ketchup

This past few weeks I've been listening to stuff, and this time I didn't really listen to a band religiously like what I did with Incubus, Chiodos, Bull Zeichen88 etc, but because I have no time thanks to effwhypee (read:FYP--Final Year Project) and I can't really concentrate if I listen to music while I'm working on it, especially if it's something new. I listen to some easy listening songs on my playlist instead. 

I started off with RHCP, but I got bored after about 20 songs more or less. Fixed genre. Can't really survive that because they lack of surprises. Well, the basslines are still awesome as always, but after about 6 songs I feel like I need a break and then I continue some other time =.=" But then, I figured that during their live concerts, Flea played different than the original basslines. He added stuff here and there makes them more enjoyable. I think it will be super worth it to attend their live concerts! Also, I don't like the sound of his bass live. I like the one in the studio recording. But oh well, it's a matter of preference. The one is studio albums sounded warmer than the one live which had more tone. I decided just to put a couple of their hits on my playlist.

On my bed, B.B. King will be on the play. I found that I like slow blues much more than the fast ones. The slow ones are soooooo relaxing! Even though the chords are not minor or sounded sad, but the lyrics are freaking emo. B.B. King's stuff are far more heart piercing than those emo songs nowadays I think. He used simple words and not at all poetic. More like ghetto talk sometimes, but then somehow I can capture the sadness. And sometimes, it felt like Lucille (King's guitar) is crying along. No kidding. This kind of quality music is rare nowadays. He  a story for each song :) How Blue Can You Get  has the most epic lyrics so far, I think. Funny and painful at the same time :P I haven't finished listening to all of his stuff because he has a mountain of songs. Seriously a lot. I have those from the 70s until 2008.  Will continue listening :)

When I'm rushing to the uni for submissions, classes, or waiting for a friend, I tuned in to Dream Theatre. 

There are 108 tracks on my playlist. 7 studio albums, and 3 live ones. Haven't finished listening either, because their songs are long, but full of surprises! I like it! I have 2 favorites so far: Take away my pain - sounded real sad but awesome, and Honor Thy Father - epic solos and arrangement!! I was actually poisoned by a friend in 2006. He likes Mike Portnoy a lot! He introduced me to Panic Attack, Dance of Eternity, Through Her Eyes, and Hell's Kitchen, but didn't really bother to listen to the whole discography :P Listening is on progress :)

Oh yah! Btw, I've finally finished learning Cupid's Dead - Extreme!! So happy :D I learned from HERE Never thought I could play that one :P I've studied the whole lines and riffs, but I still need to work on my speed and fingering because sometimes I still can't catch up with the original speed =.="

Well, I guess that's enough for now :D


Image credits to: Blogtactic

...

I serve God as a musician even before I entered uni. Before the service, I usually pray along with the team, set things right with God, and also tell Him that this is not about us but about Him, and pray that we will be able to give our best to Him. 

Guess what!? I failed. I went to practices just to end up feeling all miserable. My mood went on a tour off a cliff, and I just wanna scream. I judged others. I was like "oh man, why did he/she play that?!" and then I realize that I myself was just simply playing as well. I could see an ant went jogging at their face but I didn't see the elephant in front of me. I practiced during practice time, and that's it. Never really bother to practice at home, or maybe think about the arrangements of the song, or maybe try to brush up some parts that didn't sound nice. I could have done that, but I didn't. I thought that as long as I am in the same page with the others, play the same chord, I'm doing ok.  EEEEKKK!! Wrong! Now it bothers me, darn it.. I realized that this is the kind of stuff I've been giving to God for all these years. Trash. This is not about playing bad chords or not playing skilfully enough, or maybe playing the exact copy of the song, or even play better than the original version. It's not about that. This is much more than that! I didn't give my all. I didn't give Him the best of me. I didn't give Him what He deserves. I took it as a duty rather than an act of worship or because HE deserves it. And sometimes I even judge others that they're not giving their best. Gosh. This is mad awful. I feel terrible. @#$%^#@%&*

But hey, I'm not dead yet. I'm still breathing, I still have fingers to play, a brain to think about arrangements and sequences, a pair of ears to listen, and a Sovereign yet Forgiving God to worship.

I'm starting over.


p.s: special thanks to Holy Spirit, for pointing it out and pulling me back :)

*smile from ear to ear* :)

Things that I've never even thought of is what You've prepared for me.

KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry.

I'm just still too excited.

I just came back from another LEGENDARY gig :) Guess what?! It was in Tropifrickincana City Mall! Yessss. Finally we reached that place, and this time we brought maps. The journey was pretty scary remembering how we got lost last year because this time, there's no 2nd slot for the next morning. The next slot will be next week, and there's no guarantee that we could play because the line up was fixed. 

