Life, Games and flatulence

please make it stop

2012-02-15T23:24:00.004Z

I had a break, frankly marking is making me google eyed and my fingers were getting soft from the lack of guitar playing, and since we have band practice tomorrow and...oh I can't think of any more excuses...I needed to twiddle with my new pedal

It really is neat, many of the settings are pretty tradional tone based fx, all very nice and really clean, but its the Sequencer fx and ryhthm based stuff that makes the ADIII stand out, here's something I was messing about with to see what the difference is with short, sustained chords and single notes..I found if I kept a bass note going as I was strumming or picking notes I got the most amazing groove going...
I recorded it.
The drums are the machine of course which locks down the beat, but the rest of it is one guitar playing a few chords and single note lines while maintaning a base note rhythm..its brill, I need to work out how to expand this into a song. I even played some blues licks over it at one point and it sounded good, so maybe some trippy blues thing...watch this space during next weeks Bina's in Iceland so Brian's going to record in his underwear week.

Ahthankyew

While the girls are watching Emmerdale

2012-02-14T19:56:00.001Z

I had a tinker with my new toy.

Bloody hell

WOW!!

Can't wait till next week when I have some real time.

Ahthankyew

Real pain is....

2012-02-14T12:45:00.003Z

Having new toys to play with but absolutely no time to play with them.

The Adrenalinn III FX/Drum pedal and FCB 1010 midi board arrived today, incredible service as always from Thomann.de pretty much next day delivery.

I can't really use the midi board anyway, though its perfectly possible to program it and do all kinds of things to make it work with the AdrenalinnIII, I bought a special PROM from the US which automatically programs it to work with the ADIII as a dedicated board (I have no other midi kit so might as well). I'll hold off on playing with that till the PROM arrives and is fitted, no sense in learning stuff only to end up not using it in the end.

If I can finish the marking in the next day or 2, I will finally have a whole week of free time (aside from my Didactics resit) next week for Spring(????) holiday, when I plan to do a monster recording session or 2 and get to know my new toy.

Anyway...I plugged it it to try it out and the drums sound amazing..I'll restrict myself to that for now...back to marking.

Ahthankyew

Getting the groove right

2012-02-11T17:18:00.004Z

I've been toying with drums for a while, I own a very basic electronic drum kit but its not great for learning on and lets face it I have no real sense of rythm so I've been using it more for patterns and occasional high hats. I like my Cahjon a lot really need to get into that more. But I need a drummer who can play some groves for me and let me noodle along. Backing tracks and in built rythms on my pedals work ok but your kind of fixed into the 1 groove for ever or can only play as long as the track lets you.
When I want to play something I like, especially old blues songs, getting that ch ch ch ting/boom rythmn which then changes as it build ups mid way and speeds and up slows down as the mood changes, is not always easy to find, or indeed control without stopping playind and clicking on computers or something else, losing the groove.

I assumed there would be loads of guitarist drum machines on the market but it turns out there are very few and almost all adhere to the standard 3/4 4/4 rock/latin/samba type of offerings...I want something more flexible, something I can control, preferably set up on a PC and switch on and off , build up, slow down and change the grove with my feet while I play.

There are VERY few things on the market that do that...shock!

The closest is this

Which is impressive though it needs some extra pedals and software to get the best out of it.

Needless to say I'm going to try it out.

Lets hope it does the job or I may have to hire a drummer by the hour to live in thestore cupboard.

Ahthankyew

Must...keep..going

2012-02-09T08:46:00.003Z

Marking marking marking...wow so much of it.

Though have tried to make a point of only doing it during working hours or when I have nothing else to do, so it does not take over my life...As always the best laid plans didn't quite work out as expected, a lot of the assignments needed careful review and reading which when you're dealing with code is a lot of reading.. Fortunatly I have one of those memories where if I see something I can recall if I've seen it before...but not always where.

Probably going to be another week, and as usual I've got people screaming that some things need to be prioritised, breaking my pattern of working on 1 thing at a time...but hey ho. I've got a big chunk of time today so might get the 1st load of IGD's finished and then do some emergency AGT's sorted out (they need the grade to be able to do other things)

Took time off a couple of evenings this week though, on Tuesday I went to the Speeltuin cafe (the play ground) which is famous for its jam sessions on Tuesday nights, you turn up, get on stage and play, basic kit is available though it seems the dedicated bring their own kit.

I almost get up with my guitar playing collegue Oliver to do a bit of blues but the stage got overtaken by a bunch of regulars who almost certainly play as a band and hogged the stage most of the night...Very good though, they played really well and way above my standard so I wasn't tempted to muscle in at any point, though Oliver joined in a few times quite impressively desptite bemoaning the quality of the guitar on offer.

Also last night, Wednesday, was the Breda Ex pats quiz night, which is a semi regular english quiz, run by the Ex pats society. My team, the Bald and the Beautiful, have won every one so far, and last night was no exception, 5 in a row.

Exciting as it is to win, its starting to get a bit much now so I think we're going to stand down for a while to give the other teams an incentive to keep coming. There was a low turnout last night due to weather and other things and we don't want to be responsible for putting people off....5 in a row though :)

Off to the docs in an hour to see about my cough, its now 7 weeks, its not as bad as it was, but its still there and it needs to be sorted out.

Then another chunk of marking and a quiet night in.

bliss.

Ahthankyew

There's no end to it.

2012-02-02T13:16:00.007Z

Not the Marking, that will end eventually, if I live that long. But the constant meetings that seem to get crammed into this week, the only real week when I have no student activity, which leaves scant time left for marking and course prep.

But as I sit waiting to go into another meeting, I though I'd check out my train fares to Nantes/Saintes in July for my guitar course. Took a little bit of doing but eventually I got it sorted out. 135 euros and 6 or so hours, not bad, certainly cheaper and faster than the car, once you factor in the cost of fuel and tolls, with the added advantage of being able to read/snooze on the train.
What was even more surprising was that if I go 1st class, its cheaper!!!!!! 6 whole euro's cheaper...didn't expect that. Good for NS Trein, Fyra and TGV, whats more its only 3 trains to travel quite some 670km :D

Can't actually book it yet since it seems they only have a 3 month advance booking option, but good to know that the train can take the strain without killing my wallet.

Ahthankyew

Marking......

2012-01-30T11:01:00.003Z

So now begins marking hell, 3 courses, approx 100 assignments and 1 week to get them all graded!!

lol yeah right, ask me in 2 weeks.

Ahthankyew

21 today

2012-01-28T18:17:00.002Z

My lovely daughter is now 21.

wait..how its that even possible, its was only yesterday I was changing nappies and wiping her nose (not with the nappies), yet here we are 21 years on.

I missed a lot of her growing up, I was there till she started school and raised her while her mum worked, but as our relationship collapsed I had to step back and let her mum be the main parent, but I stayed around as much as I could and was always there for her, watching her grow from little girl, to moody teen, to smart young woman and now...21...wow

I am very proud of Danni, she's turned out a level headed, sensbile woman, who will tackle anything life throws at her......words don't describe how amazing a feeling that is for a dad.

Ahthankyew

storage is the key

2012-01-27T20:59:00.005Z

The attic is a mess, there's cardboard and packing material and tables and bits of stuff all over the place, since I've been spending the last several days building this...

Brilliant isn't it. Storage for 9-10 guitars each side, with the bottom side being reserved for guitars in use and out of their cases.

I do really prefer them all to hand, but this at least keeps them safe and solves what was becoming a major crisis for storage.

Its basically a double Pax wardrobe from Ikea, with sliding door (don't get the expensive glass ones if you don't need them, I didn't realise I had a choice) and divided in the middle rather than adding lots of cloth hanging/storage stuff. I still want to had a bit of re-enforcment to the shelving but loading it up now to see if all fits I noted it didn't stress or bend so it seems to be ok..for now, I'm still going to put a few support pillars in. At the moment a ABS case is acting as a bit of girder holding it up if it was too heavey, but I think we're good.

Quite a palava building it, Bina and I have been banging on about getting new robes for the bedrooms for ages, and I do like the Pax ones, but after this, when we do get them, we'll hire the ikea guys to build it for us.

Only a bit of re-ordering to do now, need to get rid of a table and move things around a bit to make use of the space so we can get full use of our home cinema as well as my studio/music room office, withouth tripping over guitars.

Ahthankyew

failed...oh the shame

2012-01-24T23:38:00.002Z

Well no not really shame...I didn't supply quite enough info in the assinment so have not passed, I've been given feedback on what is missing and can represent. I'll have a bit of a rest since I'm still a bit poorly with the cough and do it next week.

I was one of 3 who are having to represent, so at least I'm not alone, we still had a fun graduation ceremony and an interesting last day of tution in the art of managing groups which I found very interesting.

I even got some flowers :D very nice...Bina liked them.
Some pics were taken so I'll post them when they are sent to me.

Ahthankyew

Still coughing and the suspense is killing me

2012-01-24T00:03:00.004Z

A week on and I'm still coughing like a good un, going back to the vet to see what else he can give me, not really interested in any more puffers the effectiveness seems to have worn off, I want rid.

Got some feedback from my asignment, favourable but with requests to make some ammendments and additions, which is fine. I probably will not graduate tomorrow, but that means I get a month to fix the problems and resubmit which will be a lot better over all as I have much less teaching to do next block compared to this.
I'll know for sure tomorrow.

Might now finally get a chance to finish my guitar vault and start storing things in their correct places.

I got to spend 30 mins at last with my new toy and I am really liking my EX7 it has some quite remarkable tones in it, especially the Leslie speaker emulation, which gives a warmth and richness to my playing I've not been able to get before..becuase I don't have Leslie speakers of course and am never likely to considering the cost and size of them.

I decided to get a 2nd one to take with me to band practice, since I really don't like taking pedals out of my home board and carting them around, managed to pick up a barely used one half price on ebay (pic above) even allowing for postage costs, its a heavy item, I still saved a lot on a back up that I will keep in my bag and let my home one stay on the board at all times.

The band are now resolved to do more regular practice, and we've settled on a core of 6 songs to get right before adding more, a mix, of pop, rock, blues and r&b numbers..lets hope we manage to do decent versions of them all. I'm comfortable with most of them except Foo Fighters Monkey Wrench with is a banging tune played very fast, not my usual style at all, fortunaly I just need to play 4 of 5 chords over and over again as the rythm guitar, Martin as lead can do the riffs.

Oh and in other news I got an ok to be away from Breda in July to attend another Creative Vacance guitar course, this time blues guitar, so I'm really looking forward to that, I improved so much in my acoustic playing after the last one and am hoping there will be a similar improvement in my electric playing this time. I'll get the travel arranged in advance to save costs...assuming there is a saving when you book train fares...I drove last time, which was fine, but it was a long and expensive trip once toll's were factored in. Train this time, relaxing and a chance to do any final work related stuff as I travel....few months off though.

Ahthankyew

Zzzzzzz

2012-01-23T03:21:00.001Z

Assignments done...and sent, not sure they're good enough but I did my best, if they fail I get a month to fix them which should be possible in the next lighter block.
Student issues dealt with, and work related form filling and reading done

4-23am now...up at 8-45 to get ready for meeting....

life is never dull

Ahthankyew

So this is what being a student feels like?

2012-01-21T14:12:00.003Z

Well its been a mad week, due to having to take a day and a half off due to the chest/cough, I've had the remaining work time filled up with other IGAD stuff, mainly students taking advantage of the ask Brian for help before he shuts down in exam week offer.
Which is fine, except for the fact I have a Didactics assignment, 2 actually to hand in this week. There simply was not enough time for that, I tried to flesh out the notes and roughs I'd build on over the weeks, but it just wasn't possible, my days of being able to work all day and night are long since passed me and I missed my deadline, fortunaly I am being allwowed to hand it in a few days late, and as a worst case if I do miss it I get a month to redo it..So it will be sorted, but for the 1st time really I've had a students view point of not being able to cope with my workload.

In my case I don't think I could have avoided it, I 've been doing my homework, making notes and roughing things out, but the sheer weight of coruse work I've had this block added to the extra faculty meetings and comittees I have to work on...its been crazy.

I've not been able to complete my guitar vault, just not enough time, though I did get 10 minutes to unpack and plug in my newest toy a Digitech Ex7 expession pedal, mainly for the awesome Leslie effect it has, but also lots of other cool fx....an incentive to get my assignment done so I can actually play with the thing.

Ahthankyew

slow, slow, qu...slow slow

2012-01-17T21:51:00.003Z

Despite my cough being under control with the inhaler, I've had to avoid the cold air outside and have been messing about with assignments and grading.

Also made a start on my new IKEA guitar vault, which is basically a standard Ikea Wardrobe but built for storage and re-enforced on the shelves to hold the guitars.

Normally I love doing flatpack furniture, its just like messing with big Airfix kits, but in my not well state, it was quite an effort, having to stop at every single little step. Normally I'd have it up and done in a few hours, but this is going to be a couple of days at this rate..got the 1st section up though and trying it out for size.

All fits....there's another section to be built and joined onto that section, reenfocement on the shelves, then glass sliding doors (A slight excess on my part as I didn't realise I could buy cheaper non glass doors..) and all should be fine and dandy.

I think I can store 20 in there, 5 in each section, though maybe less if cased. The bottom rack will hold my most used non Gibsons (I'll keep the gibbos on the wal) and the other racks can keep the less often used acoustics safe and secure and snug.
All in all a huge space savingbut still accessable.

Just wish I was fit enough to get it up and done. But work commitments mean I could only do a couple of hours and thats as much as I managed.

Hoping the inhaler lets me get a full nights sleep, and not get kicked out into the spare room for keeping Bina awake...Who incidently had a wisdom tooth out today, and she's still the smartest women I know...go figure??

Ahthankyew

inhalers are ...ok

2012-01-17T11:30:00.003Z

Went to docs about my cough, was lucky to get a same day appointment despite calling in later than planned.

