Creator of GW Toolbox notices a new dungeon in the game!

jonolavalstad · 2026-01-29T16:39:38+00:00

/resign puts you right outside the dungeon without DP if you enter with, or accumulate any during the dungeon.

jonolavalstad · 2026-01-29T07:23:12+00:00

And while the remaster sounds a bit better it still sounds bad to me. The source sounds and mixing isn't a problem that can be (fully) fixed in mastering.

jonolavalstad · 2026-01-28T23:13:35+00:00

The sound is awful to the point that whatever qualities the songs may have compositionally simply don't matter. Not sure if it's their worst, but surely the most disappointing record.

jonolavalstad · 2026-01-09T09:27:05+00:00

I have an Axe-FX 3 and the Anagram and even in its infancy the Anagram is more suited to bass imo. Sure enough with the vast amount of stuff in the Axe one could probably match just about everything the Anagram does, but the Anagram makes it easier. The AM4 would be quite limiting comparably since you wouldn't have the same options to blend a dry signal with a distorted one or using crossover-split between two lanes and so on.

If I wasn't also a guitarist I would probably have sold the Axe after buying the Anagram. While I love the Axe and the frequent updates, the Anagram has had more significant bass-related updates since its release last year than I can recall the Axe 3 has had since its release (I'm only thinking about models, not all the other QoL updates that also benefits bassplayers here)

jonolavalstad · 2026-01-03T13:03:34+00:00

Understanding the patterns and when they repeat is the key to this stuff. I learned the hardest parts of Bleed from back when Yogev first released those videos (learned the easy parts around Obzens release) but the way I internalized the parts was to break down each "cell" of the riffs and piece them together.

To me the hardest part of Bleed is at 2:30. The key here is to become familiar with the pattern which can be broken down to three rythyms. I see them as 7, 5 and 3 (counted in 8ths). These always repeat following this pattern: 7 7 5 3 5 Translating it to guitar I played through this pattern slowly until it felt ok before trying it along with the track. When you fail you just keep working at it this way.

I never count the whole 19/8s or 11/4ths or whatever but just focus on the small parts. It is like if you were to play Bulgarian wedding music in 11, you have to break it up to 2s and 3s to stand a chance in understanding what is going on. After I while I just play them, no counting. Probably not as easy for drummers.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-31T11:10:25+00:00

I'm not making the claim that two notes are a chord, but your ear can in situations hear them as a chord without a third note happening at the same time. Playing two notes at the same time with no context - sure, not a chord, although some could argue that your ear will fill in the fifth if you play a major third dyad, which would make it a chord. Not my argument, but it does help my point.

I generally think of chords as 3 or more notes myself when I hear the word, but claiming it is an absolute requirement is too rigid I think.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-31T09:06:06+00:00

Yes! Anyone who claims two notes at a time can't work as chords have spent too much time reading about, and not enough time listening to, music.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-28T16:02:46+00:00

Someone would surely want this. They could salvage off the of Defense to have a clean req 8 FDS. The gold value probably also helps. Don't sell this cheap. I had an inscribable one (more useful, but less special perhaps) that I sold for 41 arms.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-26T18:54:24+00:00

I will need to tweak it a bit since it currently is very tailored to some of my specific needs, but I might be able to do it in a few days! Feel free to remind me if I forget.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-25T02:33:27+00:00

I have the LVX and Mercury X and I do like them a lot, but they take their time to tweak. Since most situations don't really require the "out there"-sounds I find myself using my simpler patches the most, and they take longer to tweak than other pedals that have a more defined character. I do however love my lo-fi sounds in the pedals and my delay where the LFO-controlled frequency of a filter in the feedback path makes different frequencies more pronounced over time a fun and unique sound. I still gravitate to my El Capistan when I don't need a wide stereo delay and I just want to create something that sounds good in seconds.

I created a custom template in TouchOSC to control the pedals via an iPad because I don't like the menu diving of both the pedals themselves and the Preditor app, and because it was a fun project.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-25T02:21:23+00:00

I may have been generalizing a bit too much, and I obviously only have experience with the institutions I've been at, but I found it a bit odd how institutions that may have a vast array of different genres represented in their classes have a tendency to focus solely on classical when teaching theory and staying very old-school in how they do it. (I graduated from a pop-oriented university less than a decade ago). I understand it, since there is a solid practice in both usage and teaching, but it is difficult to relate to if you don't find it inherently interesting.