The gig was in a bar, Artista Bar to be exact, and this event is called M.A.N.G.G.A which stands for Music & Art Nurturing Gigs Goes Anal.

The event was awesome, and somehow we got to play last. Thanks to this, I've finally taste the feeling of playing last :P It was pretty scary because you gotta see others perform before you and somehow it pressurized me >.< All the performers have different genre and characteristics. From metal to pop. Pretty fun, and this is actually a really good platform for unknown bands to promote themselves. Too bad, this is the 2nd last M.A.N.G.G.A session. After the last session next week, it's over.

Btw, why I called this LEGENDARY? Ok. Actually at first it was just like normal gig where we just play and have fun. But then this time, it was different. Well, at least for me :P 

Before we play, the MC (who's actually kind of a celebrity here in Malaysia, the so called "Malaysian John Mayer") said that there will be jamming session after our performance, but I didn't really pay attention or give a dang because I was too nervous for our performance. When we played, everything goes well, and I actually felt that it was pretty good, because we played original songs in which all of them were from different genres. It kinda gave more suspense to the audience (who are mostly music lovers) about the characteristics and genre of our band. After we played, I thought it was over. So I just carry my bass and the tangled jack back to my seat, and before I even put my down my bass, the MC called "Christy, Christy, would you like to play, Christy?" In my heart I was like "Oh HECK YEAH i have no frickin idea what is this but let's do this". So I went up the stage with my bass and tangled jack, plugged it in and I was good to go. The vocalist was somebody that I don't know, as well as the drummer. The vocalist told us the chords *thank God it loops for the whole song*, a groovy stuff that I have never heard of. It goes like E C A D. The vocalist signaled us when to be silent and when to build up. :D Major fun. I just swayed and danced to the beat and not gave a damn whether what I played is right or not. Heck with it :P

And then, after that song ended, our band's vocalist shouted "Can't take my eyes off you!! Can't take my eyes off you!!" and then the singing guy decided to go with it, and here comes the MC joining us with his guitar as well :) Man. That was my first time playing with a well-known musician :D So the drummer started the beat and it was FRICKIN DIFFERENT!! Far from the original, but also far from all kinds of covers I've ever heard!! It was the groovy version! Almost like reggae!! It was EARGASMIC! Multiple serious eargasm while I played. goodness. We jammed that song quite long, and the fun part is, we all swayed and did some little jigs :P I hope somebody took a picture of us playing >.< Looked like we all enjoyed it to the max. Another major moment in my giggin' life :D

At first I was quite discouraged because all the bands that went before us were good, and according to my friend, musicians hang out at that bar so I was so nervous for I'm a total noob. 

Thank GOD that all went well, as well as the jamming session :) I had a super AH-MAY-ZING time. Truly, things that I've never even thought of is what You've prepared for me. :) Thank You Jesus~

Another awesome part was on the way back home. We were kinda lost, but our 2 friends that tagged along to watch the gig had friends in that area, so they helped us find our way back home. Even though we were quite lost, we shared stories behind the original songs that we played. Those were composed by the vocalist, and the bassist (the original member btw). Those stories were awesome, and I didn't know that the first song that we played was actually about the experiences when called for National Service :P The others was about a girl, friendship disputes, and life falling apart.

Well, I've got some lessons too :P and this time, it's more for the drummers (these came from our drummer), singing, and song writing (from the vocalist of course).

For drummers out there:

1. Comfort is everything. When the drum chair is shaky, It's distracting and 

    kinda make you lost a bit of confidence. It's better to bring your own chair I 

    guess.

2. Have a stick holder near your drum set. It will come in handy when your 

    stick fell off your hands (our drummer's stick flew away. Luckily it was 

    successfully saved because it was slow song). If you don't have that thing, 

    just put the spare sticks within your reach.

3. When the drum set is lousy, just bear with it. You have no other choice. 

    Just chill, and do your thing. Don't lose your passion and energy.

4. When the drum set is moving around because of no carpet or something 
    to prevent it from moving around, you gotta be clever. You may find some 

    breaks or a hole in your song where you can fix it back to its place.

Regarding singing and song writing:

1. For those who wants to nail screaming, then you gotta practice. At first it's 

    gonna hurt and you may not be able to sing for a while because of sore

    throat. But, after the time goes by, the more you practice, you'll get used to

    it until you can even sing again even after lots of screaming.

2. *I got this indirectly* Be imaginative and aware of your surrounding. 
     What you feel about something/someone or maybe when something major 

     happened to you, put those in words. Think about aesthetics, rhyme and 
     all later.

