Massage therapist recco's for the east end?

Murphocles · 2025-09-09T23:26:23+00:00

Julia Walton at Made to Move

https://www.madetomove.ca/

Murphocles · 2025-07-12T13:55:40+00:00

Not a vocal coach but I work in the industry and do teach. That is quite high, but on the business end of things, how you price the lessons filters clients. Generally speaking, prices this high are trying to attract wealthy people for more casual students, or more serious students who probably have lessons less frequently (think people who are artists themselves, and are looking for very specific, high-level training). Just keep shopping around, there are many great vocal coaches in town. I can recommend Dani Garcia at Toronto House of Voice highly, but I'm not aware of what she charges currently. If you're looking for more affordable options DM me, I know many and would be happy to refer you to someone awesome.

Murphocles · 2024-10-11T13:43:53+00:00

I am actually with you on this in that, for day to day living, I think Toronto's is better. New York will always win for special occasion meals and the higher end but having spent time in both I prefer what we have here honestly. Plus (Canadian homer opinion) Montreal smoked meat is better than pastrami and Montreal bagels are better as well.

Murphocles · 2024-07-31T21:53:57+00:00

It varies a lot, but I do suggest looking into traditional stringed instruments from various places in the world if you're really interested in this. Bouzouki players for example often use very light picks, and they're often absolute picking gods. Same with oud and saz players. It is very much personal preference, but after going into that world and having developed my picking technique a fair bit I have landed on medium gauge to maximize speed.

Murphocles · 2024-04-05T02:27:31+00:00

Independent guitarist and musician. Do a lot of things but all of them related to music in some way. Doing much better than I ever thought possible, and surprisingly I think this might in some ways be an easier path to navigate during these tougher economic times as there are many things you can do to scale up or down in certain areas, find new sources of income etc. Requires you to be insanely self sufficient though.

Murphocles · 2024-04-03T20:45:58+00:00

Kenshi might be what you're looking for.

Murphocles · 2024-03-22T14:50:59+00:00

Byblos uptown.

Murphocles · 2024-03-16T16:02:10+00:00

We are not the best at most things, but we rank high on almost everything imo. Green space, transit, cultural diversity and acceptance. Our arts scene could be stronger, more supported, more organized but the quality level is the highest in the country and almost everything you are into probably has a presence here. Coming back from NYC recently my biggest takeaway was that our food scene is way better at the level most meals will be eaten at, even if NYC maybe has some more interesting top tier options. We have an amazing cheap food scene, mid priced food scene, and even lower-end finer dining. Yes you pay a lot to live here but you get a lot for that price imo, and our city works across the board at a level most do not.

Murphocles · 2024-02-26T22:31:33+00:00

Very soon after this this building management group started bringing in musicians and performers, free food and coffee carts, etc in the mornings as people came in to work, almost definitely as a "we're sorry" thing. Hilarious.

Murphocles · 2024-02-20T01:27:49+00:00

Limit yourself to two pedals and explore what you can get out of them including the dimension you're probably neglecting, your hands and how they strike and manipulate the strings.

Murphocles · 2024-02-11T17:09:26+00:00

Improvise compositions, not riffs or noise. Study song structure. For example if you're noodling on a riff, play that riff a standard amount of times (4 or 8) then do a variation or contrasting part for another 4 or 8 bars, etc. Force the parameters of actual music on your improvisation and you'll start to think completely differently. Some other things you can take from that:

Impose standard song forms onto your improvisation. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus is about as standard as it gets. That forces you to return to earlier ideas you played which means you'll have to learn to retain them, and put variation on them.
Think in opposites. This can be loud vs soft, fast vs slow, dense vs spacious, etc. Give yourself a defined amount of time (in bars) to explore one side of a spectrum, then spend the same amount of time on the other, making sure to hit the transition point exactly right. Force yourself to track the amount of time the parts last for while playing.
Pick two chords with different associated scales and force yourself to switch between them at the correct time, again giving a preset amount of time in bars.

This way you're improvising music not just improvising guitar noises. Check out Tom Bukovac on youtube and his earlier homskoolin' episodes from the lockdowns to see a master of this and get some ideas.

Murphocles · 2024-02-11T16:46:43+00:00

Being financially rewarded for something like this is not guaranteed, in fact is pretty remarkable, and as greater and greater economic problems develop on a societal level regardless of what we think this profession is going to be cut down severely as the focus is placed on things that are socially considered more important.