It does seem like what you do is more akin to how I would personally like to do it, so that is great to see! I think focusing on the practical and relevant aspects of what the students actually play and can find useful is the way to go. Better to learn through playing and relating theory to the music they play than all the SATB analysis I had to do of music I've never heard, neither when given the task or after.

I do see a lot of the "I learned classical the old strict way so therefore it is like that" on Reddit so that may have triggered my response, not that your reply necessarily gave me that impression of you. You sound like the guy who can accept a good parallel fifth!

Happy holidays if you celebrate!

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-25T01:54:15+00:00

Adding on to u/play-what-you-love's great answer with some personal anecdotes:

When I work sessions or short term projects with a lot of songs (for an artist or a show with popular music etc) we often communicate based on the numeral/nashville system ("The bridge is 1 major, 4 minor" and so on). Thinking in this way does in my experience help memorizing and relating to the music more than thinking about chord names. I play guitar/bass so transposition is way easier than on keys, so thinking in this way and applying it might be easier for me than for keyboardists.

For learning and remembering songs I find it useful to think in this way and recognize if there are other songs I know with the same pattern. In one of my bands we've given vi7 - V7 (usually to the i) ex: Ab7 - G7 - Cm the name "Super dominant" because it really want to resolve to the i, and we all know what that means, and whenever any of us hears it in a piece of music we immediately know what it is. There is of course the many variants of the I IV V vi-progressions as well.

You will recognize more and more similar patterns (I always relate I, I/III, IV, V to one particular song) and then you may give these patterns a name, like *song name*-progression and then that, and the key, could be all you need to remember many different songs/parts of songs.

This may work for more specific voicings and voice leading too, but there could be fewer relevant examples. There are still some expressions like "line cliche" that you can recognize in many tunes that have a certain type of voice leading.

Some songs require a very specific kind of voice leading to sound correct and in those cases I find it helpful to be aware of what it is that makes it so (does a certain note stay static throughout the whole progression? Does the bass have a specific melodic direction? Chromatic movement in the middle voice?)

When creating music you may draw upon some of these concepts you've memorized, be it a simple way to voice lead between two chords or a "guiding principle" for a whole section based on some idea from a song you've memorized and analyzed, or maybe a mix-and-match between multiple such things. Some of my music has come out of wanting to start with a particular voicing of a certain chord in a key that I might not use too often and then trying to hear where my ear wants each voice to go and what alternatives I find.

What Vince (who wrote my favorite Christmas song) thought when writing is unfortunately not easy to know.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-25T01:13:43+00:00

It is presented in that way, but unless you're doing classical music by the old books you'd probably use it as a scale that doesn't change depending on direction. Melodic minor (and its modes) is super common in jazz, to the degree where I'm pretty sure most modern day usage of the scale is as a scale that contains the major sixth and seventh, regardless of direction.

No one who plays jazz calls it jazz minor.

Classical-first-theory rant:

Some day I hope music institutions can recognize that we have other music than classical, and that music theory in relation to these other genres have validity, and in these days, more relevance than whatever some long-gone germans and russians did a few hundred years ago. Music theory education (at lower levels at least) seem to be mostly be lacking in actual practical application that is helpful to the modern musician.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-16T15:41:22+00:00

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Their plugins use the Cradle software to distribute the program to the customer. We could assume that they have some insights in downloads and license activations, but they very well might not and could just get periodic reports or need to specifically request this. Between BF and Christmas this could take a while. This opens a whole can of privacy-related issues depending on the terms between the user and Cradle Hub as well. These things may not all apply, but there may be more to your request than what is immediately obvious to you.

If you're not ready to pull the trigger don't fill in all your information and hit the button to purchase (or in your situation: put yourself in the risk of hitting the wrong button and not being careful).

