Mr. Nick - lol... Not at all, and that post shouldn't; I was just being exaggeratedly cynical... lol...

Clarky - I just listened to Talking to Stone again. That's such a beautiful piece of music - you have to have it as a bonus track on your album or something... REALLY looking forward to our next jam now...

Mr. Nick - A T2J CD? Count me in for sure. I'm working on three pieces at the moment - I guess I'll pick the best one when they're all done...

Jelly Man - I ordered Liquid Tension Experiment, Vol. 2 yesterday from amazon.co.uk. I'd better not be disappointed or I'll go all Jackie Chan on yo ass for convincing me to spend money!!!!!

Clarky - Driving around all day looking for a toilet sounds very fulfilling!!! Be really bad if you needed a shit though, eh? lol lol

Wow 33 pages posts. I simply couldn't be arsed to read them all, so I'm not gonna make any excuses - if I've missed anything important regarding the T2J CD project then let me know coz I'm a lazy fucker!!!

Trutina - Regarding the pulishing rights: I don't suppose the CD is likely to get a great deal of airtimeon radio stations, but incase it does (or is leaked ot a pirate or something) what's happening about those royalties? Is anyhting being done about joining a collection society or getting a one off publishing deal or something, or getting PRS (or ASCAP for US artists) involved? Just curious - it seems quite important. No-one wants to be ripped off... And is there gonna be a launch party? lol

What does everybody think of George Lynch? I bought one of his videos and found him a bit, er, mediocre...

Oh, God - another 33 pages!!! Once again, I couldn't be arsed to read 'em all...

Clarky - I'm living in Guildford at the moment. Depending on the time, any day is fine with me. Regarding George Lynch: it's not that it wasn't impressive, it just all seemed a bit samey. Better than me though, by a long shot...

Nick - Congratulations, man! It's a bit weird that they offered you a place only on the Diploma rather than the Higher Diploma. When you get the book on enrolment day have a look through it and if it all looks a bit menial and easy let them know and ask to be moved up - it's too expensive to be wasting your time. That's what I did. I hadn't even started the course yet when I asked to be moved up, but they told me to see how the first week goes and then they'll consider it. The first week was so tedious, man - half of the Diploma guys couldn't tune their own guitars and they were being taugh barre chords, shape 1 of the minor pentatonic, and all that stuff. I had to get out, so I went and whinged and they moved me up. I'm glad I only spent a week in the Scope course coz I learned so much right from the start in Higher Diploma. Don't waste any time if you think you should be moved up. Also, I'll definitely be seeing you next year as I got accepted for the degree!!!!!

Later all Neil

Clarky - Yeah, 8th March is fine. What train station do I go to - is it Reading or is there a nearer one? I'll bring a dodgy backing track I made for my T2J tune, and you can give me some opinions/pointers/help, etc. if that's okay...

Nick - Beep! You got mail...

Trutina - The shorter tune has actually become the one I wanna use now coz I reckon it's better. Undecided on a name as yet, however... Is the deadline a case of miss it and miss out? It's just that the studio I'll be using is pretty booked up until the end of March, and then I have to get it sent across the pond by the 31st...

Clarky - It doesn't actually look like I'll be able to make that now. I've just run out of student loan and my parents have said they wanna come up and seem me that weekend. Definitely next term though. I guess I'll just have to try and remember everything you said about playing over ballads last time I was over... Tension and release, right kind of wrong, etc. etc.

Trutina - okay, roll with "Missing You" for the T2J CD then. That makes it a lot easier coz I don't need to book a studio for that as all the drum sounds I'm after are on Acid/Making Waves.

Jelly Man - That CD (Liquid Tension Experiment 2) came the other day. I've had a few listens now, and rest assured it won't be leaving my CD player for a few days!!! It's awesome - thank you for convincing to spend the British taxpayers' money on it... lol

Phryg Dom - Yeah, that'd be cool. Can't afford to go anywhere ever again this term though, so maybe next term?

Mr. Nick - You have yet more mail...

Neil

Jelly Man - I like "Biaxident", "Another Dimension", and "When The Water Breaks" the most (so far...). Still don't know what a Chapman Stick is though... lol

Regarding the T2J CD cover, I liked the top two. I think that it wouldn't do any harm, however, if we had a really artsy one in a similar vein to Vai's "Fire Garden". Any resident artists?

Welll it's been ages since my last post due to me composing, recording, practicing, auditioning, and (rather bizarrely) filiming a pop video with new girl-band "Untouched" as their guitar player. Let's see if it goes anywhere - they have interest from EMI... (fingers crossed)

Trutina - My track is pretty much finished - I'm hoping to have it all done by the end of next week. Where do I send it and in what format?

Clarky - No probs, dude. I'll let you know as soon as I have a free weekend.

Nick - You got mail...

Another audition on Monday. Hope it goes well - this would be a really cool gig...

I'm disappointad in myself - I'm actually starting to like some fusion. Quartal harmony is sooooooo cool....

