Jolt Country

Having gone as far as I am likely to go with the tenor saxophone, the baritone saxophone and the oboe, it is time for me to find something else to take up a copious amount of time and result in little else other than a money pit. That pit, I have decided, will be... the CHAPMAN STICK!

Here are some videos of people whipping thing thing into shape:

http://www.stick.com

That being said, I would like to hear opinions as to why I should definitely NOT attempt to get one of these and learn how to play it, so I don't lose a truly foolish amount of money on this venture.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:thing thing

I thought she died last week.

Thank you! This has been Too Soon Theater!

Copyright (c) 2008, Too Soon Theater, Inc.
"If it's too good, it's Too Soon!"

Reason No. 1: There are guys like this that make me want to throw my fender out the window sometimes, especially when I am learning a particular saxophone solo note for note on an upcoming cover tune.

Just get a regular axe and learn that.


THE
YEARS OF PRACTICE
AARDVARK

My lovely lady just bought me a real sweet ukelele. Now there's an instrument we should all get behind. Lighter than a Domino's Pizza door-hanger menu, four tiny strings of fun and goodness.

You may keep your "Fenders" and "Sticks". Me, I'll just be here, yookin' out!!!

How long would it take you to completely master that instrument, assuming you already knew how to play guitar? 15 minutes?

Can you play like this guy?

[youtube][/youtube]

Without even pressing play on that video, I can tell you that I can NOT play like that guy!

It is not an instrument easily mastered, for one simple reason, which I will describe in this two-item list:

1. The strings are all tuned differently.
2. The bottom string, where you'd normally play a low E on a guitar is actually HIGHER PITCHED than the two strings above it!

This will fuck you up because as you go down the strings, from highest to "lowest", you're like:

"Ah, that's a high note. And this one's a little lower. And this one's a little lower still! And WHAT THE FUCK HAS JUST HAPPENED TO MY LIFE?!?!?!??!!?!??!?!"

That is what you're like.

Here is what I'M like:

POST COUNT INCREASED BY 1!

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Can you play like this guy?

Huh, the ukelele really does make one happy. I am now obsessed with that video.

I have been meaning to get some Newfoundland Screech because of it.

Can you actually play the geetar, Robb? That would give you a place to start with a Stick. The thing about the Stick is that it can actually be tuned however you want, so if you want a guitar + bass, or two four string basses, or guitar + cello, or whatever the fuck, they'll set it up for you.

I've always thought it would be kind of neat to play, but the application is very narrow. Anything with a Stick usually involves at least two of the following three words: Fat. Beard. Prog. It's sort of like D&D, but with actual skill.

Bugs wrote:Can you actually play the geetar, Robb?

Oh, laws, no.

That would give you a place to start with a Stick. The thing about the Stick is that it can actually be tuned however you want, so if you want a guitar + bass, or two four string basses, or guitar + cello, or whatever the fuck, they'll set it up for you.

See, that's awesome. That is seriously fucking cool. And these things somehow have MIDI output as well. Which floors me. IT'S STRING!!! How does it know?!!?

I've always thought it would be kind of neat to play, but the application is very narrow. Anything with a Stick usually involves at least two of the following three words: Fat. Beard. Prog. It's sort of like D&D, but with actual skill.

Yeah, there is definitely that. But I like progressive rock, so that's cool.

The unfortunate thing is that I have discovered that they are unbelievably expensive (like all music instruments) but there does not seem to be much of a second-hand market for them. I guess I could stop into a pawn shop, but I'd be shocked to see one in there. (As opposed to saxophones and such, which you can get off craigslist or whatever.)

If I had all the time in the world, I'd learn the following instruments:

keyboard (er, correctly, in other words, not as I currently know it)
the STICK
the xylophone
the slide whistle

That plus two saxes and an oboe can really set you up as a one-man band.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:See, that's awesome. That is seriously fucking cool. And these things somehow have MIDI output as well. Which floors me. IT'S STRING!!! How does it know?!!?

I think the frets are wired up to be the MIDI trigger/sensor things. I've seen some pretty badass work on MIDI guitars.

Yeah, there's not much of a used market for the Stick. I've seen then on ebay every now and then.

I don't know how many people START with a Stick, however. Most Stick players I've known of are already pretty accomplished guitar or bass players that have mastered that instrument, as well as having a good tapping technique (think of the bass in "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver"). To understand the fretboard and how to play tap puts you about 75% towards where you need to be to play Stick.

