TapperMike

Oddly that's what I was with SZ as I was subcontracted. Never met my bosses in real life. With regards to other companies. I've tried, trust me I've tried. 8 years of trying to get into another company doing the same thing. Larger companies farm out to Indian network centers which handle several companies at the same time. Smaller companies rely on programmers to handle support when workload is light. As far as companies that make apps... Those are all subcontracted to one person per app who also must write the help files. It's funny years ago I was having a problem with my (music) software not working properly. It took two months to receive a single reply. The company has since gone out of business. We can all speculate on why. While there are still software techs that make house calls. Most all of that is in California and it's about the OS. There are "pay" versions of linux operating systems which some companies use that require constant maintenance. I haven't touched a linux system in over 15 years. It used to be a hobby of mine that I lost interest in.

A strange thing the music software field. Some companies are good, some great, the vast majority not so much. When they go out of business it's not only the biz (employees etc) that can suffer it's also the consumers. Sometimes they don't need to go out of biz sometimes they are simply acquired such as when Apple bought Camel Audio. CA left everyone who purchased their windows version holding the bag, While Garage Band and Logic got some new toys. If you've been following my story with SZ you know that it's now closed. What we did is set up a care package so that not only purchasers but everyone will get free tools to run the software as long as windows supports it. Granted there are some things that can't be covered in the care package we sent out. And there will be no one like me to follow up when if something goes wrong and people can't/don't follow directions.

Thanks Rudi It was a long run. The longest best job I've ever had. Just turned 13 years for me when the place closed down. To be honest I "volunteered" as an evangelist prior to joining the team. I'd written articles for wired, cnet and others, I'd also been published for my contributions to "Friends of Flashkit" a collaborative book written by people with varying flash skills from then varying swf authoring programs (not just flash) I was near completion writing a book, which required more money then I had. When I asked for an endorsement the owner hired me. I did live seminars for flashforward. Appearing at San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. It was an amazing ride. I wrote over 200 help files, countless tutorials and screen casts and answered over 230,000 support calls. For a long time I was also supervisor for our template development team. I was an active contributor to all the products we produced in a consulting capacity. (I can code I'm just not that great at programming) It came at a time when I was working the midnight shifts at Denny's When I'd juggle over which bills I could pay and which I couldn't. Cars would break down with no money to tow let alone fix. I'd walk 6 miles in the debt of winter with Sub zero (F) temperatures. The job at SZ lifted me up. It gave me a sense of purpose like no other before or after. It wasn't just the money, though in the early years the money was nearly 5 times what I'd made previously. Even as sales declined, sales dwindled and I as well as others had to take constant pay cuts. I still loved it. When all the other employees were let go years ago, I got to stay on doing support. No one would thought the company would hold on as long as it did. We let all the development staff go 4 years ago. Somehow we were still able to generate sales and maintain support.

I've thought about that. I've also thought about marking them as spam so I don't see them. Many thing I look back over through the years and want a second look at. As an example I belong to a band in a box user group. An old old style forum hosted by yahoo. The members are very old as well. Many I think of as friends. They helped me in understanding the capabilities of the program and I went on to help new users.. We also share our biab compositions. every once in a while I get notification of a new song being posted to the file area and I just have to look. As far as the forum it is so specific that we can only cover biab related material. The helpers outnumber the helped 4 to 1 as well PG music has their own forum now (had it for years) Part of me can't let it go. This is the predicament I see with many of the mailers. With regards to setting up a new email account. I've had the same email address since '96. I'll often get emails from long lost friends and relatives out of the blue. They may not think to access me via facebook but they store the email address and send me a line "Remembering When"

So SWiSHzone will be closing for good this weekend (possibly today) http://swishzone.com There goes my dream job. I've had it for 12 years though the last few have been on a part time basis. It was great while it lasted and I'll have a lot of found memories working online. Sadly just before I got the notice, an old friend passed away. He was my supervisor during my earlier years but due to declining sales he had to be let go. He had long term health issues which prevented him from finding work elsewhere. I'm told he passed away suddenly and quietly at a center for the terminally ill.

Someday it's a full time chore deleting unwanted email from my box. Sure long ago I did sign up with an interest for X product or political but that's faded. Seems like some companies want to give you the run around. You have to log into your account....wait you have to retrieve your password, then log into the account, then ask nicely and then they send you an email back asking if you are really sure you want to.

