Joe Muscara

When he first started comping with the EP sound, that wasn't bad. I kind of liked a bit of it. Once he started the electric guitar sound, that was WAY too much. I've been revisiting my fandom of Van Halen lately and one thing I've been thinking about is how well EVH worked on/in a tune. He didn't just shred for the entire song, his parts fit in as part of the tune, not over the vocals but between them, leading into the next part. That being said, you might forgive Jordan because maybe he was experimenting. Sometimes, when we're just jamming and learning a tune, we play a lot of stuff to see what might fit. A lot of what Jordan played could fit. If he gave me all of that to use for a track, I might take a phrase here and one there to use on the track, just not all of it. At the end of the initial listening section after he played the guitar stuff and went to the rhythmic pattern, that could be okay as a bed on the tune or parts of the tune, something underneath that provides more of a feel and not something you really hear. Pop music does this all the time. I feel similarly about the orchestral part he played near the end. Some of that could be okay as a bed. But no, if he's going to just wank over the entire tune, that's not what the tune is about. And no, Alicia doesn't need to add more tracks.

Thanks for the info. Mine has gotten pretty bad lately, I don’t have a reason why (I can pinpoint certain events when mine leveled up to where it went from occasional to chronic, and I also believe I know what started it when I was younger, but not the latest increase). My ENT isn’t on the list for Lenire, but I might contact him and ask about latest treatments. When I saw him about it a few years ago, what he had didn’t work for me and the last thing he suggested was something I didn’t think would work so I didn’t bother. Maybe he’s aware of some of these new treatments.

It was a pretty wild weekend where teams that seeded well or were generally expected to do well pretty much got blown out. And, several of those games started out with one team crushing the other in the first half, the other team looking like they found their rhythm and were going to come back, but then collapsing. It was weird seeing several different games having the same feel. Congrats to the winners and those of you who are their fans!

Cleveland’s defense was obviously quite good. They made a lot of good stops. I was worried there for a while.

What book? I have never found a book by Barry, but several by various students.

I go largely for the hang. 2020 was my first Winter NAMM and it pretty much started with the KC dinner for me, after that I could have gone home after meeting and hanging with everyone. The rest of the trip was bonus. I’ve been to 2022 and 2023, and much of that was for the hang as well. Mostly KCers, but also friends I have in the industry I get to catch up with. Unfortunately, I won’t be making it this time, and I was really looking forward to a few more contacts who are returning this year. But OTOH, I’m glad to be missing the show in the middle of this COVID rise. Hopefully it won’t be a spreading event. Anyway, I hope to make 2025.

that was a fun game! (Except for Browns fans, I’m sure) Flacco had a great comeback season this year, but sorry Joe, it wasn’t meant to be anything more. OTOH, the Texans really seem to have righted the ship. Amazing.

I can't remember which office supply store I bought my stuff from, but I'm using a five foot table (30" x 60") with additional wheels and the keyboard on a rolling stand fits under it. I also have a Kensington (QWERTY) keyboard tray that attaches with its own clamps that I switch when I'm doing that kind of stuff. I think someone here shared this video in another thread and that's where I got the idea, and added the wheels. P.S. As far as smallish speakers, I recently purchased Kali IN-UNF which can connect via TRS or USB-C among one or two other methods and the system sounds fantastic. It's based on the other models of their Project Independence series but the low end comes from the center unit which can be put behind your computer, and you point the 5" speakers at your head from the desk. There are a good bunch of glowing reviews of this system online and I agree.

Agreed, and it's not just football. NCAA MBB is pretty terrible right now, too. The Houston Cougars are a top 5 team and we don't have the package to get many of their Big 12 games, they're not on national TV.

