counting down...

last week was an absoultely grumpy week. all the lousy grades, lack of sleep, workload, communication problem and all made me super vulgar in a way.

next week would probably be worst. i dont even have a interviewee yet for my radio talkshow this coming wednesday, i got to think of one more story angle, there is the ezine which i feel so helpless about, there is also the final PR project to plan, a life and more.

but on a lighter note, i got great plans for this coming holiday!

as usual there will always be interesting happenings around to make me realise there is so much more in life.

as for now, lets countdown to the holiday.

M I A

sometimes, i wonder if this space reflects me.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

ok, i am off.

chee-ki

i just collected the first batch of pictures i developed, took with the nikon N5005 SLR camera i just bought.

i consider this batch of pictures as my first experience playing the role of an event photographer. wah... the feeling was shiok! pushing all the way to the front with the super heavy camera in the hand felt totally professional. then snapping picures with the fingers rotating the lens as though i knew exactly what i was doing.

but...

omg, the pictures turned out like shit la. i think i take better pictures with my phone. but then its my first time, so maybe the future batches will turn out better after i am slightly more familar with the mechanics and nature of the camera.

i tried some 'experimental shots' with various aperture and shutter settings, and those shots didnt even manage to develope...

argh... i wonder what went wrong.

on a lighter note, i had the chance to talk to one of the best photographer in singapore today; Mr. Julian. i manage to catch him while he at marina square; he was the guest speaker at the sony's new alpha 100 digital SLR camera launch. its my honour indeed, he is a kind and professional man whom answered my questions in the most humble manner.

ok, i better get back to my work. i shall end off with a quote from julian.

" the true essence of photography is to understand your subject as well as your camera."

taken from http://www.julianw.com/default.htm

owell.

its the last couple of weeks of another semester yet again.

sometimes, i think i left my mind at the period of time just before chiangmai, when we were all looking forward to the trip. the 2 weeks trip, remaining of the holiday, and the first 14 weeks of the semester went by so fast; i am totally overwhelmed and lost.

the only thing i enjoyed this semester is choosing what songs i want to play for the radio test. i quite like planning a program.

newswriting is a bitch.
PR is interesting; but no thanks.
commiss is hurhur...
web design is something i feel very proud of after creating the journey website.

as for the final project, i am sure my group will come up with something decent. or we can always depend on shear to work some magic on shan.

watching my cousins grow up week by week every saturday is another blissful thing in my present stale life.

lucky kids whose only agenda everyday is to finish the rice, sleep and learn manners. and maybe do one or two new monkey trick every saturday to make the whole family happy.

sian la...

to tokjiaying...

this few weeks had probably been the most trying period of my mum's life for the past 20 years. do you understand?

i believe no level of poverty or amount of hunger is ever too sad for any man, as long as every day is led by with a goal and motivation. yet, emotional depression is an illness no external element can cure; it all depends on the person.

our family used to lead a very difficult life. dad's job is to bring bread home while mum's job is to bring the 3 of us up. she never believed in putting anyone of us under the care of other people. she believes it is her responsibility to teach us moral values, manners and etiquette. thats why she will blame herself all the way if we dont turn out the way she desired us to be. ultimately, she is the one whom taught us our morals in life. i think i am 70% who i am today because of mum, i wonder what do you think.

its ironic how i am writing a story to 'fight' for the rights of foreign domestic workers in school, for we have a mummy domestic worker at home whom never had a day off for the past 18 years of her life. the only day she would relinquish from this job is probably the day she carries on to another world. i say this because she would always worry about us, it doesnt matter the age. as children, we should all learn to cherish her.

mum turns 40 this year, she got to make a transit in life. things are no more the same as compared to just 3 years back. time flies... and how true and sad is this for mum. a few years back, she will cook lunch everyday and all 3 of us would be back home by latest late afternoon. dinner is a needless to say routine. however, now that all 3 of us are grown up, it wouldnt be suprising if the earliest of us 3 returns home at 10pm.

for the past 18 years, her life revolved around us. but now that we are all old, how much of our life is devoted to the family? today, going out with friends is more important, playing the guitar is more important, surfing the net and chatting with friends is more important, playing maple story is more important. family seems to be going lower and lower down the list. yes, we are all guilty of it. mum is not asking us to return anything back to her, i am sure she doesnt. but shouldnt we all try to spare some basic thoughts for her?

