--______--

It annoys me that I haven't made much time this week for music. I mean its not like I've been THAT busy I've just been too tired. All those late nights are coming back to haunt me now that I'm having to get up at 6 >_<. What it means is that I aren't progressing with learning guitar as much as I'd hoped to be, I'm still regressing a lot with my piano technique and control (ahh the banes of my life!!!), and my song is not progressing much.


Now it's the weekend. The time when everything I put off doing during the week gets done. Oh, and I have work as well >>_<<


So, yeah. That's pretty much my life right now. I kinda reckoned on having a bit more time for stuff but due to 3rd year uni work and losing 3-4 hours a day on/waiting for public transport I don't. If only late nights didn't have such a major effect 2 weeks later...


And if someone can give me guitar lessons it would be much appreciated :D

Idea...

So it's 6:55am and I should really be getting ready to go to uni since my bus leaves at 7:15 buuuuttt I really wanted to post this. I've tried to write songs a lot over the past few years but because I'm not the greatest lyricist, ok and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I never got anything finished. And then I forgot what I had got. SO now I've decided to start a songbook notebook thing so I can keep all the clever chord progressions, motifs, and scraps of lyrics I come up with and hopefully one day take a few and make a song out of them. Well that was the plan. Until, long story short, I got motivated to write a song for our upcoming church youth camp...


So yeah. I'm interested in how that'll turn out...


And I'm running late for my bus...

Something I read...

"The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short."

Forward to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

I like this for so many reasons...

Fail and Some Wins

So as you can probably see by scrolling a short way down this page about 6 months (-ish) ago I decided to come back from my unexpected "blog hiatus". And as you can see by the 1 post since then it ... ahh ... yeah. So a bit of a fail there. But I've been busy with uni, work, music, and even helping set up a youth council! So a few wins there.


And now I'm not sure how to carry that on so I'll add a few random thoughts to the end of this post to make it a bit more substantial.

1. I haven't been listening to much of the hard rock or metal on my ipod recently. My playlist has been more along the lines of Chopin, Enya, The Rocket Summer, The Fray, Sigur Ros and an overall mix of soft rock, easy listening, and classical. If anything heavy came up on shuffle I would skip it without hesitating. But since my last exam on Monday I've noticed Red, Underoath, Muse, and other hard and fast tracks have been creeping back in. When I realised it I found it slightly amusing.
2. Remember that 30 day song challenge thing that went around Facebook earlier in the year? I ended up falling behind a bit and never finished it but I've been considering doing it on my Tumblr. I just need to figure out what my favourite song is and trust me that is not an easy task for someone who's Top Rated playlist in iTunes has about 2/3 of the library in it! Watch this space.
3. I'm learning the first song in this clip now. The arrangement is not exactly the same but is similar and I can't play it at anything like this speed yet...

An Awesome Night

I love live music. I really love it. Really really really really ... well you get the picture. The only problem is most shows tend to be a bit out of the reach of a student's financial means, or at the least really stretch it, so I choose what I go to carefully and won't usually go to more than 1 or 2 a year. So it was no small matter me going to the Avalanche City show last Saturday night at the Studio on K' Road. It was pretty much perfect having a main act that I really love and supporting acts that I quite like as well as not being too expensive and not being too far away.
The first act, Alaska, are an indie-folk style band a bit like Mumford and Sons but more folky (if that's a word). I'm pretty sure I'd seen them at Parachute or somewhere before but if I had they have changed a LOT. (Btw check their stuff out at alaska.bandcamp.com). Luke Thompson, the official headliner, was quite different. He reminded me a bit of Ben Abraham but played much more acoustic stuff. Well to start with at least. Near then end he got Dave from Avalanche City and a couple of other musicians to come out and do a bit of a jam on his single Water and that was pretty awesome! (Here's a video. It's just a fanvid but the quality is reasonable)
Then it was the main event. I had no idea what to expect, to be honest, from a band that had been formed after the recording of the album to perform it (they kinda remind me of the Foo Fighters in that respect) but they definitely did not dissapoint. Dave Baxter (the lead singer, songwriter, and until a few months ago the whole band) lead the band really well and they were all very very tight even on the tricky xylaphone duet for Everybody Knows. I'm not quite sure what else to say - they were amazing! If you have only heard Love Love Love (that song on the TV2 ad) you are really missing out. As much as it is an awesome song the album has even better ones on it. Seriously, check it out! And they are even better live!

