Tobbe said:
Welcome, Sam!
Frank Zappa said:
I am very fond of music I am somewhat a musician myself - at the minute, I'm playing the guitar, bass...
So do I! What guitars and basses do you play? I'm primarily a bassist, so I've got a five string Fender Jazz Bass. I don't play guitar as much, so I've only got a cheap Squire.
I only have one bass (it's a false Stingray. I don't know who really made it, but the action on it's superb. I use a Peavey amp which is quite good. It has a nice, warm tone to it). It's a great bass, as I said, the action on it is great. Has a very nice, warm sound. I prefer it to guitar, mainly because it feels as though it is carrying along the song along with the rest of the rhythm section. Problem with me is, though, I always seem to latch onto stuff that's maybe a little bit too difficult for me to play (stuff like Zappa and what have you. I also try to play a lot of jazz things like Charlie Parker, which are quite easy, because a lot of it's improv, but there are certain parts that are very difficult to get your hands around. Especially when you take into consideration that you're trying to play stuff almost as hard as Charles Mingus), so I often don't get far. I don't give up, though. I enjoy playing the stuff, so I am determined to get it right.
I use a 1998 Danelectro U2-56, two Fenders and an acoustic Takamine. Because of the time I spend with the bass and other instruments, I don't tend to play the guitar much, so at the minute, I'm playing a lot of ska stuff on them (very, very easy), and I'm trying to learn some of Mr. Bungle's stuff as well as Estradasphere (which is very difficult, but I like it, so I don't see any harm in trying it).
spiraldoor said:
Games with guns and aliens have merit.
I see precisely where you're coming from, but all I am saying is that this is a tired genre. It seems to have become a cliché, as have fantasy RPGs and other such things. What people tell me are fantastic games seems to me to just be middle-of-the-road time-wasters (although that may just be me comparing the fun I used to have with games to the fun I have with them now, which is considerably less) and seem to be made soley for commercialisation.
spiraldoor said:
I think that there is certainly a sufficient number of interesting and original titles this generation to warrant the purchase of a PC or console. For example, there are games like Portal, Arkham Asylum, Super Mario Galaxy, Braid, The Last Guardian, BioShock and LittleBigPlanet, are of which are unique titles not like any that have come before them. Then there are games like Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2 and God of War III, which are not original but prove that originality is not a necessary component of a fantastic game.
I will admit, from what I have heard about a few of these titles, some do seem to be somewhat original, but couple of them to me seem to be aesthetically unoriginal. Not all of them (in fact, there are quite a lot I have seen that aren't), but I do tend to notice that the visual styles of a lot of games seem to be quite heavily based on a lot of silly sub-cultures (for example, the gothic culture that a lot of adolescents seem to have adopted, the Japanese popular culture that a lot of people in the Western world also try to be a part of, and most cultures that heavy rock music is associated with).
And thank you for the welcome, everybody else.