JoshVilla

12 hours ago, mjmooney said:

I've got a mate who took up guitar during lockdown, and he's been popping round to do some recording in my little home studio. Unfortunately, his ambition exceeds his ability. Now that's normal for all of us, but hearing his efforts played back is disheartening him. I've suddenly become aware of the dilemma of being a record producer. To what extent do I attempt to get him to change his style to something simpler? He's playing acoustic blues, but trying rather intricate fingerpicking. And it's all over the place - fluffed notes, bad timing, etc. My instinct is to tell him to drop that and stick to basic strumming, but he seems hellbent on sticking with his chosen approach. If he's ever going to master it, it'll need a LOT more practice, and a weekly recording session in my studio is not the ideal venue for that. I've suggested he get a little 4 track portastudio for home practice (I think he needs to repeatedly face the painful playbacks while working on the errors). 

Anybody else had experience of recording other people? 

I always found that, with anything that's quite technically demanding - start off at a tempo that you can play quite comfortably, and then each day add just 1 or 2 BPM to the metronome. Then keep going until you actually go slightly faster than the tempo of whatever it is you want to play, then bring it back again. Such small increments each day are hardly noticeable until you go back and realise how far you've actually come.

Might not help in the short term with the recording, but is sound advice long term if he's adamant that he wants to play more intricate stuff.

Just finished Like a Dragon Gaiden.

100% recommended, especially for anybody who's planning on playing Infinite Wealth when it comes out next week (it essentially bridges the gap between 7 and 8). The story is much shorter and to the point, but there's still plenty of usual Yakuza extra stuff to do if you want to. Absolutely loved it.

It certainly feels that we're having a bit of an iffy patch in terms of performances at the minute. I think that the last genuinely good performance that we had was the Man City/Arsenal week. Having quite a few absences through injury/suspension hasn't helped things, but it feels like we've lost that bit of zip that we had previously. All of a sudden we look very slow and laboured.

Hopefully once we have everyone back and firing (with the exception of the long term absentees), we'll see things pick up again.

Hopefully this is our low point in form and things will pick up. We haven't had a fully convincing performance in weeks.

Frustrating game.

Early days but Everton look hungrier at the minute. Need to make sure we match them on that front. We're being a bit silly in possession.

If there's no drop shadow and the lion is detailed/textured, then it's definitely an improvement.

I still can't understand why there's so little claret in that badge, considering claret & blue are our main colours.

So, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Yakuza Eight) comes out this month.

I must say, it looks brilliant. It looks bigger, more ridiculous, and has a **** island builder minigame in it... 

Feel like this is going to be potentially my GOTY for 2024.

Thank **** that season is over (a sentence I've said the majority of seasons during my time as a Washington fan....). Rivera gone. Nice guy but made some very questionable decisions.

Hopefully we can hire a HC that understands the importance of a strong OL when it comes to developing a young QB. I still think that Howell has something about him, but he's been running for his life on nearly every play.

1 minute ago, thabucks said:

So today some are choosing to believe the none BS artist in Villamole … looks like someone has taken the design and rushed out a poor quality version on a low quality embroidery machine. 

That's what I was thinking. Thought I'd post it on here just to share it, but it looks like someone could have made a rough version of it with some basic machinery. Hopefully the actual version would look a lot more refined.

Badge is still shite though...

Don't know if this is real or not, but gives a decent indication. Can't imagine it'd look too different to this:

Tom Fox in.

So they change the Lerner badge, realising from the survey responses that the majority of fans didn't really like it (only 8% voted to keep it). We get a new one that, although still divisive, apparently the majority of fans preferred. Now we're ditching that one and getting a shitter version of the one that 92% of fans surveyed didn't want to keep.

Make it make sense.

I feel like they've dug themselves into a big, big hole with the Everton situation. If they got a 10 point deduction for 1 charge, then everybody will be expecting an absolutely unprecedented level of punishment with the sheer number of charges that City have against them. Anything other than that, and the cries of corruption will be deafening. If they come out and say that it turns out there was no wrongdoing, things could get ugly.

I think they'll struggle to attract anyone genuinely decent. They still seem like a bit of a basket case off the pitch. I'd imagine they would have had to pay Rooney a fair bit to shift him, unless there was a performance based clause in his contract. 

Well, that's ruined my 2024.

Lower Calrath and Calrath Slums are absolute dickville and I hate them. Similar complaints to what's previously been said on here, possibly about other areas, in that the enemy density is a bit daft and the checkpoints are waaaaaay too far apart (unless you buy loads of vestige seeds).

Hoping that the rain picks up to stop the fireworks going off - purely from a selfish point of view as it's a pain in the arse getting the little'un to sleep with them going off all night (also, the cats are terrified of them).

In terms of ambitions for next year:

- Hopefully go for my black belt at some point later on in the year.

- Be ready to take Japanese Language N5/N4 level test.

- Get the little one fully potty trained.

- Do more gigs

- Villa win the Conference League and qualify for Champions League

Watched Grave of the Fireflies for the first time the other day.

**** tore me to pieces.

Feels like we had to "get through" that one. I think you can see the fatigue creeping in, so it's good that they've got a bit of a rest before the Boro game (I'd imagine a few key players may not feature in that either).

I think the past few games have shown that we don't yet have a squad that's 100% capable of challenging at the very top just yet, and that's fine. Our starting 11 is fantastic and more than capable, but we've seen where the holes are when we lose players to injury or suspension. Kamara has been a big miss over the Xmas period, which has affected Luiz & McGinn's games. Tielemans was really starting to come into some form too, so it'll be brilliant to get him back. Digne has been a real bright spark for me this season, and I feel we've really lost something defensively with him out.

It's been a phenomenal year to be a Villa fan. Best home record in the league for 2023, currently level on points with Liverpool at the top (if only them, Arse & Citeh would lose their games in hand...). The good thing is that we have the Jan window coming up, where we could hopefully at least get another RB so we can keep Konsa in the centre if Cash isn't playing. With a bit of luck, we'll start seeing players returning from injury so we can try and hit some good form in the second half of the season. Our overall results have been excellent so far, way beyond my expectations before the season began. However, our level of performance has been a little patchy, whereby we'll look amazing one week, then a bit rough, then okay, then amazing again. It doesn't feel like we've really hit our peak yet, so hopefully we'll really continue to push on over the next 18 games.

UTV!

49 minutes ago, DakotaVilla said:

I don’t think there is a single Villa fan in the world who genuinely thinks we are going to  win the league. 

The only ones that do are the ones that call in to TalkSport and make us all look daft.