Teddy Talk

Whew, Ted talk is over. Praise the lawd. Lord. Whatever you may choose to call your deity, praise it.So, I think that Max and I had a great presentation. Our song performance was alright. We were both definitely nervous, and the setup took a pretty long time. However, the actual presentation was great. We weren't super formal and scripted, we were more genuine and closer to the audience. We talked to the people, not at them. This makes a connection with the listeners, in the true TED talk spirit. We were definitely ambitious, maybe a bit too ambitious, but that was good. It's always good to have fighting spirit (row row). Our main idea, although a little played out, was refreshed by our application, and hopefully given new life. We spoke in pretty accessible terms, which is easy to do when talking about music, considering the almost completely alternate language. We definitely gave a lot of examples, stories, and introspection into our experiences, which was good. I definitely got some laughs, which is good. Not much crying though. We didn't sell from the stage, at all. Honestly, Max and I hardly used our notecards, which I feel makes it more heart t heart, because we're speaking what we really want to say, instead of overly formal scripted speeches. We went a little over on time, but the presentation would be bad without the time we took. I rehearsed my talk in front of a trusted friend, because I was presenting with said friend. Overall, I'd give us a 93% to 95%. Good job, me. And you too Max. Good on you.

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Congratulations, Shinji

So. It's finally over. All recording is finished, all the work done. CDs burned, exquisite album art drawn, CD cases prepped. TED talk rehearsed, notecards prepared, Powerpoint polished. It feels so... weird. For the past seven weeks, I put in well over 40 hours of work into this project, not counting Max's time spent too. Speaking of Max, I spent an average of 10 hours a day with him, through school and working on the project after school. I lost sleep, as I'm doing now, I hit things and felt happy. The whole experience has been very enriching to me, and I've learned so much. My library of new knowledge ranges from musical to practical to life lessons. I learned how to drum so others can play along, I learned how to play guitar and bass, I learned how to nudge a track in reaper so as to synchronize a song. I learned how to vent frustration without breaking lamps or bones, I learned what it's like to put hard work into something I really care about. That's the thing about this project - whilst I give effort to other school assignments, this is the one I truly gave a damn about. I enjoyed what I was doing, I knew it would help me, and I wanted it to be as good as I could make it. Thus, I worked as hard as I've ever worked on a project ever before, let alone any school assignment. Hopefully, I will reap the rewards I have sewn, with my two hands, and feet, and all of my body and mind.
Thanks for reading, and goodnight.

Good News and Bad

Believe it or not, my spring break was a magical adventure in music and education, and I learned much about the structure of the human emotions, and in turn much about myself as a person, as a student, as a musician, and as a thinking being.
But seriously, I did make progress on this project, as opposed to playing Skyrim for 216 straight hours. Given, I did play a lot of Skyrim. Anyway, I learned a few things in the process of doing this project over spring break, be they good things or bad.
To start with the good news: I'm a lot better at guitar than I thought previously. This is due to my purchasing some shiny new .008 gauge strings. For those of you who do not play guitar, those are very skinny strings. I didn't play guitar too much before the project, but now I've begun to play it more out of necessity. I wrote most of the music used in the project on guitar. So, I learned the major scale and learned basic chords, but I wasn't too good. At this point, I had started to get the swing of the guitar, and started to be able to know what sounds good with what. This is most likely due to my prior education in piano and music theory, which is the difficult part of music. Now that I know music theory, I can pick up other instruments much easier. However, I really got better once  replaced the strings. These are much easier to push down, which lets me do barre chords, tapping, hammer-ons, and everything else much easier. That's the good thing.
Now for the bad news.
I was recording vocals for our cover of Beck's Sea Change (beautiful song, you can listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i6Bu4knEM) by singing along to the track and just recording my voice. So, after I finished that take, I listened to it, and it was bad. So, I figured it was just a one-off thing, and I tried again. No change.
I cannot sing for #$%^.
Seriously, if I had to sing on the street for my living, I'd be starving. That or I'd make money from people thinking I'm a comedy act. This deflated me very thoroughly, and I was very sad about my lack of vocal proficiency. I guess I should just stick to what I'm good at, and not take those things for granted. So, overall, spring break was fairly productive for me. I spent time on my project and got stuff done. That and I played a lot of Skyrim. I like Skyrim.

