Although there are always several new pieces of gear that I want for processing my Stick signals, rather than dwell on how limited I am because I don’t have “super processing unit X”, I think I need to focus on being more creative with my existing units.

I’ve recently purchased a portable mp3 player with a 20GB hard drive. Supposedly, this thing can store several thousand compressed music files. It also has an internal microphone for recording audio direct to a compressed file. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use it to record my performances, and maybe upload some files to my website in the future.

I’ve been compressing (actually using Ogg Vorbis rather than mp3) some of my favorite CDs, which has led to me spending several hours over the past few days listening to Stick recordings I hadn’t touched for quiet a while. This “re-discovery” has been rather inspiring.

Although nearly 20 years old, Emmett Chapman’s Parallel Galaxy is, for me, still the quintessential Stick recording. While there have been several incredible albums by great Stick musicians since then, Parallel Galaxy is still the one that sets the bar for everyone else.