Invigor - Amen, bro. Drunk girlfriends are even better coz they're constantly horny!!!!!

Clarky - Good advice to Nick, man. I listend to "A Face In The Clouds" and "Toccata" from my IUMA the other day and I couldn't believe it. I was wondering whether or not to delete them... I think I'll definitely re-record them though.

Jelly Man - Yeah, that would be far more original... lol... If I hear another maj 2nd modultaion I think I might run through the streets naked with a fruit bowl on my head screaming Kill me now!!!!". Or something...

Big audition tomorrow. Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!

michelle - Please don't - I might have to actually go through with it... lol lol

Nick - I went to your yahoo group thing, joined and then got really fucking confused as to how to watch your clip... :^/

greg - Yeah, I know. I just never thought I'd ever hear myself say such a thing...

Clarky - Amen. A-fucking-men!!!!!

Nick - Okay, so once I've joined this thing what to do I click on to hear your stuff? I don't know why I thought it was a clip...

PhrygDom - I'm not sure how I'm gonna send you my photo since hotmail don't let you sent anything bigger than 1MB, and jpegs are usually bigger than that aren't they?

My audition went well. Didn't get the gig but it went well. And they said "we'll bear you in mind for anything else that might come along". I'm sure they will... lol... I guess that's more time to concentrate on my T2J track now. Trouble is, the ACM studio's pretty much all booked up this week and I'm probably going home for Easter on saturday. I only need to add the bass and lead guitar parts dammit!!!!!

NM MY IUMA

I just remembered I've got my "Theory and Applied Harmony" exam in about half a hour. I hope it's not gonna be as hilarious as the one I had to endure last term - what is a stave? What is a triad? What is a scale? What note is a major third higher than F? Write out the key signature for A major, etc. - I couldn't believe it. We had an hour to do it but me and a couple of my class mates finished in around ten minutes. Felt sorry for the singers though.... lol

There's this married couple and their sex life is rapidly disappearing down the toilet. They've tried everything to spice it up but so far nothing has worked. So, one day when the guy's at work the woman decides to venture into an Ann Summers shop to see what she can find. She stumbles across a pair of crotchless panties and thinks they might just do the trick so she buys them.

That evening as the guy comes home from work she decides to handcuff herself to the headboard of their bed wearing only her new purchase with her legs spread wide apart. The man walks into their room and she looks up at him and asks seductively "do you want some of this"? The man replies "Fuck off - look what it's done to your panties!"

Funy as hell that one...

Well, the B52's left RAF Fairford earlier this morning. I guess the shit's really gonna hit that fan now. And what a mess it'll make...

Clarky - Grand. That gives me five weeks to actually commit to this practice routine I came up with the other day (as well as finish up my track). I reckon if I do it every day for five weeks then I might even have some stuff to show you!!! Oh, wait - that'll never happen... lol... Only a few weeks until "Avarice" arrives, huh? Let's see if I can guess which guitar you'll be playing when we finally have this second jam... lol... That'll be awesome...

JSC1 - It sucks you feel that way about the T2J CD project. I haven't heard a lot of your stuff but I can tell you're one hell of a player and your presence on the record will be missed. The finances will be a strain on me too, but I thought fuck it - this is a good thing to do to get my music heard. Just follow your heart, dude...

Matt King - Wow; congrats on the full endorsement, man! Will you get things like strings and picks too? Christ - imagine the money you'd save with that kind of deal!!! I reckon I probably walk through somewhere around £1,000 a year on things like strings and picks... Best of luck to you in the future anyway, man!

Only one more exam left this term!!! Whoopdiefuckin' doo!!!!!!

What a wicked band practice!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, actually that's not strictly true... The bass player didn't turn up coz he's a fucking ass, the singer didn't turn up coz his girlfriend wouldn't let him - I think she'd arranged a surprise lunch or something (women! tsk tsk...) and the other guitar player had a practice with his other band, but I already knew about that so it's okay. So me and the drummer just jammed for about four hours which was really cool. Then we decided to try and do some writing and we came up with something that's looking very very cool indeed. We used a whole load of samba rhythms and arranged them for the guitar and drums and they turned out to lend themselves very well to prog indeed!!!! Then there's a little 5/4 bridge, and the chorus has a really straight rock/grunge kinda vibe. Should be most excellent...

Nick - I'm just about to go and check out your performance of "Always...", so I'll tell you what I think in a minute or a few...

Nick - I checked out the MP3. I thought that it was very good on the most part but you need to work on your timing and articulation. A lot of the bends were really quite out of tune and you came in a bit too early in places with the melody lines. I suggest doing what Clarky has already suggested as well as taking some time out to look at things like timing, bends, and most importantly vibrato - this is the thing that'll really define your tone coz vibrato is like finger prints in that respect (even though there's no such thing as a bad finger print... lol). It can make a bad note sound good and a good note sound even better.

Don't be discouraged though. This is one of Joe's harder pieces to play well because it's so sparse - everything you play is in the foreground so it has to be nailed.

Very promising though!