PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic It has been a while! Who of my former cohort are here?

Forgive me, Charlie. Did we interact much? I don't recall you by this name. Did you use another? In any case, I'd like to get reacquainted.

Thanks for chiming in,

R.

Notesy! Great to hear from you! Please see my answer to Matt to explain part of what has gone on with me/us. I got my wife the wind synth, but she hasn't had the opportunity to spend time with it. However, I am eternally grateful for your advice and direction on getting the thing. God willing, we SHALL make music together!

I also got her a nice late '60's Vito tenor sax, which was her instrument in school. We look forward to the time when I can sit her down with BIAB to get her chops back, and then we can blow some tunes together! That's the dream anyway.

When I left, you were doing some of the most advanced things imaginable with BIAB in a live performance context. Are you still gigging? You were playing with your wife, too, yeh? How are you guys?

Thanks,

R.

LOLOLOL! Atsa my boy!

How are you? Do I recall correctly that you were having some health issues? If so, how did that work out?

I do remember the wild sensayuma! You're in Ohio, right? I visited my daughter in Ann Arbor in 2012 and toyed with the notion of coming to visit, but geography and scheduling made that impossible. I look forward to catching up, though!

Thanks for welcoming me back!

R.

Hey, MC!

I'm not sure the VST was available at the time I went inactive; or maybe it had just become available, but I didn't get to it.

I haven't even installed the last two versions of BIAB I bought, which is pathetic! I had built a big, firebreathing uberDaw to support them. It was so strong, I'm still using it--Windows 7 and all!

My wife and I had many surgeries, and injuries, and moved in with her mother to take care of her. Now that takes up all of her time, and mine is taken up supporting HER. That is as it should be, but it has left no time for anything else. Sad.

She will have a hip replacement in mid January, after having one in October. Once she recovers from that, I will have major lumbar surgery, which will put me down for several months--again, just as it did last December, and a neck surgery the year before THAT.

What's that thing Lennon said? "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." Yeah.

I look forward to catching up. Thanks for checking in.

R.

Dude! I see you've changed your tag line. Didn't it used to be, "The older I get, the better I was." I loved that. I loved that so much I stole it and reused it. Often. : )

Glad to hear from ya! I'll hang around and get caught up. I hope.

R.

Hi. I had a lengthy chat with Don; I don't recall exactly when, but it was probably not long before the end. He seemed bitter one-on-one. I suppose he had earned the right to that. It's just not the tone I remember him for. I do miss him, though.

He was the guy who took EVERYONE'S excuses away. How could you claim "I can't," when you had the example of a quadriplegic with the use of One Freakin' Hand who could outwrite and outcompose ANYBODY. "I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." He put me to shame, he did, by doing more with less than all of us.

Thanks for checking in. I look forward to getting back into the swing of this place.

R.

YES! That was YOU, who witnessed me making the grandiose mistake of unboxing that beautiful axe one frosty morning, without waiting for it to come up to temperature! Thank God for modern finishes--it suffered no damage whatsoever.

Sadly, I haven't spent nearly as much time with it as it warrants. Read through my replies to others above and you will see why, i.e., "Life happened."

I recently reposted that wonderful photo you used of me at my console. Used it as my Facebook profile picture for a time. Okay, now imagine me with another 14 to 16 inches of hair and a goatee! (It was a beard until a slip with the trimmer, so I improvised. Hey, it's what us musos do!) You can see a really nice portrait my wife took in our back garden. My username is Richard C. Letaw, Jr. I'd look forward to having you as a FB friend, if you are active there.

And I am planning to install a Roland GK-3 synth pickup on it; just need to figure out the measurements. According to Fender, whom I called for technical support, if I do it, I will have the only one in the world like it. Isn't that cool? To me, it will make the perfect platform for both guitar and synth work.

THANK YOU for chiming in! It was great to visit with you then, and I'd like to get reacquainted. Hope you are well also.

Regards,
R.

Actually I change my tag line quite often so stay tuned!

We will soon be planning the 3rd year of a spring meetup. After Herbfest in 2022, and Herbstock in 2023, this time it will be called Herbapalooza! Probably be an all acoustic thing this year. Last year we did electric and setup took a long time. Start figuring out how far you are from the Raleigh NC area and come up.

These gatherings mean a lot more as we get older. The inevitable reality is that some of us older dogs will be leaving the stage relatively soon and we need to make use of the opportunities to meet and greet while we can. There were a few from up here in the Great Lakes-ish area who had intentions of coming last year but life happened. Hopefully next year they will make it.

Herb and Kim are wonderful hosts and his place is beautiful. And as a bonus, the 3 dogs played nice all day!

Oh, I’m doing quite well. Turned in my seven piece concert jazz group for a fourteen piece chamber orchestra, and I do all the writing - classical, pop, holiday, movie themes as well as jazz - so I’m working harder now than the thing I left.

