The Introduction Thread! 🍺

[EvilRoy]

1. There's a movie I love called "Evil Roy Slade". Its crazy person in a crazy world comedy - personal favorite of mine. Way back when I played a lot of games/used forums that had forced character limits and no spaces allowed so I just shortened it to EvilRoy. Too few people get the reference which blows because its a great movie, even if I'm pretty sure it was made for TV.

2. I saw the Prototype ZP after searching for reviews of the game, and just sort of stuck around. I didn't make an account until years later in 2011 because I didn't really have anything to say.

3. My game preferences have varied wildly over the last decade. I like Rougelikes a lot, but when I need to empty my brain I always go back to monotony-builder game. Simcity, Skylines, Satisfactory.

4. I love music and listen to it almost constantly, but I have no concept of how to read or write notes, and I don't understand keys or timings. In spite of that I own quite a few different instruments including a sax, a melodion, several types of flutes, some basic drums and I've been pricing buttonbox concordias/concertinas lately. When I play music from sheet, I translate the notes into a color coded series of multy sized dots that tie back to fingering charts, key positions, and express how hard I need to hit/blow/squeeze. Its quite a process, but usually within a few days I just memorize how to do it, then adjust my sound by mimicking recordings. If I ever forget though, its right back to the stupid dots.

 

[Drathnoxis]

4. I love music and listen to it almost constantly, but I have no concept of how to read or write notes, and I don't understand keys or timings. In spite of that I own quite a few different instruments including a sax, a melodion, several types of flutes, some basic drums and I've been pricing buttonbox concordias/concertinas lately. When I play music from sheet, I translate the notes into a color coded series of multy sized dots that tie back to fingering charts, key positions, and express how hard I need to hit/blow/squeeze. Its quite a process, but usually within a few days I just memorize how to do it, then adjust my sound by mimicking recordings. If I ever forget though, its right back to the stupid dots.

Sheet music sucks. Especially when you need to deal with both bass clef and treble clef. Why it was necessary lines mean completely different notes depending on which I'll never understand.

 

[davidmc1158]

1. Nothing special about this one. I just happen to have one of the most common names in the western world and have just learned to deal with it.
2. I've been lurking around since back in 2011.
3. While a fan of scifi and fantasy in my reading, I'm also a historian and delve constantly into non-fiction. As for games, I play WoW and an assortment of 4x games. I would love to play some RTS, but I suck at them
4. Well, I could mention things like [REDACTED] but I might get in trouble.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

1. I was thinking about Dragon Age Revenants, but Revenant on its own is boring, and the idea of a secondhand undead seemed funny
2. Few years ago. Dipped out for a bit, changed my username to something dumb using the one free change that came with the free pub club membership at a time I was thinking I might not bother to come back around much, have taken this opportunity to return to this name
3. Favorite game has got to still be Planescape: Torment. Ogre Battle 64 was also a nice old favorite. Dishonored games are pretty great too. Highly enjoy both Dragon Age and Mass Effect games as well
4. Nothing cool really, entirely ordinary

 

[EvilRoy]

Sheet music sucks. Especially when you need to deal with both bass clef and treble clef. Why it was necessary lines mean completely different notes depending on which I'll never understand.

I choose not to interact with that stuff. The second I see that in a song I just toss the sheet and learn it by ear rather than even bothering with my dots.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

1. My childhood friend that I used to be neighbours with was using a random username generator for a MMO he was signing up for, and somehow it came up with Elvis Starburst. He decided not to use it, but for some reason I liked it enough to commit it to memory for years. More than half a decade later, I needed a new forum name to go by to replace my old one, and this one sprung to mind. Been using it ever since.

2. Somewhere in 2011. No idea how I got here though.

3. The Ys series is amazing, Rune Factory 4 and Suikoden 2 get tons of love from me, and there's always a special place for Spectrobes as well, which is where my avatar comes from. Code Geass, Gurren Lagann, and yu Yu Hakusho are some shows I like. If we wanna talk Netflix, Riverdale and Chernobyl have had my attention, but some Planet Earth is nice to tune out with. As for movies... It's fairly varied. But I do really like Chronicle, Speed Racer, Sprit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Hot Rod, and the Dead Poets Society. There's more, but I won't list them all here.