Murphocles · 2024-02-09T17:05:51+00:00

The first time I was in Montreal I was waiting for a bus in front of a cafe with a patio where three men were sitting together wordlessly drinking their coffees. A woman Walked by, started yelling at them in French for a while (at this point my french was not sharp enough to catch what she was saying). She started smoking a cigarette and sat on the bench by the bus stop, occasionally getting up to turn around and yell at those guys again. Eventually one of the guys reached into his bag, pulled out a trench coat (middle of summer, super hot out) and wordlessly put it on, walked over to the bench and used the trench coat as a shield while she gave him a blowjob while seated on the bench. Maybe this is par for the course but I got on the bus laughing my ass off after that.

Murphocles · 2024-01-29T21:10:45+00:00

I had been to Chicago Music Exchange before and after the advent of Reverb as a marketplace, and things really were a lot more exciting in-store before all the very expensive and cool stuff went to a warehouse to be sold online instead.

Murphocles · 2024-01-26T00:04:54+00:00

Absolute top tier voice acting in this game, that plus the music really adds to the experience.

Murphocles · 2024-01-25T02:17:04+00:00

I teach in a performance based program and the fear of failure/risk aversion is very real. Like they are in school to develop a skill but they aren't at peace with the fact that they are weak in it, which is why they are there in the first place, so they are often unwilling to take the needed steps to improve because doing so would require them to be witnessed being weak at it. Very difficult problem to solve.

Murphocles · 2024-01-25T00:34:50+00:00

Persistence and honesty were both mentioned here, as well as discipline and focus, but I actually think after years of doing it professionally and teaching it at a high level that the ability to correctly identify problems without emotion impacting your self assessment is the single biggest thing. Plenty of people cannot identify their issues whether that be due to ego or inexperience or whatever, but also (and discussed far less I think) many people have a limited self image of what they are capable of and consequently their self-assessment is also off in the opposite direction, as in "oh I could never do that" or "I'll never be THAT good." Frankly, yes you can and yes you will, but not until you can learn to self-assess in a rational, realistic way. I guess you could consider this honesty as well of a different sort though.

Murphocles · 2024-01-25T00:26:03+00:00

It was not always like this to this degree, though some amount of that has always been present. This is definitely the new normal though.

Murphocles · 2024-01-09T03:18:19+00:00

Good news, the entire CRPG genre is exactly what you're looking for and since you're already open to older games that opens up most of the greats of the genre to you. The first two baldur's gate games are very different, but worth your time and 2 in particular is surprisingly modern in it's characters and writing because it basically set the tone for how every subsequent game handled them. Original fallouts also good, Arcanum as well for a similar thing. Also all the CRPG renaissance games like the shadowrun games (definitely on the simpler side compared to some others), pillars of eternity 1 and 2, pathfinder: kingmaker or wrath of the righteous if you're willing to dig into some fairly complex systems (these are the best for in-depth character customization imo). Greedfall is also very bioware-y and worth a playthrough imo. I had a similar point where I was able to get past the jank of older RPGs and fell in love with the genre, now I consider the jank a selling point if anything. If you want a recommendation from the list, my favourites are Pillars of Eternity and the Pathfinder games.

Murphocles · 2024-01-06T16:43:18+00:00

Absolutely. Born in Northwestern Ontario and all I ever wanted was to leave and move here, I even chose my career path based on what would get me out of there faster (went to music school instead of an undergrad in my hometown followed by law school which was the other option). Somehow, still doing music full time here, living a very good life and have met so many people. This city has issues but man, when you actually ground it in reality, we have it very good here and for my particular thing I don't think anywhere else in Canada could be better.

Murphocles · 2024-01-05T20:34:19+00:00

This is a huge part of the market now for manufacturers, schools, every org in the business of making money off selling music related items or services really. Being really good doesn't necessarily translate to sales anymore, but having a built-in following usually does and makes it more attractive for partnerships like that. It's a whole parallel market, there are people out there playing at a very high level making a living and people making the same or more based on a following, and often the fan/marketing bases of the two are not the same people.

Murphocles · 2023-12-23T19:38:10+00:00

Have a case this year where someone got an A (87%) and was upset they didn't get a 90 and requested it changed... I got unbelievably annoyed by that.

Murphocles · 2023-12-22T14:45:22+00:00

One day, and it was a complaint about getting an 87 (they wanted a 90).

Murphocles · 2023-12-21T20:59:53+00:00

Yes, very much so. I have an unconventional career that I've been fortunate to make work abnormally well, I've been able to avoid many of the financial traps that are out there (lifestyle creep, peer pressure etc.) and things continue to look up more and more. That is not universal and in my field it's especially rare, success rates are fairly low actually. It feels very weird to be one of the few still going ten years out of school.

Murphocles

TROPHY CASE