Tibet Angel – Malaikat Tibet

1 more week to chinese new year, so I’m in the mood to play something asian flavoured.

—–> CLICK HERE to listen to the song

Dragonforce – Valley of the Damned – Outro solo

I have nothing to do for today so I decided to take vid of me playing some guitar licks ^_^

This is the lick that I like to play for my warming up before I play other song. The song called Valley of the Damned by Dragonforce.

ドラゴンフォースのValley of the Damned、最後のソロを引いてみました。指の練習または指のウォーミングアップに 最適じゃないかと思います。

This is only the outro solo part. I tried to imitate herman li’s solo when he played for young guitar magazine here in Japan. The backing track is grabbed from the original recording.

Air in G Rock Version

My First guitar instrumental video in 2010.

6 days ago I started to practice this song and had a lot of fun practicing this. The original version was done by youtube username : behimo. Of course he’s version is still the best out there. I tried to cover this without whammy though.

Some sweep and alternate pickings are off but I like the sound of my guitar in this one so I decided to upload it anyway.

Home Coming Pictures

Link to pictures of my home coming uploaded at facebook.

ジャカルタで取った写真をアップしました。リンクは下記にあります。

——–> Link

welcome 2010

After having great time spending new year at Jakarta, now I’m back to reality life again in Japan.

I hope and wish everybody have a good and prosper year this year.

Sunday the 13th Dec 2009 – My best Live performance yet

A lot of practice and preparation were made for today, sunday the 13th in December 2009. This is the first time I’m performing guitar solo concert Live in front of approximately 150 people.

Here is the breakdown.

13th Dec 2009

8:20 AM

went to meet the EO at meeting point cuz he’s going to pick me up, he’s almost 10 minutes late and it freezes me because its winter and I need to wait outside holding my electric guitar and a bag of Effector in cold weather for almost 10 minutes.

Last night I already handed over the guitar amp and acoustic guitar (my reserve guitar just in case my electric guitar went wrong) so today I only preparing the electric guitar and effector

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM

helping out the EO for place arrangement, went with meeting, get my stuff onto the artist’s waiting room, yeeeay this is my first time getting my own artist room for preparing, I need to share it with dancer from myanmar though.

10:30 PM  – 11:10PM

some confirmation with the person in charge of sound effect etc and had some rehearsal, played the song 2 times. At first I use my zoom effector directly to PA mixer but it didn’t went so well so I used the 15 watt guitar Amp that I borrowed and had it through the microphone from PA system and it sounded good.

11:10 PM – 14:45 PM

lunch (provided by EO), enjoying the show, there was a japanese drum show etc, and of course the dance from myanmar, so my performance is actually the last one. I also made from with the dancer and her family during this time.

14:45 PM – 15:00 PM

My SHOW TIME. although I made several mistakes here and there but the result is nevertheless quite good. Especially from phillipines audiences. I played “My Grandfather’s clock rock version” and “One of us”, to my surprises the phillipinos actually sing it for me in the middle of my performances.

15:00 PM -17:00 PM

blent in with audiences for minigames etc, I received many good comment and also quite surprising comment like “I actually looked down on you when you went on stage but after hearing your playing  it’s good”.

17:00 PM – 20:00 PM

closing and tidying up things etc, and we went to had dinner at chinese restaurant, actually each of us need to pay 3500 yen (for non drinker) to join the dinner party but the EO said he’ll treat me because I did good performance back there. So yeah, my best dinner in these past few months

Filling the missing gap

Too lazy and too busy with other things so I didn’t have enough time to pay attention to this blog.

well, here’s a recap of what I’ve done for this several weeks. There were actually too may things happened but I won’t write it all.

Continuing from the last post’s time event

27th oct :

My brazilian friend suddenly said he’s going back to brazil for a while so we ate dinner at sushi restaurant (the one with spinning table). The restaurant’s called sushiro and it’s quite good especially I like the “ebi mayo” and “ebi salmon” which is their specialty.

nearby the restaurant I saw Uniqlo which is a cloth chain store. I’ve been searching for Uniqlo in okazaki for some time and now I found it by accident. Uniqlo is famous because the price is quite cheap (for japanese standard) and the quality is surprisingly good too.

31th oct :

Another brazilian friend  invited me to a halloween party. He said if we go with some costume then we could go in for free. So we went to nearby Aeon department store, I got my self a cute halloween hat.

But when we tried to get in to the party, alas we need to pay 4000 yen. I already doubted that we could go in by free because I already checked the internet and it didn’t say anything about getting in for free.

1th Nov:

Another halloween event. This time I became a guest speaker (english speaker) in some local event held by 2 children english teacher. It’s been quite some time to play around with a lot of children.

We supposed to do some trick or treat after playing games etc. But the rain was falling down. So the teachers called the parents to take the candies to the event place and I distribute it to them. Me and the teachers also use the umbrella to guard the children from rain when we’re walking them down to nearest station so they could get picked up by the parents.

3rd Nov:

Invited to some local event so there I went. Not exactly like what I was expected but at least I got some useful information especially about cancer.

After that since I have some time I decided to went to Uniqlo that I discovered last week. Planned to buy 1 outer jacket for winter, instead I bought 2 of them. 1 is the winter jacket and 1 is synthethic leather jacket.

4th Nov :

Guest from my home country Indonesia came to office for training. There were 2 of them and it’s nice to finally speak some Indonesian language in the office.

8th Nov :

Went to sight seeing with the 2 guests and some supervisor. I also got the chance to visit the GM(general manager), well he’s one of 2 supervisor at that day. I visited his place and he let me play his 380.000 yen guitar.