4. I run a D&D campaign, have been a DM for maybe 6 years now, maybe even 7 or so. I always homebrew my world settings. Even built a custom D&D table with my dad with a TV in the middle for maps and tokens and stuff, and have a 5.1 surround system in the living room for music accompaniment. Been told I should write modules or something. Maybe one day, but, I dunno... I'm not the best writer, just a good storyteller.

5. It's neat! Looking forward to seeing how it progresses. I wish more stuff could've been carried over, but that'll come in time I'm sure

 

[Gordon_4]

1. What's the story behind your username?
I have loved Thomas the Tank Engine since I was a small child, but my favourite character was always Gordon. Big, strong and with a cheeky sense of humour under his pomposity. Plus I love the 'angry' voice that Ringo Starr gave him in the first series.

2. When did you start following The Escapist?
Like many others I came in for Yahtzee, starting with his first few reviews and basically been a loyal follower since. I can’t remember the exact date of my joining, but it was around when the Expendables came out since commenting on the thread for MovieBob’s review was my first post

3. Favorite video games, shows, movies, etc?
My favourite games are easily World of Warcraft, the Mass Effect and DragonAge series, Deus Ex and Pokémon. There are many other games I like, but in terms of longevity of play and enjoyment? Nothing compares.

In terms of my TV I love my British shows: Red Dwarf, Black Adder, Yes Minister/Prime Minister, and Fawlty Towers. But also stuff like The Bill, The Sweeny, The Professionals, Prime Suspect and Sharpe and Horatio Hornblower. Without a doubt though, my favourite television show is Phoenix.

For movies I’m a committed MCU fan, but I also enjoy indulgences like Godzilla: King of the Monsters or Pacific Rim.

4. Any cool facts we should know about you?

Uh, I had surgery on my butt?

5. Any feedback or comments about The Escapist V2?

So far so good, I actually posted stuff from a phone and that was relatively painless except when I tried to do a double 'enter' for vertical spacing it seemed to skip back and delete some previous bits of text. Only on mobile, the desktop experience has been pretty smooth.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Sheet music sucks. Especially when you need to deal with both bass clef and treble clef. Why it was necessary lines mean completely different notes depending on which I'll never understand.

Transcribing piano music on one clef is impractical and not everyone knows how to learn by ear (or teach by ear for that matter). Also, alto and tenor clefs exist. Separate clefs are necessary to make written music for instruments (orchestral setting) concise. Imagine being a conductor flipping through a score where the piccolo and tuba music is written in the same clef, the score would be a freakin' mess.

I'm aware I show my biases because I prefer baroque music, but it's pretty easy to understand why separate clefs were pretty much mandatory to make music composition a logical process in an age when multi-voice playback at the drop of a hat was borderline impossible (not everyone had Bach's genius for writing six-voice music, the bloody nutter). And learning an instrument until the early twentieth century (or later depending where you are) required the ability to read sheet music for pretty obvious reasons. It's only recently that people that don't have Mozart's level of genius can learn by ear and it be a normal-ish thing. *shrug

OT:

1. I was pretty young when I used it as a gaming tag, and I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic and have schizoid personality disorder (h replaced with k cos foreign gaming buddies perpetually mispronounced it).

2. About 2010 or so, when I started watching ZP on a regular basis.

3. Favourite games: Assassin's Creed II, Total War: Warhammer 2, Scrubs, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, those are the ones that come to mind, there are others.

4. Cool? None whatsoever(!)

5. Liking it so far apart from the colour scheme (the grey background for post text is bad for my eyes, being colour-blind).

 

[Drathnoxis]

Transcribing piano music on one clef is impractical and not everyone knows how to learn by ear (or teach by ear for that matter). Also, alto and tenor clefs exist. Separate clefs are necessary to make written music for instruments (orchestral setting) concise. Imagine being a conductor flipping through a score where the piccolo and tuba music is written in the same clef, the score would be a freakin' mess.

