What to do about preparing for #FAWM ?
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Aand: January 1st, 2026. 20 minutes of guitar, the old repertoire from "Sally" to "Senescence", six songs, simplified and mistake-riddled, stopping when pain in the right hand set in.
Playing through my pedal board into the Arturia Minifuse 2, into Reaper with the JSConvolution modeler enabled and set to Mesa Boogie Clean - Matchless Chieftain, and adjusting the volume on guitar, pedals and interface because some settings had moved since I'd last played.
On the pedal board (worth mentioning because I may change it): Boss Chromatic Tunder, Moo-er Pure-Boost (white), Green Mile tube screamer (green) and Black Secret (black) plus a Strymon Deco with output through one channel only.
The pedal board is small by choice, it's only there to keep those five pedals together, but it does mean that I have to take out a pedal if I want to put a new one in. Right now the Pure-Boost is not being used much, and I could use the tuner in Reaper if needed. -
On the pedal board (worth mentioning because I may change it): Boss Chromatic Tunder, Moo-er Pure-Boost (white), Green Mile tube screamer (green) and Black Secret (black) plus a Strymon Deco with output through one channel only.
The pedal board is small by choice, it's only there to keep those five pedals together, but it does mean that I have to take out a pedal if I want to put a new one in. Right now the Pure-Boost is not being used much, and I could use the tuner in Reaper if needed.Problems with playing:
* Going from G minor on 3td fret to B-sharp chord on first - the rotational movement is hard on the left wrist. Not as bad as it was, but not comfortable.* Cross-picking quickly becomes painful in the right wrist, and finger picking is not much better.
* General precision, speed and recall issues, plus loss of callouses, all from lack of practice.
IF I can practice daily (that is, if my wrists aren't killing me tomorrow), those should at least improve quickly. -
Problems with playing:
* Going from G minor on 3td fret to B-sharp chord on first - the rotational movement is hard on the left wrist. Not as bad as it was, but not comfortable.* Cross-picking quickly becomes painful in the right wrist, and finger picking is not much better.
* General precision, speed and recall issues, plus loss of callouses, all from lack of practice.
IF I can practice daily (that is, if my wrists aren't killing me tomorrow), those should at least improve quickly.It turns out that my wrist joints are not too bad today, so let's see if I can make it 25 minutes, 7 songs.
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It turns out that my wrist joints are not too bad today, so let's see if I can make it 25 minutes, 7 songs.
25 minutes accomplished, 7 songs, from Sally to Stone, same setup as last night.
Observations: I got to 25 minutes at the cost of severely half-assing my already compromised playing. I spent a lot of mental energy reminding myself to play the B-flat on the sixth fret and thinking about what positons would follow from that for the other chords. Sometimes the most logical fingering for the next chords would involve the same wrist movement that I'm trying hard to avoid.
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25 minutes accomplished, 7 songs, from Sally to Stone, same setup as last night.
Observations: I got to 25 minutes at the cost of severely half-assing my already compromised playing. I spent a lot of mental energy reminding myself to play the B-flat on the sixth fret and thinking about what positons would follow from that for the other chords. Sometimes the most logical fingering for the next chords would involve the same wrist movement that I'm trying hard to avoid.
In other situations, I simply Did Not Do the embellishments that I'd usually play and just played the chords. Whatever it took to get to 25 minutes without messing up my wrists.
I guess tomorrow I will shoot for 30 and play even worse to get there. But this seems to be a good approach to take, for now. For what I want to do, expanding the amount of time I can keep playing is priority no. 1.
And I'll get my callouses back just as effectively from playing half-assedly as from playing well.
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In other situations, I simply Did Not Do the embellishments that I'd usually play and just played the chords. Whatever it took to get to 25 minutes without messing up my wrists.
I guess tomorrow I will shoot for 30 and play even worse to get there. But this seems to be a good approach to take, for now. For what I want to do, expanding the amount of time I can keep playing is priority no. 1.
And I'll get my callouses back just as effectively from playing half-assedly as from playing well.
Jan 3, 2026: Wellp, no guitar practice for me today.
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Jan 3, 2026: Wellp, no guitar practice for me today.
January 4: Another day with no guitar playing, but I've used some old Kenny Gioia videos to set Reaper DAW up to work a little more effectively with the Beatstep Pro (Gioia uses a regular Beatstep, which is different in some ways but similar enough - except in the very old videos where he uses a MIDI keyboard controller and in those it matches up a lot less well).