dinner is still prepared with the most delicate effort everyday, yet no one is at home to eat it. how sad is this for mum whom whipped up the meal... will she feel appreciated? how will she feel when everyone comes back and tell her they have already eaten outside? that is the reason why i try my best to make it a point to eat dinner home everyday, even if its late microwaved reheated dinner. i wont eat dinner outside if possible, even if i ate outside... i would eat second round after i am back home. and i would try my best to finish everythingggg. not because i am hungry, not because i am greedy, its because i want mum to feel appreciated.

she doesnt ask for much, she just asks to feel appreciated~

we are outside everyday, its impossible for us to imagine how lonely mum can feel.

and you...
- you got to be one of the most fucking lousy attitude i ever seen.
- the way you walked off and closed the room's door after you just now fucking disgusted me.
- the way you dont spare a thought for anyone fucking pisses me off.
- i try my best to be nice to you, but sometimes you just dont fucking deserve it.
- the way you think(or at least this is how your action speaks) all your friends are more important than your direct family members, to the extent that you trust them more sometimes is fucking unfair.
- the way you dont see how some things in life work after 17 years is fucking sad.

ultimately, it is your life.

dont you think its sad i got to find you online when i got something to say to you? considering the very fact that we are just seperated by one wall, or probably two for there is one more wall in your inner heart. i hope you can reflect upon what mum just said. she made herself absoultely clear. i would be so utterly disappointed in you if whatever mum just said has got no effect on you. i am probably at fault too for who you are today, for i am your elder brother. i feel myself have a certain responsibilty over both my younger siblings.

i am not saying that you are bad, but the fact is the way your character is is unfair to other people sometimes.

the problem with you is you never think about how other people might be feeling. now you would probably be screaming 'then who the hell would care about my feelings?!' i need a shoulder, i need a listening ear.

you know what, i am just going to tell you to shut the fuck up. the world doesnt revolve round you, you aint alone in this world. whatever your actions and words has an effect on other people. keeping to yourself to the extent that everyone is invisible aint your own business.

i dont remember myself ever hiting you before, dont let me do it. dont ever let me do it, i am sure you know how nasty i can be when i am totally pissed off. please dont force me to wake you up the brutal way. i never did it in the past because i know it doesnt work on you. you are probably going to bear more hatred. but today, if i hit you, its because i need to get it off my chest. i dont expect it to have any effect on you. i bet you would probably hate me, but so what? maybe i should learn to be selfish like you sometimes.

if you think that you are not selfish at all... i am telling you now. you fucking are. you are fucking selfish at times when you want to be. its just that you dont realise it.

but ultimately, i think you should know that i love you for i love my family members more than anyone else. i think i am nice as a brother, i really think so. please, spare a thought for mum because i am sure she loves you more than i do. i can scold all the fuck in the world, but its just because i care for you.

locking yourself up in the room and soaking yourself in the cyberworld is not something healthy for you. you got to learn how to balance your life more. and i dont mean going out, you are going out enough. i mean family wise.

trust me, mum is going through an emotional trauma none of us can ever understand. if you think that life is stressful for you. count it your blessing that you got a life. for mum currently has no life and its driving her crazy.

please, i dont think i am a difficult person to talk to. we will never know how you feel if you keep everything to yourself.

your attitude and behaviour for the past 1 week has been fucking unbelievable and unacceptable. i choose to give you the leeway, i got to make the first step to talk to you. i took the initiative to go inside your room and strike a conversation with you. but i guess mum just couldnt take it anymore.

i have no idea what you are thinking about now...

are you feeing sad?
i hope so...
but i know you are probably feeling something else.

if you think that mum is bias~ blah blah... and you are talking to your friend about what just happened and how unfair it is for you and all.

let me tell you this straight, you will never succeed in life for you will never be happy. and please remember, you are never alone. no one is ever alone.

you are already 17. please, reflect along the right track.

i feel like a loser typing this entry, for this has never been my blogging style. but i dont see any other ways to express my thoughts to you.

and anonymous replied...

hello there once again. great weather today. a whole day of rain, just the way i like it.

