Chromatic harmonica. It's kind of hard to learn...but after lugging around a bass and bass rig for years, one can really appreciate only having to carry a single harp.

i've got a harp in C and D. theyre pretty fun to play waiting for class or the bus or something. I'm fairly good at the harp in C, sometimes i have trouble getting my single notes clean.

Playing singles was one of the hardest things on harp for me to get a grasp on. What notes laid on the inhales and exhales, vibrato, everything else came very simply. It took me forever to learn to play singles because I would always leave the center hole open.

[QUOTE=BenJammin;18447995]I've lost musical direction now that my band's broken up. Sigh. Bass is boring... I need to pick up a new instrument, but I suck pretty bad at most of the ones I've tried.[/QUOTE]

I hear you pretty hard right here :/

Indeed.

I didn't play bass for almost a year when I was inmbetween bands...it's not not fun to play by yourself.

EDIT: However, Ben, if bass ever becomes so very boring that you just can't stand having that nice custom bass, we should work out a payment plan.

lol... yeah, no. I'll keep the bass. It's starting to get too broken in for anyone else to want it, anyway.

dude i love playing bass again now that i have a nice way to record all the instruments

you really need to branch out and do some research on how to write songs and shit in diff genres

learn to record and all that get a new AI and shit

dont you still have my brice

Today, I shall put my wireless and my 15" PA speakers up for sale to finance my new snowboard. :)

Just set my 6x10 and 2x12 up in my room with my Matamp head. Pretty sick. Shame I can't put any volume through it!

Man, I want a 2x12 to go with my Ampeg head. I just can't justify having two amps.

Which 2x12 do you have, Chris?

Can't use it at the same time as my 6x10 unfortunately :( Impedance mismatch ftl. I want a cheap poweramp so I can run both cabs in parallel :)

Schroeder 1212L. Nearly got rid of it when I got my 610, and I'm glad I didn't. It sounds like a beast still, and it was so helpful when we were on tour in scotland not to have to hump the big cab around everywhere!

I've heard that Schroeder cabs are pretty inefficient in terms of volume per watt of power. Ever notice that?

Sweet, PA speakers are sold.

Schroeders are incredibly efficient! That's their main selling point. Loud for the small size.

They lose bass response though to compensate.

Joe, where the hell do you snowboard in Arizona?

There's a mountain about two hours away (Snowbowl) and another about 4 hours away (Sunrise). Neither are very good due to short snow seasons and crowding, so I make it a point to take an annual trip to another state (usually Utah or Colorado) for a week of carving fresh powder and jibbing rails.

This is my new board:
[url]http://www.lib-tech.com/snow/snowboards/trs-total-ripper-series/[/url]
[img]http://www.compareskigear.com/img2/600/snowboard-gear/freestyle/lib-technologies-trs-c2btx-snowboard.jpg[/img]

It's so much lighter than my 8-year-old start board. Coupled with a nice, flexible set of Ride Delta Mvmnt bindings, and I'm stoked for next season.

Mae's Lost Empire split up. Knockdown cheap prices on our remaining merch here, posted worldwide:

[url]http://www.maeslostempire.bigcartel.com[/url]

We're having some shit luck, eh man?

These things happen though, right? I know my next band will be run differently, just because I've had 3/4 years of having learnt how to do and how not to do things in a band :) Gotta take the positives!

Oh, definitely. I learned a lot of what I never want to do/put up with after this band experience, lol. It's just that awkward transition time in between musical projects, especially where I might be moving out of the city in 5 months... so it's not worth it start anything up until I know what's going on.

Where're you headed if you do leave, Ben?

I'm thinking of moving to Montreal in spring 2012... way more of a scene down there than almost anywhere else in Canada that isn't Toronto. Not to mention I don't like Vancouver and Québec is a shit-ton closer to Ontario than BC anyways... and if I do move to MTL, once I get there [I]I can ride on Efrim Menuck's coattails[/I]

Also @ Joe - that board is friggin' swanky, man. I don't board myself but I do ski.

little story (WARNING - TL;DR ALERT) - my buddy Zach is real big into snowboarding. Like, made a bunch of vids as a kid and the whole shebang. Well, probably back about seven or eight years ago now he was at a skate/snow shop back home and was checking out gear because they had shit priced super-duper low. And this Forum board caught his eye. It was some beastly limited edition board and it had been sitting there for like a year and a half because nobody could afford to drop the coins on it. And he asked the cashier if it applied in the sale, to which the guy replied yes, it was like seventy percent off or something stupid. Anyways, it worked out to around six/seven hundred bucks so Zach is just losing his head and hopping up and down. So he says he'll take it.

The dude rings this board in and then his jaw drops like a stone... turns out the board is only like thirty or thirty five percent off or something, and is now officially way out of Zach's price range. The guy stands there a half-second, turns and says "But hey, I was the guy to quote it in error so I've got to honor the agreement. I'll just talk to the boss and square the rest up myself."

So Zach got this majorly expensive board for a boatload less than he should have and all was right in the world.

and that's about it!

how do you guys find bands to be in?

Open mics, ads at local places and/or mutual friends. Word of mouth kinda shit.

Mostly mutual friends. I really don't get along musically with most people... I'd really rather just do everything on my own. But outside perspective is good too, sometimes.

[QUOTE=FlamingCouch;18452423]Where're you headed if you do leave, Ben?

I'm thinking of moving to Montreal in spring 2012... way more of a scene down there than almost anywhere else in Canada that isn't Toronto. Not to mention I don't like Vancouver and Québec is a shit-ton closer to Ontario than BC anyways... and if I do move to MTL, once I get there [I]I can ride on Efrim Menuck's coattails[/I][/quote]

If I go anywhere, it'll be to Toronto. My girlfriend is looking at UofT for grad school. If she gets in (which is likely), I'll go with her.

