1,026 Reply by jerome.oneil

(3 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

How does the 802 sound?  I've been hemming and hawing on it's big brother, which uses the same pre-amps.

I went to San Diego comic con way back in the early '90s, and ended up getting in a fight with some religious fundamentalists protesting the evils of comic books.  My buddy had just spend a lot of money on some special magazine (I'm not a comic book guy, so I don't know which one) and this clown out on the street rips it out of his hands and tears it up.   I don't think he was expecting me to punch him in the mouth immediately thereafter, but I did. 

The cops were pretty cool about the whole thing.   I've never been back.  smile

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1,027 Reply by jerome.oneil

(9 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

We have one of those at work.  We call it "The Verizon Puck" and it's awesome. I do a lot of demos in customer buildings where network connectivity is sometimes hard to get.  I put the puck in my front pocket and become a walking talking hot-spot.

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1,028 Reply by jerome.oneil

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

#2 is fundamentally unanswerable.  The big bang created time and space (being relative and all), so in essence, there was no "before the big bang."   It also didn't expand into anything.  It is an expansion "of space."  Not expansion "into space."

The Chinese used explosives for fireworks for thousands of years.  I'm not sure who thought of firearms or explosives.

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1,029 Reply by jerome.oneil

(4 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

In that same vein, Charo is one of the better flamenco players around.  She might be famous for being hot and funny, but she studied under Segovia and earned her bones on the guitar.

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1,030 Reply by jerome.oneil

(8 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

'59 Century Epi's are running about $2K right now.  Don't know if the Broadways would fetch more or less.  He should have it looked at by a guitar guy, regardless.

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1,031 Reply by jerome.oneil

(1 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I've seen a bunch of different notational techniques proposed, and actually belonged to a working group (The Music Notation Project) working on, well, alternative notations, but I always come back to plain old standard notation if you want detail, and fake books if you don't.

Standard notation gives you the ability to record every nuance that the author intended, including chord voicings, tempo, attack and sustain, bends, glisses, and other pitch bends.

I've never been a big fan of tablature because I don't think it provides enough information to be meaningful.  And while standard notation can be somewhat intimidating, I think chord voicings and beat slashes work well for rhythm sections.  There's a middle ground somewhere, I suppose.

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1,032 Reply by jerome.oneil

(6 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm in full agreement.  smile

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1,033 Reply by jerome.oneil

(5 replies, posted in Other string instruments)

Talkbass.com

It's busy, and there is a lotta smak, but there's a whole lot of good information there, too.

Generally, if you know your scales and chord theory, you can play bass starting right now.  It's no different than your guitar with the B and e strings removed.  Just fatter strings and wider frets.  smile

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1,034 Reply by jerome.oneil

(28 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

bunbun wrote:
jerome.oneil wrote:

Science should bring us closer to understanding, not farther from it.

Therein lies the rub: How often has man's progress been hampered by religion? Not by God but religion? Algebra and writing evolved in the Middle East. The Fertile Crescent of Iraq (between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to be specific) was the "Cradle of Civilization" and brought us the aforementioned sciences and others too! Yet how many great minds have come out of that region in the past 100 years or even longer?

I don't think that is an issue with Islam so much as it is an issue with modern cultures colliding with third world cultures.   Most of the negative things we associate with Islam aren't really part of Islam at all, they are part of Arab culture.  Remember that the largest population of Muslims in the world isn't in the middle east, it's in Indonesia, which is a pretty stable democratic republic.

The Americas and western Europe have had the benefit of six hundred years to think about the outcomes of the renascence, and form our society around those ideas.   The people living in Afghanistan and other emerging nations haven't.   The life they live is very similar to the life that they would have led three or four hundred years ago.    The Arabian peninsula a hundred years ago was populated by Bedouin travelers and that is about it.   It wasn't until after WWI that demand for oil in the west brought in massive amounts of money, and the western influence that follows it.   The result is a people that are barely a generation removed from a life that their great great great great grandfathers would have found familiar with immediate access to 1st world ideas and technology.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that they have difficulty absorbing it.

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1,035 Reply by jerome.oneil

(28 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

As someone who believes in God, I always found it silly when people of purported faith attempted to "prove" God's existence at all.  My God demands my faith.   If I demand proof, then I have no faith at all.   

Thomas Paine once wrote, "The true words of the Creator are written into the creation."  Science should bring us closer to understanding, not farther from it.

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1,036 Reply by jerome.oneil

(28 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

zguitar wrote:

I don't think we're comparing apples to apples here. Yes there have been many great inventors in recent history that have made the modern world what it is today. But Heron was thousands of years ahead his time. Da Vinci was hundreds of years ahead. These kind of guys don't exist anymore. It might be because people today are so smart that a stand out genius is hard to find. Mostly things are invented in groups. NASA has done major things. (Glad they are there but don't agree with their mission)

As for inventors of our time, I love Nikola Tesla. If you don't know about him check out his story. Modern Marvels on the History Channel does a great job depicting him.

I don't know if it's fair to say that guys like da Vinci don't exist any more.  We only know that he was hundreds of years ahead of his time because we live hundreds of years in his future.   Present day views of our modern smart people lack the 20/20 hindsight that we have with the renaissance folk.  Who knows what we will be saying about Penrose, Hawking, Arkani-Hamed, or Dimopoulos in four centuries?

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1,037 Reply by jerome.oneil

(28 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

bunbun wrote:

Some of the best ideas of our time were actually "invented" by science fiction writers years ago. Here is a small list of inventions:

Robert H. Heinlein
  waterbed
  waldo devices (remote "hands")

Arthur C. Clarke:
  mono-molecular blade (never needs sharpening. still in development. Based upon the single-strand carbon monotube)
  single strand carbon monotube
  Recently there has been talk of a "space elevator" using single strand carbon monotubes. Clarke "invented" this one too.