The string action of that guitar is super low so on that day I decided I need to make my guitar set like that.

We ended the day by eating in Japanese restaurant. I will never have intention to go to japanese restaurant by myself especially at night because of their price. so I had a nice dinner.

14th Nov:

Already tried to lower my string action to 1.5 mm but I could only get it to as low as 2.0 mm so I took it Nagoya where I bought the guitar. Luckily I checked the internet for the place because they moved to another place.

They gave a warranty for 1 year for the setup things etc so I get my guitar set up for free. The guitar itself cannot be set lower without some little overhaul and the luthier asked if I’m sure want to do this because he’s gonna separate the neck from the guitar and put some wood beneath it so the angle will change. I said yes and he got it set up to 1.0 mm ^_^.

At the night I went to my Indonesian friend’s place and spent 1 nite to play his ps3. It’s been a long time since I play console game ^_^.

15th Nov:

Giving private indonesian lesson to one of my student

19th Nov:

Tried to meet someone that interested to learning indonesian from me, the meeting place is radio station but I didnt know that I will meet him right inside when he’s on air, and well, I was put on air too. this is my first time to be an air live in radio station.

after that we went to get some dinner. at that time I discoverd that he’s practicing “mushinkoryuu” which is some type of martial arts based on ninja.

22th Nov:

another private lesson session

after that another meeting was supposed to be held but4 out of 5 students didn’t came so it was cancelled.

at night I went with my brazilian friend to watch 2012 at theatre

24th Nov:

just got shocking info that there will be no guitar amp on my performance day so I need to convert to acoustic guitar or get my self a guitar amp that supports big hall room

28th Nov:

private indonesian lesson with the ninja student, at that time I told about amp and he told me he could lent me one because he didn’t use it. So I borrowed it from him. It’s small and not in a very good condition but still could produce sounds. So I’m thinking to use this on my guitar performance day.

ow and the students meeting that should be held on 22th were shifted to this day

1st Dec:

I accidentally crash my guitar on to the floor at last nite so today I’m going to guitar shop to get it fixed. since its too far to go to nagoya. i went to the nearest branch which is in kariya. luckily I could find it in time before it closed. I need to pay for the spare parts that I broke but other than that it’s free.

5th Dec:

went with my ninja student to learn some ninja technique from him. so the agreement is if I teach him indonesian, he will teach me some ninjutsu .

after that I  went to get my ticket to go back home to indonesia.

Grandfather’s Clock Rock Version

The real Rock arrangement version was made by Japanese Guitarist named Sakata.

I couldn’t play exactly like Sakata so I trimmed down and changed several parts of the arrangement into easier note in order for me to play it.

Sakata’s arangements consists of advanced scaling, picking and tapping techniques that currently still out of my reach.

ps : the original song is a very slow song.

Deepening music theory

Deepening music theory

Background
It’s been more than 10 years after I decided to choose guitar as my musical instrument. I’ve been playing intermittently for these years learning by myself without any strong foundation of music theory.

In the past 2 years here in Japan, I’ve done around 10 shows (including guitar solo and with the band). Suddenly I’m not only play for myself but for the audience too, And suddenly I felt that I need to deepen my musical theory comprehension, hence I wrote this article.

Modern Music Scale Modes

To make things simple I will use C major scale as an example, so the note will go like this

c  d  e  f   g  a  b

or

do re mi fa sol la ti

if you remember the basic music class then you will know that the major interval is

w w h w w w h

and the minor is

w h w w h w w

(w is whole step and h is half step)

so here we go

1.Ionian mode A.K.A Major scale
c d e f g a b

2.Dorian mode

d e f g a b c

3.Phrygian mode
e f g a b c d

4.Lydian mode
f g a b c d e

5.Mixolydian mode
g a b c d e f

6.Aeolian mode A.K.A Minor scale
a b c d e f g

7.Locrian mode
b c d e f g a

can you see the pattern here ?

1. c d e f g a b
2. d e f g a b c
3. e f g a b c d
4. f g a b c d e
5. g a b c d e f
6. a b c d e f g
7. b c d e f g a

for the interval it will go like this

1. w w h w w w h
2. w h w w w h w
3. h w w w h w w
4. w w w h w w h
5. w w h w w h w
6. w h w w h w w
7. h w w h w w w

(note that from b to c and e to f are always half step)

now let’s call 1 as 1st degree and so on

interesting observation

1st degree is major scale and 6th degree is minor scale so every major note from 1st degree will resonance with minor note from 6th degree

for example C major will resonance with A minor because A is the 6th degree in C major

c d e f g a b
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

since we know 1st and 6th degree are important, let’s see more, 3rd and 7th degree mode is the only mode that start with half step, so if you combine them together.

1 6 3 7 –> this is the most used verse pattern ever in pop and or rock song

my music teacher once said that you only need to know C F and G to make a song. I finally understand what he want to said because F and G are 4th and 5th degree of C major

I found out that every 4th and 5th degree from a note will make a wonderful chorus chord.

since we know that 1 3 4 5 6 7 are important note. where is the 2nd ? well it turned out that the second degree note of every scale is the most unimportant note.

There is alot more to cover but for now I will end this article at this point.

Mid October entry 10th to 12th

10th October

Got an offering as a guest speaker in halloween party in early November. Last month I got an offering to do some guitar show on other party at December, starting in October suddenly I get so busy ^_^

Had some BBQ party later at night

11th October

Second time as Indonesian language teacher, this time I felt more confidence and could handle and control the class better than last time. Some people expressing that they wanted private lesson too ^_^

12th October

Good bye party for one of my first japanese friend when I got here in Aichi prefecture.  We ate at Italian restaurant