Congratulations to my friends Brent and Leslie, who just had twin boys last night, Nicholas and Alexander. I haven’t seen Brent since my college years but I still hear about the big news when it hits the papers!

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p>Also, I fixed the link below to the Triumph film, which is also available at ifilm. Enjoy!

A nice practice day today. I didn’t do many fundamentals, but I worked on doing some improvisation, trying to hold down a moving chord structure and keeping time with the left hand, while letting the right hand find a melody. Then I worked on trying to actually craft a melody and remember it, while working up a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure. Believe it or not I got a couple workable tunes out of this method, and when I got done I was very disappointed I hadn’t recorded the whole thing. I could probably cull pieces from practice and develop them into actual songs to record if I was more disciplined about it. A lot of bands write music that way, recording their soundcheck jams while on tour and going over them later after a break to see what sounded best.

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p>Well, I just finished giving Evie dinner and it’s time to give her a bath, so I’m going to take a powder until tomorrow. And as I sign off, let me suggest that everyone check this link out. If you don’t laugh out loud, you were probably there and need to get a life too.

I am really boggled by my new VF-1. I’m going to sit down tonight and read the instruction manual so I can figure out some programming strategies for it. I did manage to get my EQ’s set up last night to ensure that my bass and melody sides sound roughly equivalent and less like two different instruments playing at the same time… although that kind of sound does have its particular advantages as well.

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p>I’m also working on writing a program at work that will use a network client/server architecture… my first try at such a thing. (I know, I’m way behind the programming curve. I mean, so far that I can’t even see the curve from where I’m at.) At least Linux gives me all the tools I need to be able to do this. Plus I have some helpful books like Wrox Press’ Linux Programming series to help me learn.

Today we’re bringing the baby and going to Charlottesville to visit some friends who just moved there. It’s funny, I’ll feel like I’m skipping class if I go down without getting a lesson from Greg.

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p>Over the weekend we saw The Others and What Women Want. The first movie was pretty good, although I have to admit I saw the ending coming after about halfway through. It’s tough to keep the audience from guessing at it when a movie’s been touted as having “a surprise ending.” And frankly, it wasn’t quite scary enough for my taste — not enough jolts for me — but it was quite good. The latter was mediocre, and could have used a better editor since it was far too long for a light romantic comedy, clocking in at a smidge over two hours. What ever happened to 90-minute screwball romantic comedies like they used to make in the ’50s and ’60s? Mel Gibson was funny, though, and Helen Hunt was good, but frankly I don’t think the role was much of a stretch for her. See As Good As It Gets instead if you haven’t already.

OK, so I discovered the POD thing is documented on page 5-4 of the manual. But it’s still pretty cool. I set up a bank of patches where I can start and overdub a loop, play over it on the same side without overdubs if I like, and then let it fade out. Because the POD has two dedicated delay units, I can overdub a new loop while the original is fading out. The only limitation is the 3.15 second ceiling. I imagine the Echo Pro and DL4 have got to be even cooler, since they let you imitate the way tape loops “squish” when they’re looped many times, and model lots of different loop units. Maybe I’ll get one of those later!

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p>I found I could do a pretty convincing drum groove by tapping very lightly and indeterminately on the low bass strings, while doing the same on the high bass strings for a “snare” sound. The only drawback is that the POD, after a while, develops a minimal but significant amount of digital noise in the delay, so the loops are only useful for about 5-7 minutes. But that’s plenty long to do a nice little improv groove. Well, I’m off to the music store to pick up some cables… and, unbeknownst to Eleya, pick her up a birthday present! Later…

From Hell was much better than I thought it would be. While not exceedingly true (except in subject matter) to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, it at least retained the same mordant tone. Johnny Depp was very good, as he usually is, and Ian Holm was fantastic. Heather Graham was, well, passable… but then there wasn’t much in the script for her to do other than bitch about being a whore and show off a not-bad accent that couldn’t decide if it was Irish or Whitechapel Brit. I give it a 3 out of 5. We only got the first disc from Netflix, but that includes all the deleted scenes (which we watched) and a directors’ commentary by the Hughes Brothers (which I haven’t watched yet).

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p>I’m discovering that the POD 2.0 has amazing looping potential. If you want to set up a loop and then play over it with a completely different patch, you can do so, provided the new patch has delay turned off when you start the patch. This really knocked me out, and I spent a while last night just playing with this incredible feature. Now I can put off buying that Echo Pro or DL4 unless I need to move up from the 3.15 seconds that the POD gives you to the 60 seconds you get from Echo Pro.

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p>I set up a patch with the delay time tweaked up pretty long, saved it in two consecutive locations, and then turned the delay off in the second patch. I did this so if I didn’t have my Floor Board I could switch patches by using the POD’s up/down control. But having the Floor Board (or another compatible MIDI foot controller) with this setup is far preferential; then you can switch to a nonconsecutive patch without screwing up your sound in between.

