Happy Birthday ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nebris!
Aug. 28th, 2007 07:37 amMany happy returns of the day!
Aug. 28th, 2007
Happy Birthday
Aug. 28th, 2007 07:37 amMusical Updatia
Aug. 28th, 2007 10:06 amThe other day, I found my guitar stand - it holds three guitars. More accurately, it will hold the guitar in the icon, the bass, and the acoustic. Or, it would, if I could figure out where in a quarter billion boxes I packed the bottom 3 U shaped padded bars that actually do the holding up part of the deal.
I thought I had an idea in what sort of box these three things might be hiding in, so I looked.
I found my music - not quite all of the manuscript books, but the two most critical. These include my first manuscript when I started taking lessons with Robin. It contains a ton of stuff - some, what she was teaching me, includes scales, patterns, chords, and snippets or entireties of tunes; others include my original music. The second book has newer material, more refinements to Fantasia Macabre (although I'm not sure I have the entire 45 minutes (+/-) written out anywhere), as well as definitive parts to Forbidden Love/Forgotten Royalty - with the exception of the third part of Forbidden Love. Unfortunately, I don't think that's written out or recorded anywhere. I have an idea what I did for it, but it will need to be recreated, and it's not likely to be the same. Close, but not the same.
The collection also includes the entirety of Demon's Kiss, which is actually much easier to play than FL/FR. Think Empire-era Queensryche combined with Abigail-era King Diamond combined with early Iron Maiden, with lyrics about a vampire. FL/FR is a loose interpretation of the Lord Soth tale from Dragonlance - the first half is clean, technical arpeggiated chords; the second half has so many different parts, rhythms, and structures. It is easily the most technically difficult piece I've written. Think Marty Friedman's stuff with Megadeth, with a few shades from Hall of the Mountain King-era Savatage, early Queensryche, a riff that combines a Black Sabbath feel with fast technical pull-offs, a healthy solo section that makes a deliberate nod to the latter half of Judas Priest's Dying to Meet You, a heavy doom/thrash bit, and a light, airy riff that comes somewhere in the middle of all of that.
There are some bits and pieces that might be able to be lifted for use by The Lefty Valdez Band (or whatever we decide to actually name ourselves! =), but very few completed tunes will fit in - acoustic stuff like Talent Lost can be used, and we may be able to take one of the heavier tunes - Sorrow's End - and do an arrangement on it with the horns.
Even cooler was that two of my "exercises" were in there. I've been working on the first, originally titled Scalar Goof Off, and later given the more lofty title of Ascension, and can now play through it fairly smoothly, if not nearly as fast as I should. Justin is pretty sure that even that slow speed is a few knots faster than what he can manage on the keyboards. The piece is mostly ascending 7th arpeggios, with a few melodic segments, and a couple of arpeggiated fragments that can almost-but-not-quite be played with a sweep. I was, even at my peak of practice and playing, not quite able to sweep them, and, surprisingly, I'm not far from being able to do so now. Quite a workout.
The other, which captured its title Childhood's Dance a dozen years ago when toddler-aged Justin did so, was crafted on the computer, as with Ascension, but where as the first was just random in-key splatterings of notes and patterns, the second was crafted explicitly to be a collection of exercises for guitar that had at least a wee-bit of melodic interest to a listener. Etudes, I suppose you could call both of them. They sound best with a clean guitar and a single coil neck pickup. Lots of reverb is required, and, adding a thick delay (preferably strong enough to contain a handful or more of canons an eighth note away) decreases the fretboard workout aspect and makes them a bit more interesting to listen to. The software they were written on allowed only four voices - that is, four same or different sounds, one note per voice - and included a trumpet playing the half note bass part and three kazoos doing the canon.
Anyway, after getting the first few parts of Ascension down the other day, I finished it off last night and played through it a few times, getting it smoother and a little faster. My fingers are now floating over the keyboard (computer, not musical) somewhere in the 90wpm+ range, and wondering why they are standing still and not doing something more useful with all their free time. Although it was just starting to be called so at the time I wrote it, this style of playing, boys and girls, is what is now known as shred.
I thought I had an idea in what sort of box these three things might be hiding in, so I looked.
I found my music - not quite all of the manuscript books, but the two most critical. These include my first manuscript when I started taking lessons with Robin. It contains a ton of stuff - some, what she was teaching me, includes scales, patterns, chords, and snippets or entireties of tunes; others include my original music. The second book has newer material, more refinements to Fantasia Macabre (although I'm not sure I have the entire 45 minutes (+/-) written out anywhere), as well as definitive parts to Forbidden Love/Forgotten Royalty - with the exception of the third part of Forbidden Love. Unfortunately, I don't think that's written out or recorded anywhere. I have an idea what I did for it, but it will need to be recreated, and it's not likely to be the same. Close, but not the same.
The collection also includes the entirety of Demon's Kiss, which is actually much easier to play than FL/FR. Think Empire-era Queensryche combined with Abigail-era King Diamond combined with early Iron Maiden, with lyrics about a vampire. FL/FR is a loose interpretation of the Lord Soth tale from Dragonlance - the first half is clean, technical arpeggiated chords; the second half has so many different parts, rhythms, and structures. It is easily the most technically difficult piece I've written. Think Marty Friedman's stuff with Megadeth, with a few shades from Hall of the Mountain King-era Savatage, early Queensryche, a riff that combines a Black Sabbath feel with fast technical pull-offs, a healthy solo section that makes a deliberate nod to the latter half of Judas Priest's Dying to Meet You, a heavy doom/thrash bit, and a light, airy riff that comes somewhere in the middle of all of that.
There are some bits and pieces that might be able to be lifted for use by The Lefty Valdez Band (or whatever we decide to actually name ourselves! =), but very few completed tunes will fit in - acoustic stuff like Talent Lost can be used, and we may be able to take one of the heavier tunes - Sorrow's End - and do an arrangement on it with the horns.
Even cooler was that two of my "exercises" were in there. I've been working on the first, originally titled Scalar Goof Off, and later given the more lofty title of Ascension, and can now play through it fairly smoothly, if not nearly as fast as I should. Justin is pretty sure that even that slow speed is a few knots faster than what he can manage on the keyboards. The piece is mostly ascending 7th arpeggios, with a few melodic segments, and a couple of arpeggiated fragments that can almost-but-not-quite be played with a sweep. I was, even at my peak of practice and playing, not quite able to sweep them, and, surprisingly, I'm not far from being able to do so now. Quite a workout.
The other, which captured its title Childhood's Dance a dozen years ago when toddler-aged Justin did so, was crafted on the computer, as with Ascension, but where as the first was just random in-key splatterings of notes and patterns, the second was crafted explicitly to be a collection of exercises for guitar that had at least a wee-bit of melodic interest to a listener. Etudes, I suppose you could call both of them. They sound best with a clean guitar and a single coil neck pickup. Lots of reverb is required, and, adding a thick delay (preferably strong enough to contain a handful or more of canons an eighth note away) decreases the fretboard workout aspect and makes them a bit more interesting to listen to. The software they were written on allowed only four voices - that is, four same or different sounds, one note per voice - and included a trumpet playing the half note bass part and three kazoos doing the canon.
Anyway, after getting the first few parts of Ascension down the other day, I finished it off last night and played through it a few times, getting it smoother and a little faster. My fingers are now floating over the keyboard (computer, not musical) somewhere in the 90wpm+ range, and wondering why they are standing still and not doing something more useful with all their free time. Although it was just starting to be called so at the time I wrote it, this style of playing, boys and girls, is what is now known as shred.