3. On some occasion, you may tell the story behind your song. Somehow 

    people dig that. Especially those emotional ones :P

I'm so friggin tired, my hair smells like cigarettes and I'm hungry but too tired to cook ~.~ Just ate 3 donuts on our way to the bar cuz we didn't manage to have a dinner before we depart.

Alrite then peeps, good night :)

11-1-11 gig

Hey fellas :)

I just had another gig this afternoon, we played acoustic style. This is actually an event called "3 days around the world," so basically people build booths representing their own country, decorate it, and show it off. We played a number of patriotic songs in front of our booth, which was fun, aaaand not to mention the free food!  :P

Well this is one of those moments in which I think that Indonesian national/patriotic songs are not bad after all. No. They're not just 'not bad', they're awesome! They are mostly short, but the chord progression is epic and unusual. You won't find any Em-C-G-D -andrepeat'tilltheend- * I can't believe people actually buy those kind of songs and think that those are fantastic. More like craptastic to me*. Too bad the Indonesian mainstream songs are 'cheap' these days. Like seriously 'cheap'. ugh. 

Not only the patriotic songs, but the traditional songs are awesome as well! Especially when played in different kind of arrangement. I realized also that even though Indonesia is small, we have LOTS of traditional musical instruments. There were 2 kinds in our booth. 

Gamelan

Angklung

last time there was 1 Indonesian band called Garasi, they blend one of their song with Gamelan. It's mind blowing. Watch it here.

After our performance, another friends of mine performed, and they sang some old school Indonesian songs. It was neat and very soothing. And then people started to get bored, and they played some DANGDUT songs. OH MY GOSH. I don't really fancy dangdut, but when they played them, everybody got 'high' and started to dance. That was really fun. This event really makes me realize that Indonesia is not lame no matter how corrupted it is. I'm proud to be Indonesian. The music and cultures are epic *yet idk why some Indonesians are anti Indonesia and all there's to it*. Well, except for some of the mainstream music that's growing like mushrooms these days. They don't suck. They're just cheap. No taste. Lame lyrics. The mainstream music back then were waaaaaaaayyyyy better.

Btw, I didn't know that those plate of steel in Gamelan are actually very heavy, curved, and they have different thickness, and the notes are different than the ordinary C D E F G A B.. Instead, it was A C D E G A C.

Lessons from this gig:

For musicians out there, it is important to know many kinds of music to broaden your horizon. One of them is your country's traditional/national/patriotic music. It's even better if you know how to play the traditional instruments. Whether you like it or not, I believe that it's a part of yourself as musician. It's  the music from where you come from, for goodness sake. When you hear it, you say 'it's frickin lame', 'not cool,' or  you may think 'wtf?!'. *I'm frickin ticked off when there's people around me who thinks so*. If you don't even know how to appreciate the kind music from where you come from, you still call yourself a musicaholic/musicfreak/musiclover/musician? Gimmeabreak. When you're still thinking like so, clearly you can't see the big picture. You're gonna stuck with the mainstream and go with their flow no matter how suck it gets. 

Have you ever even think about what you can do with those traditional stuff?

*ahem*

Last time I was telling you stuff about the mighty-hot bass by IKUO.. I mentioned there that they didn't produce the red one. But then just now when I checked out Ikuo's twitpic, I saw THIS.. Well, apparently they do have red ones, and the difference is only in the pick guard. The pick guard is white instead of shiny stainless steel.. but wait!! How come the pick up is different? Hmm.. Is this the same bass, or?

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Hi! :)

Finally the huge gig was over! It was a christmas musical production :) Well, a bit off Christmas since it was held on January 3rd because there was no venue available for booking in our campus..

The gig was AH-MAY-ZING. I had LOTS of fun!! The whole process is complicated. Since this is a musical, the band don't play only normal songs, but we gotta do background music as well. In my previous post I mentioned about film scoring and stuff--the idea is almost the same, only we played it live. 

This is a dream come true for me. I dreamed to be a music director when I was in high school, and one day I told God that I want to be one. And, that's it. He made my dream come true :)

It was one heck of an experience! I was the assistant + bassist for last year's production, and it kinda taught me lessons that were useful when directing this year's. I had LOTS of lessons during the practice period. We practiced for about 12 weeks!! Actually we didn't practice every single day. For the musicians, we practice during the weekends, due to classes and stuff, but during the weekends we practice for like, 13 hours a day, and the practice hours were added as the performance was approaching. I developed no blisters. Thank God.

Here's a couple of lessons throughout the process:

Dynamics -- This is what I've called the ups-and-downs of a song. You may google it for proper definition. Gosh. This one is freaking irritating sometimes. Because there were times where the song that we played just feels so plain, and it all just sounds like noises even though we all played the right chords. I don't really know how  to explain this in words, but during the practice, we gotta figure out when to play loud and when to play  soft or when not to play at all in a song. Each instrument has different parts in the music or even no parts at    all. So we have to know when's our cue. Try play one song with all instruments playing at the same time at    the same level and the same chords until the end--you'll hear disaster. It doesn't work that way. Dynamics   apply to every frickin song. Even death metal has dynamics.