It actually helps that Gioia remade some of his videos multiple times over 9+ years.
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January 4: Another day with no guitar playing, but I've used some old Kenny Gioia videos to set Reaper DAW up to work a little more effectively with the Beatstep Pro (Gioia uses a regular Beatstep, which is different in some ways but similar enough - except in the very old videos where he uses a MIDI keyboard controller and in those it matches up a lot less well).
It actually helps that Gioia remade some of his videos multiple times over 9+ years.
January 5: extremely tired. Took the evening off from practice, but may manage to watch one Reaper-related video before bed.
Honestly, the most gain in the short time left before FAWM is in learning how to DAW so that's what I'll do.
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January 5: extremely tired. Took the evening off from practice, but may manage to watch one Reaper-related video before bed.
Honestly, the most gain in the short time left before FAWM is in learning how to DAW so that's what I'll do.
I didn't finish the video I started, because I had Reaper on, messed with the settings and messed them up so bad that I had to spend half an hour to figure out what I'd done wrong and undo it. The current state is that hitting C2 on the Drum channel no longer starts the transport, which would have been a dealbreaker if I was trying to get anything done.
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I didn't finish the video I started, because I had Reaper on, messed with the settings and messed them up so bad that I had to spend half an hour to figure out what I'd done wrong and undo it. The current state is that hitting C2 on the Drum channel no longer starts the transport, which would have been a dealbreaker if I was trying to get anything done.
Now, on the one hand, this thoroughly unpleasant experience was one I brought upon myself by letting myself get sidetracked from following the steps in the video and messing around with settings I had already got working for me.
On the other hand, it's still the sort of thing that makes me consider going back to GarageBand and just living with its limitations. It's not like I've got that much hair left to pull out.
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Now, on the one hand, this thoroughly unpleasant experience was one I brought upon myself by letting myself get sidetracked from following the steps in the video and messing around with settings I had already got working for me.
On the other hand, it's still the sort of thing that makes me consider going back to GarageBand and just living with its limitations. It's not like I've got that much hair left to pull out.
January 6: I may not have brought yesterday's bad experience on myself; it may have something to do with how channels on the Beatstep pro are handled. My working theory: the transport on the Beatstep Pro has to work regardless of what channel is active, so on initialization, it resets its configuration so that it sends the right notes with the first channel that's activated, or all channels. You then have to re-assign the connection with the Reaper transport in Reaper…
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January 6: I may not have brought yesterday's bad experience on myself; it may have something to do with how channels on the Beatstep pro are handled. My working theory: the transport on the Beatstep Pro has to work regardless of what channel is active, so on initialization, it resets its configuration so that it sends the right notes with the first channel that's activated, or all channels. You then have to re-assign the connection with the Reaper transport in Reaper…
I could probably shoot a few holes into that theory, but it'll do for now. This is just a way for me to remember why I think the problem that was solved yesterday reoccurred today. If it's wrong, I'll at least have a starting point.
Anyway, I mucked about with the sample player plugin that ships with Reaper, following another Kenny Gioia video, and that turned out to be pretty easy and maye a more practical way for me to do drums during FAWM.
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I could probably shoot a few holes into that theory, but it'll do for now. This is just a way for me to remember why I think the problem that was solved yesterday reoccurred today. If it's wrong, I'll at least have a starting point.
Anyway, I mucked about with the sample player plugin that ships with Reaper, following another Kenny Gioia video, and that turned out to be pretty easy and maye a more practical way for me to do drums during FAWM.
However, I could not finish the "lesson" and didn't record anything. In fact, I've never yet actually recorded anything in Reaper, except by accident. Everything I've done since buying the license has been about setting things up (and sometimes playing live through the effects plugins). Time to pass that milestone with some simple beats… tomorrow.
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However, I could not finish the "lesson" and didn't record anything. In fact, I've never yet actually recorded anything in Reaper, except by accident. Everything I've done since buying the license has been about setting things up (and sometimes playing live through the effects plugins). Time to pass that milestone with some simple beats… tomorrow.
January 7: I'm getting extremely frustrated with #Reaper DAW. I'm trying to follow what should be a simple tutorial :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p9r_QYU0CA
But no matter what I do, I can't get looping to work. I've gone through the options in this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Reaper/comments/1dvpjsx/loop_problem/ and I found the attitudes of the respondents unhelpful and none of the proffered solutions resulted in loops working.