Doc, a huge hulking ape like man who hunched over as he walked to the room with me following, had a bit of a listen, decided there was no real sign of infection but that my lungs were sensitive at the moment and prescribed an inhaler.

Funny thing is, both he and the chemist went to great pains to explain the correct way to use it, and warned of the deeply unpleasant issue of having to suppress the cough reflex you get when inhaling such things. But I must breath through it they both emphasised.

Got home...readies myself for this new, and apparently unpleasent medical experience, breathed right out, then deep breath in as shown, and pressed the inhaler button as I am taking my deepest possible breath.
....
...

nothing....did anything come out?

Pressed it onto my hand and yes sure enough, a little puff of something comes out.

So I think, it might have been a bit of an air lock in the gadget, shake it up, and repeat process...same result, absolutely no cough reflex or unpleasent sensation at all, in fact nothing whatsoever appeared to happen.

I think I just gave myself a double dose with no cough reflex.

hmmm best not do it again for a few hours then.

Oh...cough seems to have died down..so something has happened, good stuff this ;)

Ahthankyew

cough cough splutter yeeuuuugghhh

2012-01-16T23:39:00.003Z

Thats the noise I've been making most of the day today as the 1st real cold day of the Winter met with the tail end of my holiday cold to give me a mother of a cough that will probably keep me awake all night and missing out on another of my cool Didactic classes as well as an important staff discussion meeting.

I'll give the doctors surgery a call tomorrow and see if I can get a same day appointment out of them to get some A/B's and proper cough meds, which are surprisingly hard to find here, as are good cold/flu meds.

Oh well....spare room for me tonight.

Ahthankyew

thats better

2012-01-12T18:51:00.002Z

Fretlight's back, €35 well spent, still has a bit of a buzz somewhere probably on the bridge but that does not impact on its playing tone when amped so all is well.

The New nut is considerably better and I can do 1st,2nd and 3rd string bends with impunity now. A considerable difference seeing a proper cut nut in place compared to the badly scored bit of plastic that was on there.

I noticed though on testing it, that the humming and computer feedback is still very evident on the neck pup, even played wirelessly, you still need to have the midi contoller plugged in via a wire, to the guitar and pc so there is "noise" going back up into it. So I'm quite sure there's a quality issue in the earthing of the midi LED controller and that neck pup. But not going to worry about it, its for practice not playing, and I can use the other 2 pups no problem.

It can now take its place now in the stand near the computer ready to be plugged in with Guitar Pro6 for Fretlight to let me practice scales, modes and occasional songs. But I can't see me buying any more Fretlight products for the forseeable future.

I'll take Goldie in next to get her pickup selecter fixed, my DIY repair job has not really worked and now I can't access the neck pup or the out of phase sounds at all..best let the pro handle it.

Ahthankyew

Embarassed, moi?

2012-01-11T00:44:00.004Z

Finally managed to take my fretlight to the shop today to get its nut properly installed and I thought I might as well spend a few quid to try to upgrade it generally. I was thinking, some new modest pickups, perhaps a coil tap on the humbucker. All sorts of smart ideas to make it into something worth keeping.

But the shop tech was having none of it.. simply not worth it, the bridge was the cheapest of cheap and the light wood body had little or no resonance on it to make any kind of mod viable.
It has a nice neck which is where it gets most of its sustain but otherwise its little better than some of the cheapest guitars they sell for beginners. Pickups are cheap, frets are not well dressed and of course the supplied nut is terrible and totally ineffective for proper playing.

I wanted the pickups changed to get rid of a hum on the neck pup, but he was adamant that it was simple single coil hum...I pointed out none of my other single coils hum that loud and he made a vald point, my other guitars are quality, and have quality pups.

I had to concede he was probably right.. there's no point spending money on a guitar thats only there for practicing my scales, keys and learing new songs with the supplied software.

Since its only a practice guitar and never ever ever going to be used for any serious music, changing the pups or anything else is throwing money away.

So he's going to fit a proper nut on it, set the action to a decent level and give it a proper set up. That alone will cost a couple of quid and thats where I'll leave it.
Overall todays experience in the shop confirmed what I already believed, I think that the concept of a tutor guitar with light-up fretboard is decent, but the quality of the actual instrument leaves a lot to be desired, at least on this base level model..I can't see me ever buying another. Shame really, since a harder wood and through body bridge would probably make it quite decent. I've actually bought betterr 50quid guitars on ebay...pity their fretboards didnt light up!

Oh well.

Ahthankyew

I'm cured!!!

2012-01-08T00:27:00.004Z

I went with Bina to Utrecht today, she's was doing an exam for her Masters (which of course she'll get another A* for). And to amuse myself I went hunting for music shops.

I found the motherload!! Feedback Music...OMG Guitars, basses, Guitars, keyboards, Guitars, pedals, guitars, drums...everything in fact, including guitars.

Loooooads of them and proper makes, not the cheap branded chinese crap we have on sale at our local padding out the 2 or 3 decent guitars on offer.

And amazngly, all well priced....I tried loads of different ones, almost broke a Fender Acusticsonicaster thingy, which due to its thin head dropped off the wall mount after I played with it..fortunatly I caught it before it hit the ground and the shop staff wisely then placed it on a stand rather than the wall.

Lots and lots of interesting guitars, I got to try them out, even the expensive ones and for the most part I didn't like the way they felt...so no purchase. I got a chance to compare an Epiphone Lucille with my Gibsons and really there is no comparison. I tried a couple of Line6 variax's and loved the cheaper one, the top end having a strange heel join to the body that I hated. A couple of PRS Se's also felt great to play, one was on offer.....tempting. Ibanez's were nice but I just can't see the appeal myself. The Fender acoustithing was nothing to write home about. There were some very nice basses which almost had me reaching for my credit card, but nothing at a price I could justify for the amount I play, I'll stick with my old Roberts for now.

But, heres the thing, though I still have a chunk of my Xmas bonus available, I didn't purchase anything...I walked out smiling and happy with my twiddles, I know now what a range of guitars feel like and more important I know now where to go if I feel the need to buy another (I won't though...) and try before I buy.

GAS is clearly under control. Well that and the fact I am going to buy a wardrobe and convert it into a vault, as well as perhaps buy some better electronic drums as my kit is really not good for learning on, so I had other uses for my bonus money......still ....progress eh!

Ahthankyew

Home sweet home

2012-01-05T03:20:00.002Z

Nice to have a break, but even nicer to come home to your own bed, even if at the moment I'm not in it, due to the fact I have a nasty cough from the cold I developed on holiday. I'll be waking Bina up if I snuggle into bed then start hacking and wretching. Though much better I'm still hacking, so spare room for me when this is done :(

I lost the final day of the holiday due to a nasty spot of food poisoning, not sure if it was the dissapointing Chinese we had or the really tasty but slighly dodgy and huge street seller candy floss I gobbled afterwards...probably the candy floss.

But a day on the couch in close running distance to a handy downstairs loo, had me back to normal again and we headed off on our trip home. Leaving my digital camera in the hire car in the process..bah..hopefully they can send it on to me...we'll have to see.

Speaking of digital camera's Bina had an absolute ball at Lorca Parque on Tenerife getting herself a yearly pass so she could go every day she wanted to see her beloved Orcas and dolphins. She went 3 times in the end. In the process taking some utterly brilliant pics which are on her facebook page, I might post a few on here too.

But holidays end, flight back was pretty good, we were worried about bad weather but we manage to miss it and had smooth flying and landings with no problems at all.

Stright to our soft and sadly seperate beds till the cough dies down.

I had a nice relaxing 1st day back with my girls, trying to do some recording of Bonamassa and Harts amazing version of Bobby Bland's "I'll take care of you", which I played on a loop 50 times at least when I was lying ill on the couch.. its just utterly brilliant.

Of course I couldn't get it down, I'll need a bit of help from my bandmates to be able to get this masterpiece recorded, and you can forget that end solo...wow.

Still I enjoyed the process of trying, its nice to have a bit of a break from playing guitar then finding that the break has made you more aware of things your doing right and wrong, so today was a good day despite the recording failure..I'll try something a bit simpler instead.....
like this

Which I can play, if not sing..

or maybe this..

a bit more challenging with several layers, but not too hard and very cool...

Watch this space and we'll see what I come up with.

New Year of course means new resolutions, my resolution is not to make any resolutions, oops which I've just broken...not to worry, I had already made up my mind to lose weight and get fitter once Holidays were all done, I'll start charting progress on that soon... The target is to lose 50lbs in 6 months, while obviously rediscovering the Charles Atlas body that is currently hidden in this Homer Simpson padded suit..
Lets just stick to the 50lbs..some diet...some....note that mum, some...But mostly more excersise.

Ahthankyew

Hello 2012

2011-12-31T20:36:00.004Z

Internet is incredibley bad here in Tenerife, we seem to be bouncing off a reflected signal which comes and goes, usually right in the middle of something important that needs downloads.

So I'll keep this brief.

Happy New Year to you all, its been an interesting year, no where near as bad as 2010 but a lot more work, 2012 has promise though...lets hope we all get what we want, or if we try real hard we might get what we need.

Peace love and other assorted platitudes which probably won't post.....

Ahthankyew

Lost and Found now for some sunshine

2011-12-23T14:15:00.006Z

Lost in Space did turn up, she'd been delivered to the next building, the sender seems to have forgotton to put the building number on the label, though he did put the building name on so I am surprised at UPS not making the connection with a big building with PAKHUIS carved in 3 foot high letters on the wall as well as a large PkHS logo on the front..
never mind, it arrived..sadly very slightly damaged but not in anyway that causes it to be unusable, as I said before she is a cheapo guitar, so her wood is not solid mahogany like my other axes, more plywood if you get my meaning, as a result a flake on the tip of one of the legs got bashed off and lost the paint exposing the wood. But not to worry.

So she's now waiting to be abused by hoards of students in our Game Anylsis Room...or rec room as it should be called. So long as they don't throw her around she'll be fine and we'll all have a lot of fun plugging our ipods into her..ermmmm lots of things wrong with that statement.

Lucky it did show up today, since this is our last day at work..I have a full day of GameLab supervision/help ahead but after that 2 whole weeks of Xmas holiday, much of which we are spending in sunny Tenerife, spending our lovely double salary bonus...I've mentioned how much I love my job right??

Roll on the sunshine, I must confess to beig totally exhausted this last block, with difficult classes and huge amounts of prep, admin and marking work its been pretty intensive and I need the rest.

oh well back to work..for a few more hours.

Ahthankyew

hmmmm ebay losing the plot

2011-12-23T09:40:00.003Z

With The Lost in Space guitar still not resolved, and not likely to be anytime soon, this has been a pretty bad month all told for ebay purchases and postal purchases in general

I bought some expensive wireless headphones which were useless and the seller agreed to replace them, but so far has not, and has suddenly started accumulating lots of neg feedback on his store, and not responding to mailes, suggesting big issues/walked away, which might be a problem

Several small packages from the US appear to have gone awol, including Bina's Birthday pressie/s to me which she tells me was coming from the US though she thought it was NL.

I'm not overly worried about my ebay problems, I buy huge amounts of stuff, sometimes quite expensive things, and lots of small things, and problems are rare.

Paypal is of course a total joke and never any use when there are genuine issues, which is why I usually pay via paypal with my credit card, there's always a protection system in place there, so if worst comes to worst and my headphone guy has done a bunk with my cash, I can claim it back and let the UK Police pay him a visit at my credit cards request.

We'll give UPS a chance to resolve the guitar over the holiday period, its not the sellers fault, though when all said and done I have not got my goods, so if a claim has to be made, it has to be made. They can claim from UPS who have gone so far down in my estimations I don't ever want to use them again.

Ahthankyew

Lost in Space

2011-12-21T14:23:00.004Z

Quite annoyed with UPS, it seems they have lost, or misdelivered a package.

I bought this,

She's a Space Invader themed flying V, as a "gift" to my work recreation area...to add to our acoustic guitar and keyboard collection which the students and staff sometimes bang out a tune on..(I may be tempted to play it a bit myself)

It wasn't expensive, but all the same it wasn't free, so was a bit narked to find that UPS reported it as delivered yesterday. I had it delivered to the work address since thats where it will live and the office is never usually empty.

Apparently it was delivered at 1.07 and signed for (with a squiggle according to image on the tracking system) by someone called Jansen

20/12/2011
13:07
BREDA, NL
DELIVERED - JANSEN

20/12/2011
03:47
EINDHOVEN, NL
IMPORT SCAN
20/12/2011

03:11
EINDHOVEN, NL
OUT FOR DELIVERY

Trouble is we have no one called Jansen here and no one saw any sign of the UPS man who's no stranger to our building.....oh dear.

So its either gone to the totally wrong address and someone has taken it in...or someone has snagged it as it was being delivered here...either way..WTF!!! are UPS doing giving large box to someone who's name is not on the box.

Lets hope the driver remembers where he delivered it, or a claim will be heading off pretty soon.

Ahthankyew

noodles

2011-12-18T20:46:00.004Z

Birthday weekend == time for guitar playing ;), at least until I have to start prepping this weeks lectures.

Been wanting to do a version of this for a long time, its a really big classic of course and everyone knows the amazing original, its not often done any different, so I had planneed to do a darker version which was sounding really ermmm "nice" , when I practiced it, but I can't sing (or even think sing) and play so I got the I know I know I know bit in the wrong place when I laid down this track, but I thought it sounded great even with out the dischordant stuff I had planned ot put in, so I decided to just do a bit of mood noodling along to a great sounding 1st track riff I got down...shame its not a bit longer....might revisit this if I can find a singer to do the vocals properl

Ahthankyew

Crappy day

2011-12-15T20:21:00.002Z

Won't go into too much detail since my blog is not as private as it once was, but today was a seriously crappy day...I don't think I've had a day quite like it in 3.5years of teaching, trying to get a simple and important concept across and being forced to simplify it till it had little or no meaning, only to find even that extreme simplification wasn't registering.

