Saturday 14 August 2004 by ramuji
Following a nice lunch at a nearby French cafe that Chicaco and I really like, we spent the rest of Sunday taking it easy at home watching TV and listening to music. Chicaco found time to watch
Zatoichi today; I’ll have to find time in my schedule to watch it this week before returning it to the video shop on Friday. We also spent a good part of the day watching the Olympics. We’ve been hooked on the judo competitions, and Japan has faired well with 3 golds and a silver.I’ve never quite been able to work out the left-hand bass motors that Emmett describes in
Free Hands. I simply haven’t put enough time into practicing and getting it up to speed while soloing with my right hand. A few days ago, I was playing some quick 16th notes in the bass, and after a friend commented how he liked how it sounded I realized that it was something of a modified version of what Emmett was teaching in the book. So, I’ve been reading through those pages of Free Hands again, and also watched
Hands Across the Board again today for some visual input. Now, I just need to spend some serious time on practicing it.
I found this picture of Greg Howard on the website of Sound House, one of my favorite music equipment suppliers in Japan. Apparently they send staff members to the US every year to attend and report on the NAMM events, and had the chance to speak with and photograph Greg at this year’s Summer Session in Nashville. Greg was demostrating the graphite model Stick XG at the booth exhibited by Moses, the company that provides the graphite bodies to Stick Enterprises.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Stick Players, Stick Techniques | No Comments »
Friday 13 August 2004 by ramuji
Mid-August in Japan is a time for remembering family members who have died, and most companies have at least a few days off. So, this is a long weekend for me, and I’m spending it doing a lot of nothing. I did finally go out on Thursday night and buy a new microphone for my iRiver mp3 player/recorder. I tested it out a bit on Friday, and it appears that it is going to work out very nicely.
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Wednesday 11 August 2004 by ramuji
Jamie and Natasha had their wedding party on Monday night. Although they’ve been together for several years, they had never had a party with their friends, plus it was excellent timing since Jamie’s family is in Hiroshima now to visit them. We started off at 6pm with about 35 people at Rendez-Vous for food, drinks, and general merriment, and then moved on to a much larger event at El Barco starting at 9:30pm. A large group showed up at El Barco, many of us with instruments, and we celebrated for hours making music. The party was still going strong when I finally gave in and went home at 3:30am.
By the way, the kilt-clad Jamie and his two brothers, Fran and Simon, were a big hit with the ladies, and not because their knees were exposed. I wouldn’t be suprised if a few interesting “up-skirt” photos started showing up on the Internet soon.
For quite some time I’ve been wanting to add another effects unit to my rack for the melody strings, but I had given up on the idea because I can’t afford it right now. But, I started obsessing about the idea again last night, and stayed up rather late reading on-line product manuals again. I’m leaning toward products made by T.C. Electronic and Lexicon. The idea is to connect another processor in series with the Boss SE-70 that I’m currently using, to expand the palette and flexibility of sounds on the melody side. For now, I’ve simply re-wired my current rack so that both of my SE-70s are now processing the melody strings. This leaves my bass strings un-processed, which isn’t necessarily a downside, although I would like to eventually move one of the SE-70s back to the bass side.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Gear Talk | No Comments »