Television or Live Performance? Buddies of mine and I conceived and ran of this talent show which we purposely fixed not to win for ourselves. It was all about making a few bucks. We found this old dollar movie theater in a run down part of town that would run Dollar shows. Yep that's right $1.00 for third or fourth run bad movies. They even had a .50 night. We put together a "Battle of the Bands" as we were too young to get gigs in bars and too old for the high school party circuit. Got bands like us, Printed of thousands of flyers, paid for advertising in the two local "scene" papers and in the hometown paper. We worked our arses off to get the show launched. We performed to a packed house. We placed third out of three. When everyone was paid off we made 250 dollars split equally between our four man band. Of the band I'm the last one playing an instrument. We tried together, we tried apart. Jobs, families, life caught up with the rest of them. As far as the other bands.... Only one member of the two five piece bands still performs as far as I know. Nobody got PR out of it. Nonetheless it was nice playing in front of a big crowd. It was a great learning experience for me. With regards to open mic's. I love em. People think they are going to perform and enhance their following. Regardless of how well they perform they don't take a bigger crowd then they left with. Also they don't get paid. Maybe a bar will be nice and send you a free drink during the performance. Open Mic's / Blues / Jazz jams are more about networking with local musicians. You get to see what the competition is up to. You get to mingle with like minded performers. And if you haven't been on a stage performing before or you are rusty or you want to try out new ideas that's cool. Careers, broader audiences, no. As for TV what may make for a great 4 minutes of television viewing may also not make for a good career choice.

The Persuaders -Some Guys have All The Luck Welcome to the thread Erihael

I only have one 32 bit issue in my 64 bit world I got around to installing proteus VX on my windows 10 machine. I have jbridge so that's a non issue with 64bit Daws and 32 bit plugins. What kills is that I can only run PVX in standalone mode. It has endless issues with permission errors regardless of how the daw is installed / run and the plugin is installed /run. Then again PVX was only designed to run on Win98.

Thanks, I'm going through bluehost.com and I'll be running Joomla as my cms. It's been an interesting (frustrating) process setting things up . At first I just wanted a standard wiki such as wakka or tiki. They proved to be a pain to set up and I spent more time then I'd like debugging. It's funny, ages ago I used wordpress. During a routine update it sporked my whole system and I had to open MyPHP admin and copy/paste every thing from one set of tables to another. It was agonizing. While it may be stable now. I have no intention of using wordpress ever again. I've run IIS locally as well as Apache in the distant past and then just a few years ago I ran them again as a refresher. In other news. My schedule has changed dramatically. Due to recent changes at work (cooking) I'm working 7 days this week and next week I'll be on vacation. Big family reunion.

I'm in the same boat with Rudi, The only song that really struck me was "Money Guns and Lawyers"

Any Wold (That I'm welcome to ) Steely Dan

Thanks, But I've already bought the domain name paid for 2 year hosting and installed the cms. The next step is all the window dressing, I know it seems crazy but I have disillusions of monetizing the site

Premier Guitar has "Rig Rundown" where the video famous artists touring rigs. I've seen a few "how to sound like X videos on the web. When I had tappermike.com I did do a famous keyboards of the 60's and 70's articles I just didn't reach a wide enough audience. Not that I expect one from my new site I still have to build the damn thing. I want a nice "cut to the chase" look so if someone is looking for a precise tone they don't have to wade through a bunch of stuff to find it. Getting the Variax has been nothing but an enjoyable distraction. I find myself constantly chasing classic rock sounds when I should be doing other things.

For those who didn't get the invite.... Sorry https://www.facebook.com/groups/1065515906819234/?ref=bookmarks Once I have enough data to get going I'm going to open a Guitar Rig Wiki Basically it's a database of famous guitarists and the equipment / settings they used to create the sounds they are famous for.

You have good points. I've never been much for live guitar loopers. Sure Mixcraft has a performance setup that is similar to Ableton Live but I've only used it twice so far and I haven't used Ableton in years (latency issues) I have played hundreds if not thousands of standards in the past. Usually with the sheet in front of me or BIAB. I may consider just printing up fake sheets, working from them and if I can't recall them all by Gig time I'd bring them along. Cheesy I know. In the past I'd always get mad at jazz pianists who insisted on playing live using sheet music even though they'd played the same tunes for years.

Thanks for your support gentlemen. It's a street fair, so lots of people passing by on their way to cosmetic jewelry stands, homemade honey, so the performance will be more audio window dressing then anything else. Which I'm fine with. I'm sure there will be more acts then just me I just hope it's not a four or five hour gig. My Buddy said he's still has to work out the details of when, I'll be performing I could drag out BIAB or other software as backing tracks which would extend my playing time considerably as i've had a fairly vast repertoire in the past. Here is the hindrance of biab. It makes the situation harder to memorize / perform without it as you always have the reference of the chord charts before you. An old laptop in the bright sunlight makes it very hard to see the screen. I've decided to start with the songs I know best recently then work backwards to one's I haven't played in a few years and then concentrate on possibly learning new ones. It's all going to be Chord Melody stuff, I'm not going to sing and I'm not going to bring the ztar or linnstrument along. Even though I do have quite a number of tunes I've worked out on the z...that gets back into the issue with laptops and sunlight. What's odd is that just a few days ago I came to the decision I'd do more "tapping style" arrangements. The way I play tapping is very unique and yet closer to Chapman stick type soloist performance then EVH stuff. as I mix and match both conventional strumming / finger picking with tapping within each given phrase. Writing arrangements using this method can be time consuming. After I'm happy with my set list which already includes some of scores / methods I'll try to work a few in. So far I have... Autumn Leaves Blue Bossa Body and Soul Polka Dots and Moonbeams My Blue Heaven Here There and Everywhere They Can't take that Away from Me Dream A little Dream of Me Round Midnight. Note that these are actually very short songs the way I have them arranged. It's very melancholy stuff for a festival. But those I kinda have down blind.