When you stand next a student and they can't even type in a dictation of the answer its hard work.

There's only so many ways you can express a simple concept till you end up repeating it over and over again and feel like giving up.

Going to have to have a bit of a rethink about the teaching method used and the expectations of the students involved. Some advice from my didactics tutor is needed.

Ahthankyew

Hmm I'm doing it wrong.

2011-12-11T17:53:00.004Z

I am supervising 1st year IGD gamelab at work, thats my 1st time working with the IGD group and its been quite an eyeopener.

The IGD are designed to be more specialised than the Programming and Visual Art tracks, they need to be all rounders who can do some coding, some art adn some production with a view to letting them develop their own specialites.

The Gamelab concept is based normally on the idea that students get chucked into the thick of it and we stop those that are sinking from ermm sinking while the swimmers get going and in time everyone picks up the the working in a team mentality.

That works very well with PR and VA students who get mixed up and do their own thing, but we're finding IGD to be a bit more problematic.

Mainly due to the coding side of it, there has to be some level of tech skills and in this case we really don't have it. I do teach some of them programming in the 2nd block after they have already been doing gamelab for 3 months.

So its been a struggle, and this week I've been doing some work to help them get things up to spec....I can see so many basic mistakes, stuff I have been teaching in class just isn't being used.

so...while I get that they have not had the benefit of me teaching them coding for 3 months..they have had me for 5 weeks and the basics I explained just havn't been getting used...Thats my fault I think, if they are not understanding the importance of what I am explaining, especially the basics, then I'vd not done my job right.

Got 3 weeks left to get them on track before they start their next gamelab. I am going to be keepng a very close eye on them to see if my re-asserting the basics works.

Ahthankyew

Diet !!!! Hell no!

2011-12-03T18:25:00.004Z

As I approach 49 (edit oops 48...maybe I can postpone the exercise a year then) in a couple of weeks...I am becoming increasingly aware of the fact I'm a right podgy bastard...most of my shirts are getting tighter....and its not due to machine washing.

Despite cycling a lot, I also eat a lot..and of course something has to happen. I am currently 14st, 92kg. Which is actually what I weighed just before my cancer. I lost a lot of weight soon after than, but slowly its been going back on.

Anyway for my height and build, I should really be around 10-11st. So.....it begins!! I can't really carry this weight around and not expect a heart attack before I'm 60. So its time to shed it...not with diet..I hate diets..but slightly more sensible eating and ...wait for it.

Excercise.

gulp

I have agreed to join Bina's Gym (which will also encourage her to go a bit more as she does not like going alone) and I'm going to take up some running.

To enforce this I just bought THE most expensive pair of trainers in the history of my ever buying trainers. 160euros..yes I said 160. Apparently after testing my running style (by videoing me running in the shop..I shit you not) the specialist show shop reccomends a set of shoes with some extra lift on the instep to help prevent injury.

160....gulp...There's an old saying which goes something like...Spend little, but spend wisely, I take that to mean don't waste money but buy the best you can...so...

I better end up being ablet to run sub 2 hour marathons after that level of investment!!!

Anyway...Starting off light till I get into the swing...Going to go for some light cycleing around the area, then some walking then light jogging.
I'll keep a track on the weight to see if its dropping.

Ahthankyew

A wall of Gibsons

2011-12-01T18:03:00.004Z

There's Libby lined up with my other Gibsons.
waiting for her to warm up a bit before I tune her up and have a bit of plinkyplonky time. She's really nice though, a '98 model so nicely aged. Only 1 minor crack on her, but she has been looked after very well.

She does need a clean though...she smells a bit, think her last owner must have been a smoker.

:D

Impressive performance by DHL giving next day delivery and regular notifications. I really though it would be Friday or Monday before she got here.

Edit..ok warmed up...tuned up, plugged in.

'kin 'ell.....what a belter....fantastic just fantastic, feels amazing, sounds amazing, looks...incredible....WHY did I not buy one of these babies before...just spent nearly 2 hours noodling around, doing mega barre chords and stretches and all worked perfect, no hand strain, no hard to reach frets, nothing, perfect position, pefect weight, perfect neck, perfect sound..I am genuinely smitten.

Just need to do something about that smell of smoke..

Libby, time for a wash.....c'mere you!

Ahthankyew

Nearly here

2011-12-01T01:20:00.004Z

Looks like Libby might arrive in the afternoon sometime :D
She's already on the mainland.
I am planning to get to work tomorrow, if I ever get to sleep...So with a bit of luck I'll be able to have some plinkyplonky fun when I get home.

Arrived at Sort Facility BRUSSELS - BELGIUM
Sign up for shipment notifications Thursday, December 01, 2011 at 01:45
Origin Service Area: EXETER - EXMOUTH - UK
Destination Service Area: EINDHOVEN - BREDA - NETHERLANDS, THE +1 Pieces

Thursday, December 01, 2011 Location Time Pieces
7 Arrived at Sort Facility BRUSSELS - BELGIUM BRUSSELS - BELGIUM 01:45 +1 Pieces

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 Location Time Pieces
6 Departed Facility in EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 23:32 +1 Pieces

5 Processed at EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 21:54 +1 Pieces

4 Arrived at Sort Facility EAST MIDLANDS - UK EAST MIDLANDS - UK 21:43 +1 Pieces

3 Departed Facility in EXETER - UK EXETER - UK 17:24 +1 Pieces

2 Processed at EXETER - UK EXETER - UK 16:13 +1 Pieces

1 Shipment picked up EXETER - UK 13:57

Ahthankyew

sick..

2011-11-29T18:45:00.002Z

I never have sick days, and a cold does not usually stop me going to work...sick days are for wussies..I even went to work when I had cancer and bits of me were leaking and falling off....thats how hard I am.

But man flu.......oh dear...horrible horrible, if I manage to survive I'll post more later...in the meantime I will stuggle on through the pain.

.....ah balls its only a cold, but I have a really sore throat which makes talking, especially loudly to a class a bit hard, so am working from home for a couple of days, doing the last bits of marking and clearing up my backlog of admin thats been building up.

Despite being sick, its actually nice to have the time to get this done its all been causing lots of stress cos I know it had to be done there was just no time to do it..I really hope I get more prep/marking/testing time made available next block.

Ahthankyew

Busy busy

2011-11-27T13:50:00.002Z

Although I have managed to get out a few times these last few weeks, a blues only jam with students at the Mezz on Thursday being a particular highlight (I even sang...in tune...kinda) I've been in marking hell this last 2 weeks.

This is my biggest issue with teaching, I need to give assignments, rather than question tests to prove they are using what they are being taught. This is almost always a simple retro game at this stage, which by their nature need to be played and checked for issues but that takes time. Sometimes a lot of time!

Since most of my students are still beginners and think nothing of little gameplay prevention bugs getting in the way, after all they know to avoid the thing that causes the crash....In time of course they will realise that having ANY kind of crash is not acceptable, but until they do I have to either find and fix the crash myself or continue to play avoiding the crash.

This all takes time, 1 assignment took me nearly 5 hours to complete, in a couple of session. Amazingly he passed just. He had no major coding bugs, just no bloody idea how to make a simple game interesting and playable so that it flowed from 1 part to the other, and it was hamstrung by a bug we have discovered in I7 cpu's which causes delta time checks to fail. So games are often absurdly fast and unplayable or absurdly slow and equally unplayble.
Since they are taught game design in a different module I can't in all fairness mark them down for shockingly bad game design....yet.

The i7 timing issue is being looked at but for now I have to swap computers around till I find one that works..usually my old samsung laptop is ok but it takes a while to set it up to run the games.

This weekend should finally see an end to it, or at the very least get all but the most problematic done.

Those who passed did ok this year, we have a good bunch of students and I am hopeful that as the year progresses their skills will increase...and their attention to gameplay with it.

Ahthankyew

Me make music

2011-11-22T21:08:00.002Z

Had a great 1st band practice despite our singer being poorly (get well soon Britta), but with our backup singers taking front stage we managed a pretty damn good rehearshal and got a couple of numbers tightened up nicely. Then did an amazing Blues jam in A for 10 mins or so that was brilliant....if only I had recorded it....oh well

Some minor tech issues with my Irig connection to my Ipad, it seems to be wobbly and not always doing a stereo output..I have a better Ampkit adapter on the way (taking a while) but have also picked up a chinese copy Irig as a back up for a few quid...despite the guys laughing at my toy obsession I still prefer to route my guitar through the Ampkit/Amplitube apps on my Ipad into a PA, than into a noisy feedback prone amp...so tech issues must be resolved asap.

Blueshawk is all paid for, he's going to set up pick up on Monday so should be here next week Wed/Thurs. :D

Ahthankyew

Nothing left to collect

2011-11-20T19:00:00.006Z

Well....thats it...the Blueshawk was the final piece of the quest for perfection. I now have a guitar to suit every style of music I enjoy listening to and playing.

The only things "missing" are a Fender Jaguar/Jagstang which is something I can use to make up for my small hands (it has a very small neck making it easier to reach big chords) and a proper Archtop for Jazz...but I don't like much jazz and would not really want to play it.

I can reach most of the chords, as a result of practice, on my Gibsons (shorter scale than Fenders) so the Jag is now pointless.. I therefore have my complete collection, Blues, Rock, folk, classical, bit of Country/Bluegrass and anything else that takes my fancy.

A Super strat has been suggested ala Vai and Satriani, but tbh I don't enjoy their music that much, too flash, so I don't need those uberfast necks and low frets....and an Ibanez is kinda overkill for me.

So I'm done.....I'll cull a few of the less played guitars over time to get the collection down to under 20 and those are my keepers.

Need to locate a nice guitar vault to keep them safe and sound; as much as I like having them on display and able to pick up and plinkyplonk on them, a proper storage cupboard will keep them safe for years to come..I can put them on stands when I want to use them.

Something like this :D

Mad innit...I could proably make one of these using an Ikea wardrobe as a chassis...will look into that sometime

Ahthankyew

Got her

2011-11-19T23:58:00.004Z

Just waiting for the transaction to process, but I got her. A 1998 House of Blues Limited Edition Gibson Blueshawk...with some aftermarket details which make her even more limited than the 50 House of Blues varients that were made.
Her name is Libby, and no I didn't not make that up, its what her current owner called her and I will do the same.

I didn't get a bargain on this one, but also I didn't have to pay over the odds, something about the right price, which for a rare beast like this is doing well.

But I'm not adding to the collection, my Wesley Semi acoustic is going to a new home (she can't compete with Libby) so its 1 out 1 in..maybe 2 out if I can sell one of the other lesser guitars as I do need to make space.
I am playing all my "good guitars" quite regularly but its fair to say I don't really play the lesser ones much at all, so they have to go over the next few months.

Ahthankyew

Blueshawk tingles, but Fretlight woes

2011-11-19T17:00:00.003Z

I've put an offer in for a Blueshawk....its a limited edition model with a few customisations, which makes it ingeresting, to me at least.. The US supplier really ended up a bit of a dead end, strange emails which felt like cut and paste efforts to other buyers so I've given up on that, despite the warehouse full of Blueshawks I suspect its going to cost too much once you factor in postage and import..so need to look to the UK/Europe.

The owner of this House of Blues BH is asking a fair bit for his, though he seems to have not noticed its been altered from stock..that removes its limited edition price tag and puts it into the slightly lower "cared for" price range, so I've offered him an amount I think reflects that..we'll see.

The Fretlight woes however continue, in spite of some sterling efforts on the part of the Fretlight exec who sent me a new cable and some replacement nuts and a huge T-shirt (thanks for that it was a nice thought but a bit big for me (must keep eating)), the thing is still noisy as hell when hooked up to a computer..Though admittidly gets better with good cables.

But shielding is clearly an issue thats not going to go away easily.

More interesting was the new nuts, I was set 4 all "cut" the same way and needed normal shaping to fit. Since I wanted to play the Fretlight today, I did a quick temp replacment of the nut myself which provides proper spacing again for the strings, but once again..the cut of the nut leaves a lot to be desired...1st and 2nd strings popping out of the cut every time you do a tone bend lower than fret 3. I'm not going to attempt a re-cut though, its too special a job.

So...basically its a pretty poor quality guitar, nut cutting is a skill that if not done correctly totally ruins an otherwise ok guitar.
Not to worry though, in the hands of a good tech it can be saved, I will be taking it to a guy in Breda to have the nut properly set (I didn't adjust the height, leaving its intonation all over the pace) and cut to hold the strings and maybe get rid of the buzzes which could be down to some poor soldering.

I've had a lot of good results in the old days when I bought mostly cheap guitars of taking them to good luthiers and having them setup properly, my old Epiphone strat copy was one of the cheapest bits of crap around but set up well I got a lot of compliments about how well it played.

I'll take the Fretlight to the shop on Monday and let them do some magic on it, if it comes back a good guitar, I'll keep it, otherwise...ebay!

Ahthankyew

The hunt continues

2011-11-17T22:36:00.002Z

With all those blueshawks on sale its no surprise that I've been doing a bit of hunting..I have in fact managed to find a US supplier which a warehouse full of them in all colours and conditions...amazing....looks like he specialises in them, but costs of importing and shipping still make it hard to justify purchase from the states at the moment.

Unless he's got a Little Lucille model in stock, a very rare and much sought after varient of the Blueshawk endorsed by my hero BB King...an LLBH would look great on the wall next to her big sister...we'll have to see though.

Had a jam tonight with the Breda ex pat crew, the usual faces excluding Ed our bass player and tbh it was a pretty crap effort, no energy or real interest in the music tonight. We've had a few bad ones in the past so I guess it happens. We'll have to try and practice more and be well rested for the next one...marking permitting.