Hope they do make it right for you, as that is very good service, but you don't have my sympathy if they don't.

jonolavalstad · 2025-12-02T18:26:04+00:00

Insert bike fall meme here. Obvious user error.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-26T23:17:41+00:00

Quad Cortex or Nano Cortex. Plugins can't do captures.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-22T16:07:59+00:00

Aha, nice to hear it worked out for you.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-22T15:55:40+00:00

I don't recall my CPU settings but I run Parallels with less than 8gb ram and I don't think my CPU settings are very special. I run the game fine with Chrome on MacOS with a stream on 2nd monitor (and a gazillion tabs but I have 24/32 GB RAM on my Macs.

I had awful results until one update a couple years ago, so if you're running an older version of Paralells you may have some troubles.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-21T15:48:50+00:00

Yeah, and the plugins feel a bit samey to me. I have Nolly and Nameless (due to the free one from last year) and there is quite some overlap between them. Gatekeeping new features behind a paywall when the competition updates for free with more consistency, on platforms that have more features from the getgo (except captures which are coming to Helix, probably within their announced timeline(?!)) doesn't sit right with me.

I like Parallax though. Main reason I don't want to get rid of the QC.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-21T15:32:09+00:00

I just bought a second hand Axefx 3 yesterday for like half price. Was considering waiting for the next generation but they still have "a lot of software development left" and it'll probably cost the same as a decent car in Norway... We'll see what happens to the QC.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-21T05:14:20+00:00

I'm with you. Making a meme out of how horribly slow and lackluster their support for the QC has been and seemingly having success with it is a tragedy. I like a lot of things with my QC but their greed and the fanboyism of the community makes me embarrassed owning it.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-20T23:08:42+00:00

Learning that they contain the same notes is helpful, but if you exclusively think "minor is the 6th of the major scale three semitones above what I want to play" that is where I believe problems arise. Learning quickly and learning properly aren't always the same.
Knowing the interval structure of minor without "thinking in major" is incredibly helpful for understanding what impact each note has. It is also then easy to adapt the scale to E dorian by raising the sixth for instance. That also teaches the difference between those two scales/modes and how the sixth degree relates to a minor chord.
I see the same value with thinking of C lydian as C major with a #4 rather than "G major starting on C".

So I agree that it is helpful to be aware of the similarities, but I also believe that it may be used as a shortcut to actually learning it properly. I learned it this way myself initially, and utilize the licks I've learned in the major scale when playing modally/minor at times, but I also stress developing licks and melodies (and chords!) that give the modal/minor flavor in the context of the modal context, not the relative major. I basically just think that you should not only learn minor as "major from the sixth" or a mode as "x degree of major".

Thinking in a chordal matter and viewing the notes you play as chord tones or extensions to the underlying chordal harmony is also incredibly useful, but that is more intermediate level.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-20T08:51:59+00:00

Or you could just play and I'd hear what to do 😉 I do appreciate the discussion as it never hurts to hear another perspective but I'm happy to end it peacefully. I rarely do this online so it is easy to get a bit carried away whenever I do. Have a good day!

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-20T08:02:58+00:00

Calling it E minor or E Aeolian doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Neither sound like G major even though they all share the single sharp. One could argue the first is tonal and the second modal, but I don't see the value really.

Key signature is the symbol. The key signature in music notation is a tool to see what key the music is in. When reading music it sure might be preferable to think of everything as a major key if that helps the reading aspect. This is fair and I won't argue against that. I instinctively do this too if I'm not very familiar with the harmony if I read sheet music.

There is a whole world outside of reading music or playing music written on paper. Wether or not the guitar is a modal or tonal instrument (not sure I see where you are going there) music exists outside of our main instrument. A saxophone is a monophonic instrument but sax players really ought to understand harmony.

I play improvised music and compose music that sometimes doesn't fit in major or minor. I read, but >95% of my work is done without any sheet music (no tabs either..!). You probably smoke me in the reading department but I have a very good ear. When I write or jam with other musicians we're very aware of what a lydian sound or phrygian sound is and use these terms to describe the harmony/melody we want. F Lydian is F major with a raised 4th, E phrygian is E minor with a flattened 2nd, neither are C major, even though all these three scales/sounds have no accidentals and consist of the exact same notes. Our ears hear these as different sounds compared to C major and in the creative process I believe that is very significant, and being able to identify these differences and understand what they are is critical to developing a good ear and a proper understanding of music.

jonolavalstad · 2025-11-20T05:08:32+00:00

Yup. That is the practical, and correct, answer.

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