These are the types of conversations I wish I could have on the music board on groucho since I started moderating it. But nessman has a guitar propping a door open somewhere, Steve is savant-like in his knowledge of proper skin-flute technique, and that's it for musical knowledge over there. Oh, and Aardvark knows how to use Garage Band or something.

Bugs, there is music in my soul. I probably enjoy playing it more than listening to it. I just don't get an opportunity to play it. I'll go off on a MINI rant about free time: we Americans work too much. (OK, er, that was it.)

Making music (writing songs, recording them, mixing them) is also fun. But the ollllllld 4-track cassette recorder I have is just a relic of times past. I guess I want a free program that will allow me to directly plug my MIDI keyboard into it (I guess through a 1/4" plug to the 1/8th" input jack on my sound card) and work as a multi-track studio. But I also want it to be able to directly record sound, like voice or a sax or something. Hard drive space is cheap, so I am not worried about that, but I don't even know where to begin to look for a tracker. It seems most musicians spent money on the product, serious money.

(The part about the cassette tracker that drove me crazy was that it would record a POP every time you pressed play and record. Sometimes you wanted to just start re-recording a track in the middle of a song, because you effin' nailed the first half. But then, "POP!" Right in your song. That absolutely fuckin' aggravated me.)

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Making music (writing songs, recording them, mixing them) is also fun. But the ollllllld 4-track cassette recorder I have is just a relic of times past. I guess I want a free program that will allow me to directly plug my MIDI keyboard into it (I guess through a 1/4" plug to the 1/8th" input jack on my sound card) and work as a multi-track studio. But I also want it to be able to directly record sound, like voice or a sax or something. Hard drive space is cheap, so I am not worried about that, but I don't even know where to begin to look for a tracker. It seems most musicians spent money on the product, serious money.

You should look into something like this: A portable digital recorder

A friend of mine has something like that, and I can vouch for the recording quality. It may come with some rudimentary tracking software, too.

RobB, check your email

I want a Whamola.

I'm not sure how he did it... I guess involving the "Tron" or replicator technology.. but Aardvark has sent me a CHAPMAN STICK through e-mail.

Here's your feedback IF we were on eBay!

L@@K!! Best Co-Sysop ever!! Manipulates spacetime and matter with ease! Reasonable shipping! A++++++++!

Okay, so, this message is basically going to serve as a reposatory for all of the music-related products I find to be win.

I mentioned this to Robb earlier in IM but the Haken Continuum Fingerboardis a keyboard... sans keys. So, you can sweep your finger back and forth and it will bend your note like a guitar. Or, it will change notes like a regular keyboard would ,depending on how you want it to act. If you press down harder, the sound gets louder. You can also move your fingers vertically on the keys to produce a filter sweep (AKA wah-type sound)... or if you want it ot change something else you can have it set to do that, as well. You can tell it to play in a certain scale so that whatever you play won't sound "wrong" with everything else you're playing. And it interfaces with any sound module you want--you can even hook two up at once and have one half of the keyboard playing on a completely different sound set from the other.

Electric lap Steel Guitar--this thing is kind of like a chapman stick for guitarests. As the strings are elevated from the fretboard it makes frets useless, so it's traditionally played by using a slide in the left hand and plucking the string with the right hand. Typically the strings are a lot longer than they would be on a regular guitar so you can hit many different notes. They are also traditionally tuned in an open tuning, as otherwise it would make playing chords near impossible. No link provided, as there are tons of manufacturers out there--not just electric, either.

2Box drumIt Five
This isn't out yet, but BOY do I want it. Combines all the advantages of an eKit--smaller, easier to setup, quieter, a better signal for a live sound guy to work with--and eliminates two two huge disadvantages: they sound like ass and they don't have a good feel. This one lets you use regular drum skins, or the Mesh/rubber heads, and they let you change it at will like you would change a real drum head. As for sounds, the module is coming pre-loaded with samples that are used on tons of top records for drum replacement *right now* (you've probably heard them already and not realized it) and if you don't like that particular soundset they let you load your own samples via USB. Comes with MIDI, too, if you need that.