Ahthankyew

Dammit, they're like busses.

2011-11-14T20:32:00.002Z

Just when you give up on them 3 come along at the same time.

My GAS (Guitar aquisition syndrome) has died down now, pretty much got everything I want now except for the damn elusive Gibson Blueshawk, which is hard to find in Europe and no longer in production, so you have to wait for 2nd hand models to turn up, thats not often as they are usually much loved and kept so not a sniff of a decent one on ebay for months...until now when of course Ebay is listing 3 of them...all overpriced and only a US one willing to ship to The Netherlands, which of course makes it even more overpriced.

bugger...will keep an eye on them for now, but only just getting my cash reserves back so will probably have to pass again for 6 months.

life is so unfair sometimes.....ah well.

Ahthankyew

Party Time, hangover follows

2011-11-06T18:47:00.002Z

I had a really nice time at my colleague and old friend Martin and his wife Sally's house warming party...even managed to be part of the winning 80's pop quiz team, beating a much more knowledgable colleague who's hobby is DJ'ing 80's pop :D

Much drink was drunk, much chat was had and it was nice to have a party where no punchups or raised voices were in evidence...This I like about Holland a lot you can actually have a party, get plastered and not be afraid the bloke from accounts is going to knife you.

Even managed an extremly short guitar jam, after Martin had asked me to drag an amp and Gracie all the way over there, only for him to dissapear and leave me noodling on my own...good job the G-Dec has backing tracks to play along to. :D

Bina missed a good party, she's away in the UK visiting her mum at the moment, and eveyrone was asking about her.

Ahthankyew

Damn you technology!!

2011-11-05T12:45:00.002Z

As you know I love my guitars and also the toys associated with guitars, my pedal board for example is a thing of wonder...quite a lot of pricey electric gadgets designed to make me sound a little bit better than I am, both on guitar and vocal.

But alas technology is starting to make me doubt the financial sanity of those purchases.

I have always kept up to date with using Ipod and Ipad apps to use my guitar for practice, Amplitube is especially good, but so is Ampkit. Despite the fact they tend to rip you off a little on constant in app purchases which can rack up...it is still far cheaper than and easier than owning and storing 30 odd amps and a hundred or more pedals.

But I've always considered it for practice, something to twang along with in the wee small hours downstairs so I'm not disturbing anyone.

I have changed my opinion...after this weeks ex pats jam when I had no one to give me a lift, I thought it best to travel as light as possible.. I decided to just take my ipad and Ipod and hook them up using their Iklip adaptors (handy but overpriced gadgets) to my Mic stand and then into the PA.

I had some issues with the Ipod version of vocal live, apprently not outputting, so that got put to once side but the Ipad running Ampkit was a revelation. Pumped out through the PA with no effects, leaving the Pad to do all the sound texturing. Huge variations in tone, great echo and reverb effects and most important, it sounded natural, like I had Fender, Peavy, Messa Boogie or Marshal amps on tap with lots of options clean clear tones or for screaming heat and phasers etc.

Brilliant. I will most certainly be taking just my Ipad with me to jams in future, the only drawback it has is I can't do loop stuff and switching from rhythm or acousticy stuff to solo powerchord stuff is impractical for that you need a footswitch set up..so 2 way switch system which I already have, to my mobile board might be needed for some songs...though with 2 or 3 guitarists playing its probably not needed really, just those odd days when I'm the sole string plucker.

Ahthankyew

how far?

2011-11-01T23:56:00.003Z

I have to go see an intern student tomorrow, all the way up the North of this extremely small country....well, "small" is relative I suppose, its going to take 3+ hours each way...by train...thats quite some trip accross a small country.

Not having a great week at work so far, in fact for the 1st time ever I can honestly say I've started to not want to go in to work...nothing to do with students or the work load, just some issues I feel I'm being forced into that I don't want to be forced into and are causing me stress...for the 1st time ever. Hopefully they will be resolved quickly and cleanly but we'll have to see.

Can't even fully discuss it since it seems my blog is not as private as it once was, that makes me sad, I liked the chance to express myself here so mum and family/friends could keep tabs on me, but now I have to be careful and guarded...at least until things get resolved...sucks.

Had my didactics course today, which I did enjoy. It has focused a lot of material on how to put together future courses into clear perspective..I wasn't doing much wrong before but it was not properly directed so that I caught as many students attention as possible, the course is certainly making it much clearer to me that specific approaches need to be implimented rather than just me standing in front of a crowd and getting them to repeat stuff till they get it.....still a lot to do on it, but 3 weeks in I already feel quite empowered by it...Next block, once I'm back teaching and the "shit" stuff is out the way, I am looking forward to seeing some significant improvements in my students absorbtion of info.

Speaking of students, I am now busy with mountains of marking as final homework assignments come flooding in, just before final exams next week. At least thats one thing I can do on the train, I was going to take the car and shave 30mins of the trip, but better to sit and at least some of the marking and let the train take the strain.

Time for bed...

Ahthankyew

Who said Technology makes life simpler...

2011-10-30T00:01:00.002+01:00

Whoever it was was an idiot, and has never tried to get Itunes to run on 2 computers. I can get my mac to work, but it won't hold all the songs I manually imported and there's something wrong with the USB connections on my PC which causes Itones to just fuck up royally pretty much refusing to update anything except on rare when it can be bothered occasions.

So I try to avoid using Itunes for all but the most basic of things....but when there's an update of course my pain is quadrupled.

The amount of time I've wasted tonight just trying to do a simple update for a new album I added is absurd...as I type its finally updating, and the songs have gone over...whats the betting it bombs out half with through with an "unexpected error"

Ahthankyew

We sang Coldplay

2011-10-27T22:33:00.003+01:00

as a test for the hub, Jodie, Bina and I sang/played Trouble.

by Coldplay

I feel dirty now...

but actually it was quite nice.

Ahthankyew

its so...small!!

2011-10-27T18:01:00.002+01:00

As the Actress said to the Bishop.

The new Jamhub has arrived, it had actually arrived when I was typing about it, in the last post, but Jodie was too busy getting readyto go out to shout upstairs to me..I only discovered it when I went downstairs a bit fed up that it was not going to arrive today... and saw the box.

Anyway..yes..it works well, at least as far as I can tell with only 1 user..needs to get a bunch of us together to play to get the best out of it, but it does do exactly what it says it does.. So if the others buy their mics and whatever else they need to get sounds into it, we'll be in business.
I was surprised by how small it was, the box was over twice the size of the actual unit. Its about the size of a laptop only a semi circle.

Less impressed with IK Multimedia's IrigMic, bought at the same time, or more accuratly the software..the mic seems fine, but the software is buggy as hell, pressing presets is just as likely to cause a crash back to IOS as do anything else, if it doesn't crash it just seems to select options without updating the screen...not good. It does work sometimes, but it seems to depend on the mood its in when it fires up...I've fired off a message on their forum to ask wtf...

I hate paying for apps that don't work, more so when I've bought hardware that needs it. Its not expensive and its just being kept as a backup for practice, I prefer my VL4 for 95% of the vocal stuff I attempt. But its good to have options.

So...lets see if we can get the band together a bit more often, at mine and or one or 2 of the other members. Fun times ahead...need a name...Broken Down Auld buggers...might not go down too well, but I like it. B-Dab ...hmmmmm :D

Time to get some grub..Bina and Jodies have gone for sushi in town..after yesterdays dicky tum I thought best of it, but now am starving, so its on the Thuisbezorgd.nl site and ordered some tasty ribs...hmmmm I can smell the msg from here.

Ahthankyew

What...wait a minute...where...eh??

2011-10-27T13:46:00.002+01:00

It's Thursday already...what the hell...where did my holiday week go?

I want it back I never got to have long lie ins and late night piss ups..oh scratch the piss ups..I'm off drink for a while, I was feeling quite queezy and somewhat the worse for wear on Wednesday after a few too many glasses of Mosel Merlot the night before at home..

Not a good way to feel when Bina dragged me off to the other side of the country to go see Maastricht, which in fact turned out to be a girly shopping trip for her and Jodie, with me plodding along ducking into available loo's as the need took me...often urgently.

Been keeping myself busy with student questions and fixes..a few students of course not bothering to do any work despite plaintive crys for help and promises of dedication to the cause...then mailing me to say they don't know what to do...a week after being told...sad, but what can you do! Its their holiday too, so I'm not going to get too stressed..but come study week!!

Waiting for my new jamhub and a few other goodies to arrive. Was a wee bit peeved to discover that I could have got the same things a bit cheaper (about 50 euros) even factoring in delivery costs at GAK in the uk, but hey ho...next time.

In other news.

I managed to dig out my tickets for Guthrie Govens upcoming gig on 2nd December way up in Zoetermeer..no I don't know where it is...but I'll get there.

And the Veldman brothers return to Breda on the 18th, I'll go going to see them again for sure. That'll be a nice night out after my Birthday ;) I must not get drunk, can you imagine going to an electric blues gig with the tail end of a hangover.

Ahthankyew

Its not got any strings

2011-10-24T17:56:00.004+01:00

So now that the credit card has been paid for another month, its safe to hit it again

Just bought this little beauty

Its a jamhub silent rehearsal studio, interface, thingy ma jig....basically a posh mixing desk that allows multuple players to plug in and play so we can all hear each other without using loud amps and stuff.

This is to help our "band" get together to practice in relative silence, since its not possible for us to always get together at the Mezz, this will let us practice in each others homes and only have to worry about the singer getting to loud and bothering the neighbours. Only the singer and acoustic guitars would be heard but they're not that loud as to be a worry. (Drummer has electric drums).

Bit of an investment on my part but I would love for our band to work out and this will help get it going..I can always sell it on ebay if it does not work out.
Lets hope the rest of them chip in for the headphones and mic's they will need to get the best out of it, cos I'm not buying those for them.

Ahthankyew

I had another go

2011-10-24T01:54:00.002+01:00

And in the Process Goldie seems to have lost the output from her neck pickup....Larry is in the shop now so if they do a good job, I'll take Goldie in...Bit crap though since Goldie was supposed to have had her very nice Seth Lover pickups fitted by a pro, I've done one running repairs to her selector switch already.

Which means the solo on this is done with Rosie, my strat...she did well, but the sound is thicker than I wanted so I may redo it when Goldie is repaired.

Ahthankyew

Phew time for a breather.

2011-10-22T16:37:00.003+01:00

Its been a busy block, seems like so much more than 7 weeks since we went back to work, but we are knackered and looking forward to our Autumn week off. Well it won't really be much of a week off, got lots of work to do, marking to do, prepping to do and no doubt many other things...but at least I will get some lie ins.

Larry has gone to the music shop for repairs, I suspect a faulty capacitor or similar issue on the output circuits but best to let pro's mess with things like that. She'll be ready on Wednesday

I've been re-working the Jumping at Shadows track, I really have decided I don't like it...its getting better now, I've changed the guitar intro, and I've been working on the big mid part solo to make it more Greeny. In doing so I've realised what a genius he really was. I can play about half the solo, note perfect but just can't get anything like the feeling and expression into it he did, just shows the difference between godlikeguitargenuiuseseses and me.

There's been talk amongst the Breda Ex Pats We Jammin' group (which I help run) to form a band, the talk has been up and down a bit the last few sessions and it seemed to have died down again but this was mainly due to the problems of fitting everything into a bunch of grown up's schedules...but we may have a way to move it forward.
I hope so, I like the idea of being in a band, playing with others has been a revelation for me and pushed my playing forward more than 10 years sitting noodling on my own....that sounds rude.....Hopefully we'll have some more info soon...if not though we still do our 2 weekly jams.

Ahthankyew

Starting to hate Pac Man

2011-10-19T14:25:00.003+01:00

I give my 1st years a range of retro games to work on as a way to learn different coding techniques. Pac man demo's tile based displays and grid interaction, also a bit of basic AI

As always though my marking of assignments is much slower than I want...mainly due to compiling issues in their code, they've not all got the idea that if it works on their machine it may not work on mine.....so I often have to make minor fixes...which takes time..

anway..nearly done...then I can put Pacman away for another year, and look forward to 35+ submissions of a Zelda level (class usage and data storage).

Ahthankyew

sunday recording

2011-10-16T21:00:00.004+01:00

Man this just about killed my hands doing the shuffle...I had to loop it in the end when I could not get more than half way through, fortunately the join is pretty good.

Overall as a 1st pass this isn't too bad, but it does sound horrible on PC speakers, it needs quite a lot of work. I have time next week so will redo pretty much all of it apart from the shuffle, was quite an enjoyable way to pass a sunday though in between bouts of marking.

Next week hopefully I can get some drums on it as well.

edit

nah the more I hear this the less I like it, especially though tinny PC speakers, The guitar isn't right, its off pitch a bit at the start, then its to mournful all the time, I failed to get the anger and drive that you can hear in the original version from Fleetwood mac, of course I can't compete with PG's incredible skills but I should at least make an attempt at it..it needs to be fiercer at the breaks and then go into its soulful sections

Ahthankyew

Ready for a new week

2011-10-09T21:55:00.003+01:00

Have had a really nice weekend, compliments from students, fun guitar stuff (you will not belive what I am tyring to record...I'll tell you if it works), and an excellent curry and drinks with my old friend Martin and his wife Sally. Which I spent 3 hours making and boy, it was worth it. Bina's samosa's were also bloody awesome..we should make more of those and freeze them.

Looking forward to this week now, the bummer meeting has become a much clearer issue for me now and not something I should be overly worried about, when all said and done I'm doing more than ok at work and we're nowhere near having to worry about the masters situation in a couple of years time the other worries are more specific to different people and all I have to do is my job and keep my perspective on what is important, making sure my students move forward to the point they become independantly motivated.

Got a strange late lecture tomorrow at 5 till 6, so I'll have the whole day to look over students work in peace and quiet at home, and so far its starting to look very cool, PR students are starting to get their lightbulb moments, which I have to say is bloody exciting as hell.