despite the fact of the existence of the internet, and more specifically google.com, people still have the cheek to ask questions like how can one learn guitar by themselves, blablabla.

with the question on being musical.. well i have several viewpoints with regards to that.

i reckon you know who marty friedman is. all his solos in megadeth were improvised, and that says a hell lot. in his instructional video he showed the stuff that goes on when he improvises. he follows chord notes closely, saying that the more you think, the better you will play. the more confident you are of the notes you are playing, the more conviction with which you play them (whacking the strings!), the more impressive you will sound to the listener. because of the fact most of the stuff he plays over are your basic major/minor/power chords, it is simpler to well, know the chord notes and improvise accordingly.

but one thing he said was that anyone could just pick the right scale and improvise over a progression. but not many follow the notes closely, saying how he adds his own little things in when following the notes, like passing notes and bending in or out from an out-of-key note to a sweet note, etc. he said that all these little things would make you unique in your own way, which would of course be better for our musical health, rather than just wanking away like so many shredders do. personally i'm not a fan of shredding done in overdoses. you can train a monkey to play fast, but you can't for the love of god make him play something slow with feel and nuance. still, shredding impresses your everyday ignorant man, which is basically what too many wannabe musicians (psst, singapore) crave for.

in his words, it is "the way you do the things you do", adding on that it would be a great song title. hah.

to be honest, i am as clueless as anyone on how to be extremely musical either. for me, i like to sing the notes consequently while playing them. when i improvise i think to the extent of the caged positions (or the caged system in relation to the mode i'm playing in), and my start and end notes for every different chord which to me, make all the difference, adding passing chromatic notes every now and then. and your odd octaves or two, with some funk picking here and there. sounds big but its chicken shit. it's basically playing blindly in one sense, but i do have a subconscious sense of how the notes sound all across the neck if you get what i mean. its that sense of familiarity within a scale that you get after practicing it for so long. it becomes somewhat an extension of yourself. that is also how you start getting stuck in a box as you have been playing in its boundaries for so long. hah.

you do know the application of modes yes? on how we use the modes, over which type of chords, what type of progression, etc.

now, all this leads to another question. does one want to be a good jazz improvisor or a rock/blues improvisor? neither one is better than the other, just different.

with relation to a more jazz context, i have seen joe pass's instructional video as well, which was needless to say mindblowing. the walking bass lines and melodic lines going on around the bottom two and top three strings respectively... well, he's joe pass. now, au contraire to marty, he said he does not like to complicate things, trying to keep things as simple as possible. how he likes to think of a 1-6-2-5 progression with the 6 being a minor chord, simply as a passing chord that is not as important as the 2 and 5, etc. basically, i learnt how to play pseudo-jazz and learnt chord substitution from that video.

but keep in mind, he has practiced all the scales including the augmented and diminished scales (in all keys!) since young for basically twelve hours a day, so much so that the guitar has truely become his second voice. you can see that when he does this little thing that i have noticed, where he plays the same combination of notes, across three strings as an ending to his whole "performance", for example the e string, then the a string, then the b string. i'm not sure if i make sense here... i am not particularly adept in communicating to anyone, let alone someone i do not know.

at the same time, i have watched a couple of andy timmons (if you don't know him, check him out, he has an amazing feel to his playing) videos a long time ago, where he said the best thing that he ever did playing guitar, was learning by ear. even though he eventually learned theory to understand and be more... enlightened with regards to what he was playing.

if you have managed to see guthrie govan in action, i hope you do feel inspired by such a great player. he was, or rather, still is my muse in guitar playing.

i know i owe it to myself to learn more about chord theory and chord building to improve in improvising, more specifically, in a jazz context. problem is, for awhile now i have been more interested in improving as a songwriter, rather than a guitar player, if you get what i mean. it was a pivotal moment when i decided to blow my two months work pay on an acoustic rather than a new electric. hah! i've become your sensitive acoustic-bearing songwriter writing love songs for no one and about no one, and dreaming of the day when he actually becomes brave enough to perform and comes out and everyone goes "he's amazing!".

i know john mayer once had such a coming-out fantasy.

