Wow. Over the past few days, things have suddenly started getting busy for me (as if things weren’t busy enough already). On Friday night, my good friends that make up the blues duo “pyk’m” invited me to sit in and play a song or two during their set at a late-night event at the club Commune on Saturday 29 October.

Then, much later on Friday night, a good friend introduced me to guitar player Iwamoto Mitsugu. Iwamoto-san and I had a nice conversation, and he was very interested in learning about The Stick. He then invited me to play a few songs at a concert he is performing next Wednesday 26 October at the club Flying Kids.

Check the Schedule section for details about locations and times.

After doing some rearch on the Internet, I’ve lowered the pricing for the Stick Seminar, bringing it more in-line with similar events in the past in both the US and Europe. For details, see the Stick Seminar information page.

Dan Chapman has been working on a documentary of his brother, Emmett, and the birth and evolution of The Stick. He is making plans to have a friend in Japan come to Hiroshima and film the seminar, concert, and some interviews for possible use in the documentary. Some clips of his work thus far can be seen at the Stick Enterprises website, including one of Emmett (Lotus on Irish Streams) and one of Don Schiff (Ireland).

I’ve made some additions and minor changes to the website, including an RSS feed that will let you know when my website has been updated.

Click on the orange RSS button to jump to the RSS channel, where you can copy the URL to paste it into your favorite RSS reader (such as My Yahoo!, My Netscape, etc.). A simpler alternative for those not familiar with RSS readers is to click on the orange icon appearing in the lower right corner of your Mozilla Firefox browser. (This function is only available with Mozilla Firefox.) Select either “Subscribe to ‘www.ramuji.com [English]” or “Subscribe to www.ramuji.com [Japanese]”, and a folder containing the latest website updates will be added to your bookmarks.

With both options, there will be a list of the latest entries to this journal. Each of the links will bring you to the top page, from where you will need to scroll down to see the journal you want to read.

I’ve noticed some display issues when viewing this website in Internet Explorer. I’m not yet sure how I will address these problems. The site displays fine in both Firefox and Safari.

Tickets to Bob Culbertson’s concert on 12 November are now available for purchase from Yamaha music store, and Kawai music store.

Native Instruments has announced the release of version 2 of their Guitar Rig amp/cabinet/effects simulation software. It seems that it will be available sometime in November, although I haven’t yet been able to find a release date on their website.Highlights in the new version appear to be a few new amps and cab sims (including for bass), rotary speaker sims, a handful of new effect sims (including analog synthesizer filter), a crossover mix function for high frequency and low frequency splits, a group of modulators (LFO, analog sequencer, step sequencer, multi-step envelope), and a loop machine.

I’m very excited about the new possibilities that will be available, particularly the bass amp and cab sims for the bass side of the Stick, as well as the integrated looping function, and the modulators. The price for upgrade from Guitar Rig 1 seems quite reasonable.

The series of three concert events that I was involved in to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina raised a total of 283,203 yen (about US$2500). The entire sum has been donated to the Japan Red Cross. Thanks to everyone who came out to support us and donate money.

Things are starting to come together for the Stick Seminar and concert in November. I’ve been exchanging emails with Bob and Emmett several times over the past week to iron out some important details.

Some new friends that I have made through my involvement with the Hurricane Katrina Benefit Concerts have a weekly one-hour show broadcast on local radio (P-Station, FM76.6). I asked them if they would be willing to play some of Bob’s music on the air and advertise the upcoming concert/seminar. Not only did they happily agree, but the idea has expanded; they’ve asked me to appear on the show for a spot of probably somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes. The plan is, in addition to playing some of Bob’s songs, to have me talk a bit about the Stick and its history, and then for me to perform a song or two live in the studio. The show is pre-recorded, and will probably be broadcast on 6 November. I’ll go into the studio for recording in a few weeks, and will post details here afterwards.