There are many other devices "invented" by SF writers including laptop computers, tablet computers, cell phones (think of the Star Trek flip communicators), flat screen TV's, etc...

Genuine science fiction (not fantasy) is speculative fiction.  It's supposed to deal with future technology, so it would make sense that they would predict a lot of things we find in the modern world.

In the mean time, I'm still waiting for my atomic powered flying car so I can go live on the moon.  smile

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1,038 Reply by jerome.oneil

(8 replies, posted in Electric)

Almost any electric guitar is going to have some radius to it, so your friend will want one with the biggest radius he can find.   Ibanez and Jackson guitars generally have larger radius.  Strats and Teles will have smaller radius necks that will probably feel weird to him.

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1,039 Reply by jerome.oneil

(11 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Is this the one where they can do their own songs?

If so, I approve.  If not, cover acts aren't my thing.

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1,040 Reply by jerome.oneil

(79 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Sweaty Nipples were a great band.   My next project is going to be a straight punk act called The Manky Skangers.  The Irish among us will pick up on that.

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1,041 Reply by jerome.oneil

(12 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

"Grok" has been adopted by computer types for a long time, a suitable homage to Heinlein, I think.  It's used in essentially the same way.  "Yeah, I can code C#, but I really grok Perl."

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1,042 Reply by jerome.oneil

(32 replies, posted in Electric)

I think what Patrick is talking about is an "expression" pedal.   On "stomp boxes" the pedal is just a switch to turn the effect on or off.  An expression pedal allows you to control the amount of effect with the pedal.  Think in terms of a wah pedal, for example. The effect is always on, and the pedal controls the tone.

My Zoom B9's pedal is completely programmable.  For any given effects chain I can have it control any of the particular effects.  It also has a sweet "z-dimension" feature.  The pedal not only moves vertically like a normal pedal, but the top slides horizontally as well, allowing me to control two features with it.  I've re-programmed most of my patches to have the "Z" be a simple volume control.  Pretty handy.

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1,043 Reply by jerome.oneil

(32 replies, posted in Electric)

I have Line 6 (guitar effects), Boss (loop), and Zoom (fer THUNDERSTICK!!!). They're all good.  Haven't used Digitech but I've no reason to assume anything other than goodness there, too.

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1,044 Reply by jerome.oneil

(32 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Oh yea.  I know about half a dozen firefighters that all swear by "The Little Back Book."

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Health-Man … 1903334004

Hope it gets better.

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1,045 Reply by jerome.oneil

(5 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Dirty Ed wrote:

Considering the teams that will be playing, this years national championship game should be called the Oversigning.com Bowl.

The NCAA should do something about that.  After you explained it to me, it sits less and less well with me.  The "student athlete" concept has always been somewhat laughable in the face of NCAA money grabs, but the oversigning issue is just tacit admission that it's a joke.  We could, at a minimum, at least pretend to give a crap about football player's educations.


I wonder at what point sponsors are going to realize that adding their name to a bowl game makes it sound so ridiculous that the "advertisement" becomes counter-productive.

We're already there.  Some of these bowls are simply the Sponsor's Name Bowl.  See Godaddy.com Bowl as an example.

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1,046 Reply by jerome.oneil

(25 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

My dad was a fire fighter his entire life, and retired as the Chief at McCord AFB.  This kind of stuff is unreal to me.  What is more unreal is that a municipality wouldn't provide police and fire services the old fashioned way. Through taxes.  This has the aroma of "private fire protection" which is really too close to "private police" for my tastes.

What's next? 

"This is the 911 operator, can I have your credit card information please?"

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1,047 Reply by jerome.oneil

(32 replies, posted in Electric)

The best thing you can do to satisfy an ADD teenager's whim of the moment tone fix is with a multi-effects pedal.   The quality of the tones won't be as sweet as if you buy specialized pedals, but if you buy a specialized pedal, it is going to produce the one tone it produces really well, but that's it.  Nothing sounds quite like a Big Muff, but when he decides he needs to compose the Epic Love Song for his sweetie, it's not going to do him much good.

Something like this http://www.digitech.com/en/products/rp255  will give him all kinds of options for a pretty good price and keep him occupied for hours.   

You'll also want to get him a good set of headphones, unless you want to listen to it all day.  smile

The Rig that Russell is selling is really good kit, too.

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1,048 Reply by jerome.oneil

(7 replies, posted in Music theory)

By building them, I mean as in "I know I need a Bm7 here.  The exercise is to find out what is in a Bm7, and then find them on the fret board.  It's an interesting challenge.

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1,049 Reply by jerome.oneil

(10 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

You were thinking "Hey, at least with the gigging band the beer is sometimes free."

And there's nothing wrong with that.

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1,050 Reply by jerome.oneil

(5 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

The Potato Bowl has to be the most awesome name in bowl game history.

Honestly, I think there are too many bowl games.  It's become like NASCAR in the amount of branding.  The BCS championship game isn't even in one of the traditional bowls any more, it's just the "Allstate BCS Championship Game."   

The tradition of the bowl games went out the window when they adopted the new format, and frankly, I'd rather they had it back.   Arguing over who is really #1 isn't ever going to end so long as there is no playoff system.  They aught to take the Meat Soup Bowl and the TrendyDotCom Bowl and use them as a first round qualifier for a real playoff system, with the championships being decided in the big five (Rose, Fiesta, Cotton, Sugar, and Orange).

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