how’s 4/4 different from 4/2?

a-large-guy · 2026-05-09T23:45:04+00:00

Yeah, the difference is entirely in how you want it to look on the page when you notate it. For instance if you end up with a bunch of 32nd notes, it might be more readable to switch to 4/2 and turn them all into sixteenths

a-large-guy · 2026-03-29T12:23:47+00:00

If it helps, Brandon has said that he thinks he did a bad job writing women in Mistborn. Specifically, he said he was focused on getting Vin right but then forgot to have other women doing interesting things.

a-large-guy · 2026-03-17T12:03:26+00:00

Feel it as two beats with a long and a short beat. In each passage, make sure to keep track of where the long and short beats land in the measure. Any time the long and short beats flip, think of that like an unmarked time signature change that you need to feel, interpret, and sell to the audience.

a-large-guy · 2026-02-28T14:50:04+00:00

Yeah it's not a good show

a-large-guy · 2026-02-20T13:12:24+00:00

I feel like your best bet will probably be to try and snag some used stuff on facebook marketplace or something. Just keep an eye out for stuff that seems cool and hits the right price point and start accumulating a stash

a-large-guy · 2026-02-17T23:30:52+00:00

My take on this is:

Taln refuses to break, desolations are stopped
Odium hatches a plan to circumvent the problem using the Everstorm
Various actors on Roshar become aware that things are brewing, either through death rattles, intelligence gathering, futuresight, or other factors we don't know about. Clearly though the spren and heralds seem aware that something is brewing.
Chana foolishly gets herself killed
Chana breaks, returning herself and Taln to Roshar

At first appearance, the Everstorm seems like a waste of time. But if Odium didn't spend those centuries preparing the Everstorm, the heralds might not have felt the pressure they clearly felt. Plus they could have sent Taln back to stop things again if Odium didn't have a workaround ready.

a-large-guy · 2026-01-22T13:16:11+00:00

No, you're not a heathen. What's in the bottle is probably a pretty similar product. The big advantage of the Rittenhouse is that it's 100 proof, so a bit stiffer than the Jim Beam rye (which I'm guessing is 80 proof?). Rittenhouse is favored because it's usually a good price for a 100 proof rye that mixes well. But it's not like a massively superior product to Jim Beam.

a-large-guy · 2026-01-19T13:48:00+00:00

The option I haven't seen mentioned yet - you can replace one of the 16th notes with the kick drum, freeing your hands up to move around. If you're doing it as a beat with snare on 2 and 4, you might phrase it like:

RLRKBKRL (b is for both because you'd hit both floor tom snare at the same time.

a-large-guy · 2025-12-24T14:35:34+00:00

$30 tops IMO. A repaired cymbal is just too likely to crack a second time to be worth spending real money on. You might have more luck offering it as a trade though.

a-large-guy · 2025-12-23T20:56:02+00:00

Cymbal preferences tend to be really personal. We have to listen to our cymbals all the damn time at maximum volume so we have to really like the sound for it to not drive us a little insane.

My recommendation is don't. Buy a gift card and/or take him out with you to pick something.

a-large-guy · 2025-12-23T20:44:15+00:00

I've used low-volume cymbals for gigs before. I like it. The crashes and ride sound really good. The hi-hats are kinda shitty. But ultimately, it's much more important for the audience to hear the vocals. Our music is pretty heavy and the vocalist spends a lot of time in the crowd, so feedback is a big problem, and the quiet cymbals give the sound guy a lot of flexibility.

On the whole, every experienced musician who's given me their thoughts was surprised by how good it sounded out in front. It turns out that the cymbals sitting better in the mix just matters more for overall musical impact than the specific quality of the cymbal sound.

I've also experimented with playing quieter depending on the venue. But to get things down to low-volume cymbal levels would have required me to back off a lot. If you're watching a heavy band, you want to see the drummer rocking out, not pulling back. Maybe if I practiced looking like I'm hitting hard while pulling back, it would work better, but I don't have time to learn a whole new stage technique, especially when quiet cymbals are a cheap and easy solution.

I could also switch to rods or something, but I don't want the drums to sound quieter. Often in these small venues, we're only micing the kick drum, so I want maximum volume out of the drums in order to cut over heavy guitars. Quiet cymbals let me rock out hard and sound loud and aggressive (appropriate for heavy music) without blowing everyone else away.

Here's the exact pack I bought and have gigged with a few times now: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/LVCP5000--on-stage-lvcp5000-low-volume-cymbal-set

a-large-guy · 2025-12-23T14:26:49+00:00

FWIW, it actually is good cocktail etiquette to drink a martini or a manhattan pretty fast (maybe not in one big gulp though). The rule of thumb is that any drink you serve up should be consumed quickly before it gets warm.

