TapperMike

Jeff Moen is my hero. When I started playing the ztar Jeff was (and still is) a great inspiration. I'd watch his videos for hours and try to emulate his simple yet direct "accordion -ish' left hand playing. Him - Me- Jeff is also a really nice guy. He has one approach whether it be ztar, warr (like a chapman stick) linnstrument. That approach works well for him so he sticks with it and as a result he just keeps getting better and better at what he does. Me on the other hand I'm all about the exploration. Try to get more notes into a chord, try this try that it seems as soon as I have some level of proficiency I'm bored and I want to try something else. It slows the process down. This thing is work for me. The waiting is beginning to be a good thing. This is work I've printed out an image of the linnstrument Put it on a desk and gone through the motions to get myself acquainted with scales and chords. Standing might be the better option for it But I want to master it as a "desktop keybed"

There is something freaky going on here. It seems that something was saved from another post and it wants to paste in everywhere

My fortunes are slowly turning around for me. I'm still working as a support technician (part time) and still cooking. Which means I have a little money to put away. It won't be long before my support job is gone (yeah I know I've said that one before) And I'll have to settle into working two jobs like the rest of the world (or at least my neck of it) On the positive side I've finally saved up for a linnstrument. The frustrating part is the wait. First I have to transfer money from my checking account to my paypal account... I did that on friday and it won't be in my paypal account till friday (damn you BOA) Then when I purchase the thing its a.....5 business day (7 days if I'm lucky) wait for the thing to arrive. I'm obsessing over this thing. I've printed out a graphical representation of the "board" that I practice on daily. Seriously... Almost everything is either upside down or backwards to me. Maybe the wait has some value trying to get the fingering / timing thing down a little before it arives will lessen the frustration.

Mixcraft is a great tool to grow with. I haven't upgraded to the latest version. When I do I'm getting everything. Generally I'm against having to use only the plugins that come with a given daw. That being said when you buy the package you get tonnes and tonnes of useful sounds and effects to work with. It also plays well with all of my plugins. The same can't be said of my experiences with Ableton. The more external plugins one uses in Ableton live the greater the latency issues.

@John Doing my laundry was the only activity I had with the exception of reading your post. Immediately afterwards I fell asleep quickly. And when I woke it was a new year. Also as I slept I dreamt I ate a giant marshmallow. In the morning my pillow was gone.

Thanks, reading your message was almost as stimulating as doing my laundry

I'm not in it for financial gain. I've led a little bit of the life and it's not for me. I'm a hobbyist who occasionally likes to share what I have to offer with the world. As for the professional life... Done that, been there.

Friday on my Mind - David Bowie

The concept of a fretless stringed instrument unhinges me. Anyone with the slightest mastery of playing near in tune notes earns my respect.

Or well below their capabilities. Oddly it's not always knowledge or skill that defines success sometimes it's a marketing choice that pays off. Stefani Germanotta, was a highly talented "high brow" singer songwriter before she decided fame, fortune and accessibility to the masses was more important than intellectualism. Lady Gaga as she is now known is quite content with her material and her income.

I can only imagine what pops up in a search engine when the query is Hard Picks.

Quite an impressive bundle there.

Grandpa got run over by a reindeer - Elmo and Patsy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgIwLeASnkw

As I've forgot to say it already... Welcome to the Forums Greg. I enjoyed your youtube channel offerings.

Today was a good day for BIAB and me. Thanks for everyone's input. It seems when I move two steps forward I get kicked 20 steps back. Last time I went to a show.... My car broke down and it was in the shop for 3 weeks. Now I'm more concerned with getting other things done like finding another job. I've been thinking of getting back into open mic nights and blues but here are the caveats. I can't stay focused playing blues for very long especially not "Chicago Blues" Mostly because I've done that and done that and done that and I'm done with that. I can tolerate jump blues which used to be known as Rhythm & Blues because it includes a lot of Charlie Parker type jazz ideas (CAGED for my guitar friends) But as Greg points out in this business the playing out choices are very limited. Locally... I have no musician buddies. There used to be a time in the restaurant biz when musicians could be found left and right. Not anymore. I'm the only musician where I work. I have several questions for you Greg, I'm about 10 years your junior.although I do recall the 70/s and 80's fairly well. Why retire? Are you going to quit playing out cold turkey? Have you ever tried the newer midi based trumpets like the Yamaha EZ-TP or the Morrison Digital Trumpet? (A buddy of mine used to play trombone he switched to a yamaha WX5 his opportunities skyrocketed. Re, teaching. sharing knowledge. Oddly I have taught guitar before in a music store. These days those jobs are extremely hard to come by as fewer and fewer people are learning instruments. They'd rather play games. As well for many a year I shared knowledge about ztars. Setup, technique I featured articles on various ztarists. Harvey Starr loved it but he's about the only one who gave me a shout out and encouraged me to do more. As for the ztars. Well I don't think the BabyZ is coming back. It's got a wiring issue I can't resolve myself. Oddly I did get the Z6 up and running but now it has more dead notes then before. It's frustrating as hell and I've had to assign fixed velocity to make the notes that do work to work correctly. It costs less for a new babyz then to repair mine. I'm not sure starr labs is making them anymore. If anything getting the z6 up and running has made me want a linnstrument even more. The linnstrument is something I could pour myself into. But my financial situation being what it is the linnstrument isn't in the cards till I line up another job and when working two jobs I doubt if I'll have the time to devote to it that I'd like. Cooking is being there when they need you. Especially if you are at the bottom of the seniority. Every Friday, and Saturday night and all day Sunday with occasional shifts thrown in elsewhere. If I get a day position elsewhere usually they are 10-2 or 3. The only guarantee of working a straight 8 hour shift these days is third shift at a Denny's (11pm to 7 am) and trust me I am not going down that road any time soon. Many musicians rightly believe that to insure they maintain income playing an instrument they don't give away what they could be paid to do. I feel the same way about cooking. I know some may think this is strange or selfish The industry is not how I left it. I talk to peers these days and I'm amazed at how low the pay rate is in comparison to 10 or 15 years ago. It's not just talking it's also trying to live at that payscale. Working two 30 to 35 hour jobs just to make ends meet.

