I received an incredibly wonderful surprise yesterday. A major performer/recording artist/teacher in the Stick community sent me an email, expressing an interest in visiting Japan later this year for a possible seminar and performances. We are still discussing and exchanging ideas by email, so I’m not even close to making any kind of announcement yet, but I may be sending out feelers soon to gauge how much interest there might be in a possible Stick Seminar in Hiroshima.

Addendum: The person I mentioned above is Bob Culbertson. Bob and I have continued to exchange emails today, and we have decided that I should start gauging interest in how many people would be interested in participating in a Chapman Stick Seminar held in Hiroshima and taught by Bob. He is thinking about coming to Japan in October, although nothing will be determined until we get an idea of the level of interest this will generate. If you are interested in participating, please send me an email.

I will be one of several musicians playing at Rendezvous on 8 April, in a fund-raising event for the good people at GetHiroshima.com. The administrators of that website are being sued by a local English conversation school, for comments posted to the website’s forums by an annonymous user that the owner of the school feels defamed both him and the school. It all sounds bogus to me, but even if GetHiroshima should be found free of liability, they will still have a mound of legal fees to pay. GH’s many friends have started to come together to do what we can to pay them back for everything they’ve done, and continue to do, for us. I’ll post more details about the start time and performing acts as soon as more info is available.

I just placed an order for a Behringer FCB1010 Midi Foot Controller. The FCB1010 was the first MIDI controller I ever owned, but after some searching and experimenting, I ended up replacing it with the Ground Control Pro, which I am still very happy with. So, why order an FCB1010 again? Well, I’ve recently installed the SooperLooper looping software into my MacRack, and have decided that I’m going to need a separate foot controller dedicated to looping functions. So, to recap: my original motiviation in switching from a conventional effects rack to the MacRack was the ability to expand my processing gear without increasing the size or weight of the equipment that I have to carry around. Now, with the addition of new processing software to my MacRack, I will be doubling the size and weight of the equipment I use to control it.