[QUOTE=BenJammin;18452884]Mostly mutual friends. I really don't get along musically with most people... I'd really rather just do everything on my own. But outside perspective is good too, sometimes.[/QUOTE]

Basically this in a nutshell. I wish I could split myself into three so I could do everything at once. But then a great idea for a horn part or something would come up and I'd be screwed. I guess I'm lucky though in that in the recent past I've been playing with guys who share my vision somewhat, so that's a plus.

hahah, Toronto. Right on. There's a great scene there, but I'm just not fond of the city. it's only four hours from home though so that's a plus.

If I had the resources to, I would just pick up a new instrument every time a part came up, and then just find people after to play them. But I'm an asshole... Once I write something and finalize it, it is *not* open to interpretation. This is where working with other people is often problematic for me.

[quote=FlamingCouch;18452423]Where're you headed if you do leave, Ben?

I'm thinking of moving to Montreal in spring 2012... way more of a scene down there than almost anywhere else in Canada that isn't Toronto. Not to mention I don't like Vancouver and Québec is a shit-ton closer to Ontario than BC anyways... and if I do move to MTL, once I get there [I]I can ride on Efrim Menuck's coattails[/I]

Also @ Joe - that board is friggin' swanky, man. I don't board myself but I do ski.

little story (WARNING - TL;DR ALERT) - my buddy Zach is real big into snowboarding. Like, made a bunch of vids as a kid and the whole shebang. Well, probably back about seven or eight years ago now he was at a skate/snow shop back home and was checking out gear because they had shit priced super-duper low. And this Forum board caught his eye. It was some beastly limited edition board and it had been sitting there for like a year and a half because nobody could afford to drop the coins on it. And he asked the cashier if it applied in the sale, to which the guy replied yes, it was like seventy percent off or something stupid. Anyways, it worked out to around six/seven hundred bucks so Zach is just losing his head and hopping up and down. So he says he'll take it.

The dude rings this board in and then his jaw drops like a stone... turns out the board is only like thirty or thirty five percent off or something, and is now officially way out of Zach's price range. The guy stands there a half-second, turns and says "But hey, I was the guy to quote it in error so I've got to honor the agreement. I'll just talk to the boss and square the rest up myself."

So Zach got this majorly expensive board for a boatload less than he should have and all was right in the world.

and that's about it![/quote]

That's sick. For the longest time, I wanted the Forum JP Walker sig, but since the advent of rocker and anti-camber technologies, I'm glad I never dropped the coin on it. Forum makes some really light boards, but as you've seen (especially with signature models, not unlike basses and guitars...), the prices can be obsurd. The board I picked up was a demo model that had only been ridden once or twice and looks damn new on the bottom, plus has a fresh wax and tune. I managed to talk the guy down in Colorado because I found a sale back here in AZ where they were being sold new for $60 less than what he wanted (ignore the fact that it only applied to the 157 size and not the 162 I got).


If I lived in a place less than 2 hours from a mountain and with longer snow seasons, I would gladly drive up to the mountains every weekend and probably switch back and forth between skiing and snowboarding. Both are fun in their own right, and I wouldn't mind actually having control riding through moguls on skis.

[QUOTE=BenJammin;18453024]If I had the resources to, I would just pick up a new instrument every time a part came up, and then just find people after to play them. But I'm an asshole... Once I write something and finalize it, it is *not* open to interpretation. This is where working with other people is often problematic for me.[/QUOTE]

I'm definitely in that same boat. But on that note I put myself in other people's shoes - OK this guy isn't famous and I'm not making a jillion dollars touring with him, so why the fuck should I play it to one-hundred percent spec?

I never play anything exactly as it was written so I can definitely appreciate some variation. But I also have a concrete idea of how I want my music to sound. I do have a bit of leeway, I suppose, but in a perfect world... y'know.

My first serious band kind of stretched to the limit because of conflicts of interest and writing and shit like that.

@ Joe - yeah man, if I was half-decent on just one board I could definitely switch between... but I'm not. Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing - anything that requires both feet on one apparatus - is not my thing. I just have no control, maybe no center of gravity. I dunno. But hey, such is.

[quote=FlamingCouch;18453116]I'm definitely in that same boat. But on that note I put myself in other people's shoes - OK this guy isn't famous and I'm not making a jillion dollars touring with him, so why the fuck should I play it to one-hundred percent spec?

I never play anything exactly as it was written so I can definitely appreciate some variation. But I also have a concrete idea of how I want my music to sound. I do have a bit of leeway, I suppose, but in a perfect world... y'know.

My first serious band kind of stretched to the limit because of conflicts of interest and writing and shit like that.

@ Joe - yeah man, if I was half-decent on just one board I could definitely switch between... but I'm not. Skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing - anything that requires both feet on one apparatus - is not my thing. I just have no control, maybe no center of gravity. I dunno. But hey, such is.[/quote]

I usually write down/record and set aside ideas for months (or lately, years) at a time until I either get creativity to write some sweet new parts, or I pass it along to some **insert-specific-instrument-here**-playing friend that I have and ask them to write something for it.

Have you ever actually tried snowboarding? It's totally backwards from the other two- you pivot on your front foot and swing your back foot to turn. FWIW, I was terrible at skating, despite living in a city with flat concrete and practicing every single day, and I've never tried surfing, but I was totally able to pick up snowboarding with relative ease. Granted, the first day is like paying your dues and nearly killing yourself, but after that, it gets easier.