Despite the OP's confusion about the "added complexity" brought on by this other way of looking at it, much of Barry's teachings as I understand them really simplified the approaches to jazz playing. For instance, his method considers chords you might play outside of the sixth diminished harmony as "borrowing". He even considered the major seventh chord as the sixth but you borrow the 7th from the relative diminished scale. As someone else described above, you can move voices between the sixth and diminished chords and get some interesting tension and resolutions. You can also move in half steps between the two types of chords for those notes and get even more stuff. And all of this is very helpful and usable when you have something like one chord on a lead sheet for two bars. You can create movement with tension and resolution even though the chart doesn't show any. (What I think is really happening is that the diminished chord is hinting at the five-seven of the six chord, because two notes of the diminished chords are the third and seventh of that five chord.) Try this. Play C major 7 with the B on top (C6 with the B borrowed from D diminished substituting for A). Move the B down to A, then to Ab, then back to A. Pretty little movement, right? You can do movements like that with all the inversions of C6 such as having F instead of E as the top note, then do E Eb E. Some you may like better than others, or will work better or worse depending on context. As far as the sixth on the fifth, it's similar. Say your called for chord is C6. Play the G6 aka six on the fifth. Now play the closest C6. You've just played a movement without really changing the chord because you went from what's basically a C9 to a C6, both C chords, by moving two notes. You can also move in half steps, which passes you through a diminished chord (G dim in this case) on your way to the C6. Again, movement without changing the chord, really. That's the point. His method gives you another way to look at this stuff, and options for things you can do especially to create movement. Are there other ways to say the same thing? Sure. Supposedly he got his theories by "reverse engineering" what the greats of bebop did. They may have thought of this in totally different ways. That's fine. Whatever works. I learned all of this stuff from Chris Parks and Adam Maness at Open Studio, mostly via Open Studio Pro but Chris now has prerecorded courses on this on regular Open Studio.

That's the one positive, that you can quickly tell what kind of person you might be dealing with. OTOH, FB is stupid about trying to make it easy. Last I checked, they literally had a button on Marketplace posts that sent the message, "Is this still available?" so you get a ton of those from people who don't even respond when you tell them it is. It gets to a point where there's no reason to respond to people who don't do more than that initially. And I've had so many people who I do get some interest from, but then have to wait until their husband gets home because they don't have a car or something, and then eventually bail on the whole thing. (Note these weren't for musical items, we got rid of a bunch of stuff when we moved a couple of years ago and I was just looking to offload it all and not just throw perfectly good unused or clean stuff in the trash.)

I heard it said that this was the first time a team with a rookie coach and a rookie QB made the playoffs.

Found on social media but I think you-all would appreciate it!

Free piano plug in! Free it NOW! chanted the crowd. Seriously, I just saw an ad for Boz Digital Labs that for the month of December they are giving away the lite version of their 1926 New York L. The Lite version of their 1991 NY L is only $10. Sorry for the late notice, but I just saw it this AM. They also have a few other free plug ins, but two of them need to be updated to be native on M-series Macs so I only downloaded Panipulator. https://www.bozdigitallabs.com/new-york-l-bundle-lite/

I saw an interview with him where he said the odd thing about was that’s pretty much how he danced and performed at his live shows and the crowd ate it up. I looked up some live clips on YT and there it was. So there was no reason for him to think that video was a bad idea. I didn’t know the Separate Ways video was shot in New Orleans. I’ve never been to that location on my visits, but there’s a lot of the city I still need to see. I’ve always liked that song, and when someone on the Casio Music Forums shared a clip of himself playing it on his CT-X, I asked him about the patch and he sent it to me. I’ve never played it with a band, I just do it for fun. 😁 @eric once you get Don’t Stop Believing, you’ll be ready to gig on Bourbon St! 😂 Seriously, have fun with these crowd pleasers.

And my ear says they're playing mostly to tracks anyway.

My wife thanks you for this report.

I just realized that Cooper did A Star is Born and now Maestro, yet his Wikipedia bio doesn't suggest anything out of the ordinary in his background that would lead one to think he's a musician, wanted to be one, or anything like that. I'd like to know if he's drawn to these projects for any particular reason.

This seems to be the only thread about the Rise 2. I get lots of ads about it on social media and it’s currently on sale so I’m tempted. Most of the reviews are positive, but I’d like to know if any of my fellow forumites have any further thoughts. @Ed A. did you get yours and what do you think? Anyone else?

Sorry for the OT. It just reminded me of this scene that I saw again recently.

What I found interesting was that John Denver did the intro, and he at least acted really excited by it.

I think I’ve seen rumors about that but that’s all they are.

How big is the Surface Pro? I recently purchased a refurbished 12.9" iPad Pro from Apple for this purpose and to take notes in classes and I love it. I can't believe how well it's working for me. It sits on my piano desk most of the time and I have nothing else up there. Instead of a bunch of sheets and books, I just have this. (I have found or made PDFs for almost everything I'm currently playing or working on.) Edit: Oops, I see you're talking about having two sheets open. I can do that but it's a bit smaller. I prefer one sheet on the iPad Pro.

Happy holidays and wishing a great 2024 to my friends here on my favorite place on the internet! It’s because of you-all that this place is so great. Keep it up!

I have never heard of the No Media problem ever occurring with any other Casio model. If it was a problem with another model, there would have been similar “solution” posts for it around and there aren’t. P.S. Do you know about casiomusicforums.com? It’s a good place for Casio owners to talk about their gear.