I'm aware I show my biases because I prefer baroque music, but it's pretty easy to understand why separate clefs were pretty much mandatory to make music composition a logical process in an age when multi-voice playback at the drop of a hat was borderline impossible (not everyone had Bach's genius for writing six-voice music, the bloody nutter). And learning an instrument until the early twentieth century (or later depending where you are) required the ability to read sheet music for pretty obvious reasons. It's only recently that people that don't have Mozart's level of genius can learn by ear and it be a normal-ish thing. *shrug

I'm not saying don't have separate clefs, I understand there are a wide range of octaves and you won't fit them all on 5 lines, but the way it's handled seems needlessly complex. For example:



In treble clef, these are 'C' notes. However, if I were to change it to bass clef, they are 'E' notes. Now you need to memorize two completely separate meanings for the same notation. It doesn't make sense not to just have the same lettering, but have the bass be two octaves lower.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I'm not saying don't have separate clefs, I understand there are a wide range of octaves and you won't fit them all on 5 lines, but the way it's handled seems needlessly complex. For example:

View attachment 17

In treble clef, these are 'C' notes. However, if I were to change it to bass clef, they are 'E' notes. Now you need to memorize two completely separate meanings for the same notation. It doesn't make sense not to just have the same lettering, but have the bass be two octaves lower.

A lot of things about musical notation don't make sense if you were to design it in a strictly logical sense, but they were simply a product of their time. I guess to change it now would come with a massive cost, since all the music written in the old style (so basically all of it) would no longer be legible to new musicians unless all of it was rewritten. Plus you'd have to find some international consensus on the new notation...and somehow I doubt people would be able to agree on whether to use the new or old system, with ensuing confusion.

So while it's a bit silly, learning the current notation isn't actually that hard, even if isn't always intuitive, so the costs of changing it probably outweigh the benefits.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Transcribing piano music on one clef is impractical and not everyone knows how to learn by ear (or teach by ear for that matter). Also, alto and tenor clefs exist. Separate clefs are necessary to make written music for instruments (orchestral setting) concise. Imagine being a conductor flipping through a score where the piccolo and tuba music is written in the same clef, the score would be a freakin' mess.

I'm aware I show my biases because I prefer baroque music, but it's pretty easy to understand why separate clefs were pretty much mandatory to make music composition a logical process in an age when multi-voice playback at the drop of a hat was borderline impossible (not everyone had Bach's genius for writing six-voice music, the bloody nutter). And learning an instrument until the early twentieth century (or later depending where you are) required the ability to read sheet music for pretty obvious reasons. It's only recently that people that don't have Mozart's level of genius can learn by ear and it be a normal-ish thing. *shrug

OT:

1. I was pretty young when I used it as a gaming tag, and I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic and have schizoid personality disorder (h replaced with k cos foreign gaming buddies perpetually mispronounced it).

2. About 2010 or so, when I started watching ZP on a regular basis.

3. Favourite games: Assassin's Creed II, Total War: Warhammer 2, Scrubs, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, those are the ones that come to mind, there are others.

4. Cool? None whatsoever(!)

5. Liking it so far apart from the colour scheme (the grey background for post text is bad for my eyes, being colour-blind).

I'm having tech work on a light theme today. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

 

[SupahEwok]

I'm not saying don't have separate clefs, I understand there are a wide range of octaves and you won't fit them all on 5 lines, but the way it's handled seems needlessly complex. For example:

View attachment 17

In treble clef, these are 'C' notes. However, if I were to change it to bass clef, they are 'E' notes. Now you need to memorize two completely separate meanings for the same notation. It doesn't make sense not to just have the same lettering, but have the bass be two octaves lower.

That's reasons for that. In treble clef, 1 bar below the 5 bars (-1 bar) is a C. In bass clef, 1 bar above the 5 bars is that same C. And in alto clef, that C is firmly in the middle bar. Observe the C4 note:

That is what makes it continuous, and there's definite advantages to that, for composition and for the director. Given the accepted practice of 5 bars for a stave and an octave being 8 notes, you can't rewrite clefs to follow an octave order without leaving some notes in the whitespace between clefs and making a damn mess. Besides, most instruments only need to know their own clef on a daily basis, and it's not like fingerings transfer for different instruments even for the same notes.