(Oh and big ups to my mate Luka for coming with me. Awesome night!)


On a side note there is now an AnalogueDigital tumblr where you can check out some interesting stuff that I have found on my periodical trawls around the intartubes (yeah and I'm studying CompSci as well :D ). Please follow me! 8-)

The Return

Well that was a rather long and undisclosed break/hiatus/whatever you want to call it. I kinda didn't even plan it but it happened anyway. I just kinda lost the buzz. But I'm back. SO what has happened since? Well first off I got a turntable for Christmas (yes 7 1/2 months ago :-O). I found my grandparents have a huge, i.e. 300+, stack of LPs in their attic that they've said I can take whatever I want from which is pretty awesome for a semi-audiophile like me. Currently I've got about 20-30 singles and LPs in my makeshift cabinet (the box the turntable came in) and of those I have so far digitised:

• Antmusic (single) - Adam and the Ants
• Abbey Road - The Beatles
• Walk of Life (single) - Dire Straits
• ELO Greatest Hits - Electric Light Orchestra
• The Big Picture - Michael W. Smith
• Graceland - Paul Simon

which isn't really that many considering how many are sitting in the box.

I'm going to update the 'What I'm Playing' box soon as its really outdated. I'm currently working through a Beethoven sonata among other things which is cool since I've never played an entire sonata before. I'm also trying to arrange Someone Like You by Adele which sounds easy since its played entirely on piano anyway but since I can't hope to sing anything like as good as her I'm trying, with minimal success, to incorporate the melody into the arrangement.

As a side note the Tron: Legacy soundtrack was dissapointing. There was too much mediocre orchestra and not enough Daft Punk and, although some tracks were stunning, overall it just sounded like every other movie soundtrack being made. The movie itself was awesome though :D

It's A Whole New World, Baby :-P

So I was away over the weekend with my family in Coromandel (yeah, I know, lucky me) and on the way to the far side of the peninsula we stopped in Coromandel Town for ice cream. On the way to the ice cream shop we noticed a small little op-shop called The Bizarre so, intrigued, we wandered in. There was your usual odd selection of clothes, books, and video tapes, most of these home-made recordings of movies off TV, which were of minor interest but just as we were leaving I noticed the records. I've always been interested in vinyls, due partly to the fact that Dad's record player was stolen when I was 4 (long story), but mainly because of the massive amount of tweaking you can do to the sound and of course since they are becoming an endangered species like typewriters and TV antennae. Being at my Grandparents' bach with a record player available for the weekend seemed like too good an opportunity to miss so I bought 5. I didn't mean to buy that many but I did. However, for 50c each you can't really go wrong can you? 

The funny thing is that I'm now really interested in vinyl which I never thought I would be. I mean I assumed that I would enjoy the novelty of placing the needle in the lead-in groove and hearing that pop as it slid into place, listening to 25 or so minutes of comparably low-fi music, and carefully removing the needle before flipping the disc and repeating the process for a day or so but then it would wear off and I would be left annoyed at the hisses, clicks, and pops ruining my music but it didn't. And now I kinda like the artifacts here and there as it makes the recording sound much more natural compared to the sterilized sound of CDs. Also they just look so much better. There is no way the tiny 6 sq. in. jewel cases can match an envelope of 3 times the area for grandeur and impact of the cover art. Not even iTunes fancy cover flow comes near.

The best thing, however, is the price. Those 5 LPs cost the same amount as each CD I bought from the last op-shop I went to (that was over 6 months ago. It's not like I buy second hand music every other day!) and much less than the guy at the Napier markets who sells old CDs for $10 each. The main issue is they are tricky to rip to my computer for my iPod but with a decent turntable and Audacity anything's possible. As you can probably tell I'm quite excited about this - it's a whole new world waiting for me. Only ... I need to actually OWN a turntable first. Hello Trade Me ...