ectogemia

More warm-up sets are really good for priming the joints and small muscles for hard work as well as letting your gamma motor neurons know what they're about to get into (it's the neural network which determines how many muscle fibers will be recruited for work; it's anticipatory in nature, so enough warm-up lifts give it the proper feedback to let you lift the heaviest weight possible). For squats and deads, I do 4-5 warmup sets. So if I were doing 3 work sets of 5 reps at 280 on squats, I'd do a warm-up series like: 95x5 135x4 165x3 195x2 225x1 Or something like that. Just stay below warming up at 80% of your work weight or you'll hurt your sets. Interestingly, I read a study a while ago that showed ~10% increase in work weight when warming up with a protocol like that. Wish I could link you, but I have nooooooo idea where to find it anymore. And I don't want to cramp your style, but Smith machines are dangerous. They've been pegged as the most injurious piece of gym equipment. I don't know if that's true, but I think I buy it. A huge compound lift like a squat is really risky to do under a constricted bar path like the one a Smith machine permits. A squat is a very biomechanically complicated movement since you're moving a lot of weight balanced over your center of gravity with essentially your whole body (quads are the biggest part of the equation, but it's really just about a full-body lift). I wouldn't be at all surprised if the posture the machine forces you into is unduly stressing some part of your squat's kinetic chain. If your hip flexors are hurting, I'm going to guess that the machine is forcing you to hold your pelvis more upright than your body would prefer, so the hip flexors may be stretched and strained. Is there a reason you're doing them in a Smith machine as opposed to a power rack with free weights?

Too much cardio before lifting is a bad idea. You don't want to deplete your muscles of glycogen before lifting because won't be able to lift to your potential if you're lacking in energy, so your muscles won't be challenged enough to grow at a reasonable rate. Just enough to get your heart rate up is all you need, probably a few minutes.

Holy shit, man. That is nuts that you've gotten to that point so quickly. I thought my deadlift progress was something special, but that takes the cake. We're talking full-depth 10x315 back squats, right? If so, we all owe you an e-high five.

I had the same thought a while ago. I even made a thread about it here, but it didn't really go anywhere. I think Nase is right, that the idea is to create an interesting piece of music which is not so interesting that it becomes distracting or tiresome. You can do that through subduing the writing, the mixing, or both -- whatever sounds best. That being said, I experimented with toning down the mixing and bit in the soundtracks I'm working on, and I didn't like the results, so I decided to mix as though I'm writing a studio album and see what the players' feedback is like. If it's positive, I'll keep mixing like that in the future; if negative, I'll flatten my mixes a little. ... not that that helps you since the Project M dude specifically asked for changes in mixing, but iono, try listening critically to SSB tunes and comparing the frequencies, transients, and balance to your own and talk to the dev about the comparisons you've drawn. If your tunes already sound SSB'y, maybe you can convince him that he's asking for something you shouldn't be doing anyway.

Andrew's post was legit. It's also extremely important to remember that although "calories count," they aren't everything. Hormones dictate the distribution of energy/nutrient harvesting and storage, and your food intake, exercise frequency, exercise intensity, stress level, sleep, etc. dictate your hormone profile. Low carb, enough sleep, low stress, intermittent fasting (google this term), high protein, and heavy lifting is the recipe for body recomposition. If enough hormonal factors are out of whack, your body will, say, preferentially harvest muscle rather than fat to meet an energy deficit. Stack the odds in your favor for muscle gain and fat loss by sticking to those conditions as best you can.

This song is insane.

Crap, I'm a day late. HBD2U!

Just got this feedback from the judge thing: You misspelled poops.

It said my ReMixer name was "Uncle Tom," (which is not true; I go by ectogemia) and it called me "boy" a few times. I haven't been talked to like that since the 1950s. This is unacceptable honkey bitch-ass bullshit.

You guys might wanna consider removing the racial slurs from the JUDGANATOR algorithm.

Thanks a ton for the support so far, everyone It's beyond awesome. Check out a preview of 10 tracks from the soundtrack on my soundcloud!

Kickin' dat ass, man. Glad to see the numbers are still going up. That should keep on going pretty much without any hangups for another few months. Bench is by far my weakest lift, too, but I'm a lanky shit with a small frame. I've also kinda seen anecdotally while working out with lots of friends over the years that bench seems to have more variability than any other lift among different people. Sometimes it's due to obvious reasons (wide frame/short arms = easy benching; narrow frame/long arms = hard benching), but other times, it sorta defies explanation. A dude in my class has a really stocky frame with fairly short arms. He's super strong everywhere else, but he has a 5RM on bench of like 190, and that's pretty low for a guy who's been training for the better part of a decade, or even for a year or so. If it's any consolation, bench is basically the least important major compound lift, at least in a functional sense. Not a whole lot of instances in which you're gonna need to push a heavy weight off your chest, haha. I've also found that after a couple or three months of building up stabilizers and my upper back and abs, benching becomes much easier and has a "second wind" sort of effect with respect to gains. Whenever I start lifting again, I always go through a period of being really shaky with it, then once I regain stability with the bar after a while, I can focus on my pecs alone enough to build them up more quickly, and then the weight goes up.