IGD students have been hampered a little by the unfamiliarly of team based working and task lists and strange engines, but they are starting to put fingers to keyboard and even though its early days its looking like they will produce some nice nice work.
Now we get to the exciting last few weeks of IGAD Block A, when we find out who is starting to get it and who needs a bit more of a shove.

Then the exams....oh well...I didn't ever say it was all fun ;)

Ahthankyew

Normal services resumes

2011-10-08T17:03:00.002+01:00

I've been bitching a bit about work recently, but its very hard to stay upset when you have a great job, the odd wibble is normal in any workplace as it is in life and it can be easy to forget the good things.

The very best of those good things is when you know you've made some difference to a student.

I got an email from a student last night which really brought this home to me. He thanked me for taking time to help him with an issue in class and said how much happier he was to continue with his class.
I get a fair number of compliments, a few complaints from time to time, which I try always to address and the odd hug and wave on the street from old students. I don't really think about it too much, the compliments are nice but its important not to be lax and think you're doing it all right all the time, the complaints may be few but must always be addressed and I do.

But this week, the timing of this 1 email was spot on. A bad week at work totally negated by a 2 sentence ps at the bottom of an email.

A small thing really but simply the best feeling ever. I have a great job and I do it well, thats all that really matters.

Mood lifted, time to spend some quality time with guitars.

Ahthankyew

arrghh

2011-10-08T00:05:00.000+01:00

Ahthankyew

bummer

2011-10-07T00:36:00.002+01:00

We had a very very disturbing staff meeting yesterday, our head honcho director whom we don't see very often, came to our building, and gave a short talk about the worry surrounding our lack of graduates, some student related issues which I can't discuss and...

well...the and is a big deal, and tbh I can't discuss it in detail either, since there's really rather a lot of apparent misconceptions about our happy bunch of campers which may be getting skewed by the actions of 1 or 2 individuals. This needs to be discussed by us all in some hopefully frank and open debate to see if we need to change some or all of our culture at work.

There may be some intense discussion taking place over the comming weeks to rectify very serious problems which many of us don't actually feel exist, indeed our first step is to see if we do indeed have problems or if some inaccurate reporting of our working environment is being passed to them upstairs....we'll see.

My own view is that there's a break in communications between us and upper managment. That being the case it should be easy to fix, otherwise I can see a lot of confused people wondering what the hell is going on!

Well THAT was fun

2011-10-04T21:32:00.002+01:00

Last year I went on a didactics course to gain a teaching qualification which I felt would be useful then, and now it will hopefully serve me well if this nonsense with the,teachers need a masters, thing ever comes to haunt me.

You may remember I hated the course, it was utter crap, totally useless and left me very frustrated and irritated. Indeed it turned out almost all the other "students" felt the same.

But I do want to get that certificate, so I signed up for another course being run this year which was sold to me on the basis that it was a more traditional tutor led course and today was our 1st day.

I can't say how much I enjoyed it, it was informative, structured, engaging and backed up with reference material and content. Unlike last year which might as well have been an instrution to use google by a "trainer" who's only apparent role was to tech us how to use crappy software in conjunction with google.

Really enjoyed myself and I think others did too. Its going to be quite a bit of work, there's a lot of interesting information to take on board and also a lot of homework and reading to do. But if it keeps going at todays pace it should be a pleasure.

Ahthankyew

The Great Autumn Re-arrange Pt 2

2011-10-03T12:16:00.003+01:00

Ok so Guitar and computer corners are all cleared up and tidy...some excess is currently sitting in the middle of the room awaiting placement in safe areas.

I realise now, I may actually, possibly, perhaps, have one or 2 too many guitars.....hmmmm need to buy more wall mounts.

Ahthankyew

The great Autumn re-arrange part 1

2011-10-02T13:35:00.006+01:00

The big re-arrange of the attic is in progress
Stage 1, is as always to remove the guitars from their stands and put them somewhere safe....

(go on can you spot the odd one out of this group?)

We're going to need a bigger couch.

Stage 2, get the corner cleard up and move the pedal board in and out of the way.

Stage 3...clear the computer desk...which currently looks like this.,

ohhh that is disgusting...but will sort it out..

Then I have to work out how to fit this lot in nice tidy places...

Hmmmm Good Job I like a challenge..

Stage 3 to be started after a nice cuppa coffe...and maybe a bit of old fashioned procrastination for a bit.

Ahthankyew

New inspiration

2011-10-01T17:28:00.009+01:00

Now that I've been getting the hang of my recording gear I have been searching the web for songs I might be able to manage with my limited vocal range, and that will tax my playing.

One of the songs I want to try is this. Its a bit beyond me at the moment, but something to aim for, so I was looking for alternative versions that might give me some idea of how a limited singer could do it...and then I found this.....and balls to the limited singer.

Its a brilliant version of Mumford and Sons Little Lion man, but in finding I also stumbled on OrtoPilots videos and am totally blown away by the musical and recording skill involved with this amazing artist from Little Hulton near Bolton, UK. Matt Hutchison is his name and why he's not a mega star is just beyond me.

Check them here

His videos are almost always just him, though sometimes with a few friends using the OrtoPilot band name. For sure, some of these covers on his site are 24Kt gold and a source of pure inspiration to keep trying to improve. I spent hours so far going through them, and still not watched all of them.

I noticed on most of his vids he does not use drums, but a Cajon, which is brilliant and a much more subtle and controlled instrument than my cheap electronic drum set which I am starting to find frustrating on anything more complex than basic patterns...quality or the lack of it eventially shows in musical instruments...

So while still basking in inspiration...off I went to the music store today to buy..

My very own Cajon, a DG Bailaor or Fandango models....neat..simple and quite easy to play the basics, but like all things some practice is needed. But its not so noise that the neighbours (or 'er downstairs) are likely to be bothered. Oh and to top it off I haggled the shopkeeper down €25, so even more of a result. Still...160euros for a plywood box is taking the mick a bit...but lets not grumble I couldn't make one myself and the cheap ones they had in stock felt cheap...and learning from the quality shows itself lesson...I walked out with a proper pro plywood box, with snares inside.

I am going to settle on a couple of songs and make an attempt to record them in Garage Band as close as my skill and voice will allow of course using my guitar, Bass and soon to be new found Cajon skills. As well as limited vocal and keyboard stuff...GB also allows me to overlay strings and other things so I basically should have access to a full set of instruments so long as I don't over reach myself too much.

I am not going to attempt the video recordings for now, thats a whole different level of ability, but I am going to have a go at a few simpler covers to see if I can make anything that sounds decent. One or 2 of OrtoPilots vids are just inside my skill level, though it remains to be seen how I can handle the vocals..The key about covers though is not to copy but to make your own versions so I'm going to see what comes out.

Time also for a bit of a re-arrange of the guitar storage...the 6 guitar stand is bloody awesome but I am not yet making best use of my available space...time for a shuffle.

Ahthankyew

sick puppy

2011-09-29T02:16:00.004+01:00

Harvey is sick, he spent most of the evening throwing up and desperatly trying to eat anything in range, so he could throw up again.

I stayed up with him to keep him company and clear up any mess, but fortunatly he managed to keep down some antiemetics we were given last time he had a bad stomach, long enough to take effect...he's snoring away now so time to sneek to bed and let mother nature take its course.

Bina's going to take him to the vet tomorrow.

I need sleep!!

Ahthankyew

and a bit of messing

2011-09-25T15:42:00.003+01:00

I am going to redo these vocals at some point, Though I quite like the way I did it, there were a couple of points where I pushed too hard and the autotune failed to grab it....

but anyway, here's another version of Knocking with a bass line added, I don't play bass often so it does wander a bit, off riff, and there is 1 bum note that sticks out to me..see if you can spot it...

Since this was all done multi track I can always go back and redo it...but thought posting this might be interesting to look back on the way the thing progressed.

and after a bit more mesing

beter vocals and bass on this

theres a hiss on the vocal track I found out later how to fix but I just could not get a better vocal track done and after many attempts tbh I've got bored now....so thats it for Knocking...going to try something else. It has been an interesting experiment though. Loads of fun.

Ahthankyew

hungover and 50 euro's lighter....what a great night

2011-09-25T13:21:00.002+01:00

Awesome nights poker, I lost...oh well, but it was a fun night with my dutch friends finally getting to meet a few of my work collegues, one of who walked away with my 50 euros give or take a few cents.

Having a bit of an indian summer at the moment, our summer this year was unusually crap, but in its death throes it's brightend up quite a bit and everyone is making the most of the last few weeks of summer. Including us, we took the dog for a long walk at his favourite woods, after a false start to a local lake, which when we got there discovered it did not allowed dogs...oh well Harvey loved the woods more than I'm sure he would have done the lakes.

I've been getting a lot of positive feedback for my latest bit of garage band twiddle, its not really finished yet though so I hope they'll still like it when I am done.

I think most people are just surprised at the fact I can sing a bit (allbeit with mega help from autotune gadgets) and that my playing is getting better.
To me it still sounds rough and a bit ragged in places so I will work on it.

Time for a bit of lazy sunday afternoon, then a bit of prep work for the week ahead.

Ahthankyew

more moozik

2011-09-24T16:46:00.004+01:00

We had a go at this during our jam session last week, but we din't really know the words or chords so I decided to have a go at it on Garage band...3 tracks..I may add drums and bass later, and there is one (or 2) points where the vocals are ugg I might try and redo.

Hope you enjoy

Ahthankyew

Now that I'm a singist

2011-09-22T13:22:00.006+01:00

Due to a lack of male vocalists at our jams I've on occasion,and only as a last resort, had to do some of the singing....I know, I know...not nice, you can see people grimace and lose their timing when I start screeching.

As you can hear from my vocal performance on recent recordings I need very heavy signal processing and a touch of after take compression to make my voice sound in anyway reasonable.

I use my VL 4 at home to fix my voice and as I get more and more comfortable with it I feel I'm getting a sound I like and will stick with it, but I don't really want to take the VL4 to jams with me, its a bit big and its now "fixed" into my home board...I'm carrying loads of gear as it is, and this was the very reason I built my mobile board, so the VL4 is not ideal to cart about.

So I have bought a singist toy which can be carried in my mobile board box, and sits by the side when in use.

voila

A tc-halicon C1 Correction Pedal.

It does the 2 main things my VL4 does, pitch correction and persona, ie makes it the voice sound lower or higher. I don't need the VL4's harmony and other functions at the jams cos there are usually a bunch of ladies to do that... So this fits the bill prefectly

A very very quick mess about shows that it seems to work fine, I may take it to tonights jam to play with since I don't think we'll have any male singers again tonight (groan).

I'm curious to know what it can do, maybe even hooked up with the VL4 as well :D

edit....its great...worked really well indeed, I was singing along with no one wincing or running out of the room....Though in typical computers are evil fashion, I can't seem to update its firmware with the supplied software, I may have damaged it having to abort the firmware update that refused to go past 0% after 20 mins....but no worries, I'll send it for a replacement. Still seems to work though....so I wont be in a huge rush.

edit edit...used the mac to update it...its fine...:D liking my new toy a lot, the simplicity of it is fantastic even if it does not do all the nice harmony, warmth, and other twiddles my vl4 does, it does do exactly what it needs...I'll do another Stormy Monday to compare.

Ahthankyew

2nd track on my new album

2011-09-21T17:36:00.002+01:00

A wee bit more twiddling...though I rushed this so its not quite as good as the Thrill is gone, but I'll try again at the weekend when I have a bit more time to spare. The backing track is a bit short too, so it's a very simple version with no big twin guitar solo's.

Ahthankyew

Top 10

2011-09-21T10:12:00.002+01:00

bloody hell, my blues twiddling has gone up to #8 in the Blues/General Chart.

I'm a top 10 recording artist lol

» today's position: # 16 in Blues
» today's position in sub-genre: # 8 in Blues General

Time to start planning my tour. I asked Bina to get me some M&M's but take out the brown ones....she wasn't impressed.

Ahthankyew

Getting the hang of this moosik lark.

2011-09-19T21:39:00.004+01:00

After 1 day this is #12 in the Blues General "charts"..wow..
» highest in charts: # 30 (46,501 songs currently listed in Blues)
» highest in sub-genre: # 12 (19,996 songs currently listed in Blues > Blues General)

Quite pleased with that, I had not noticed that some of my "tunes" were actually in a chart, lol its just dawned on me, these are open to anyone who goes on that site..gulp...I thought it was just a repository to store sound clips.

Anyway, for future reference, this is Frankie, my Telecaster (I said strat on teh notes for some reason) going into my mobile board with the 808 on, but no amp, straight into the Mixer board, mixed with my voice then into Garage Band which has that nice Cm Backing track playing.
Done in 1 take after 20 or so tries to get the levels right and work out how to phrase it to suit.

Very pleased with the guitar work overall, could have done with a bit more play on dynamics, and a couple of twiddles are not really needed and hang in the air a bit, but I was singing and playing at the same time so it was more of feel thing so I left them in, I didn't do any post take edits at all, but I did add a bit of reverb and compression to beef it up.

Its all improvised as I was singing, but its very much on the theme of the original and just had to start with that opening vibrato note but after that I went with the flow, though of course a few trademark BB pings are in there ;)

Vocals are being autotuned to death by my VL 4 with a "big" persona setting to lower the tone and add a bit of depth to it...maybe a bit too much. I've finally worked out that the best way to use the VL4 is to actually try to sing in tune and to add some effects and tones to get a more naturual sound.

I've not really found a sweet spot that suits me yet, to my (and mums) ears this does not sound much like me (which is probably a good thing) but at least I've got out of the habit of setting everthing to 100...except auto-tune...trust me it needs it.

I missed out a verse cause I just could not get the phrasing on it right but its not missed that much.

of course.....nothing quite beats this amazing version....I'll keep working on it.

