Furilas

Hooray! Bad things DO come in threes!

Well, I guess, but it's gonna be a weird departure from our smooth jazz standard.

Our names in internet lights! Another dream comes true.

I believe Hayeser has outlined the best option above. It's cool that the mics you've got both have built-in USB, but if you want to use them both at the same time that way, you're likely to run into complications like long latencies and system instabilities- particularly if your laptop is running Windows. There are ways to make it work (for free, which is worth noting if your budget is really tight on this), but you may end up spending quite a lot of time and accruing some headaches doing it. I'll link up a few examples if that option interests you. The other option, as Hayeser said, is to get a two-input audio interface (which is not quite the same as a mixer) and use your mics' XLR jacks (with a couple of matching cables) to connect them to it. This means the interface can look after all the timing and buffering and such. It's definitely machines' work. And almost all interfaces will allow you to adjust the volume of each mic independently so you can balance the two voices. There are mixers with USB that will also do this job, but in my experience, the USB interfaces on tiny little mixers like these is often pretty shoddy, so buy at your own risk.

My experience is similar to DrumUltimA's - I built a lot of my skills out of necessity, and I think it's been very productive for me. Due to my distance from good teachers and not a lot of money to throw around, I haven't been able to get lessons for the cello I got a fair while back, and so I didn't practice it much. But in the latest band I'm playing in, a few tunes have wonderful spaces for it, so I've been nicely motivated to work on it at last - even though my self-taught/Youtube technique is probably going to make any proper classical players in our audience cringe. I'm guessing you're asking your question as somebody who wants to be ready to offer these skills at a moment's notice when a sweet job opportunity comes up for you. My advice would be to pick up the basics of the things you think will come in handy, at a pace that doesn't make you hate it. When something comes up that calls for one of those skills, then you'll be ready to offer it and build on what you know to suit it. Sometimes the most productive practice - and the choice of what to practice - comes from a good incentive.

That's called a harmonic. You can play one by letting one of your fretting fingers rest lightly on a string at particular points along the fretboard and plucking it, removing the fretting finger just after so you don't muffle it. Dulcimers have a few different fret layouts, so it's a little hard to give points of reference without knowing them, but they all have a fret whose note is one octave above the note of the open string. Try playing a harmonic up there - it's one of the easiest to produce. Naturally Wikipedia has lots of (admittedly fairly technical) info on the topic. Functionally, this is as applied to the guitar, but the science is the same on any stringed instrument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_harmonics

I PM'd my first try at this track quite a while ago. Any thoughts?

I've got quite a bit on my plate lately, but maybe I can pitch in if there's enough time. When do you need these done by?

I'd be happy to give it a shot, if you're okay with a male voice instead of a female one. I can send a few samples along or sing something of your choice so you can get a feel for whether my voice fits your ideas or not. Just say the word.

On the subject of those tubular bell samples, you can also try slowing down their playback speed. I once used that to make the sound of a stick hitting a rather nice-sounding steel fence post sound very girthy and ominous.

I'm looking to do an arrangement of Ko Otani's "To the Ancient Land" for a choir I often work with, but I can't figure out what's being sung. The album's liner notes are pretty but unhelpful, and a fair bit of Googling around hasn't done me any good so far. I have a feeling the lyrics might be written in the game's created language, if that's at all helpful. Could anybody please point me in the right direction?

Aww, you make me feel so musically sexy. <3 But all this lube makes me go through strings faster than I'd like.

Vouching for Tuberz. Rock-steady, knows heavy, and yet one of the most sensual metalheads of the age. He won't let you down.

I like where this is headed, but if I could get to California I'd like it so much more.