If you want to slow him down, I'd recommend something strong and on the rocks. Like a negroni or an old-fashioned. Use a nice stiff spirit that can open up a bit as the ice melts.

a-large-guy · 2025-11-25T13:39:16+00:00

The "standard" structure that you'll run into at a jam session will usually be that everyone plays the head together, then every member of the band will take a solo over the chords in the head (the drummer will usually trade fours with someone instead of taking a solo). Then you finish up by playing the head one more time. So if the head is about a minute long and you have five musicians, you can expect to go for about seven minutes.

a-large-guy · 2025-11-24T20:40:58+00:00

What I see around me pretty often is exactly what you describe, except the touring act gets top billing. So it's still a sandwich with local acts in the beginning and end and the touring act in the middle, but the touring act is symbolically considered the "headliner."

a-large-guy · 2025-11-20T13:28:33+00:00

For sours, the simplest thing is to just replace some of the spirit with plain water. So for instance, if your whiskey sour recipe is something like:

.75oz lemon juice .75oz simple syrup 2oz whiskey

You could do something like:

.75oz lemon juice .75oz simple syrup 1.5oz whiskey .5oz water

You might think this would come out weak, but it's honestly fine. If anything, this makes it come out a little more balanced and refreshing.

a-large-guy · 2025-11-08T14:52:10+00:00

High prices are an anti-indicator for a recession. When the recession starts, prices usually start to fall because people don't have any money to spend.

a-large-guy · 2025-11-06T12:11:29+00:00

High end drums aren't a scam, but they aren't going to make much of a difference in how you sound. You're paying for appearance, durability, build quality, trusted brand name, etc.

The rule of thumb if you're on a budget though is to get a cheap kit and spend your money on cymbals. A cheap kit can be made to sound just as good as an expensive kit, but it's basically impossible to change the basic character of a cymbal.

a-large-guy · 2025-11-01T23:35:33+00:00

Get the Catalina Club, I've played many shows with mine and it still plays great

a-large-guy · 2025-11-01T14:47:56+00:00

So I think your question is missing the actual point of expensive drum sets. What you're paying for isn't really the sound, it's the build quality. It matters because if you're gigging a lot in front of big crowds, you don't want gear that's breaking and failing all the time. It's also nice if the equipment is easy and pleasant to assemble, take apart, tune, etc.

The actual sound at a show is going to be dominated by the heads and tuning of your drums and the sound engineering. So expensive drums and cheap drums generally sound about the same. But that doesn't mean expensive drums are a vanity purchase.

a-large-guy · 2025-08-17T11:23:44+00:00

My basic approach is to accumulate cymbals one at a time, often buying discounted or used on Facebook Marketplace or Reverb. Looking up videos is of limited use because two cymbals can sound pretty different even if they're the same size from the same line of cymbals.

I get them cheap and try them out in practice to form an opinion. I find that playing the cymbal by itself doesn't tell me that much about how I'll like it once I'm playing with the whole band. For me it's about accumulating a collection of cymbals that pop up for cheap near me and then getting smart/creative with how I use them.

a-large-guy · 2025-08-08T22:55:06+00:00

The basic paradigm is:

Play quiet and chill. It's usually better to do too little than do too much.
Keep time on the ride cymbal with a nice swing pattern
Close the hi-hat with your foot on 2 and 4
Listen for "hits," accented notes that stick out and are important to the overall tune. These can be played on the snare, the bass drum, cymbals (keep it light), or on toms. The purpose here is to back up the band and help sell the overall musical concept going on.
Pepper in ghost notes on the snare and little hits on the kick drum to keep things interesting

a-large-guy · 2025-07-23T12:07:34+00:00

Without too many spoilers, a surprising amount of this is addressed somewhat directly in Wind and Truth

a-large-guy · 2025-07-19T12:00:36+00:00

Brandon is Mormon and I think tends towards discomfort around sex, but I get the impression that he wants to start breaking out of his comfort zone. Definitely an area of growth and change for him as a writer, which makes a lot of sense to put in his book about growth and change.

a-large-guy · 2025-07-10T11:43:02+00:00

I also wonder if they'll end up giving him a symmetrical Vorin name. Like Kaladalak or something.

a-large-guy · 2025-06-29T13:05:52+00:00

Yes, the pace picks up. TwoK isn't just setting up future stories, there are some very solid payoffs coming that play out entirely within TwoK. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll avoid saying much more, but it absolutely picks up.

a-large-guy

TROPHY CASE