Lyrics | B.B. King lyrics - The Thrill Is Gone lyrics

Ahthankyew

Finally, storage problems resolved

2011-09-10T12:34:00.005+01:00

On obvious issue with having a large collection of wood and string beauties, is that they need to be stored..I have some on the walls, which look great btw, and some on stands in the corners, but I have to admit I have reached capacity now...and a few of my babies are stored away in their cases not seeing the light of day very often.

Being one of those people who wants to have my guitars on show and easily to hand for a bit of plinkyplonkystrummywummy stuff. Storage and display is a bit of an issue....But there is this, wonderful item

Its a Hercules 6 way stand. I've been trying to get hold of one of these for ages, but they don't have many european stockets, and by the time you factor in shipping (if indeed they will ship them to The Netherlands) buying from the US or UK has been bothersome.

But happy to report I finally found a stockest in Belgium who has stock and will deliver...not actually all that far from where we are but lack of car and fear of buying too much other stuff if I go into a shop stops me visiting.

This should tidy up my guitar corner quite nicely. I have one of their 3 way stands and its a solid bit of kit, as you would expect from the name. I'll be able to display all my guitars when this comes and put the cases away in the shed or someplace untill I need to transport them..So in fact it will provide a bit more space....hmmmm maybe I will visit Belgium after all....next month.

Ahthankyew

Larry is sick

2011-09-05T22:47:00.002+01:00

With the arrival of my new pedal board and the ability to just plug in a wireless bug ratehr than messign with wires, I have taken to rotating my guitars when I play...probably not a smart idea for practice reasons but for noodling around its a lot of fun and ensures that every one of my babies gets a little bit of loving.

It also shows me the vast differences in tone and output from my guitars, quite staggering, you don't really spot it till you plug in a succession of guitars and find which are the loud screamers, which are throaty and which are the quiet warm homey ones.

And then there's Larry, my GS60 hmmm something not right with her, she's got a serious case of laryngitis. When plugged in I just can't get enough output to drive the amp or pedals..even the tuning pedal can only pick up on a low E and A.
Considering she has a van Zandt humbucker in her bridge, which should scream, something is very wrong. I had noticed on occasion she does go quiet when I switch pups, but flicking back seemed to resolve it..clearly a problem which has now got worse and perhaps no longer resolvable with a simple tapping of the electrics

Time for her to take a trip to the guitar shop and get her checked out.

Ahthankyew

New Rules Suck

2011-09-02T12:49:00.004+01:00

As we start the new academic year, we're being bombarded with meetings and information. Some if it interesting, some of it useless,to me at least, some of it quite worrying.

Interesting and worrying was our general lack of graduationg students. This is not a reflection on our staff, but more a problem with the fact that our standards and resulting drop out rate are so high that by the time they come to 4th year we don't have many students left. Or they've taken an extra year to complete.

Its really quite a big issue, any university is measured by the quantity and quality of its graduates, we've got quality all right, several high ups in the industry are starting to say that. But we need to address the quantity.

That's going to mean a lot more pressure on students to get on with things, there's far too much larking around at certain key stages so we're going to monitor that more closely and make more effort to keep them on track.

Of course this means work for staff who act as mentors (like me) but overall its worth it. It should mean our low/mid skill range students will get more attention and hopefully we can push them forward rather than having them fall away as has happened in the past. OFten they are perfectly good students who just take a bit longer to "get it".

One or 2 things I am not happy with though, which may in the future cause issues for my job security.

There was a huge scandal recently over a university chain called InHolland which in light of similar issues with poor graduation figures, took a foolish route of downgrading the quality of the courses and basically let students get thier degrees for no work. This totally undermined those degress and many students have been forced to hand their certificates back and seek alternative tution to graduate again.

Madness of course, but once uncovered it created a massive stink at government levels, which of course has produced a typical political knee jeerk reaction with several new laws being proposed.

Some make sense...like forcing students and schools to pay for delayed graduations, (education here is heavily financed by the government so putting a limit on how long you can take before having to pay will be a major issue for slow students).

But others are just a bit daft...Like the insistance all teachers/lecturers are educated to Masters level....yeah you guessed it, I don't have a Masters. I don't even have a degree. I had planned to go to university to be a Vet, but when I messed up a year at school and got lower than needed grades I didn't go and instead drifted into computers.

When I got into games, there really were no equivilent degree courses that related to the games industry. I, like others of my generation helped lay the foundations of the game industry as it is now, and like others of my generation was self taught and have been constantly motivated to maintain and update my skills by the constant rise in industry standard.

I won't ever claim to obe the greatest coder around, but I do feel I am an industry veteren, an expert in my field and good at what I do...Thats why I was hired so many times as a freelancer as well as a code slave. Its also why I was hired to teach at NHTV.

How would an academic background help me be better at that? Academia and the Games industry have in the past been so far apart in both standards and goals that its long been known that game courses were generally outdated, impractical or even usless for entry into the games industry.

This is why I was so attracted to NHTV's IGAD program, here was a university clearly making efforts to build bridges and produce industry standard graduates, not academics with paper qualifications who would still need a years training if they were ever hired, many of whom may even end up going back to academia to teach without ever having produced a commercial game in anger. Are these the kind of people the government wants to teach the next generations?

After nearly 30 years in the industry nearly 70 self coded projects, 100's of producer credit projects and god knows how many lines of code and sleepless nights working out how to do things that now go into books I would have to read to gain a Masters, and quite possibly being supervised by people with a fraction of my expereince and knowledge???

A Masters will not make me better as a coder, it will not add significantly to my knowledge, (though I am not so arrogant to assume I won't learn something, even my students teach me new things which I love.)
It won't make me a better teacher..it will probazbly teach me a few new things, show up some bad habits I have and perhaps even force me to rethink the way I do certain things...but I do that every time I start a project. So how will it make me a better teacher having MA or whatever after my name?

The idea that a masters or Phd makes you a better teacher is nonsense.

If this does become law, and the university tries to enforce it...I could have issues. Fortunatly I have a life time contract here, which has no stipulation about qualifications so I could fight it..
And I will, for as long as practical. But hopefully it will only apply to people who are working towards life time contracts. Bina for example...she however WANTS to do a Masters so she has my full support.

I don't... (I won't say never, since I LOVE my job and want to keep it), want to do a masters. I will not be forced to take a qualification I don't need, don't want and don't see any need for.

Hopefully this will be recognised as a human rights issue...we'll have to wait and see if the law comes into force and people start to fight it..who knows I might be the test case ;)

Rant over.......

I also worry that this insistance on a masters is going to drive away potential industry people who want to move into teaching. IGAD is now almost totally populated by industry nerds who are jumping at the chance to show students how it should be done as industry demands. Many in fact there becuase of my spreading the word.

A few of those don't have masters or life time contracts, and are now being forced to take them...some more willingly than others.

But I know many many people in the industry who are not academically qualified who would be great teachers, able to provide incredible uptodate insight into the black arts of game development and who would now be unable to take up a position here....unless of course they WANT to do a pointless 2 years masters course to prepare them for an insutry they already excel in!!!

Thats just plain daft. I really do hope that Academia does not start retreating back to its ivory towers insisitng it knows whats best for the games industry while the Game industry again establishes it market driven 10 year lead on academia as a result of idiotic blinkered shortsightedness.

At least IGAD for the next few years at least has Industry bods at the help producing top grade people......but a few years from now, we're going to need new..old blood to keep us in front, and it won't be there!

Rante really over now!!

Ahthankyew

ermmmm

2011-08-31T02:16:00.004+01:00

This is tempting

it looks like a reissue custom shop Les Paul, which if genuine is worth £1500-2000+.

But it just screams wrong....its pretty all right but the fret board is too light, the pickup switch is the wrong colour, the control knobs should have a finger pricker position indicator, it should have an aged look on the pups, no case is mention and lack of proper pics on key ID points is odd...Also the price....I mean £475?? If he bought it as a Gibson reissue he'd have paid a small fortune for it...and would be asking for a Buy it now rather than a very low auction starting price.

I've mailed him to ask for specific pics of key points that will help ID it, if he sends them, I'll be tempted...but....something tells me its a chinese copy, and not worth 500quid...200 maybe, but not 500.

Ahthankyew

Some adjustments

2011-08-30T22:57:00.004+01:00

I had to make a few adjustments to the pedal board...as much as I liked it, the mixer was not really working since I had no easy simple way to switch out the Zoom G2.1u m,ulti fx pedal, which has a bad habit of buzzing or producing some cpu ticks when in bypass mode.
So back to my friendly switch maker and a bit of re-wiring and purchasing of much better quality velcro, later.

I now have this set up.
..ermmm I was going to upload a photo, but since my PC switch my Ipod->Itunes sync has been totally screwed....so photo will have to wait.

Edit..

After THE most contrived series of processes ever....I have finally managed to get the photo...and its crap!!

Anyway, I added a 5 switch loop box, which allows me to select an fx channel, either 1 or a mix of any of the 5. Which then goes to the ABCDE switch to pick an amp/mixer to go to...neat

I also added my wireless system too, so that the guitar is totally wire free. The input then goes 1st into the VL4, to supply pitch data for singing (help) then the thru signal is sent to the loopbox to go onto the selected channels.

I have it going into my mobile fx on pos 1, acoustic Zoom A2 fx on pos2, Zoom G2 on pos3, Bass 607 on pos 4, and pos 5 is clean. The output then goes to the Digitech Jamman, for looping phrases if needed, then over to the ABCDE switch to go to a chosen amp. Marshal VT50, Fender Champ 600, Practice Bass amp, Cheetah amp or G-Dec. I may also put a small 2 way switch in to plumb straight into the mixer but for now if I want to use the mixer I'll unplug the G-dec.

Its bloody awesome, but you need to be sure the jamman is not amping up an empty signal from the VL4 as I discovered that caused some noise. Also the amp you send it to should not have FX running if you send a loop phrase to it or it distorts..But this is all good, just a learning process.

Ahthankyew

I have the POOOOOWWWWWEEEEERRRR

2011-08-23T13:34:00.004+01:00

There's a few teething issue with my new PC, the video card is borked, but I negotiated a refund on that and am using my old one for now, it also seems to BSOD coming out of sleep mode, which usually means a driver needs updating..

This sounds worse than it is, but what is good is the absolute power that I have got to play with now, 8GB of memory and a 2.8Ghz multi threading Quad core i7 make for a much smoother Windows experience than I've had for quite some time.

I spent last night installing software, as you do, and even though it was a pretty long process the i7 managed to do most of it in the background as I tested it out, with dev packages, games and audio tests..It didn't break a sweat and thats without SSD's!

Hopefully some driver updates will resolve the BSOD on sleep restore, and then I'll be back to having a mega PC again...though you can get faster i7's :) hmmmm next year maybe, for now this is several levels of magnitude better than I had so I'll stick with it.

Going to stick in my drives next so I can get all my data.. I learned some time back not to have data on the same drive as system files so that updates like this are much easier.Just plug in the data drive and restore the apps and all should be well. Quite curious to see if Windows 7 on the SDD in my old machine will fire up on a new board...they usually don't but...lets see :)

Ahthankyew

Ohhhhh pretty

2011-08-19T20:54:00.001+01:00

All clean and shiny, polished and waxed with a new set of strings.

My baby ;)

Ahthankyew

Causing...slightly, less pain to music lovers.

2011-08-17T14:35:00.001+01:00

playing with my new pedal arrangement, but I got the vocal levels totally wrong so it gets drowned by the guitar twiddles.(thankfully)...but not bad for 1 take.I need t work out how to do smooth fades on garageband though

Ahthankyew

Shhhh...be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting PC's

2011-08-15T12:34:00.003+01:00

Yeah.....bugger. Though the main PC is now functioning without BSOD its hobbling along quite badly due to lack of memory. I have a dilemma, is it the chip controller on the motherboard playing up or is it the memory modules themselves...I could buy new memory modules and try them out, it would cost about 80-100quid, but what then if it does not work, that would be wasted money since it uses DDR2 and my next PC is certain to have DDR3 memory. Even if it does work its only going to extend this machines life for a year or so.

Time to upgrade I think, to a mega machine..one that will last 2-3 years before the software starts to make it chug.

I usually make a point of building my own mega machines but when I made this one I settled on functioning rather than capable of lasting a few years, mainly due to me being so knackerd from my cancer surgery and needing to replace my last beast.

This time I'm not so much knackered as cant be bothered, there's been a lot of leaps in PC tech in the last year and I've not kept up with it, so I'll just buy a prebuilt one...and add my own drives to it to retain most of my stuff....still means installing shed loads of apps but what the hey!

Going to hit ebay and find a decent spec but hopefully quiet I7 beast that fits the bill.

Think I've found one....will see if he takes my offer...its a Gaming machine, which means high spec, but usually with noisy fans, though those can be replaced...watch this space.

Ahthankyew

normal...ish services have returned

2011-08-14T16:27:00.003+01:00

hmm seems my PC's memory is indeed faulty, but not quite sure in what way.. I took one stick out and it ran fine, passing memory tests no problem, so assumed the stick removed was faulty.

To be sure I put that stick back in, removed the other and ran tests.....and it was fine...eek

Sure enough it seems the memory issues only occur when both sticks are in place... It may be a dual channel thing. I will try one last test with both sticks in running in single channel mode and see how it goes.

edit
Annoyingly I could not find a BIOS option to put it in single channel mode, it may be that plugging it into different slots achieves that...but its quicker to set values rather than get down on hands an knees reaching into computers, so I locked down some of the automated options to known fixed values, like 667 for speed. Then fired it up and ran memory tests.....it passed.

I'll try a stess test on it...Supreme Commander 2, usually puts it under stress :D and it was the 1st thing that showed up problems.

Honest I'm testing...not playing.

Ahthankyew

New PC Time?

