bitflipper

In defense of Pentagon...it was, and still is, a great way for beginners to learn about classic subtractive and wavetable synthesis. It was actually fairly sophisticated for its time, with features that weren't common in other early software synthesizers (e.g. oversampling, formant filter, polyphonic portamento, user-loadable waveforms). The only reason it's "obsolete" is that Microsoft made it so when they started locking down the registry for security purposes, breaking many products' installers.

Are "new chords" even possible? I think I've played every chord imaginable, even if many of them were by accident.

VIP Section at The Eagles Concert Breaks into Brawl During “Take It Easy” https://consequence.net/2022/06/brawl-the-eagles-vip-take-it-easy-watch/ I don't feel at home in this world anymore.

Never lost it.

We didn't have a van at first, and had to hire someone to drive us to gigs. Our drummer's dad offered to buy him a VW bus. But the drummer, Rafael, grew up in Puerto Rico and had never driven a car before, never had a driver's license or instruction, or had any idea what a clutch was for. So the rest of us traded off driving duties, not wanting to risk giving him driving lessons with our precious gear loaded in the back. And loaded we were. That little motor wasn't meant to haul so much weight. Every trip was a slow trip. At one point, we were pull over by the Polizei for driving too slowly up a hill. We all pretended not to speak German, so he grumbled something about keeping up with traffic and sent us on our way. Cops in Germany were mostly pretty cool. They would stop you on the sidewalk and ask where you're going and make you show ID, but then wish you a good day. We had a long drive from Frankfurt to Munich, at night, in winter. But a few hours out of Munich Rafael insisted that dammit, it was his van and he was going to drive the rest of the way home. So we stopped at a Gasthaus and everybody but Rafael downed a number of beers with Schnapps, with the intention of sleeping through the certain terror that was coming. With 5 of us aboard, 3 could fit up front and 2 had to travel horizontally, lying atop Marshall cabs. Planning to sleep anyway, I took a spot in the back, atop my cushy Kustom cabinet with the stuffed Naugahyde. The night before, we'd played in Bitburg, at a large US air base near the Luxembourg border. That night, I'd had an unsettling dream; the van was spinning around and I was being assaulted by flying mic stands. So in the morning I convinced everyone to take all the gear out and re-pack it in such a way that we wouldn't be crushed or impaled in an accident. No one was happy about that, but all agreed the move seemed prudent, even if seating would be less comfortable. So there I am, trying to sleep with the aid of alcohol in the back of the van, but every time I closed my eyes that dream came back and I was again spinning around in the van. Except that on the third time, I opened my eyes and the spinning didn't stop. We were actually going in circles, then the van hit a guard rail, jumped it, flipped on its side and slid in the snow for a good 50 feet before stopping. The side doors flew open, and the only thing holding the amps from exiting the door was my Vox Continental. When we stopped, our roadie was on his knees in the snow, in the doorway. My poor organ was bent in a U shape, supporting the weight of all our gear. I had to crawl out through the back window. What had happened was we'd come over a hill and there were two cars blocking the Autobahn from a fender-bender. Rafael, who had only recently seen snow and ice for the first time in his life, panicked and slammed on the brakes. Anyone who's grown up in a snowy place knows exactly what happened next. The van was totaled. Rafael then called his dad in Nuremburg. I don't remember how, as this was long before cell phones. Poor Ralph, he was sure his dad would be extremely angry. If you've ever known a Puerto Rican dad, they don't take no sh*t, and his dad was a hard-as-nails Army sergeant with a mustache that he trimmed with a Dremel tool. He scared all of us. But Ralph's dad was cool. The kind of guy you'd want as your platoon leader in combat. He calmly told us to stay with the van and he'd send someone. He called some contacts at the base in Ulm, and they sent an Army tow truck. We're talking a serious tow truck that was designed for pulling BIG trucks. Our crumpled VW bus looked like a sad minnow on a hook, dangling from the back. They drove us to Ulm and let us sleep in the brig. Next morning we called our old contact back in Munich to come pick us up. Despite the accident, the only injury sustained was by me, when I slipped on the ladder climbing up in to the monstrous tow truck. The organ, though, never fully recovered and had a noticeable bow to it until its retirement. But it still worked, a testament to Italian construction. It was only the first of many calamities experienced during my rock 'n roll road journeys. Every band has such stories. This one's remarkable only because it was my first. And one of the few road tales that are G-rated and can thus be told to a mixed audience.

