StickNews Digest Issue #290 - 15/01/07

• And So Begins The Year of Steve

• News from Pascal Gutman
  
• Critics Rave (new Steve Adelson recording)
  
• Adventures In Stickology
  
• samples
  
• Jonas 3 Stick tour dates
  
• Stick for Sale
  
• It's Directory Update time
  
• Happy New Year and January 2007 Newsletter
  
• Human Feelings

• See Spot Run
  
• Spinal Column # 2,765,098
  
• Dry Erase Touchboard and "fighting CRS"

• The Roland V-Bass - a very flexible floor processor (Part II)

Hello,

My second CD is released now, called ā€œED REHMā€. You can hear excerpts on
http://trois-quatorze.fr In ā€œECOUTEā€ field. Click on each track name and the music sounds...

It's possible to buy it by PayPal (also the first CD) clicking on the pictures.

All the best to you all,

Pascal Gutman

From: George J3 [george.baldwin@btconnect.com]
Subject: Jonas 3 Stick tour dates
Date: 02/12/2006

DATES:
FEB 3rd STAFF UNIVERSITY
4th LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY
5th CHESTER tbc
8th NOTTINGHAM RESCUE ROOMS
11th BOURNEMOUTH OLD FIRE STATION
15th MANCHESTER ACADEMY
16th WOLVERHAMPTON CIVIC CENTRE
28th BRIGHTON KOMEDIA
MORE TO COME VERY SOON!!!!

Just a reminder to please check your Stick Player Directory entry to make sure it has the correct website, email instrument info. If you've moved, let me know your new City. If you want to add a picture, just send me a 95x95pixel jpeg.

If you haven't signed up yet, you can find the directory at:

http://members.aol.com/sticknews/sticknewsarchives/playerdirectory

There are currently over 400 players from around the world listed.

Happy Tapping,
Greg
sticknews@aol.com

From: Michael Kollwitz [michael@michaelkollwitz.com]
Subject: Happy New Year & January 2007 Newsletter
Date: 06/01/2007

Hope you had a great holiday season and I'd like to send my best wishes to you and yours for a very Happy New Year. Wow- it's hard to believe it's already 2007. Where did the time go?

Now that I look back, 2006 was really a great year all around. I had three new releases; the " Waterfallin' " CD in May, the "Live In Concert" DVD and also the digital download album "20 Greatest Hits"- both in October. It was a lot of work but very exciting. I hope you're enjoying them!

The DVD has gotten great reviews and it is also being carried by Stick Enterprises, Inc. If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch a 3:30 sample of the song "Steppin' Out" at my website (below), http://www.stick.com or on http://www.YouTube.com (where it has already been viewed over 2300 times). Hope you'll enjoy it.

On December 22, 2006 I made my debut on national radio as a guest on The Doug Stephan "Good Day" morning radio program. The program was broadcast in 425 markets nationwide- coast to coast.

The interview was about 15 minutes in length and he played quite a few cuts from my Christmas CD, "Frosty The Stickman". If you'd like to hear the entire interview, it's archived to the Internet via .mp3 at Doug's website. To get there, you'll find the link and more details on the front page of my website (below).

In late October, I returned to my old stomping grounds in Phoenix, Arizona to work with video producer Roy Plisko. We created a few new videos there and shot hours of other great footage that we hope will be part of a bigger project sometime in the future. A couple of the videos are already posted on YouTube and you should have no problem finding them there. Just put my name (or Roy's) in the search engine and they'll come right up.

January is usually the month when I take some time off and plan my projects for the coming year. I'll keep you posted. Thanks, as always, for your support of my music on The Chapman Stick- I really appreciate it.

All the best,

~Michael Kollwitz
http://www.MichaelKollwitz.com
htto://www.MySpace.com/MichaelKollwitz

P.S. If you already have a MySpace page, please stop by mine (above) and invite me to be your 'friend'. Hey- you gotta have friends, right?

From: Stickist@aol.com
Subject: Human Feelings
Date: 09/01/2007

Hi all,

The new feature CD on stick.com is by Japanese Stickist Toshiaki Kanamaru. "Human Feelings" is his second CD and really nice listen. In addition to his regular 10-string, it also features some nice Alto solos and uses of the Alto in larger settings. Congratulations, Toshiaki!

You can find the review here:

http://www.stick.com/features/cd

Happy Tapping and Listening,
Greg

From: nandav8@aim.com
Subject: Dry Erase Touchboard & "fighting CRS"
Date: 04/01/2007

Hello, and Happy New Year to all!