2011-08-13T13:44:00.003+01:00

My main PC has been playing up big time, randomly hitting bluescreens of death...not good...There seems to be no specfic application or Id on whats causing it, the BoS points out some pretty standard Windows 7 drivers when it fails, which normally suggests a more severe hardware fault, perhaps some RAM on its way out or something...
Even though this was a rebuild after the old beast met its unfortunate end I have never really been 100% happy with this PC, lots of little niggles with it...

So yeah..I think its time to break out the credit card and indulge the other expense in my life, aside from guitars...going to have a look at some i7 beasts and see what they will cost....

This one can probably be saved with a clean re-install of windows or something, but I need something thats 100% reliable and a bit more powerful now for some of the new work I'm taking on. In fact this is probably an ideal use at work PC, since I loathe my laptop....hmmmmm I'll get my PC head on and get back up to speed, its amazing how quickly you lose touch with these things

Ahthankyew

Fretlight fun, and also cock fun??

2011-08-12T17:19:00.003+01:00

Well I'm pleased to see my blog gets onto google, my recent post about my Fretlight expereince resulted in a request for contact from one of the new directors from Optek, makers of Fretlight, concered about the noise and nut issues I was having, a quick check on my blog list showed he'd been directed here from google....mind you so was some guy searching for "cock games"...ermmm????

He said he'd let me try a new cable in an effort to reduce the noise problems and I'd be happy to do that, since as it stands the noise when using the USB cable feeding back into the amp makes it hard to listen to. He uses fretlights on stage with no noise, I can well believe that, but on stage you don't generally have the USB tutorials plugged in.

As I said in the post and repeated to him, I find it a great learning aid for scales and chords but I don't "yet" see any song learming benefit above what tabs give you, at least as it currently is set up. I will keep trying though, but I'm not buying videos for it, Guitar Pro 6 gives me the best of both worlds.

I also asked if I could get a new nut from him, it seems they are changing the nut from the rather crappy transparent ones to something more normal. I think thats wise.

I noticed with a bit of google fu myself that a few people have posted quite negative reviews of the 400 series Fretlights, mainly due to quality..I kind of agree with that. From my own experience there are some clear quality issues, sharp frets, low nut, noise pickups and CPU noise are all issues that relate to quality.

But when all said and done, its not being sold as a high end Gibson, Ibanez or Fender, its priced at the low end of the guitar range but with the added plus of a fantastic training aid...Still..I hope they do manage to resolve these issues and push the product a bit further. The neck is really quite sweet, and bad pickups aside it has good sustain and feels quite nice, bridger and middle pickups give good if unremarkable tone qualities, so its on a par with a couple of my lower end guitars..I just paid a wee bit more for the neck.

I can also say that the software leaves a bit to be desired too...I would not mind having access to their SDK to see if I could come up with something a little more interesting, even if only for personal use...I might ask. (hint hint if you're reading this again Bill)

I hope the new director will be able to do something about that and ensure the playing side of the Fretlight becomes as much fun as the training side of it, which reminds me. After a week away, my fingers are getting soft..time for some scales and new chords, due to some holiday induced inspiration. I've been flooding my brain with loads of Ipod Peter Green stuff this last week...oh boy....just.....oh boy!!! I wish, oh how I wish I could have 1 tenth of that ability to make a single note sing......practice Brian, practice.

Ahthankyew

Fat Bloke with a guitar...and looking worried for some reason!!

2011-08-08T15:46:00.004+01:00

While sheltering from the rain here in Germany, I updated our We Jamming Facebook page with some pics Bina took of her 1st Jam.
Of course since she loves me so much :D Most of the pics are of me....

I'll just post the ones with me in it so as not to annoy people who may not want their pics on my blog..

Ahthankyew

Nicht gut!

2011-08-08T15:41:00.001+01:00

I'm in Germany, for 5 days with Bina, a nice romantic break for 2.

And its raining..oh boy is it raining....

guess we'll have to find something else to do...

Ahthankyew

Fretlight limits

2011-08-06T11:54:00.005+01:00

ok I've had another good play around with my fretlight and I am starting to form the opinion, that its a bit hmmmm.

Its very handy for learning chords and scales, quite brilliant for that, my fretboard knowledge is expanding greatly, which lucky for me is why I bought it.

But for trying to learn songs.....nah...at least not with the software that comes with it. Its a wee bit like trying to play guitar hero with an unknown song set to hard level.

And I realised why, when you read tab, you do at least take in a couple of notes at a time and therefore know whats coming up, with the fretlight...its all in your face, there's the note, hit it hit hit ..too late..gone.

Of course you can slow down playback and watch 1st, but really reading the tab, playing back slowly and then trying to follow the lights is the best way, which tbh you don't need to follow the lights because you can hear if you played it right or not.

What it needs is something GarageBand does quite well, a way to analyse what you play back to see how close it matches the song, perhaps even waiting till you hit the right note before moving on to the next...This needs an audio input into the computer but those are easy to come by and am sure Fretlight could brand something from China to do the job.

Also I discovered a major quality issue last night, well a couple in fact, when wire plugged into an amp, and the usb side hooked up I got incredible computer noise back through the amp..I mean really bad. I hooked it up wirelessly to cut the link between amp and computer becuase it was soo bad.
2nd the nut is rubbish, I was learning SRV's Mary had a little lamb, which needs a 1st string 3rd fret bend and every single time the string popped out of the nut. Even my cheapest guitar does not do that. Grr
I attempted a little home repair to deepen the nut groove, which then caused a major 1st fret buzz, so I had to raise the action at the bridge on 1 string...hmmmm

Well its not good is it, but its a teaching aid not a real guitar regardless of what they may say.

I'm also not terribly impressed with the teaser emails Fretlight send out, free play along videos (they play a vid and light up the fretboard as the notes are hot)...only they are not free videos, they are 30-40sec samples of a full video they are selling..I hate that...supply the songs for free, the full songs. Stop trying to make post sale sales, stand by your product and use the vids to promote and enhance it not make money out of those.

Oh and to top it all off, Dutch Customs have still not sent me a refund or contacted me about the overpayment!!! Another letter I think.

Ahthankyew

I got no strings,,,

2011-08-05T14:48:00.003+01:00

More non string based music instruments have arrived at Chez Beuken.

I am using Garageband more and more on my mac and having found how to simulate intruments, I also found that I needed a proper keyboard to make besst use of it.

Imagine my joy to discover I could geek amplify that need by adding an Ipod touch to the keyboard to make it a fully working portable synth :D. Great for taking to our jam sessions....though I won't even pretend I know more than 3 chords to make it work but I can pre-program some things that work best with synth backdrops.

And I also managed to pick up an iControl unit to allow for physical control of Garageband for almost half price on my old friend ebay. Mice are not always easy to fiddle with when you are playing something and need to trigger a new track or whatever.

Getting quite a collection of music instruments in the attic now...if only we could actually play them???

Ahthankyew

Blogger is broke

2011-08-04T12:13:00.005+01:00

As reported before, technology and me are not getting on very well at the moment...perhaps its my impending middle age starting to take hold and I'm getting to that, but I pressed it stage in my life.

This time its Blogger, I've noticed a few silly issues with it recently mainly due to it not seeming to be able to keep me signed in when I post replys to comments..well its better than that. I can't post comments to any blogger site it just keeps looping me back to a sign in page over and over and over and over and....

I'm starting to understand why older people have so much fear of computers!!!

Ahthankyew

A year in Belcrum

2011-08-01T02:59:00.002+01:00

It may not be Provence but it has been just as magical in some ways. We've just notched up our 1st year in our new home, here in the area of Breda called Belcrum.

Overall its been a good year, our home feels like a home and as we aquire more and more junk to clutter it up, it feels cosy.

Going to be quite a different 2nd year, with no Jodie here, but I don't think we'll be seeing the last of her just yet :)

Ahthankyew

Pedal board is complete

2011-07-28T12:25:00.006+01:00

Still waiting for my new switch to arrive but here's the final part of my "mobile/gigging" board, a small loop pedal.

I normally use my brilliant Digitech Jamman, which is getting a little old now (actually its been out of production for a couple of years now) but its still my favourite pedal type toy, but its size and need for AC current make it a bit hard to add to a self contained/1 plug board..So I bought this. In some ways it outdoes my Jamman but also it has limits that my jamman does not have. Not to worry, as far as recording short chord sequences and phrases from the guitar to allow for self accompniment at our jams are concerned this will do the job perfectly. It does not mix voice/mic loops, but lets be honest, with my voice thats a bonus. Though I can if I want to make use of the stereo in/out and plumb a mike into 1 channel and guitar into another.

So the Jamman now gets left set up full time on my home setup and the RC-3 gets a home in the new gig board.

and here it is in place, my all in one (more or less) pedal solution

The switch when it arrives, will be carried around inside the box, but if I plan to use it (with my hybrids), I'll place it outside the box and connect it to a Zoom Acoustic pedal, which in turn can then go into either the Looper stereo output direct or via the VL4 if I take it with me. I can even use the spare power leads, with the switch to put a whawha pedal or Zoom G2 in the signal if I choose, so all in all a very good basic setup with the chance to expand outside the box if needed/

The looper also takes an aux input so the Ipod/pad can be plugged in there for backing track playback if needed.

1 box, 1 plug for normal use..if I need to take the Zoom A2/VL4 with me it lives in another box but can be plugged to the signal chain with little or no effort.

Really pleased and much neater...no more dismantalling bits of my home setup to go to jams, just pick this up lock the lid down and take it and a guitar.

happy bunny....

Ahthankyew

grrrrrrr nothing works

2011-07-27T12:36:00.002+01:00

Whats up with blogger, it refuses to stay logged in so I have to sign in every time even though I've set the stay logged in option..

And everything else....nothing seems to work easy..I'm getting mega mega pissed of with computers and tech, this laptop especially!!

Anyway...recording gear set up again and one thing I am enjoying is Garage Band, a tinker about last night discovered even more functionality than I realised, I am loving that package when all hooked up it provides amazing studio functionality...though it did of course crash at least once on me...grrrr, and lets not even start on Apples add on Jampack addition process..which does not work!!! doh!

I even found the onboard keyboard options...but have decided to pick up a small/cheap usb midi keyboard to make best use of it. But now I can add strings and piano to my recordings, so long as they are not too technical...but certainly for some horn parps this is great.

My nice t-bone condensor mike which went all crackly on me just as it went out of its 30 day no quibble return policy, so had to go for repair, has come back from Thommann.de and working well again, hopefully for good.

I decided to dip into my VL4 user manual to experiment with some settings to do some decent autotuning on my voice, only to confirm that as expected I really can't sing, even autotune has its limits when you warble as bad as I do..I will have to hold off on my Black Eyed Peas audition for a while....but as I said before I have 1 tune that might work if I can get at least a couple of phrases in tune.

In the meantime, Summertime is starting to take shape, my 1st attempt at mult track recording is a learning process but an enjoyable one...when things work.
Ahthankyew

meh....

2011-07-26T16:31:00.004+01:00

Despite the golden chance to do a bit of recording while Bina is away, I've been too bored, tired or otherwise busy to bother...mostly bored.

The weather has been wet and muggy pretty much the whole week which saps the energy out of any enthusiasm.

Also after Thursdays barnstorming jam, I have to re-connect all my bits and bobs which are lying around in the attic. It is a tedious and boring task getting everything back together again..(though I am putting together a "portable" kit for jams, more later)

But am upstairs starting to put things in place, and as it feels a bit cooler today even if it is still wet. I'll get my kit set up again and see what I can come up with.

While searching for classic R&B numbers for the Ex Pat jams, I heard a really great funky guitar riff the other day which I can't get out of my head,unfortunately I can't get it into my hands either, but its AWESOME All I know it its a G+9 chord, but how its played is a mystery to me at the moment.
How did I not ever hear this before....

Still working on this Sam Cooke version of Summertime though, which I love and can almost play through without errors...Its only taken me about a week to master...almost. I did a dummy recording of it to test it out but will do a proper garage band multi track version soon, withouth the singing of course!

My mobile board is almost complete, now that payday has arrived I've ordered a new switch from my reliable switch maker, the EHX switch has been sent back for a refund and to complete the chain, I bought a new RC-3 Looper standard sized pedal which will fit in the box, which pretty much gives me all the same stuff I carry around when I go to Jams, aside from the VL4 which considering its inabilty to make me sound even remotely in tune may not be as usable as I hoped. So I think it can stay at home in future.

That said, I may have found a number which the VL4 can work with, since it matters not if my voice gets autotuned to death...we'll see, I'll reveal all after some tests.

Oh well, typing all this isn't going to get my amp power cable fed up behind the desk is it....better crack on.

Oh a small post script...Bina passed another of her MBA assignments with an A...I'd say I'm very proud of her, but she knows it ;)

Ahthankyew

Life is a losing game.

2011-07-23T23:47:00.001+01:00

Sad news about Amy Winehouse, proof that fame, fortune and whatver else she had does not bring happiness....also that drugs are going to kill you who ever you are.

I love the Back in Black albumn, and yes I'll be listening to it again a few times over the next few days. There really is not one bad song on there, and that voice...amazing.

For me this is my favourite of her own songs...I managed to find a youtube of her demo version, just her and a guitar, no production, no fx...just a twangy guitar and voice like treacle dipped in honey oozing emotion at her lost love.

"That all right?......." yeah...thats perfect.

RIP Amy Jade Winehouse.

Ahthankyew

Why so complicated?

2011-07-22T13:26:00.003+01:00

As much as I love computers, I have to after all, there is no doubt they seem to be capable of draining the very life out of you when it comes to doing what should be relativly simple tasks.

I took some video footage of our ex pats Jam session last night (which was a huge amount of fun despite my reservations about doing guitar duties alone) and I have about 40 mins of footage I want to put on our We Jammin facebook group.

simple enough eh!!

No...