It's more likely they'd have seen his band than mine, as we mostly played in and around Bavaria with an occasional road trip north. I don't remember the name of his high school band, I'll ask next time I see him. My first Munich-based band was called Last Hopes Lost (with a mushroom cloud as our logo). The second band was called Bilbo's Tired Head, from a line in The Hobbit. Everybody'd ask which of us was Bilbo, so that became my nickname for many years. We were booked to play the Frankfurt AYA at one point but it got cancelled and when we arrived there was just a note on the door. This after driving all day down from Bitburg, but we were young and full of energy so we just jumped back into the van and headed for Munich. Wrecked our van on the way there, but that's another story.

Even if you just have a passing interest in film scores - and who doesn't? - this is a must-view. Yeh, much of it is obvious observations such as how a violin section made the Psycho murder scene scary, how motifs are used to establish characters, how the score sets the mood. Most of you will spend the first few minutes wondering when the film's gonna get to the meat. Yeh, we get it. Music's important to storytelling. But the music's really good. I was amazed at how many scores I knew from films I'd never seen. Never saw Superman or Dark Knight, but I fall asleep many nights listening to their scores.

My best friend is a graduate of Frankfurt AHS, class of '69. We met the following year in Munich, where we formed a band comprised of 2 Yanks and 2 Krauts. We Yanks couldn't legally play out without work permits, so we mostly played American service clubs, high schools and AYA clubs. However, our local guys also got us cash-under-the-table gigs at German college parties. Those were some chaotic Animal House grade alcohol-fueled bashes. Forget the stereotypes of serious, humorless Germans - it ain't so. Polite and friendly, yes. Reserved, no. I graduated from Upper Heyford AHS, in Oxfordshire, England in 1969. There were 33 students in my graduating class, not quite enough to populate a rock 'n roll band, so I joined up with four Brits who became my best friends during my time in England. We played some wild gigs there. Again, forget the stereotypes of staid, well-mannered Brits. There were always brawls. Most important to 18-year-old me, though, were the liberated ladies. It was an eye opener, having come there from uptight conservative Nebraska.

Very complex. But Cakewalk has already done the calculations and the data exists in there. It has to be recalculated every time a plugin is inserted or removed/unloaded. They just need to bring those numbers out to a dialog. I'll bet Noel could do it in half an hour. It's not like he has anything else on his plate .

ProTools does, too. But that's because in the early days they made you manually calculate PDC with the less-expensive versions of their software. Back then it was one of the reasons we found SONAR more attractive than ProTools, because SONAR gave you a feature for free that PT charged extra for. I think it's a great idea to add a dialog that lists those values, so that users can quickly see which plugins are adding the most latency. Obviously, those numbers are already there internally for calculating PDC. I'd go one step further and provide a report that can be saved as a text or XML file, listing every track and plugin used in the project.

While we're on the topic of keyboard gymnastics and stuff to challenge your brain... This bassist might not be an Asian cutie, but sheesh, he's certainly in the same league musically. His fingers keep up even when my brain can't.

Absolutely. Although sometimes she takes off into realms my brain cannot keep up with. Here she is 20 years ago, when she was still mostly down here in the realm of mortals.

How about some Japanese speed metal? Not my normal genre of choice, but I'd pay to see these guys.

Agreed. But let's not forget that Sgt Pepper was partly inspired by and greatly influenced by Pet Sounds, according to Sir Paul himself.