Listen -- Hmm.. If you'll be covering other people's song and intend to play the exact copy, then you gotta listen.  And by listening, I mean listen to your part in the song. When to come in, how the riffs go (if any), when to go loud, when not to play, what kind of effect should you use to get to the same feeling, etc. When that  part is figured out, now here comes the playing. When you play together as a band, you need to listen to  each other, and try your best to get to the appropriate level. For example, if you are supposed to be strumming in the background, then adjust your volume accordingly so you won't overpower the others. As music directors, you gotta be able to listen to what everybody's playing. I found this tough because sometimes there's multiple flaw being played at the same time and you gotta stop the whole thing and explain one by one on how it supposed to sound like and then repeat it all over again.

Encoding/translating/whatever -- The directors have imagined and set how should a song sound like for a scene, which sounds different than the original song most of the time. You may get comments like "it's not emo enough", "it's not supposed to be that funny", "it's supposed to be high", or even just plain "I can't feel it". You gotta be able to translate those into the music you play. Also, when you read the script, you gotta figure out what kind of music is suitable for a scene. For example, how to play for a fighting scene, or the most difficult one *for me* is what kind of music you play when people are in a mall and they were gossiping?

LEARN HOW TO READ THE FRICKIN SCORES! -- I finally realized that it would be so much easier when everybody can read scores. Our guitarist and keyboardist are educated, so they can read stuff. I myself can't read, so when I want to communicate what's in my mind, I gotta sing it =.= and many times my timing and their timing is not sync so it takes extra time to make it happen. Thank God everybody understand music language.. You know, the dukduktak jrengjeng, dumdum and tingtings xD

Obedience -- This one is VERY important. Many times you won't agree with the directors. But, you can always communicate to them about how you think the music should be. But then they still might not agree with you.. I'd say, obey. Because they have imagined it and it's perfect in their mind, and your job is to make that scene comes to life with music. So, if you can't find middle ground, obey.  I was pretty rebellious during this production >.< My apologies directors... For the musicians, thou shall obey thy music director as well, because they are the one who is communicating with the scene directors about what they want and you clearly have no idea. But then as I said before, you can always communicate your idea to the music director. Your idea might be the one they're looking for.

Relationship --  Now this one is also very important. Try your best to build good relationship with one another, and try to understand your team better. I found the breakfast/lunch/dinner before practices was really helpful. During those times we didn't really talk about the musical. We discuss satanic bands most of the time, listen to blues while eating, and listen to Power Rangers theme and some alternative stuff on our way home xD That was really fun. We talk music only during practice, but sometimes we strayed as well >.< I lose focus    easily. sigh. 

Compromise and Encourage -- When one of your team member is not feeling confident to play some stuff, encourage them. If they're not able to do some riffs because it was too difficult, then try to do simpler version where everyone is comfortable. It's better to simplify it than forcing it. Too much pressure is not good.

Don't panic -- During THE day, there were several mistakes.. After that song, we just look into each other and say "it's okay." Well, there's nothing you can do other than just kick ass in the next songs, right?!

Well, those are the lessons I've learned, and those are only my opinion. If you think that there's something wrong or I should add, feel free to point it out :)

Some of the practice days were the best days of my life. Like, totally.

2011

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

2010 has been a great giggin' year for me!

Many gigs, stories, lessons and experiences along the way and I never regret any second of it :)

One thing for sure, I wanna thank Jesus for being with me all the way, and being the one who make my dreams come true. One night, I asked him, "God, I really wanna rock with the bass.. and I wanna have a memorable final year!!" *fyi, this is my final year in uni :).. Well, He didn't say anything, He gave me Rubberband. And for the memorable part, hmmm. I don't even know where to start. After Rubberband was formed, it was like raining gigs. I go places and play music even with people I don't expect to meet and play with before. He knows one of the things that will make me happy.. Music. 

Not only that, ever since I was in high school, I want to be a music director one day. He answered it as well. For that, I'll explain in the other post :P. I can't thank Him enough. Not only for the gigs and music stuff, but for being with me ALL THE TIME :)

Btw, I can't really post a review these days because of the projects and stuff, also there's this HUGE gig happening on the 3rd and I was super busy rehearsing *about 13 hours of playing for each session fyi* that I don't even have time to listen to stuff  >.< by the time I touchdown on my bed, I'll be asleep in less than 3 seconds.

Alright then, have great years ahead!!

Good night :)