The OP "resolved" the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling? -
January 7: I'm getting extremely frustrated with #Reaper DAW. I'm trying to follow what should be a simple tutorial :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p9r_QYU0CA
But no matter what I do, I can't get looping to work. I've gone through the options in this Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Reaper/comments/1dvpjsx/loop_problem/ and I found the attitudes of the respondents unhelpful and none of the proffered solutions resulted in loops working.
The OP "resolved" the issue by uninstalling and reinstalling?Finally,
I went back to this video, "Looping in Reaper" which shows an action of drawing a time selection on the "ruler" area, which I can't replicate either.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p9r_QYU0CA
So… unnecessary complexity, basic actions fail and send me into a rabbit hole to try to get them fixed, "advice" forums are unhelpful… REAPER would be the linux of DAWs if it was open source.
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Finally,
I went back to this video, "Looping in Reaper" which shows an action of drawing a time selection on the "ruler" area, which I can't replicate either.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p9r_QYU0CA
So… unnecessary complexity, basic actions fail and send me into a rabbit hole to try to get them fixed, "advice" forums are unhelpful… REAPER would be the linux of DAWs if it was open source.
And on top of it all, I still haven't recorded a single note on this DAW in four months of owning it. I'm starting to think that the 70 bucks for the license is a sunk cost that I should stop pursuing.
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And on top of it all, I still haven't recorded a single note on this DAW in four months of owning it. I'm starting to think that the 70 bucks for the license is a sunk cost that I should stop pursuing.
Update: uninstalling and reinstalling did not work, probably because that's not how things are organized on the Mac compared to Windows. Deleting the app only deletes the app, not the settings.
Following the steps in https://promixacademy.com/blog/loop-in-reaper/ also failed, because the behavior described in Step 2-1:"Right-click on the timeline above your selected area and choose “Set Loop Points” from the context menu." simply does not occur. There's no "Set Loop Points" option there.
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Update: uninstalling and reinstalling did not work, probably because that's not how things are organized on the Mac compared to Windows. Deleting the app only deletes the app, not the settings.
Following the steps in https://promixacademy.com/blog/loop-in-reaper/ also failed, because the behavior described in Step 2-1:"Right-click on the timeline above your selected area and choose “Set Loop Points” from the context menu." simply does not occur. There's no "Set Loop Points" option there.
However, after selecting "Remove all markers from time selection" from that same context menu, I can draw a time selection on the ruler, which is progress. I do not recall having made a time selection before, but maybe I have. Does it work? Let's find out!
… yes, yes it does. Only took me an hour to troubleshoot.
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However, after selecting "Remove all markers from time selection" from that same context menu, I can draw a time selection on the ruler, which is progress. I do not recall having made a time selection before, but maybe I have. Does it work? Let's find out!
… yes, yes it does. Only took me an hour to troubleshoot.
Well, stone me, I've recorded some drums. And it's time to wrap up practice for the day and go to bed, so more tomorrow.
Once again, once I'd jumped through a dozen different hoops and tore my hair out for over an hour to identify the tiny thing the instructions missed, things work pretty much the way I expected before I started on the task.
I wish just for once I could go directly from zero to things working the way I expected them to in the first place!
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Well, stone me, I've recorded some drums. And it's time to wrap up practice for the day and go to bed, so more tomorrow.
Once again, once I'd jumped through a dozen different hoops and tore my hair out for over an hour to identify the tiny thing the instructions missed, things work pretty much the way I expected before I started on the task.
I wish just for once I could go directly from zero to things working the way I expected them to in the first place!
Though I guess the sample player, ReaSamplOMatic5000, counts as something that worked as expected immediately. So maybe I'm being unfair in the thread above.
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is there software that randomly loads and unloads kernel modules at boot asking for a friend
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@skovmand agreed!
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@metteh Jeg tror, jeg selv hørte om noAI-Duck i første omgang her på Mastodon. Det var befriende at flytte over til!
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La difesa armata non ci può salvare dall'invasione statunitense. La salvezza va cercata nella difesa popolare nonviolenta, che si basa su un principio fondamentale: nessun invasore può governare senza il supporto degli invasi. Per controllare 450 mlioni di europei, funziona come per l'assistenza agli anziani: ti serve una badante per il giorno, una per la notte, una nei weekend e feriali. Totale: un miliardo e trecentocinquanta milioni di invasori. Ma gli statunitensi sono solo 300 milioni.
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@HailsandAles even worse, it's THE FIRST HALF of January