Muse Receptor: This baby is just awesome. It lets you do everything you could do on an audio-editing computer except record and, er, edit (load VST plugins, mix multiple instruments, add your own effects to taste) without any of the disadvantages (inconvenient for gigs, requires someone who knows how to work a confusing program, can break, fucks the entire show if the thing crashes). So, you could have your drummer use an eKit and trigger his favorit samples through it (assuming he isn't using the Drumit five ;)), have your guitarest and bassist get their favorit amplification sounds from AmpFarm or whatever, have your keyboard player load up all of his favorit instrument samples, have each player adjust ambience and EQ and whatnot until they all have just the sound they want... then save all those settings, go to a show, take ten minutes to set everything up, do the concert, and take it all down in ten minutes again. Then the next night they already have their sounds preset so they just have to plug in and turn on. And of course since the sounds are all created on the receptor, your instruments plug right in so no more huge, unweildy rigs, and you can even rout everything to headphones so you can rehearse your entire rock band in an apartment someplace without getting yelled at and it will sound just like it will on stage. The receptor runs some version of Linux--I can't remember which one, Gnome I think?-- so it's designed to recover from crashes with a minimal of fuss. It's also housed in a stupid-strong case to withstand buffetting from a long tour.

If you want to get into entry-level music recording I would suggest the Echo MiaMIDI sound card as it gives you a good balance of features VS. price point: one pair of inputs, one pair of outputs, MIDI I/O and S/PDIF I/O for $125. The one thing it totally won't do is multitrack but you can record one track at a time and then edit them in a multitrack editor as if you had recorded a bunch of things at once.

As for audio editors, take your pick; Cubase, Inuendo, LogicPro, ProTools, Audition, Sonar... Not cheap, and I wouldn't dare suggest anybody do anything as irresponsible and illegal as find a cracked version of the software on teh intarnet. But these are the options available. Interfacing with a multitrack editor with a keyboard and mouse really kind of sucks, though, but with Sonar at least you can assign USB or MIDI keyboards to act as a control surface. So rather than clicking around to turn the volume up on a track that's playing you just twist one of the knobs on your music keyboard. I'm assuming most other multitrack editors let you do this as well, and you'll wanna look around on their website to see what they'll let you get away with.

It took me way too long to find this thread as we all misspelled ukulele. Do you still play it?

As a relative newcomer to the board I had not seen this thread. I will tell you that I watched the embedded video a dozen times today and have come to the conclusion that I do not think the man in the video is a real doctor.

Jonsey, it sounds like we did a lot of the same things in the past. Back in the mid 90s I bought a four-track recorder and recorded an album just to say I'd done it. Yes, it's online -- no, I'm not posting a link. Eh, what the fuck. It's in the middle there somewhere.

By the time Windows 95 came out I was trying really hard to do Windows-based digital recording and the technology just wasn't there yet. I did a few simple loops and stuff but without today's software (and pure processing power) I was really limited.

These days you can just use something like Cakewalk or Sony Vegas and have a whole multitrack studio on your PC. There's a hundred zillion plug-ins out there available for whatever you need, from guitar tuners to vocoders. They give away the light edition of Pro-Tools, if you like that. I ended up buying a MOTU 24i (24 1/4" inputs to firewire) and a 24 channel mixing board. Windows sees the MOTU as 24 separate sound cards, which is enough to get you hard. Just plug into any track on the mixer and it runs to the PC. Unfortunately most of this stuff is sitting in my closet right now due to a lack of interest and space. One of my 2009 resolutions is to record another album so I guess I had better drag everything out again pretty soon.

Two quick links. The first is a link to a ZTar YouTube video.

[youtube][/youtube]

I abso-fucking-lutely love the guitar sound on Deadsy's first album. I've been trying to duplicate it for years by doubling guitars and pitch shifting them down. It wasn't until recently that I learned the secret to the sound -- a ztar. It's basically a midi guitar. I've already searched eBay; you're talking $1k+.

[youtube][/youtube]

By the way, the lead singer in that band is Cher's kid.

Last video. This is one of my favorite bass players of all time. He's a local guy (or, at least, was) and I used to catch his band probably once a month growing up. if you like dual-handed bass players, you'll love this guy.

[youtube][/youtube]

That clip is from Rev's instructional DVD, which I reviewed here.

This is awesome! With all the talent that's just moldering away right here on this board we could come up with some serious songs.

I have a Korg something or other that has that pitch bending sound but it's old old old. It does have strap pegs on both sides tho, so a body COULD pretend that it's something cool.

Maybe if we all had the same tracking software we could throw stuff back and forth and see what comes of it.


THE
MY DOG HAS FLEAS
AARDVARK