As an addendum, I don't really understand people who say music notation is too complex to learn. I learned it in 6th grade for middle school band, and I was never more than a mediocre musician. You can do it! Just practice a little and associate your fingerings with the notes.

 

[Drathnoxis]

That's reasons for that. In treble clef, 1 bar below the 5 bars (-1 bar) is a C. In bass clef, 1 bar above the 5 bars is that same C. And in alto clef, that C is firmly in the middle bar. Observe the C4 note:

That is what makes it continuous, and there's definite advantages to that, for composition and for the director. Given the accepted practice of 5 bars for a stave and an octave being 8 notes, you can't rewrite clefs to follow an octave order without leaving some notes in the whitespace between clefs and making a damn mess. Besides, most instruments only need to know their own clef on a daily basis, and it's not like fingerings transfer for different instruments even for the same notes.

As an addendum, I don't really understand people who say music notation is too complex to learn. I learned it in 6th grade for middle school band, and I was never more than a mediocre musician. You can do it! Just practice a little and associate your fingerings with the notes.

I know that, it's just annoying though. Piano requires bass and treble, and I've always had trouble occasionally reading notes wrong.

 

[Neuromancer]

1. Neuromancer is one of those books that got me into books. Cyberpunk is my favourite genre. It also sounds cool.

2. I remember the days where the escapist magazine was actually trying to look like a magazine.

3. Favourite Game: Planescape:Torment
Favourite Movie: Blade Runner
Favourite Band: Pink Floyd.

4. That sounds like bragging, and I'm too cool to brag.

5. It's different. Looks more modern. It's been a while since I've been in a forum so there's some getting used to again.

 

[Martintox]

1. I needed a name for MSN Messenger and I happened to think of a small French TV segment called "Info ou intox?", which consisted of confirming or debunking dubious facts. I simply put the words "Martin" and "intox" (more or less a way to say "hoax") together.

2. I found out about The Escapist because LoadingReadyRun had started a partnership with the website in 2010 or so.

3. My favorite music, my favorite movies, my favorite games.

4. I make music.

5. There are still problems when it comes to making and editing posts, but the user experience is quite pleasant. The forum remembers drafts of your posts, the ability to have a cover for your profile or your threads is nice to have, and it's extremely easy to keep up with thread updates and replies.

 

[Nick Calandra]

1. I needed a name for MSN Messenger and I happened to think of a small French TV segment called "Info ou intox?", which consisted of confirming or debunking dubious facts. I simply put the words "Martin" and "intox" (more or less a way to say "hoax") together.

2. I found out about The Escapist because LoadingReadyRun had started a partnership with the website in 2010 or so.

3. My favorite music, my favorite movies, my favorite games.

4. I make music.

5. There are still problems when it comes to making and editing posts, but the user experience is quite pleasant. The forum remembers drafts of your posts, the ability to have a cover for your profile or your threads is nice to have, and it's extremely easy to keep up with thread updates and replies.

What issues are you having "making and editing" posts? Can you post specifics in the beta feedback thread?

As an aside, there is a limited time to edit your post and we have some restrictions on stuff because we can't have people uploading 30 images and stuff "aka the guy that filled his signature with a bunch of stuff".

 

[Martintox]

What issues are you having "making and editing" posts? Can you post specifics in the beta feedback thread?

As an aside, there is a limited time to edit your post and we have some restrictions on stuff because we can't have people uploading 30 images and stuff "aka the guy that filled his signature with a bunch of stuff".

When posting a new thread, using text color, font size, image insertion, and text alignment using the sidebar instead of directly writing down the BBCode gives the error "Oops! We ran into some problems." when attempting to preview or post. I didn't feel the need to post in the feedback thread because SupahEwok had already brought attention to this in that same thread.

 

[Nick Calandra]

When posting a new thread, using text color, font size, image insertion, and text alignment using the sidebar instead of directly writing down the BBCode gives the error "Oops! We ran into some problems." when attempting to preview or post. I didn't feel the need to post in the feedback thread because SupahEwok had already brought attention to this in that same thread.