Tom Petty - Free Fallin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqDq3eyTGck

Well, it was mighty depressing at the time. For the last 8 years I was content to live without a car. I got this one and it lasted me exactly one week before it stopped working. For all the time they had it I thought for sure I wouldn't be able to afford to pull it out of the shop. Nevermind the fact that as my software job is disappearing quickly and my cooking job isn't giving me enough hours or money to pay the bills. Now atleast I have a car to look for a second job.

Good news. I finally have my car back after almost 4 weeks of being in the shop. Double good news It cost me $400 for labor

Have you checked with presonus for driver updates? Firewire like thunderbolt has security risks. In Microsoft's attempts to patch those risks it may be gumming up the works. Some programs allow you to allocate which cores to use for certain things. This is important as it can be used to bypass the interrupt process. Midi operates on interrupt. Which means if your computer is checking something in the background you have to interrupt the process first. If the operating system says "no you can't interrupt what I'm doing" then the signal has to wait. Sure it's all small stuff today compared at what windows used to run before but it still can lead to inconsistencies. Sort of like using external plugins with ableton live. The sample rate doubles for each non included AL plugin you are using It gets downright stupid after awhile which is why I no longer use AL.

I'm thinking of getting adobe flash professional That in my humble opinion is throwing in the towel. I've had flash in the past. My boss used to work for macromedia as a developer for flash before leaving to form his own company. The latest installment allows for .fla to be converted into HTML Canvas. Flash in swf format is so far beyond what can be created in html5 it isn't even funny. When one "downgrades on export" from .fla to .html many features that have been present for the last 15 years don't work in html so there is a warning signal. I've had many disagreements with adobe's development of flash over the years and it's not just about working for flash's nearest competitor. I also really don't like the subscription model for software.

You're right John, It's not that hard. I've run wamp's and lamps in the past. I've even run plek

Egad, I may never master jQuery at this rate. I just spent an hour studying how to show / hide an object using jQuery. and I'm still confused about it. In SWiSH it took me less then a minute to show/hide an object using simple instructions like... And about 10 seconds to convert the swf (flash) to html via googles swiffy

I've got the bandwidth for my needs. What I want to do is build up a portfolio of different sites on subdomains both cms and static for potential employers. I too used to hard code php, perl, asp and coldfusion along with some rebol and ruby/rails for extra measure. I'm rusty I've seen more then a few positions on craigslist for web design development that I could have easily handled years ago But not today. SWiSHscript / SWiSH Max (action script flash made easy) and a little php was all that I needed to get by. That won't cut it today. Looking at my career choices I've got cooking and I've got web design. I'm prolly going to need two jobs to survive I'd rather not sling hash 12 to 16 hours a day to keep a roof over my head. And at this point that's what I see. So I want to get back into design/development and sharpen my skills from the ground up. Which is something that could be done with something like dreamhost or bluehost or any contemporary hosting company but it's really not the same when you have one-click instant cms scripts. Showing that I can do it all locally (wamp. dynamic dns) is also a nice feather in the cap.

I tried WAMP server but it failed three times during the install. So I went with XAMPP It's up and running but I haven't set up a dyn dns service yet. After looking at what is available I went with https://www.dynu.com/ Even though hosting is dirt cheap these days I really don't want to get tied down to a traditional hosting service. If I did I'd go back to Bluehost.

Many years ago I ran all sorts of servers from my desktop computer. Gaming/Chat environments as well as hosting websites. It was all part of the educational process for me. I've been thinking of running a wamp server (http://sourceforge.net/p/wampserver/wiki/Home/) with a dynamic ip address such as noip.com As I've been looking at other opportunities other then cooking. I'm reminded that before I got into tech support for multimedia software (swishzone.com) I was a web designer and offered hosting for a time. I let all of that go as I got into tech support and many of my skills became rusty. Just as I used to hardcode php, perl and asp for a time then I got hooked on prefabricated portals. I'm curious if anyone else has tried "home hosting" in recent years or have you simply got a good hosting package with the big name brand hosts. Mike