I read it. This thread is sorta intended to be an info dump more than anything, not really critiques or assessments of what people posted. At least that's the way I'm trying to treat it.

Anyone have any other interesting discoveries they want to share? I don't want the thread to be too cluttered up with theory debates, no offense

Greenlight link Hey, everyone! I've been working on two (or three, depending upon how you look at it) game soundtracks recently. One of those games, a highly accessible and unique sci-fi rogulike called Approaching Infinity, just began its Steam Greenlight campaign fresh on the tail of Dungeonmans, the excellent roguelike zircon is most excellently scoring, succeeding in its own campaign. So congrats to zircon for that! Check out the third video on the Greenlight page for an extensive walkthrough of the gameplay and features PLUS a nearly 15 minute preview of some of the music I've written for it so far. There's also a FREE BETA. I hope you enjoy the game and the tunes! Please vote YES! ================= Features taken from the dev's blog: - Select a ship and venture into unknown space - Visit planets, shipwrecks, star temples, ruined cities, space stations, mercenary hideouts, and alien embassies - Find, buy, and sell new ship parts, devices, and powerful rare artifacts - Battle 12 Alien Races, or make friends with them and complete their missions of self-preservation, exploration, and galactic domination! - Complete both randomly generated and hand crafted quests - Explore procedurally generated environments, with over 20 different algorithms - Hire officers and choose their skills when they level up - 50 devices and 53 skills, with more of both to come - Encounter over 65 monster types - 5 victory conditions now active! - Find, buy, and sell “commodities” in the old “space trader” vein - Escape dire situations by the skin of your teeth - Infinite Play! No sector or item level cap. - In-game tutorial and help - Use your Keyboard, Mouse, or XBOX 360 controller!

Sounds like my background in classical theory, haha.

That's definitely true in classical theory, but in jazz theory, that's not the case at all. A lot of those add notes aren't resolved until the next chord or even at all, but in classical theory, at least as I understand it, a non-chord tone is usually resolved during the chord it is sounded with.

That's pretty cool. Nice, easy way to come up with a solid jazz cadence. I understand how tritone substitutions work, but I haven't really experimented with them much. Dumb as it sounds, I learned them in the context of dominant chords, so I figured they only worked with them for some reason and never bothered to try them out with other types of 7th chords Gonna try that now.

No prob, guys, still <3 you both Tone of voice doesn't exist on the internet, so I'm not always gonna receive your message the way you meant it to come across. And yes, this is the pinnacle of music geekdom. And geeks are usually pretty successful people... so let's keep the knowledge flowing

There's a saying in science: "You don't know what you don't know." I only know how to communicate it the way I did. I'm not a formally educated musician. I don't know every bit of terminology and music theory and history. I communicated it the best way I could, and the means of communication is way, way less important than the successful transmission of the message intended. Did you learn something from my post? If yes, awesome, that was the point. If no, sorry, I don't really know how to describe it any other way. I'm not trying to be complicated or "smart", I'm trying to be thorough so whoever's reading has the highest chance possible of picking up on what it is I'm trying to get across. I'm seriously baffled that people think this thread is a circlejerk. Their loss, I guess. If you've been contributing, keep up the tips. I've definitely learned some cool stuff from this thread so far, so thanks! Gonna pull a Shariq and say "stay on topic." Dunno why people are bringing their negativity into here.

Another way to look at it is people trying to help one another out.

YES. Lydian and Mixolydian are awesome on their own. Put them together, and...

Cmin7 - Bmaj9 - Bbmin7 - Ebmin6add9 - Bbmin7add11 - F7 Seems to be in the key of C minor or Bb minor. That second chord isn't in the parent scale, though. The F7 suggests it should cadence back to Bb as the tonic rather than C, so that's how you ended up in Bb on the last chord. Secondary dominance weeeeeeeeeeeeee

D: Music theory definitely isn't essential to writing music, but man, it makes it way, way quicker and easier to write and gives you a framework for understanding and explaining conceptually what you'd otherwise just be hearing abstractly. musictheory.net is a really good intro, and coursera.org has REALLY nice free theory courses as well, plus it has courses on production, recording, jazz, and so on. I've learned a ton from coursera.