Me, too. I was married to one for 40 years. I just didn't want to be the first to point out how cute these ladies are. I'm sure they'd rather be acknowledged as musicians first, which I do. Which I surely do. But a sexy musician is way more interesting than, say, a sexy movie actress, which may explain why Susan Tedeschi makes my pupils dilate.

Just discovered these gals, and it's surprisingly addictive stuff. Cheese und Krackers, that bass player! All this is live. Well-recorded but not subsequently sweetened. The drummer's got pipes, too. It's bugging me that I can't identify the bottom keyboard...

I had one of those too! I couldn't afford the full package, though, which included the cheapest POS MIDI keyboard ever made. Still, I was convinced that it was the future of electronic music. Fortunately, MIDI was becoming standard and it wasn't long before I had a proper synth (Jupiter 6) with a MIDI port on it. That's what I first recorded with in Cakewalk 1.0.

Maybe I just need to be logged in. I'll create an account. Rather than be frustrated, I watched something else: The Mavericks on Austin City Limits. That there was some good sh*t. Great band. I never got too excited about them in the past, but this show was mostly in Spanish, and strangely not understanding the lyrics makes the music more enjoyable. French Canadian prog does the same for me.

Synchronicity. Minutes before seeing this thread I received a text message from someone who doesn't normally text me, saying "you gotta see this Brian Wilson doc". I've only caught the preview so far, since I don't watch television, but I understand there is a free app that lets you watch PBS shows. Will check that out.

I once read a Gearslutz thread where some pissant refuted a Dave Smith comment by posting "who the hell knows or cares who Dave Smith is?". I stopped hanging out on that forum soon after. This is for anyone who still doesn't know who the hell Mr. Smith was.

Off-topic, but since this thread is being visited by currently-performing musicians I have a decision to make that you all might have opinions on. I've been considering buying some portable stage lights for those venues that don't have any lighting. Some of the places we play don't even have a stage; they just slide over a pool table or move around tables and chairs. Those also happen to be some of our favorite gigs. But I hesitate to buy lights because it'll increase setup/teardown time. I already have a couple RGB pars, a DMX controller and cables, but haven't used them in years because it's more stuff to set up in addition to my rig, the PA and monitors. Fortunately, everybody in this band pitches in with the lifting, which is why I'm considering this purchase at all. Here's what I'm looking at - a pair of these, one for each side of the stage (or wood pallets, plywood on milk crates, or flat spot in the back garden), They pack up assembled, so the manufacturer claims a 5-minute setup time. They are wirelessly controlled, eliminating the need to string DMX cables. However, they'd only be used once or twice a month and the cost is not insubstantial. Your thoughts?

Thanks, but I wasn't in the service. To be honest, part of the reason I was living in Europe was to avoid being in the service. I was not a draft dodger; I registered for the draft on my 18th birthday like a good little citizen. Turns out that although they didn't bother drafting Americans who were living outside the US, they had no problem tossing them in jail for failing to get on the list. I did my part for military morale, though, entertaining the army at the EM, NCO and Officers' clubs, as well as hooking soldiers up with hashish. What can I say? I am a patriot.

Lugging gear in the rain and snow. Risking your life driving home with the drunks at 2:00 AM. Showing up at the venue with a 6-piece band and discovering a stage sized for a singer-songwriter with a drum machine. Meeting your FOH guy who introduces himself as a future metal star temporarily doing sound for free beer, just until he's discovered. Stairs. I don't hate anything about playing music, though. I'd play House of the Rising Sun one more time even without that $5 tip.

I think about this every time I see a classic band who've had to play the same songs over and over for 40-50 years. Especially the one-hit wonders. Even though the audience eats those oldies up, it's gotta be a chore. And they're really not allowed to take too many liberties with arrangements, lest the audience turn on them. My own philosophy is that you're an entertainer, period. Your one job is to entertain. Whatever makes the audience happy should make you happy too. If you don't feel that way, stay in the garage and entertain yourself. That said, the list of songs I won't play is too long to enumerate here.