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ggm1960

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About ggm1960

  • Birthday 07/09/1960

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  • Biography
    Mom made us take piano lessons.

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  • Location
    Cedar Rapids

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  • Interests
    Harley Davidson

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  • Occupation
    Electronics

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  1. Yeah it's a real hassle and something I hope will be addressed with midi 2.0. The cakewalk .ins files were great. Mac had a similar thing going on with midinam/mididev files, however that got lost in the switch away from 5 pin DIN connections to USB.
  2. There is a lot of that going on around here also. There are so many guitar noodlers you'd think it was 1983, so many seem to act as if they're trying to be the next Jimi Hendrix or SRV. Now, I'm not opposed to noodling the guitar, I've been doing it since my teens myself, but it just wears me out to watch it endlessly and amazes me that it still seems to be a big deal among "musicians" even when it seems the general public is not all that interested in it.
  3. I would agree, looks better than it has in years.
  4. I guess when I say that I mean one of these solid chunks of wood that read Gibson, Fender or Rickenbacker on the headstock and don't need a battery! I was a bit frustrated with the T5 for a while, couldn't keep it tuned. I don't know if it was the guitar or the Elixir strings but it seems I finally got them stretched enough where the thing mostly cooperates now.
  5. In my duo I've been using my Roland KC100 keyboard amp that I bought second hand years ago. It's a great solution since I also have my Korg Krome plugged into it. The guitar I mainly use is a Taylor T5 although I like to use my Takamine EF341SC for a more authentic acoustic tone on some songs. While the Taylor does a fair job of electric I managed to fatten it up some with my Tech 21 Fly Rig 5. It adds a lot without adding much in terms of size, weight or complexity. I might even take a "real" electric guitar to a gig some day.
  6. Thanks for these great suggestions! I'm currently gathering materials and planning my room treatment. R38 insulation, OC 703 ridgid fiberglass and foam panels all waiting to be installed.
  7. My experience around here is that, with few exceptions, if you start a new band, you start all over in regards to getting booked. There's also what I'd call a "turnover" problem where venues (mostly bars) open,close and/or change hands somewhat frequently. I'd worked with this drummer in the past and found that he doesn't like to um.....stick to a standard beat and could go off the rails with a little, shall we say, improve occasionally. I've talked to others that have worked with him since that time and tell me they find it difficult to work with him for similar reasons.
  8. I actually needed a break from that myself, it took a while for my replacement to appear but now I'm just performing in a duo with my wife. Low stress, low pay, less equipment, less gigs; it's working for me!
  9. That's pretty much the perspective I was originally writing from, I'm a few years older than that guy but we're both in our 50's here. I suppose the upside to this particular story is that we have technical degrees and long term steady employment at a huge corporation. With marketable skills at something you find interesting, electronics in our case, working for "the man" can actually be a pretty good thing. I don't recall a time when I wasn't a musician, from the age of five my mother had us taking piano lessons and later I became a proficient and studied guitar player as well. I often think I probably could have done real well in the music business but at the age where I should have been pursuing it I was extremely unfocused and irresponsible. I still enjoy writing songs and I believe some of them are pretty good. I was really into recording back in the 90's when computers were beginning to make it possible for people to do that at home. I posted a lot of them but they got lost in the huge influx of others doing the same thing of course. I sometimes think I should try to find a capable group of younger musicians to mentor and perhaps promote but finding (or perhaps more appropriately, making) the time is difficult. I have a number of other hobbies and interests besides the time consuming business of working full time and maintaining a home, etc..
  10. So I'm at work the other day in an area where I'm not typically at and a drummer that I'd been in a band with a number of years ago spotted me and came over to talk. I've always thought the guy to be a bit odd but I don't believe he's stupid. He's telling me all about this band he's been putting together, the idea as he describes it is a 70's glam themed thing. That sounds ok but it strikes me as a bit weird that you come up with the idea for what you expect your band to be before you actually go about finding some players and a vocalist that you think will match your somewhat narrow vision. There is a very active live music scene in this area, however, it's rather modest size wise by national standards and the talent pool is limited by that. It's probably similar to most other areas though in that you do your best to promote your shows and hope that you can get enough of a crowd that the venue can make some profit. This time of year everything is indoors and there aren't any particularly large places to play, if you're booking a band you take what you can get and hope for the best turnout. Anyway he goes on to describe the difficulty he'd had trying to find a vocalist (no, really? I think to myself) but now he's found someone. Silly me I go ahead and ask who it is but he holds back and says he can't really divulge that information. I'm oddly unaffected by that but I don't bother to say that even if I recognized the name it would be very difficult for me to find someone else to tell that would actually care. I go ahead and wish him the best of luck!
  11. Facebook's Cover Band Central is what appears to me to be the topic clone of this forum although like Outkaster states, FB is a piss poor format for forum discussion.
  12. Don't overlook college radio, many have programs that play songs by local and/or independent artists if you send them a CD.
  13. Is there a website out there where you can do a search by band or song name and it'll give you the name of the specific sound/sample/synth used from that player? Ideally with popular tunes from the classic rock, r+b/funk, blues, jazz canon...i.e: I'm aware that anyone can take the time to look up this stuff individually through Google, but was just wondering if there's a site out there that puts together this stuff in some kind of comprehensive way for we music nerds . Don't I wish! I've spent countless hours trying to recreate sounds for a contemporary hard rock band I wish I'd have never joined. Sounds like the nasally arpeggio background in Disturbed Stupify, hardcore synth sounds in Sevendust Ugly and other background sounds for bands like the Prom Kings. I've been able to get close using Reason 4 but sound design is a world unto itself!
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