oh, before i forget, your remark on how players like steve vai and yngwie would be if such resources were available to them back in the day. well, i have observed a couple of healthy debates on this from harmony central before, and i have to say that, they are great at what they do, and that i don't think they would be any more great of a player than they already are, just that they would be able to get where they wanted to be in a shorter time. after all, they would in my mind still be as successful as they are now, not because of the wide availability of resources, but because of their devotion and passion to the instrument that is way above everyone else's.

all of what i've said is of course, is in my humble opinion. i hope i have been of some help to you. one should always lead by example instead of preaching, and i think i have been preaching way too much. i wish you luck in your journey, and i'll end with charlie parker's quote - "You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."

oh by the way, here's an interesting little thing to train your ear. (relative pitch)

http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer

regards

so you wanna rock?

hey hi anonymous, interesting comment you made at my previous post. or rather, i really appreciate the effort you made to construct the message.

ha, and i thought it was spam initially. it certainly looked like advertisments especially with the links you provided.

good advice. i know them all already. and this is what i got to add and share, as you also seem to be studying improvisation.

firstly, i cant agree more that there are no 'wrong notes' on the fretboard. every note you ring is relative to the music you are playing and modes and scales should only serve as a guide.

one thing about me learning scales and modes is that i tend to play them 'blindly'. i dont know your standard but this serves as a warning for anyone learning scales and modes. you may have your modes and scales at your fingertips.

but how musical are you when using them?

slash is famous for constructing leads which make use of little notes, its amazing what he makes out of a minor pentatonic scale.

joe pass is a monster of jazz improvisation, i will check out the other guy you mentioned.

some time ago, i would run my fingers blindly upon picking up my guitar and i realised after a while that its really unhealthy. the running of scales did nothing to make my improvisation more musical. i may be able to play abit faster, but so what? its not as though i am shredding. its nothing compared to some of the shred freaks around. then again, i rather be more musical than technical.

the best thing to do is actually to use your ears. visualise a melody in your mind first, then try to construct it by finding the various notes. usually, the notes in the melody would happen around the same area which is actually a scale in itself. to me that is the beauty of the guitar. its something that piano can never achieve.

as for backup tracks, i have two websites to share with you too. and i think they are much better than the link you referred me to.

http://www.guitarbt.com/index.php?page=dl_list&cat=Jam%20Tracks
this first link features mainly blues backing. you can even download them, very useful indeed.

http://betterguitar.com/Instruction/Improvising/ImprovisingIndex.html
all right, this second link is actually a webpage that incorporates teaching with backup tracks to support the learning.

one of the best things today is probably all the various resources we have online. can you imagine how people like steve vai and yngwie malsteen will play now if they enjoy all the resources we have today at their time....

who wanna rock?

i justified today by playing guitar.

i still play like shit, and i get pretty angry over it sometimes. there is this screaming lead i cant get out of my soul. no pun intended with regards to the recent newswriting assignment. but owell, it kinda applies too.

there is a certain magic formula to play the electric guitar. you can compose your own muscial screaming lead if you master the formula. its really similar to magic. i am getting fucking irritated by my inability to improvise after playing for nearly 2 years now.

there are a few possible reasons.

1. i lack theory.

2. i lack musical sense.

3. i lack someone to practice with me.

yes. all 3 are good reasons, and i shall tackle all of them. so...

i am looking for any boy whom like to play guitar like me to play at my house. if you stay in yishun and like to play improvisational guitar, you can lug your amplifier over to my place and we can trade a few licks.

in fact anyone is the most welcome.

especially, if you are interesting in playing blues with all the emo string bending.

PLEASE dont come and pester me if you know nothing about the guitar. i aint interested to share my little knowledge and help make someone a better guitarist.

go to the void deck if you are gonna strum chords and sing oasis. i aint interested in that.

all right, anyone?

hot... hot... hot...

the weather is so fucking hot.

if i am the decision-maker next time, i will take the following actions.

the day would be declared a national public holiday if the highest temperature of the day exceeds 34 degrees celsius.

free bottles of chilled pink dolphin to be given out to the public at all mrt stations. i stress the word chilled~ its such a sin to drink pink dolphin that is not cold.

free admission to all public swimming pool.

all air conditioner machines to be up for 40% sales.

free electricity consumption for the day.

compulsory bikini day for all females between the age of 18-25.

all right, ladies above 25 can stay home to enjoy the air-con.

thank you, i shall call for a more formal news conference if this gets somewhere.