During COVID I completely retooled my software, hardware and instruments. That’s made some improvement in productivity.

So I’m good.

See this page for setting up the WX5 https://www.nortonmusic.com/wx5.html — it'll give the closest sax experience, so switching between the Vito and the WX should be easier.

If you can get one, I recommend the Yamaha VL70m Physical Modeling tone module, especially with the Patchman voices at patchmanmusic.com. It's the closest thing I've tried to make it feel like you are playing an actual instrument instead of triggering synth voices. I actually use a couple of the sax voices, even though I bring a tenor sax to the gig. My tenor/mouthpiece is set up for rock/blues and for cool school jazz or during quiet, dinner sets they are great. It's the only module I found that I've used for sax.

They are out of production, but used ones float around. Patchman often has one that he puts his voices in before selling.

And yes, we're gigging. We just picked up our 23rd gig this month, and we're doing two in one day. I know that's insane, but they are both long-time dependable customers, who have become like friends, and we couldn't turn them down.

Until mid-April, when the tourist season dies, we'll be doing at least 4 per week. Then in the summer it slows down. When the fishing is good—fish hard.

I don't use BiaB straight on the gig, but often use it to make my backing tracks. It depends on the song and the styles available. I use MIDI styles because I can edit them to my heart's desire, and make the end product even better than what comes out of the box. I can add signature licks, change chord inversions to complement the melody better, add, subtract or replace drum fills, add instrumental cues to keep us from getting lost in songs that don't change chord patterns, and so on.

Other songs need to be done from scratch. Since I play drums, bass, guitar, wind synth, and some keyboard synths (I'm not a pianist), I can reproduce songs close to the record if that's what we need. Having the sheet music helps, and I can get most anything popular on the net for a reasonable price. Full details on how I make and use the files on the gig can be found here https://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html

I'm still making aftermarket styles and song collections for BiaB. I like to keep busy.

Right new we are redoing Fake Disk #2 which we released in the 1990s. There have been so many new styles to better interpret the songs, and we've gotten better at doing the disks since then, we want to make it better. It will be free to anyone who purchased the disk, because that's the right thing to do.

Other than that, nothing much new. Mrs. Notes and I are happy and healthy - anything else is extra.

Notes ♫

Aww I think it was actually forum User Pat Marr who took the unboxing pic, not sure if there was a video as well, and posted it to the forum for us all to see when he was on his driving tour of a few states.

I remember thinking how nice a guitar it is.

Good to hear from you again Ryszard, are you still at the Reason propellerheads electronic stuff.

Still around and alive (barely)..

Ryszard, good to see you on the forum once more. Life has a way of keeping us busy, doesn't it? I remember the photos you posted of your home made upright bass with your home made piezo pickup. Beautiful workmanship.

I was moved by your sweet reply in regard to "The Don"... We all miss Donnie...

Notemeister, I got her the rig exactly as you and Mick(?) recommended--WX5, Yamaha VL-70m, with the hotrodded Patchman chip. As I said elsewhere, she had just gotten when she broke a wrist, then had carpal tunnel surgeries on each side, all in quick succession. Then Life Happened--her mother went downhill, we moved in to care for her, and Trudy pretty much hasn't had the rig out of the box.

I also got her an incredible deal on a late '60s Vito tenor sax, and she coaxed a few notes out of that. But she has just been to slammin' busy for anything outside of cooking, housework, and doctor's visits. (She goes to all of mine, too.) Oh, yeah: Life in the Old Folks' Fast Lane.

I will continue to check in. Thank you SO much for all your help to this point. I have bookmarked your links and will refer to them when appropriate.

Thanks!
R.

Thank you. He and I interacted a bit. But his main role in my life was as an example. He was--and is--an inspiration.

That's not homemade, friend--that's an NS Design NX-4 electric upright. It's aMAAAAzing. I wish I could post photos here. I also got an inexpensive composite French bow, as I originally learned to play arco. But mostly I wing it. It has phenomenal sound.

Because of that, I will restring my Fender Jazz bass, which presently has La Bella nylon tape-wound strings to give it a "woody" sound (and it does!), replacing them with Thomastik phosphor-bronze round-wound strings. This was at the indirect recommendation of Ms Carol Kaye herself. I look forward to hearing what THAT'S like!

Regards!
R.

If and when she gets the time to start up with the wind synth again, and if there is anything I can do to help, don't hesitate to ask. Just PM me or go to my website to get my e-mail address.

Notes ♫

Still around, but somewhat infrequently these days. Good to hear from you again!
I'm still playing the '62 Fender Jazz, but I changed my Precision fretless for an Eastmill five string jazz fretless which I've strung with the extra string on the top ( E-A-D-G-C). Yes, that's a C on top, not a B.
It took a bit of getting used to, but it sounds amazing.
Hope to see you around in 2024.

ROG