The Dry Erase Touchboard is not a new secret composite Emmett is working on, but a cheap, and I mean cheap easy teaching gadget you can create with very little cashola involved. First go to Stick.com to instruments and tunings at "http://www.stick.com/instruments/tunings"- find your tuning, and print it out. Go to your local copy place and enlarge the fretboard part of the page to fit onto a 8x11 paper.(.07 USD) Then have them laminate the page- (approx $2.19 USD) , while you are there, pick up some dry erase markers-($2-3.00 USD) used for those magnetic bulletin boards on everyone's fridge. Now you can write down everything from chord shapes, to scale tones, to note intervals, and modes to solo over on a particular piece, with the occidental notes in a different colour ie. G to an E7, the g could be green and the g# could be red to remind you to switch when you get to the E7! You can write out your scales in actual notes and circle roots or key tones in your song you want to emphasize for colour. You can take a chord and spread the notes out over both sides for wide-open voicings. The best part is you're "just a wipe away, just a wipe away" - (sorry recently saw Gimme Shelter again- too much Stones), from your next creative venture and getting to know the Touchboard a little better.

"Fighting CRS"- No donations please, just remember where you came from! Most, if not all of us, played another instrument before seeing the light of the Stick- whether it be guitar, bass, keyboard or drums et al. We seem to forget all those cool things we used to play that impressed our friends and crowds, when we start to play the Stick, at least I initially did. CRS stands for "can't remember Stick" (at least in this context it does!) Take those cool riffs or signature licks from popular songs you used to play, and arrange them for the Stick. It will help make you feel more familiar with the Stick, and your audience will say "cool dude!" and do an instant connect! Try this- on the melody side find two notes- a "d" and an "a" below that "d". On the bass side, find these notes descending, or going lower in pitch, a "D" , a "C" and a "B" note, and play them 2x each. Put together like this D-D
("d"-"a"), C-C ("d"-"a") B-B ("d"). now say Turn It UP! and viola, you have "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd! You know your crowd better than I do, so proudly play those keys licks/riffs and most righteous melodies even better on The Stick! You'll have to turn your amp up over the applause!

If anyone wants to come out and hear me, I'll be at my favorite venue, the Coffee Den, in Pittsburgh, PA every 2nd and 4th Friday opening for the Primatives. http://www.howlingtoad.com/coffeeden/take care and keep tapping! - Dave Brosky, Pittsburgh, PA

As mentioned in part 1, Iā€™ve often thought that the lower Stickbass strings are different enough from the upper Stickbass strings that in some applications they possibly shouldnā€™t pour out of the same jack all together. Not that a mono recording of any given instrument canā€™t sound great ā€“ itā€™s just that for some of my applications Iā€™ve had the wish.

In earlier attempts to differentiate the higher bass strings from the lower bass strings, I have used two methods: 1) MIDI and 2) an RMC breakout box. At one point I also corresponded with Emmett as to whether it was possible to split a Stick pickup into more than just bass and melody ā€“ and he stated (in short) that there wasnā€™t the capability.

The first method Iā€™ll discuss is via MIDI, which uses the GK pickup mounted under the Stick bass side strings to trigger MIDI sounds. The MIDI sounds are then typically combined with the Stick bass (Stickup or other) sound. A simple example is that I can produce a clean, dry punchy Stick bass sound out of the standard Stick pickup, and ā€“augment- the 2, 3 or 4 upper strings (or all 6 strings) with MIDI sounds (wet, dry, transposed, etc.). While the MIDI tracking on the upper strings is just fine (fast and accurate to pitch), the MIDI sound is typically in addition to the standard Stick pickup sound. The MIDI sound(s) can and hopefully will complement the Stick sound, but in practice sometimes are difficult to stand on their own (at least for me) as triggered from the Stickbass side ā€“ so I usually combine them with the Stick output. With MIDI and the laws of physics, the lower bass notes do not trigger as rapidly as the upper (although they do track pitch quite accurately with a Roland GI-20 set to the ā€˜bassā€™ setting, which is not the case using a GI-10 on bass notes), and typically I would not attempt to MIDI-fy the full set of six bass strings with a percussive synth patch if the song called for accurate or tight timing. In this case I may add a slower attacked bass, string or flute sound on the bassier strings, and an appropriate more percussive attack patch on the top treble strings.

(Read On: here:)