First vlog glitched or something, so here's take two

wooo vlog

wooo vlog

Recording is About to Begin... The Skies Darken, Thunder Crashes, and Babies Pour From the Clouds

Recording. Yeah, Recording is not gonna be easy. We have a low quality recording device that only really lets us record one track at a time, so we'll have to dub each individual track over the prior one, which can lead to some serious synchronization issues. We'll have to use and obey a metronome in order to stay in time and not sound horrible. So, I'm reeeeally pissed off at my associate here - he's going to Florida over spring break. Florida.Not Pennsylvania, where we can record - Florida, where he can screw around in the sand, and have hot fun in the hot hot sun. The selfish little punk is gonna leave me to record for the second week. So, this week is gonna be stuffed with recording sessions - on Tuesday and Thursday, we'll literally go from 3 - 9 PM recording and recording and recording. Getting into specifics, we're gonna record rhythm guitar tracks first, then drums, then lead guitar, vocals, and other instruments. I'm gonna record keyboard tracks when stupid is in Florida, because those aren't completely necessary. Keyboards, in this album, are mostly for fleshing out the sound and providing more chord support, which strengthens the sound of the song itself by adding to the army of instruments. To answer a question I got from John in detail, we aren't using a studio. I bought a Lexicon Alpha recording hub, which has a USB hub, an instrument jack, and a microphone jack. This brings me to another problem - micing the drums. Drums are an annoying instrument to record, because most of the time, they've got over 5 different components that need to be recorded at once. The best way to do this is to use a separate microphone for each one, but we've got one microphone, and that's it. So, the recording of my drumkit will be through one microphone, which may or may not sound a bit... muddy. Moving on from that, I've been reading up on the internet about songwriting and song structure, and I've learned a lot about the moods that different chord progressions set. I, I, II, I sets an angry, agitated tone, I, IV, V, IV sets a cheery tone, and I, IV, VI, IV sets a more melancholy tone. I've also been reading up on the emotions that are communicated by different chords. Read here: http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/4974/what-are-the-feelings-emotions-behind-chords

Woooo demos and lyrics

Here we have a demo of one of our songs, called (at the moment) "Owen's Really Cool Song in 5/4".

Things are still going well. Our songwriting capabilities are very annoying, in that they prevent me from having a very interesting blog. Actually, there is one problem. We keep coming up with new, good ideas. This is, believe it or not, a problem, solely for the fact that it'll distract us from recording the 8 songs we've got. We'll try to incorporate these new songs and ideas, which will spread us too thin, and when it comes time to finalize recording, we'll have 14 half-finished songs, and that's not an album, that's an EP. On the good side of news, I'm actually pretty good at bass, and getting better. It looks like I'm gonna be playing the majority of bass on this album. Overall, this is a really good opportunity to round myself out as a musician, and I've been taking advantage of said opportunity. I've been reading a biography of Keith Moon, (ex)-drummer of the Who, and it delves into his style (which consists of beating the living crap out of the drums), and I've been trying to incorporate said style into my drumming by lifting weights and such, which allows me to absolutely murder my poor drums. I enjoy it, thoroughly. I'm getting better at guitar, because I've learned a major scale pattern and have been running through it whenever I put my hands on a guitar. My fingers are getting quicker and more calloused, and I can play without looking at the guitar now. Pretty cool.
To fill some space, I'll include a lyrics sample.

Maybe I’ll end up a better person

Or maybe I’ll lose it all

Maybe I’ll be changed forever

Or maybe the bitterness will stay

And I threw my life away

Just to get a taste

And I’ll throw my life away

Just to get you back

In a strip-mined ocean

Lost among the waves

There’s nothing there, anymore

There’s nothing there, anyway

And I threw my life away

Just to feel this way

And I’ll throw my life away

To feel this way again

Burning voices, bright with passion

Burning my shell with hazy pain

I’ll never make this mistake again

Never, until the beast is slain

And I threw my life away

Just to fade

And I’ll throw my life away

Just to remain

You just won’t leave this place

Your claws are dug in

My mind is flooded

False words plugged in

And my life’s been thrown away

By someone who wanted to fade

And my life will be thrown away

By the fader who used to be me

drums and stuff

Just an improv drum solo I did. I decided to film something for the blog, but didn't know exactly what. I also didn't know what I was doing while I was doing it.

Comments and Other Marginally Exciting Thingies. Actually, Just Comments.