40 mins is too much for FB, 20 min limits. You have to cut it.....ahhhhhhh thats easy.

No.

Downloaded some software which claimed to be video cutting software for youtube and other sites....
ok it works...but it takes fucking hours to load the 40 min movie.. this one
Free Video Cutter is simple to get hold of, install and apparently operate...but at the time of writing, over an hour after setting it to just load the video, so I can then cut it, its still at 36/60 creating video Thumbs...huh...

So I left it running in the back ground and downloaded something called Kates free video cutter, and yes it at least loads the video, but actually cutting it up into 15 min sections takes.....15 mins....per section.

I mean, come on...........its possible to slide forward and back though a video player why the hell is it needed to play in real time to the point you want to cut then process that??

Anyway, after 15 mins, I did eventually have a 15 min mpg file to upload to facebook.
Thats easy enough.

No.

FB's video upload is a farce.....it seems to up load in small 50Kbyte chunks then a pause as it does something then next chunk...so 15 mins woth of video is apparently going to take 1h20min to upload...OMG.

So simple tasks....totally fucked up by technology thats supposed to make our lifes easy.

Oh the Irony.

Edit...after taking ages to upload...it hangs
and FB has this to say

Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.

bloody computers.

Ahthankyew

Good and bad buys

2011-07-21T13:20:00.005+01:00

I mentioned before that I bought a really cool 5 way ABCDE swtich for my amps at home, but I also bought a smaller A/B switch a few weeks ago to use for my "gigging" board. I don't gig of course, I'm no where near ready for that, but I do go to my regular jam sessions both with students and more recently with adult collegues and members of Breda ex pats, and unplugging my gear and lugging it around is a pain, as indeed is restoring it all when I get home.

So I've been slowly putting together another pedal board. I have one for "home" use which basically is to allow me to use my VL4 system so my Hybrids can switch easily between pedals/amps etc. I like my G-Dec amp and various amp modding software for home stuff.

This however is my "gigging" board that I plan to take in future, its self contained, reasonably compact, and tidy. Though pretty cheaply made and with a pish poor practice amp system that I normally bypass. The A/B channels for example are not seperate, you can plug into any and get an output from both...hmmm not really a problem though.

As you can see, I have a tuner, an AB swtich, an acoustic simulator a multi effects pedal for standard effect types and the crown in the jewel a Big knobs Tube 808. This bascally lets me do most of the stuff I can do at home on any amp I want to plug it into, all be it with some fiddling on site, where at home I just select presets on my G-Dec or Garageband style software. (I love plugging this into my Fender Champ though, that 808 is mega)
The reason for the AB switch is to do with playing acoustic bits on my hybrids, they really need to go through seperate acoustic channels when in proper acoustic mode,(as opposed to an electric going into the acoustic simulator) and I want to send them to my Zoom A2 multi pedal to give deeper sounding acoustic sounds into a PA. rather than into the electric channels amp.

Gosh this is a long boring technical post innit...anyway...after my delight with my custom made switch pedal last week. I'm mega pissed with my shop bought switch, basically it bleeds signal to the unselected channel, which if amplified creates a distorted electrified echo to your clean acoustic sounds...in other words crap.
I returned one of these already and was really pissed to find the replacement has the exact same fault, so I guess its shoddy manufacturing.

I'm going to send it back for a refund and get my custom switch maker to make me a simple A/B and do it right.

As you can tell by the rant I'm pissed off about this, I hate buying goods from reputable places only to find out they are crap. So this is a warning to anyone else who might be tempted...don't buy an Electro Harmonix Nano Switchblade A/B switch.

Ahthankyew

Play time :D

2011-07-16T23:59:00.005+01:00

Still a few mistakes, and I think my timing is off on a few places, but I am really pleased with this effort, 100% improv off the cuff as I was testing a really cool new footswitch I had made special for me, which lets me hook up my radio transmitter to 5 output lines, so I can have all my different amps and fx pedals all hooked up. I just need to hit the switch for the output path I want. I can play acoustic, electric and bass just by plugging in my wireless bug and messing about with my choice of signal to the recording system, in this case, Digitech Jamman then into my mixer for use by GarageBand.

It works brilliantly and silently, you just can't hear when I switch from the G-Dec->Jamman to an A2->VL4->Jamman and back. Really pleased, this means I can keep my amps and pedals set up the way I like them and don't have to reroute wires whenever I want to play a different set up.

Also has the advantage that I can keep the Gdec backing track thats playing and change fx without losing the track.

Posting this so I can look back on it in a year or so and comment on how bad I am/was/

Mind you there is one downside to all this pedal magic, having to unplug it all when we go to jam nights and then restore it when we get back....but I think I'll travel lighter to future jams, just a guitar and a multifx pedal.

Ahthankyew

Schools out for summer!!!

2011-07-15T09:54:00.002+01:00

Nearly..

Today is our last working day, though we pretty much finished up on Tuesday, I have had a few minor things to finish and a short meeting to do in Rotterdam this afternoon, then its time for the summer hols...weeee I love this part of academia, long relaxing breaks where we..will...do...some.....work...to....get...ready...for...next year...hmmm
something wrong there. I'm sure we will fit in some holidays :D

I started a new set of Jam sessions a couple of weeks ago, with members of the Breda ex Pats society and musical work collegues and its proving to be very very successful, everyone is enjoying themselves and some really good music is starting to come out of it.

Its still at an embyonic state at the moment and a lot of fun to see people with all very different muscical tastes getting together to find a common purpose, but it really is starting to work. Last nights session saw us attempt several songs from scratch which many had never even heard of before, blues, rock, jazz and pop...it was bloody awesome. Going to be a regular thing from now on, hopefully we can settle into a core group of people with a set of standard songs and play the odd small gigs. Carnegie hall perhaps?

Ahthankyew

Nice...very different

2011-07-08T19:57:00.003+01:00

Now that the annual end of year marking frenzy is out the way I got some time to sit down and play with my new toys.

I'm liking the fretlight a lot, though it does not really compare in terms of quality with my other guitars, thats not what it was bought for. Its a decent enough guitar, though I did have to file down a sharp spot on a fret when I ran my hands up and down it, the strings are coming off 1st thing tomorrow, whats on there is like barbed wire without the spikes, a new set of Ernie Balls should make a big difference.

But it does make a decent sound and the light system is really cool. I stuck up the full fretboard notes of Gm and was really pleased at the range it let me play with...still have to memorise all the different keys and placements but it was an eyeopener for me, especially the lower ranges.

Its funny, the ad blurb goes on about how much easier it is to watch the lights than bob your head back and forward on screen but I am so used to that I actually find it a little hard to follow a tab without reading...but not to worry, new things always take time to grasp.

The supplied software though...hmmm not so great, and I was not pleased to see they were trying to charge more for song arrangments and so on, that really is something they should do for free to support their kit.

But not to worry, I bought a "1 time expense", copy of Guitar pro 6 for Fretlight which lets me use my pretty vast tab collection with it, now I can be certain of not missing a note and no more money needs to be sent off.

Also has the advantage I can see other areas of playing occuring and electronically modify them to overdub stuff like rythm, lead and bass, even some keyboards all on my guitar....well thats the plan.

Customs did make a big error, the supplier has never heard of this kind of problem before, so I'm going to photo copy everything and send it off to Customs for a nice fat rebate.

Ahthankyew

Bloody customs cock ups

2011-07-07T18:54:00.002+01:00

Not quite sure whats happened but customs appears to have majorly cocked up and charged me a small fortune in tax on the assumption my fretlight cost 816euros, which it most certainly did not, not even half that. They also seem to think it came from the US rather than Norway and hit me with a bill for 203 euros...nearly 3 times what it should be. I had no option but to pay it, and now I will call them up and complain so I can get a refund.

Silly bureacrats.

Ahthankyew

My Last One..

2011-07-07T01:48:00.004+01:00

For a while at least...Well its kinda a guitar, but more of a teaching aid. I want to improve my fretboard range, but have lots of problems visualing the scales in different keys, so have invested in a Fretlight guitar

Its a cool tool, which you hook up to your computer and it lights up the frets you need to press for chords, scales and so on, it can even walk you through lots of songs so you can get accurate notes from most types of Guitar Pro tabs of which there are many.

I use tabs a lot and as the Fretlight ad blubs points out, having the lights on the fretboard stops you bobbin your head up and down between tabs and fretboard and you can be more certain with your placement..only think it does not help with is finger selection.

Its also a fairly competent guitar but really I want it for its teaching abilities, I've gotton quite good at my tone and feel, over a few limited keys and even my rythm has improved, but checking out the whole board so you can move all over to get the right notes in the key is something I need to work on.

What I didn't cotton on to when I ordered it from a company in Norway is that Norway is not part of the EU, though it is part of the common market. But it got stuck in customs for a while...finally released today so I can expect it in the next day or 2.

Anway...that's it...there will be no more guitars, unless one gets sold.

Ahthankyew

Mid Life Crisis

2011-07-02T03:43:00.004+01:00

I really need to go buy a porche, after all its compact, reasonably practical and does provide some tangible functions.

Guitars, and various other musical toys....not so much!!

Though having said that, last night we had a jam at the Mezz which found me enjoying my mid life crisis with various other mid life crises sufferers, and it was bloody awesome, even Bina joined in with a few toots on her noise horn? Musically we got into the groove and had the most fantastic time.

But during a bit of a clear up of the play room today, I have all my guitars out on display...and ermm, there's rather a lot, even I am starting to realise I can't honestly say, they all do different things and keep a straight face.

I am a bit obsessive when it comes to my hobbies, and 25 or so guitars proves that; my playing is certainly improving, of that there is no doubt and I am enjoying myself immensely when I twang the strings. Its even evident that I'm starting to hold my own with musicians who are much more accomplished than me, but, I clearly need to stop buying guitars..I did promise myself I'd buy a blueshawk if one came up at a reasonable price, but I think I need to shed a few others before I do that.

To complete my one man band obsession I've bought a cheapo drum machine and some percussion stuff...I can't see me taking up drumming as a hobby though, but we'll see if I can lay down a few tracks soemtime soon. Such a pity that my singing is genuinely terrible, no amount of software or hardware is going to improve my crappy voice, unless I decide to be robot man and autotune the life out of my out of tune wailing.

If I have to part with them all, then at least I can narrow down to 2 the ones I'd keep, Lucille of course...what a guitar..and Gracie, my Ovation VXT, so versatile...the Dark Fire and GS60 are going to be close behind, and the Strats nd Frankie...........hmmm I simply can't choose.. I do have 3 or 4 lesser axes,so maybe I should just sell them and focus on a core of ...20 or so?? :D

GAS...probably the most expensive obsession around...but then again..when you go to a jam and start contibuting meaningful noises with everyone else....its all worth it.

Ahthankyew

more, not for music lovers.

2011-06-28T15:21:00.003+01:00

I'm not over the moon about posting this, but I will, as a 1st try at something different and it was a first try, despite having a cool Digitech Jam-man loop pedal for over 2 years now, I really haven't used it much beyond playing back pre-sampled loops or recording a backing track, not using it to its full potential at all.

So I decided, after watching KT Tunstalls amazing solo version of Black Horse and the Cherry Tree using a loop, to dig it out and give it a bit of respect...Its a fairly simple thing to use but I didn't quite get it right and found myself looking down at my feet at times working out just when to hit the right pedal.

This was recorded in real time onto garage band, through my mixer, and I just wanted to see how it would come out...I messed up the play out though as I was looking at my pedal to try to see how to set the stop on next loop option, which it turned out I cant do while playing, and lost the thread of what I was playing...

Also at the start I messed up the overdub so it takes me a whle to get into the groove to add the staccato chords I wanted to layer into it..you can even hear me pushign pedals like mad and getting nothing back, since I had left the mike on.

In short, it takes too long to get going, and the solo ends very poorly...but..that said, the sound that my Lucille makes here in 3 different tone settings is ....hmmm yummy..I have to work on this a bit more when I have finished all my marking and have some dedicated time to spend on this...but here it is..

DON'T listen if you do actually enjoy music..this may scar you for life. If you want to see a loop pedal being used correctly, click on the video below.

Ahthankyew

Mojo has returned

2011-06-26T10:09:00.002+01:00

Had a great night of poker, blew everyone away with several huge hands that left me far and away the overall winner.

For once, pretty much every hand was a potential winner, though in my determination to be cautious I dumped quite a few lowish hands only to discover they would have won with straights and trios. Ah well. I won enough, felt good to win again.

Ahthankyew

struck down in my prime.

2011-06-22T19:12:00.002+01:00

I'm not well.

The day before Kens last jam session and 2 days before I have to oversee student presentations I have been hit with debilitating man flu....

you can send flowers and candy to the usual address.

Hopefully the last of the UK Lemsips will keep me going till my dirty fighting anti virus genes do their thing...or is that dirty old jeans I can never remember.

must go gotta clean up the snot I just sneezed all over my keyboard.

Ahthankyew

What a great night

2011-06-18T00:32:00.004+01:00

Myself and 2 collegues, Ken on Bass/guitar and Robbie on drums/bass, had a grown up jam session last night at the Mezz...IT WAS AWESOME.

For the 1st time I can honestly say I felt comfortable and in control of what I was playing, even if I lost the key a few times it was really cool.
I took Gracie, my Ovation VXT and my Fender G-Dec amp so I could play her as acoustic and lead as needed and it worked brilliantly.

Less is definitely more and playing to my strengths of feel and tone rather than speed and rythymn really paid off. We totally rocked at times sounding really brilliant. Even if we often had no clue what we were playing, it just sounded great.

Sadly Ken, who is a very accomplished and supportive musician, who shouted out chord changes as needed, helped with keys and covered up my mistakes with his excellent bass, is leaving us for Abu Dhabi next month, so there's going to be few chances to repeat this awesome night. But we're going to try again next week.

Can't wait!!

Ahthankyew