[quote]digitalairair wrote:
I will now ask…
should i keep bulking to 205? or start cutting now.
I read so many different things about screwing up your insulin level and what not after your bf level passes a certain level.
[/quote]
Good question.
[quote]sstewart22 wrote:
You are certainly starting to look big…but you should definitely get bigger. Push your limits and see what happens. Hell, it’s gonna be winter anyway.[/quote]
So basically keep doing what I’m doing even if that means 10 more pounds of muscles and 15 pounds of fat?
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
Hey Frank, love your body transformations. Your video is pure gold lol.
Here’s something for you to chew on though. I’ll give you that violin is harder than piano, but you’ve obviously never tried playing the horn!
In a contest of instrument difficulty when performed at very high levels of virtuosity, I put the horn at the top of that list every time! I’m sure I’m biased… but I think many people would agree with me.
Playing that instrument professionally is like driving an 18 wheeler through the eye of a needle.[/quote]
Yes playing an instrument at an advanced level is all hard… but some require more practice. My violin teacher’s husband is a horn player and her daughter plays wind instruments as well. She told me that wind instruments in general don’t need that much practice (2 hours a day on average as opposed to 3-6 for the strings). Maybe you can shred some light on this?[/quote]
With a horn or a woodwind, there isn’t as much going on as with the violin. The way that you use the valves on a horn doesn’t require the same sort of finesse or power that pressing on strings requires. The different techniques are in the way the fingers move speed-wise and the way a player’s embouchure is.
I think drums are pretty hard for the same reason, plus there are four limbs involved instead of just one with the horn and two with the violin. With drumming, there is the added responsibility of doing so with perfect time. Pretty much any other instrumentalist can get away with stretching and compressing the rhythm slightly due to poor timing and it still sounds pretty good.
But it’s really, really obvious when a drummer doesn’t have that innate sense of timing and feel. A tendency to lag slightly or speed up slightly at certain parts only goes unnoticed for the most part if the band as a whole is so fucking good they’re that in tune with each other and can immediately adjust to the slight shifting in rhythm (see: “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin).
Plus, like the violin or the guitar, the drummer can hit every drumhead in a variety of different ways within a beat to produce different sounds, such as ghost notes played on the snare or bass drum, accented notes on anything, flams (which can be played loose or tight), drags, double strokes, triple strokes, etc. rim shots and so on, plus there’s all the different inflections possible on the hi-hat, especially when opened and closed. There’s 1/16th notes accented on the 8th notes, swung notes, triplets, claves and so on. A really creative, skilled drummer with very good feel (John Bonham) can produce a shitload of different sounds with the same basic, single-bass-pedal, 5-piece, one ride, two crash cymbals and a hi-hat type of kit.
Overall, I’d say the drums produce as wide a selection of inflections and sounds as any instrument. Of course, the drums are multiple instruments, but that’s what makes playing them harder than almost any other instrument, in my never-very humble opinion, since a drummer is really playing a bunch of different instruments all at once.
Frank I was serious. I was wondering if you got it in Taipei as I need one.
[quote]Nards wrote:
Frank I was serious. I was wondering if you got it in Taipei as I need one.[/quote]
Nards, you are way to creative to just dress up as Bane. I imagine you’ll come up with some type of variant?
-Sexy Bane?..
-Tin-Tin Bane?..
-“Banal Bane”?..(just go up to people and engage them in very boring conversation)
-80’s Bodybuilder Bane? (Mask, Zubaz pants, fanny pack, Oakley Razorblade sunglasses, etc)
I should include my dog again and he can be a little Batman.
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
[quote]mbdix wrote:
I would like to see a comparison photo of the ‘brad pit’ look and the ‘bane’ look, how long it took, and what your program was to get to the ‘bane’ look. I have enjoyed most of your art work, and training videos, some of them I don’t get, but for the most part enjoyable to watch, and you’re def very talented as an artist and an athlete. Glad you are a member of T-Nation. And getting a ‘genious’ from Iron Dwarf=Badass[/quote]
For the Brad Pitt body, I starved myself for about a month. For the last 10 days or so, I did cardio first thing in the morning with an empty stomach while taking in about 500 calories a day and did not lift at all during this phase to lose muscle mass.
For the Bane body, I stuffed myself with as much food as I can 4 times a day, and in between I drink protein shakes that contained weight gainer and cottage cheese and lots of peanut butter.
In the weight room I did your typical bodybuilding split.
push day, pull day, 2x leg in a week with 3 - 5 sets of 8-15 reps starting with compounds with lots of rest and end with machines with short rest for the “pump”
[/quote]
Thanks
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
I will now ask…
should i keep bulking to 205? or start cutting now.
I read so many different things about screwing up your insulin level and what not after your bf level passes a certain level.
[/quote]
What is the heaviest you have ever been?
