PM me if you need help or look online and you can learn how to do it. All is not lost on other words.

No, our daylight savings time does not end until Nov 7th. Confusing isn't it? Your government is here to help...

Sam

I've used this to figure out when some international members of PW might be awake to read or post something of interest: The World Clock

If the discussion here is how to get the #1 spot for the recital, I can only say good luck or wait a day so Sam can get #1 .

My piece is close, so I'll submit when it's ready and my recording nerves allow it. That may be toward the end of the submission period, but with a day or so margin of safety.

Waited months to submit a piece I've been working on since March. It wasn't ready for the last 2 recitals. The video is being uploaded. There is a good chance the submission will be #1 on the list.