So far I've commented on:
Ally Abramson's blog
CoolWillRocks' Blog
Nicole Reisert's blog
Find the damn things on moodle. I ain't got time for no silly links.

Second week of work, and things are going pretty smoothly. We've got all the frameworks for our songs down, we know one of the covers we'll do. Pretty cool. We also have one song completely done and ready to record, and it's sounding good. One minor problem (hey Hassan) that we've encountered is putting lyrics behind the melodies we have. It's a lot harder when the lyrics are not written while listening to the melodies. Alas, we'll deal with it. Another problem is that some of the lyrics I've written for Max's rapper persona, PhRe$h Nu KoNpHlIkT, are not "school appropriate". And by that I mean very inappropriate, for school and even for everyday life. In fact, if they came into contact with any human who isn't entirely corrupt, their little innocent heads would melt from the inappropriacy. Anyway - to take a closer look at the songwriting and learning process, I'll talk about an event that transpired yesterday, and an event that shows some of the difficulties of practicing quite well. Max was over my house, and we were in the basement, where all the music stuff is. I was showing Max a riff I'd written on bass, and trying to get him to learn it on guitar. The thing about this riff is that it was for a song in 5/4, which is a fairly strange time signature. So, I show it to Max, and he seems to get it. Except he plays it in 4/4, which is just missing the last beat. I say no, that's not how you do it, and play it again. He plays it again, but same as before. I try again, to no avail.

This goes on, repeating, for twenty minutes, until he finally gets it.

At this point, I'm about ready to smash my bass against Max's head, or the floor, or maybe both. So he plays the riff, and it's how it's supposed to be. I start to play the bass part, and he plays the riff over it. It sounds alright, but he suggests that he play the chords, and I play the riff on bass. We continue to do so, and we both come to the conclusion that it sounds better on bass anyway.
I was, to say the least, frustrated.

Anyway, that's just one episode of the minor difficulties we've encountered, and are yet to encounter. But we're making progress, and lots of it. I've been reading more of this book that teaches you to play in the style of famous drummers, and I think I'll record & post a video of me doing some John Bonham or Keith Moon. Now for pictures of my dream kit:

                                                       Till next blog,

                                                                              O-diggy

จำนวนหนึ่ง

Well. Blog time. I remember having tried to start a blog at one point around 7th grade... that one went over like a lead balloon. Alas, here I am, with the motivation of an interesting project and the inescapable iron-fist ruling style of grades and whatnot. Well, the project seems to be getting off to a good start. Max and I have come together already, and we've got ideas aplenty. I'm glad I got an opportunity to get Max off his butt and begin working on this band. I've been trying for more than a year, and this is a golden opportunity. On the topic of the band, we need a band name. I've been suggesting some pretty good ( in my opinion ) names, such as "Spaaaaace" pronounced with all the a's, "Genesis Tull", and some other... more interesting things. We're still discussing, although I've got my money on Lord Red. Band names aside, we have some good ideas floating about, drum solos and 5/4 and whatnot. I've got some really good reading material lined up, a book about how to adopt the styles of famous drummers like Keith Moon and John Bonham into your own. I'm really looking forward to a project, for once.

 Honestly, I did not have a single problem thinking of what to do. As soon as McPerlman said "project on something you're passionate about", I knew it would be music. After 2 minutes of thinking, it was either to learn a difficult song on drums, or record an EP or album. However, it was only later that I considered getting Max in on it. Conveniently, as soon as I asked him, he agreed. That's how this thing got started up.

So far, I've got 3 or four songs that are halfway done, and I don't know where Max is at right now. I've been staying up longer than I'd care to admit writing songs, and I feel like I should probably stop it. I've got a few weeks to do this, I'll be fine.

Alright... measurable goals. I guess the results of this project will be pretty tangible. It's putting out an 8 song album, so it can be summed up by holding a disc in our hands containing 8 songs recorded by us. There are also some intangible things, like knowing how to use recording soft & hardware, knowing songs all the way through in order to record, and other things. And then there's the building character. Does that mean that I'm in a book, and my character gets developed, or what? Never did understand that. Anyway, This project should be pretty interesting. I get to listen to music during class, and claim that I'm studying influences. On the other hand, It'll be difficult to work on the project in class without bringing a guitar or something in. All in all, I think I'm gonna have a damn good time with this.