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
My violin teacher’s husband is a horn player and her daughter plays wind instruments as well. She told me that wind instruments in general don’t need that much practice (2 hours a day on average as opposed to 3-6 for the strings). Maybe you can shred some light on this?[/quote]
Well here’s my take on it. You can’t put horn in the same category with other wind instruments. (I know this sounds pretentious, but it’s all in good fun lol)
Woodwinds except for maybe oboe and english horn are remarkably easier. I mean, you put your fingers down and there’s the note! I’ve found other brass instruments to be amazingly easier as well. The partials are so much wider that it felt like all I had to do was get in the ball park and the instrument would center the note for me. It was like having a spotter helping you lol.
I suppose it depends on your definition of difficult. I was thinking that the instrument with which it is most difficult to simply get it to do what the composer asks is the horn. The partials are so amazingly close that it takes the most infinitesimally small lip movements to change notes, anything more and you have missed a partial or cracked a note. The lips were never designed to be as dextrous as the fingers. And yet the muscle control required in the embouchure is so precise that if you were able to see through the mouthpiece and observe my lip movement while changing between two adjacent notes, the shift would be imperceptible to the human eye. This makes playing the horn accurately practically an oxymoron.
Here’s where I think you’re right though. There are way more violins than horns, and positions are far more competitive. This means that if you want to succeed professionally at violin, you have to get as early a start as possible and put in as much practice as possible, because you have A LOT of competition. In this way it could be said that the violin is the most difficult instrument, because the level to which you must master craft is higher than perhaps anything else.
As far as just mechanically with which instrument is it most difficult to do what the composer wishes it to do though, I still maintain that it is the horn 
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
With a horn or a woodwind, there isn’t as much going on as with the violin. The way that you use the valves on a horn doesn’t require the same sort of finesse or power that pressing on strings requires. The different techniques are in the way the fingers move speed-wise and the way a player’s embouchure is.[/quote]
Ah but you are quite incorrect. I believe there is in fact much more going on. Embouchure movements are quite complex. They involve all the muscles surrounding the lips, as well as the tongue. On top of that, air is a completely unique element to the wind player. Diaphragm control, air speed, breathing techniques, etc. I don’t even bother mentioning the valves. Moving your fingers is simple. I have never been challenged technically by a fast passage requiring tons of fingering changes. It is only difficult once they make you quickly change among different ranges. Then you must make tiny changes with your embouchure at high rates of speed and appropriately correlate your fingerings and more importantly, you must perfectly correlate your air pressure, volume, and speed. Any thing less and you’ve fucked it up! The number of limbs used has very little to do with it. But regardless, you actually do have to use both hands to play the horn, the lips, and the diaphragm. I didn’t even bother mentioning the right hand before. That is the necessary but not overly difficult technique of making slight changes in the degree of concave in your right hand in order to correct pitch inconsistencies unique to your individual instrument.
I hope you won’t take offense if I ask if you know which instrument I’m talking about. Not just any wind instrument, but “the” horn in F. I would agree that violin is harder than a woodwind (except possibly for double reeds), because they have so much less embouchure movements to mess with and accuracy for them is much more mechanical and automatic. Likewise the partials for other brass are much more easily found with the embouchure than on the horn.
Well sorry if I semi-derailed the thread with my hard-on for horn… Your body transformations are really awesome. Like human sculpting lol.
How much do you weight now?
I can’t believe you 2 douchebags are arguing about musical instruments.
lol
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
I can’t believe you 2 douchebags are arguing about musical instruments.
lol[/quote]
For real. At least we had a crazy bald black guy and a gay black vampire in ours. The creativity of these kids today…
[quote]Professor X wrote:
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
I can’t believe you 2 douchebags are arguing about musical instruments.
lol[/quote]
For real. At least we had a crazy bald black guy and a gay black vampire in ours. The creativity of these kids today…[/quote]
lol!
Violin is hard but I don’t find this music enjoyable. Fail
[quote]csulli wrote:
Well sorry if I semi-derailed the thread with my hard-on for horn… Your body transformations are really awesome. Like human sculpting lol.[/quote]
Yeah man I agree. That is crazy cool how you went from the pit look to the bane look. Damn impressive, not even counting youre artistic talent. I’m a fan man. Some of your stuff is out there for my taste, but overall body of work outstanding. I dont know of any ‘artist’ out there besides ID, but you got my vote as the best artist of our time.
[quote]digitalairair wrote:
[quote]sstewart22 wrote:
You are certainly starting to look big…but you should definitely get bigger. Push your limits and see what happens. Hell, it’s gonna be winter anyway.[/quote]
So basically keep doing what I’m doing even if that means 10 more pounds of muscles and 15 pounds of fat?[/quote]
Do the Anabolic Diet. Slower fat gain, but what’s your bfp?
[quote]sstewart22 wrote:
How much do you weight now?
[/quote]
195… debating whether or not to get up to 205 if that means more fat and messing up my insulin level (possibly) ?
[quote]jasmincar wrote:
Violin is hard but I don’t find this music enjoyable. Fail[/quote]
I won’t argue with you there. For pleasure I would rather listen to much simpler music like pop or rock or even hip pop for PLEASURE. Classical music is too cognitively demanding. Especially the more modern ones, they don’t please the ears at all, or the heart. It’s too de-naturaling…