And that's just when posting a new thread?

 

[Martintox]

And that's just when posting a new thread?

Yes, or more precisely when using the full reply page that appears when posting a new thread, as opposed to the quick reply window integrated in a thread. Adding a hyperlink to text using the toolbar can also cause errors. I went back to experiment some more, and it seems that text color, text alignment and text size don't give errors for new posts anymore, though they still do when editing reviews I've posted in the past couple of days (maybe it's something to do with how the text/BBCode is interpreted when using the toolbar, and there have been changes in that interpretation since I made those threads). I'll post in the feedback thread if I find anything new or a consistent pattern to these errors in the days to come.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I'm not saying don't have separate clefs, I understand there are a wide range of octaves and you won't fit them all on 5 lines, but the way it's handled seems needlessly complex. For example:

View attachment 17

In treble clef, these are 'C' notes. However, if I were to change it to bass clef, they are 'E' notes. Now you need to memorize two completely separate meanings for the same notation. It doesn't make sense not to just have the same lettering, but have the bass be two octaves lower.

Not to take your concern with traditional musical notation lightly, but I offer a couple questions: given that an octave is 12 semi tones precisely, why is a conventional scale (irrespective of key, provided it's major) comprised of, sequentially, two full tones, one semi-tone, three full tones and a semi-tone (and equivalent analogue for minor keys) while a sequence comprising full tones only sounds 'off' no matter how you cut it? And given the C-major centrism of notation (I won't go into how a lot of wind instruments are constructed with transposed tuning, that's a 'logical' mess of its own), why do the black keys have a set consensus in label? This then leads into not all steps on notation being full tone, E-F/B-C being what they are. There's a whole lot of maths in tonality that I'd seriously need to brush up on, but the pattern within scales still confuses me. Also, quite why they settled on 'C' being the central key really screws with things. Like why not 'A'? *shrug, to the extent that hearing A-B-C-D-E-F-G in a musical setting makes no sense, I'm so inured to the 'logic' of C-D-E-F-G-A-B.

Specific to the clefs though, SupahEwok's pretty much gone through the core reasoning and IMO, it makes more logical sense now than it did when they started using them primarily because of the finger marking aids for beginners (back in the baroque/classical era, it was a 'do what I do' sort of a gig, as music was a trade with apprentices and journeymen unlike now). Typically, in the early months/years of learning, the right hand does not play below middle-C and the left hand does not play above it. The fingers of the right hand are counted 1-5 going up the scale and left hand is counted down, so the placement of middle-C as being one clef line above the bass clef and below the treble clef for a meeting point of the thumbs makes it a perfect place to be. Perhaps a trick is to realise that the bass and treble clefs can be read in unison as a single clef of 11 lines (middle-C falling on the 11th line in the middle that isn't represented), I didn't learn it that way, but it could help as an additional possible explanation. Thus, having a central point of reference within a symmetrical medium for notation makes hand-crossing in keyboard playing a lot easier.

When's all said and done, musicians are nothing if not closet mathematicians(!)

That's reasons for that. In treble clef, 1 bar below the 5 bars (-1 bar) is a C. In bass clef, 1 bar above the 5 bars is that same C. And in alto clef, that C is firmly in the middle bar. Observe the C4 note:

That is what makes it continuous, and there's definite advantages to that, for composition and for the director. Given the accepted practice of 5 bars for a stave and an octave being 8 notes, you can't rewrite clefs to follow an octave order without leaving some notes in the whitespace between clefs and making a damn mess. Besides, most instruments only need to know their own clef on a daily basis, and it's not like fingerings transfer for different instruments even for the same notes.

As an addendum, I don't really understand people who say music notation is too complex to learn. I learned it in 6th grade for middle school band, and I was never more than a mediocre musician. You can do it! Just practice a little and associate your fingerings with the notes.

Which begs the question: who came up with the tenor clef and honestly thought it was a good idea?(!)

I'm having tech work on a light theme today. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Thanks!