Long tones for accuracy?

Hey all, I've been making pretty good gains on my singing overall which I'm happy with but right now my biggest hurdle is accuracy. I'm... guessing that's pretty much universal to every singer on the planet but while I have some exercises for that, was curious on this approach.

I also play trumpet and sax and it's very common to do long tone exercises, with or without a tuner present to match precise pitches and hold them for a whole note or whatever, work up/down chromatically etc. None of the exercises for accuracy I've encountered do that; not sure if it's because its so common sense it doesnt need a video to demonstrate, or just not considered worthwhile for singers.

Another random observation about my accuracy... it's weird but like if I really concentrate on getting a note right as opposed to playing on an actual rhythm, I can usually nail the note. It's when I have to sing on rhythm where I get sloppy... It's not exactly something that's 'strange' to me, like when a novice guitarist has to position their finger for a bit on the fretboard to get a perfect clean note. I suppose that's a start at least.

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u/nabiscosantajr — 7 days ago

Trying to curate a 30 minute/5 day a week practice routine.

Hey all, I'm a 'composer'/solo artist/whatever. My primary instrument is guitar which I practice 3 hrs a day. I used to play sax and trumpet in a prog rock band back in college at a semi-intermediate level but I literally haven't touched a sax in 10 years. I also used to play alto sax but decided to try the tenor world this time and bought a Yamaha YTS-200AD

I'm going to dedicate 2 hours a day in 30 minute segments of trumpet, sax, piano and voice. Now with guitar my routine is a 50/50 split of mechanical exercise ie scales, legato, rote metronome exercises etc. and the other 50 being actual music practice/learning. That being said, I was already an advanced player when I decided on this split.

As a returning player who's willing to try 30 minutes a day at first, what would be considered a good split and some good 'returning player' exercises?

Are there some good books y'all recommend for a beginner-ish/intermediate player that skips all the sheet reading/music theory bs? I already know that; I just want to know good technique info on vibrato or tone production, etc.

Thanks in advance.

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u/nabiscosantajr — 14 days ago

Trying to curate a 30 minute/5 day a week routine

Hey all, I'm a 'composer'/solo artist/whatever. My primary instrument is guitar which I practice 3 hrs a day. I used to play sax and trumpet in a prog rock band back in college at a semi-intermediate level but I literally haven't touched a trumpet in 10 years. I just recently bought a getzen eterna 900 and ready to practice again though.

I'm going to dedicate 2 hours a day in 30 minute segments of trumpet, sax, piano and voice. Now with guitar my routine is a 50/50 split of mechanical exercise ie scales, legato, rote metronome exercises etc. and the other 50 being actual music practice/learning. That being said, I was already an advanced player when I decided on this split.

As a returning player who's willing to try 30 minutes a day at first, what would be considered a good split and some good 'returning player' exercises? My range back in the day only reached the middle "g", the one that is two octaves above the lowest "g". Currently can only play up to the E below that.

I find trumpet's embouchure to be tougher on my lips/voice than sax so I figured I would do Sax first, then piano, then either voice or trumpet after.

Thanks in advance.

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u/nabiscosantajr — 14 days ago

Couple of questions on a new big band piece

Going to get real quick on these questions.

  1. I'm writing a song called "The Official Targonauts™ Jock Jam" based off my dogs, the targonauts. I think having the actual trademark symbol is just funny but is there any sorta legal precedent that would give me a hard time?

  2. Is there a good reference of study material for big band type stuff as far as instruments go? Not the harmony but just instrumentation, like you need 4 saxophones and 4 trumpets or whatever.

  3. Has anyone ever had the sensation of 'writing' a melody that you can't remember if it's already a famous melody? I had a good melody come to mind and can't remember if it's just something from a song I already knew or a genuinely cool melody.

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u/nabiscosantajr — 1 month ago

Two low strings seem jank at the bridge

EDIT: Resolved... sorta. I see the problem now, adjusted the 7th and need a replacement screw for the 8th string. Thanks, everybody

I recorded a bunch of parts in a funky tuning recently and moved back to standard. When I was practicing yesterday I noticed the 8th string seemed extremely low but decided to ignore it for the time being.

I checked this morning and noticed it was all crooked and low at the bridge, so I used an Allen wrench to 'straighten it out' and I noticed the 7th is higher than every other string. The 8th also seems to be making itself crooked again after sitting for a bit.

The bridge is level with the guitar so I wouldn't think it has anything to do with the springs on the back; anyone know how to fix this? Thanks

u/nabiscosantajr — 4 months ago
▲ 152 r/2XKO

In Memoriam - Teamfight

Now I don't play hours every single day... but can't help but notice I haven't seen teamfight ONCE since the patch. In the duos-only sajam slam not a single team picked teamfight, and that's a bummer.

I won't pretend there wasn't some cheap bs in this fuse but the feeling that this fuse is basically a sweatlord exclusive for perfectly rehearsed airtight mixup strings is a bummer. It doesn't take an unemployed person to figure out how to make 2X or double down or even freestyle look cheap AF, so I hope they can tweak this fuse so we can still pick it for fun and not feel like we're just playing a totally gimped fuse.

u/nabiscosantajr — 4 months ago

Controller clicking, gear off alignment?