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p>I think I’m going to investigate using the SoundDiver deep-editing software to tweak the delay feedback. It seems like I get either 100% or not enough (like 90%). I’d like to find a way to get about 98-99% for a loop with a real slow fade. I’ll look into it and maybe post my patch if it works out.

Eleya and I joined Netflix and got our first three movies today: From Hell, The Others, and What Women Want. Can’t wait to check them out, and more importantly, see how Netflix does over the next couple of months. We can watch movies at a pretty good clip so we’ll see how well they keep up. Is it worth the $20 a month? Tune in next time to find out….

My gear setup went really well yesterday. I now can plug my bass guitar into the front of my SWR Redhead and use the built-in preamp, and the effects send goes to my compressor, which returns instead of to the amp, to a channel on my little Mackie 1202VLZ mixer. The Stick bass side is going through my new Line6 Bass POD Pro for a preamp/modeling stage, which lines out to a regular POD 2.0 for additional effects, then on to the mixer. The Stick melody side goes into an ART Nightbass for preamping and EQ, then into a Boss VF-1 for additional effects and on to the mixer as well. Then the mixer main line out goes to the return on the Redhead to use the power amp.

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p>I am pretty psyched about this new setup, it sounds beautiful, and now that Greg gave me some pointers on gain structuring and making better use of the “Drive” controls on my POD’s for better tone, my sound is almost noiseless as well. What a difference! I can’t wait to use this rig at my next gig; it’ll rock! Well, now back to regularly scheduled work….

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. It’s been busy here! Today we had the carpets cleaned at the house and thus had to move everything from most of the house into a very small fraction of that area, resulting in complete chaos. Thankfully they look great and we have mostly finished moving things back to their pre-cleaning locations.

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p>Greg gave me a monster lesson on Monday night, including not just technical studies but also some gear hints as well. In a matter of a few minutes he demonstrated proper gain structure (which I am embarrassed to say I was in need of!) and got an even better sound out of an amp that I already thought sounded pretty great. Which goes to show that either my ears suck or Greg is a deity. Maybe both. Y’know, he started on keys, and all those keyboard players are wireheads in disguise. He probably built his own crystal radios too. I was always jealous of people like that.

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p>So today I am fitting together my new rig and hoping my Strat sells for a good price on eBay. It’s up to $325 with an hour left in the auction. I hope it gets over $350 or I’ll feel burned. Gotta run, gear to set up, practicing to do… peace!

So we saw Episode II on Sunday. My impressions:

• Uneven pacing. The first half hour you expect some setup; we start off with a bang, but then there’s about an hour of what attempts to be plot and character development, but really amounts to no more than people scooting around the universe for purposes of completing plot points. Obi-Wan plays Sherlock Holmes, Anakin and Amidala roll around in the grass, and Sam Jackson does his best job to bring some semblance of gravity to playing off a CGI Yoda. Not that it was all bad; but the kids are squirming by about 1:30 into the movie. Thank god there’s action after that.
• Overly long. At almost 2:30, this movie is just too long for kids. However, I understand the need to fulfill story development and I don’t have any problem with long films. But in a pulpy sci-fi opera, if you’re not going to have more action, you need to draw your lines with shorter strokes.
• Poor writing. Most times, the actors look like they’re struggling to bring any emotion to the table; with dialogue this bad it was probably difficult for them to keep straight faces. But they all do their best, and none of them seemed poorly cast, although Hayden Christiansen (Anakin) had the toughest time because he got stuck with the worst lines. However, I did buy the love story since it was fairly well-developed. We do have to keep in mind that he may be a hormonal teen but Amidala is quite a bit older and should be a little more circumspect in her attachments, but I can still believe in it.
• Great action scenes. Was there ever any doubt? Jedi kicking ass all over the place, including Yoda, who’s the whirling dervish, black belt, ass-kickingest Jedi of them all, believe it or not! And the big battle scenes are amazing — you get a real sense of scale, power, and destruction.

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p>But the film looked beautiful. Anyone who pooh-poohs digital photography is going to have to eat their words; although I’m sure that there was some significant work done to smooth out any compression glitches in post, this film shows that the latest of Lucas’ technological advances through ILM is sure to turn the film world on its head (again), just as he revolutionized the use of motion-control cameras, matte paintings, and CGI in other films. The color is pristine and vibrant, motion smooth and true, and no noticeable digital artifacting. I can’t wait to see who uses 24p digital next.

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p>Anyhoo, back to work, and lunchtime practice awaits. Greg is coming to give me a lesson tonight so I have to make it look like I’ve learned something….