Ha! I remember Tritone! The guy was the prince of trolls. He could enrage like no other and frankly I found him hilarious.

He loosed some mean words about some of my music and I was ecstatic. You see, he had been reserving his bile for the "Stick Masters" and I was delighted to have been included in that august group.

LOL. Tritone could start a never ending thread with a few snarky words and meanwhile, someone who posted an original music piece would barely get views, much less comments. Ha ha. It's a funny world we live in. Negativity thrills.

Walter, That was hilarious! That's how you know you've made it! It's like getting your first stalker (speaking as a guy who doesn't have to watch down every dark alley--okay, actually I do live in Detroit and I'm not Batman!) I had a few of my students in Japan who used to stalk me but that was only because I was worshipped as a longhaired (to my waist), red-haired (Kinpatsu or "Gold Hair") little-g god that was 6'2" in a land of 5'2" "giants". And that's how I knew I never wanted to be Justin Bieber famous. It sounds silly, but I taught a town of 250,000 at 4 junior high schools and 12 elementary schools on a rotating Guest Gaijin basis for 3 years. I recommend any English speaker teach little kids in Japan if you want the experience of being worshipped. The more exotic you are (read "weird"), the better!

Okay back to my Rick Wakeman Lord's Work in progress. Here's that progress video again for you page 3'ers. I appreciate the dialogue and comment so far! We've churned up a good 5 different good threads of potential topics here, and made Steve feel like he doesn't suck hopelessly (but don't take that as a challenge! HA! Tritone--glad to not have to meet ya!)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1H6UqOUoEE[/youtube]

The Japanese people are really interesting folks; they love it when you try to learn their culture, and love it even more if you're into fun stuff like music and drinking!

I had a decade or so where I was Budo obsessed... I got to meet lots of Nihonjing, and had a ton of fun sharing music. What I learned...

Malmsteen = Marumustinju
Scott = Sukotuso
Beer = Beeru

Lol

HitMan, I'm supposed to be mucking up the masterpiece that you and Scott gave me, but just wanted to point out that this is really good advice. I record a lot of MIDI noodlings I do on the house piano that become a good 85% of everything I ever put out. So much starts from recording that. MIDI is much easier to record and keep track of than hours of audio--but it's not like I don't have the space! (I bought a 24 TB Western Digital NAS (Network Attached Storage) last year before I discovered Sticks to spend money on). BTW, those fractal videos take a good 15 to 40 GBs a piece of generated JPEGs, then 2-5 GB spun down with a good codec (H264 usually) to make final videos, and god know how many GBs of video during the editing and production phase.

I try to work on recording itself as a skill to work on everyday--I should just start recording my practice sessions (but not posting them--that 9 minutes was plenty for another 100 days, unless I'm gonna show performance and not progress videos).

audio doesn't take up much space. even at full quality 24/44.1, you could prob just turn on the recorder and not turn it off for months, (maybe years) with a 24 TB drive. i have a 3 TB audio drive and to me, that's a lot.

the majority of what i do, is done on loop record when i'm working on parts for a song. sure, sorting through stuff is a pain, but i usually know when i have "the one" and it's super easy to find small fixes or alternate parts/fills by just going through the playlist. that might seem a bit lazy to some people who would rather just work out the idea and get it right before doing takes, but the repetition is the same, only difference being, i'll actually have it already recorded once i do get it. for parts that are copy and paste, it gives me alternatives to make each part different if i go through and select different fills, etc. yes, it's time consuming. if i were a better player, it wouldn't be so much extra work, but i don't see why i can't be making music AND getting better at the same time. that being said, metronomes and clicks are our friend and ally even though we might occasionally fight.

one of the reasons i stress the importance of how something is expressed is because it's a very easy thing to fix the timing of something that was recorded. if you nail the feeling and the tone, sometimes just a little nudge here or there can make you sound like one of the "elite masters"...lol well, maybe not. but just hearing it on time after you've fixed it can be good listening practice. if you hear it that way over and over, it's like studying for a test, you keep going over the answers and they will "Sink" in and "Stick" with you. (sorry, it was too tempting...lol)

give Geo a treat for me. i have a cat that looks and acts really similar to yours. she's named Phoenix. right now she's out killing something. she's thehitman's bodyguard and personal assassin.

Japan has some of the world's best microbreweries beers in the world--consistently won awards lately. In my own little neck of Japan (the backwoods--just like Kansas, which is actually why I was chosen for the area! Yay, Kansas!), which is near Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, after the tsunami wiped out several towns and villages, a bunch of the world's best sake distilleries were converted into beer vats and breweries (the economy sucked as well and no one was buying sake), and have been cranking out the world's best beers. They also make some damn good whisky (both of these are fine, fine topics over in the Forum, by the way!)

Looks like they placed several times this year in the 2016 World Beer cup, but not as good as years past. http://allaboutbeer.com/news/2016-world-beer-cup/

Okay, back to work--my katakana name (their alphabet for foreign words) is Su--Tei--boon for Stephen and Steve is Steebu, which was worse! I was Suteibun Sensei for 3 years!

Adds before posting: Damnit, HitMan, if you keep engaging me in conversation I won't get any work done! I'll chat later!

short and sweet responses.

helps get more work done. lol

Hey Steve... check out some of the posts of the not-so-illustrious tritone. LMAO

http://www.stickist.com/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&author_id=121

I'll not reprint any of this dude's crap but there were 21 pages or more of it.
memberlist.php?


What a goober! 204 hateful, nasty, holier-than-thou poisonous screeds. So many nasty fights with so many good people. He really brought out the worst in other people too.

Well, it sounds like this guy fits the classic internet definition of a troll:

Wiki:

Congrats on moving to a three-fingered approach to bass-lines in 5ths. It's all that's required. Chords are a different story, but three relatively equal fingers, each with independent tendons, coupled with easy hand movement, make tapping a breeze (in 5ths or 4ths).

Cheers.