So I've been mostly a hobbyist musician for the last decade or so. I noodle around play a few songs to amuse myself and try to expand my musical directions, sharing what I've learned along the way. I Might have a paying Gig! The city (of Wixom) aside from it's concerts in the park is going to close down a small section of downtown for a street fair of sorts. I've been invited to play by the planners. I don't have a set list as it's been forever since I've actually sat down and performed for others. It will be "one man band Mike" and while I know a few "chord/melody' arrangements for jazz standards I'm rusty. As well I know a few "fingersyle' arrangements of 60's pop era tunes. (Beatles, etc) A long time friend of mine is a member of the Downtown Development Committee. I went to visit him and show off my new variax. Played a few songs to demonstrate it's capabilities (he's a non-musician) He's heard me play in the distant past (over ten years ago). Now I wonder if I should consider not doing it because I don't think I have enough time to prepare.

Welcome to the fun. There is a lot to do here and, Honestly the nicest music forum on the web. The lounge is where we all get acquainted. There is a very fun game we play which is the song association thread. It's certain to spark one's creative thinking

Two standards every jazz guitar must know. Autumn Leaves - but be careful. Most keyboard players prefer Cm While most Guitarists prefer Em Blue Bossa - Prolly the most covered jazz instrumental Bossa Nova (yes more then The Girl From Ipanema )

You are correct. as far as lag and the other things that plagued The whole 13pin (roland pitch to midi) system are no where to be found. I did experience some warble but not significantly (see my review) My only complaint still is that it deserves a better neck. I've tamed the action as much as humanly possible without a fret leveling job. And I've played it several hours a day so my hands are well acquainted with it by now. I'll never use another pitch to midi system ever again. I don't care what progress is made. Between my Linnstrument and my Ztars I've got everything I want / need for midi. I carried Roland for years and kept on saying things like... It's gotten better only a few more quirks to fix. Didn't matter, Still got ghost notes for no good reason. Still got huge volume spikes for no reason. Still got dropout for no reason. Too many issues too often. I've read that the POD 400HD can send signals back to Variax guitars via the 1/4 inch cable. Which if I were into programming and needed ti for a live cover band that would be great. Switch guitar settings and effects settings with a tap of the foot.

I don't have the specs for the HD 2.0 I know latency has improved over the last two years. The last recorded tests I've seen on the web. Electric 3 ms 12 String Acoustic ; 8 ms Altered tuning low C 12 string : 20 ms Just as a reference the latest roland GR 55 takes 35 ms to convert internally and produce a tone. Roland VG considerably more. Mic'ing anything adds one ms per foot. So the further away the mic is from the sound source the more latency is experienced. Same with the distance of your ears to the speakers. My desktop amp sits less then 4 feet from my years. Another thing to point out.... If you use the VDI cable (Ethernet) from the Variax into say..a pod 500 HD. (sorry not 400) or helix The signal does not have to be converted from Digital to Analog in the Variax and Doesn't need to be converted back in the Pod. This shaves some lag / latency which occurs in D/A A/D conversion. I've read reports however that the analog magnetic pickups sound brighter using the VDI cable. Probably because it becomes an apples to oranges comparison of converting the analog magnetic signal inside the variax to a digital one.

Done. Um no the signal is carried from piezo transducers in the bridge from there it's converted into a digital signal where it gets processed with the on board computer and then... you can blend that with the magnetic pickups. or send it straight out the jack as a regular guitar signal.

I started writing my review of the Variax unfortunately I've run out of time. I think that it would better represent the selected sounds using a different song which matches the model.

So here's the update. I know that I originally said I wouldn't touch the action and try to get used to it as is. Well I received the battery charger today Got a good charge in it and was able to play the guitar for two hours... I'll be doing a neck adjustment on Monday regardless (too much work tomorry and it's already late nite here. The neck is playable in it's current condition but could be better. All of my other guitars have much lower action and they play like butter. That being said. God I love this guitar.!!! I have to play it louder then I'm used to. Once the master volume is up I can here the the variax tones above the actual guitar tone coming from the body alone. I haven't gone through all the included presets simply because I find one guitar and obsess over it. Most notably the Rickenbacker tones and the sitar. Beatles, Beatles and more Beatles then after that some Byrds, Tom Petty and more Beatles.