Opened up my pad for the first time to fix some constant drift on one of the analog sticks.. well one step forward one step back as the drift IS fixed however this click keeps happening and it looks like there's some sort of alignment issue on this adaptive trigger.

I did the 'open astros playroom and do a controller demo fix' and it stops clicking.... Until I close it. If anyone has ideas how to fix this, it would be greatly appreciated 👍

u/nabiscosantajr — 4 months ago

So I was a big fan of the DR and ZE series; started this game a WHILE back and made a ton of progress then got sidetracked cause... this game is so gotdang long. I'm done now and have somewhat mixed feelings. After such a long experience feel like I just wanna type out my feelings to close the book on this.

Gonna break down this 'review' into a few segments.

Gameplay: I'm a big fan of XCOM/FF Tactics/Pathfinder etc. type combat so I enjoyed the game a lot at first. It did get quite a bit repetitive over time with low enemy variety and repeating bosses. The board game section was a cool idea but alas, also became mad repetitive/grindy. These wouldn't be downsides if the game wasn't designed to be played this long but it is... so yeah.

Music: The music is good because the music in DRV3 is good. Felt like the composer just opened up his DRV3 project file, shuffled some of the midi notes around for the melodies and reprinted to make this soundtrack. Sidenote 'downside' is Clair De Lune. As a fan of classical piano I love that tune and it was very emotionally impactful in DRV3. They really overuse it here. It's like every time I see a scene is about to get even mildly emotional "oh here comes the clair de lune waterworks".

Characters: I won't lie, I hated a LOT of these characters at first. I think because of the long marathon pace of the game, the very one-dimensional character traits that could be charming in a game paced like DR suddenly become grating very fast. Shouma and the constant self-deprecation, Darumi and the constant wink-at-the-camera edgelord stuff, etc.

I will say after playing through every timeline, as one-dimensional as every char is, it IS always interesting to see how everyone will react to whatever wild scenario I'm going through now and the surprising depth when given a chance. I hated tf outta Darumi and finally played the Retsnom story as one of the last timelines I did. Felt like she was Seth Brundle to my Gina Davis and it was heartbreaking. I don't know if her getting actual depth in basically only one timeline can be counted as a plus but whatever.

Story: So this is where I get real mixed on it cause some of these individual stories were really awesome. I also felt thrown for a complete loop on a LOT of them. Like the zombie timeline and only me and Kyoshika survive?? Complete curveball to me.

My personal timeline on this game was playing "Last Defense 1" aka the first timeline thinking "hmm.... this game kinda fuckin sucks" and then getting the ending where we go back in time and unlock timelines. I then thought "ooooh this game might be fucking incredible" and the first ending I got was the 'comedy' ending with fishheads. I quickly went back to thinking "hmm nah i had it right the first time, this game fucking sucks"

Fortunately the second story I got was one of the killing game ones with Kamyuhn escaping in the rocket etc, very fun. Some of these stories are great..... Some are okay....... some.... fucking suck. As invested as I was about halfway through the game I ran into the 'serial battles' timeline and I legit almost quit 10 fucking times. Is the game trying to punish me for picking the obvious asshole option to Shion? Because I ALWAYS pick the bad option first to get it outta the way in these games. When I sacrificed Tsubasa instead of the two willing participants, I still unlocked the V'exhness route which was awesome and entertaining.

To conclude on the story, I will say I was VERY bummed that there's no 'true' ending. I thought the mega-bummer ending where everyone dies fighting the Shion bots together with the unique soundtrack, etc. was a GREAT ending... to unlock the true ending. Kinda like how Zero Escape always had those amazing bummer endings that were necessary to unlock the true ending.

The SF Route was... fine? It felt like a happy ending but I still got the generic ending music so... huh? what's next? Usually in ZE you beat every timeline to unlock the REAL timeline or whatever so... huh... Kinda wish the director(s) just had vision here to say "this is the definitive ending" just leaves me a little hollow especially after all this time.

Conclusion: I still feel pretty good about having beaten this game; plenty of fun stories and memorable moments. I feel pretty let down by the (lack of) ending; comparable and yet arguably worse than MGSV. "fuck it, let them decide what the ending is" I'm not a writer!! Finish your fucking story! What could have been really amazing I now just leave like "hey alright" atpQuan

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u/nabiscosantajr — 5 months ago
▲ 12 r/2XKO

Just curious. I don't remember working very hard for GM in Season 0 and while I just started kinda playing ranked again, it has felt consistently more challenging in every rank and after hitting master, can't help notice the point progression instantly took a big hit from like +17 a game to +6 or whatever.

I actually feel the ranked progression is at a pretty good spot right now cause Master is honestly the range I felt like I should've belonged in the first place. Feels like with all the rank inflation in SF6 and T8 making our achievements retroactively lamer, kinda glad that GM will feel like more of an actual achievement if I do end up hitting it.

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u/nabiscosantajr — 5 months ago