Musician wanna-be

Chord tasting the major7 chords

Victoria — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:13:32 -0500

During a chord-tasting session (like wine-tasting, but you taste chords instead of wine), I stumbled upon the Gmaj7 chord, and fell in love with it.

I love its airy expansiveness. When you play it together with the Cmaj7 chord, you can easily turn them into a 2 chords song with a nice floaty suspense.

I have named this 'song' Fathom. It reminds of scuba diving, regulating my breath underwater, my buoyancy determined by my breathing, and making bubbles as I exhale.

Here's the tab:

E----------2-------------2---------------0------0-2-
B-------0----0--------0---0----------0---0----------
G-----0--------0----0------- 0-----0--------0-------
D---------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------3----------------
E---3-------------3---------------------------------

And here's the loop, good for lullaby on sleepless nights:

Fathom.mp3 (4.9Mb)

Fathom (no loop).mp3 (168Kb)

My favourite FREE music

Victoria — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:00:10 -0400

Here's a list of my favourite FREE music. Yes, fellow cheapo-music-lovers, they're free for download. How wonderful, the internet is a wonderful place. And these are all legal too, I wouldn't want to rip these poor indie musicians off. I think this giving way free music works really well for them. I have often ended up buying the entire album anyway.

These tracks on the list are mostly from podcasts. The ones from IndieFeed have some narration in them, so they're not just the music tracks, but the others are just purely free music, just as if ripped from the albums.

I subscribe to the IndieFeed Podcast channels (Indie Pop, Electronica, Alternative / Modern Rock), and also the KEXP Song of The Day podcast. The list below are mostly songs I've discovered through the podcasts.

The Daytrotter ones are really cool too, they're not podcasts, but from a website. It's a really interesting idea, I highly recommend anyone to go explore the site. Here's how they describe what they do:

[the artists] ...as they’re traveling through America’s heartland – take two hours out of their travels between shows to stop in for a Daytrotter Session at Futureappletree Studio One in downtown Rock Island, Ill. The name of the city is not ironic. They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize a often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive.

And then there are the ones that nice indie bands put up for free on their websites (such as Cloud Cult.. Oh I love them).

There you go:

Happy silly

Sexy cool

Sappy wrenching

Chilly spacy

Whatever. I just love them... (mostly rock/altern)

PS: The ones with the heart icons are especially loved by me.

Why you should get a Tin Whistle

Victoria — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:17:37 -0400

I have bought a tin whistle just last week. I highly recommend anyone to get one.

I remember really hating wind instruments when I was a kid, playing the recorder very very badly (so badly I was kicked out of the school band). I never really thought I would one day every be able to play a wind instrument decently. But now it seems I am able to do it with the tin whistle! And I'm really not talented at all. So I am convinced that anyone will be able to play it and with much less effort than I have put in too (which isn't much really).

And it is really cheap. I got mine for 8 quid. You can get them from a music shop. They are just crudely made brass tubing with a mouthpiece, and are so light and hardy, you can carry them everywhere. I think that's the idea.

They are really simple instruments to learn. There are only 2 octaves on the tin whistle, and they typically start on a D note, playing the D major scale (that is Do Re Mi.. but starting with a D instead of a C). The D major scale is one of the most common scales that Irish songs come in. You can also get them in G major and A major scales. But for starters it's best to get D as most tutorials use that.

The songs are really catchy and easy to learn. Lots of repetitions, and can be very lively, like in a polka (the music they dance Ceilidh to). And it is good practice for reading musical notation too, if you aren't too familiar with the musical notation. The tin whistle scores are much easier to read than piano scores as there is just one melody running through it. No chords etc to distract you.

I have found this really useful tutorial on YouTube which has made learning the tin whistle a breeze. The links are below.

Afterall Guinness is such a great beer. Surely everything Irish is yummy.

He finds me funny

Victoria — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Ok.. so here is my new song. There's quite abit of white noise in the recording, and also the bad guitar playing and singing.. don't expect much. I don't claim to have talent. And yea, I was having too much fun with the layering too.. Oh well, but it was such great fun! Also do let me know if this actually sounds just like some existing song written by someone else. It's really hard to tell if you're hearing from your muse or from subconscious memory, especially for something so intuitive like music. There's always the risk that I might just accidentally plagiarise someone. Here you go: He Finds Me Funny.mp3 - 3.02 Mb (the Artist name is 'Tian', that's my Chinese name) He finds me funny (Chords: C Am Dm G again and again and again...) He finds me fun-funny When he teases me into crying Crying like a baby helpless and weak I weep, I weep, I weep He finds me funny, I'm sure All my desperate measures for his pleasure That's what he is after, the laughter, I'm sure My measures for his pleasure He finds me funny when I'm weak Hurting deep inside till I am meek Crying like a baby helpless and weak My spirit weaker weaker He finds me funny when I weep When he teases me into crying Crying like a baby helpless and weak I weep, I weep, I weep That's why he has made me... Oh god that's why he has made me... Oh god that's why he has made me... He finds me funny when I weep... That's why he has made me He finds me funny, I'm sure... All my desperate measures... He finds me funny when I'm weak... Hurting deep inside till I am meek...

The audacity to write songs (the very lazy way)

Victoria — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500

A friend has recommended the February Album Writing Month challenge to me, I think it's a great idea. So now the non-musically-inclined, no talent, no training, musical novice me, is going to write songs! In order to warm up to the event, I have tried writing a song last night. It worked surprisingly well. So I'm going to share my method with other non-musically-trained musician/songwriter wannabees like myself. How I do this is very simple, I start by chosing some chords that I like (Eg, C Am Dm G), and play it on the guitar until a melody comes into my head. Then I record the guitar part to my computer using this very cool free open source software, Audacity. After I have recorded the chords, I record the melody as well by humming it so I won't forget. With Audacity you can record multiple tracks to the same project and have the different recordings/tracks play in the same timeline. So I can get my humming to synchronise with the chords. And the best thing is that you can hear the other existing tracks on your earphones while singing into the microphone and recording into a new track. It's much easier than trying to play the guitar and sing at the same time at one go, hoping you won't make any mistake, and restarting if you do. I can also edit the tracks, adjust them, apply effects, time-shift them etc. And of course, export into mp3 or ogg. Next, I find some old rejected poems to salvage as lyrics and record the singing again and again until I get it more or less right. And tada! That's my new song. Without having to painfully note it down as musical scores or guitar tabs even! How lazy! The multiple tracks also enable you to create many layers of vocals and sound effects like an amateur version of Imogen Heap. It's great for people making music by themselves without the luxury of a band. It will be fun to make a game out of this. I can record some basic chords, put the Audacity project file on a forum, then have someone download it, record over it, and put it back. So people can essentially play in a band without meeting in real life. It's like a musical version of 'continue the story'. How fun! Anyway I'm all ready for February now. I'll perhaps even post up my new songs here if I ever feel so bold enough.

My fave guitar songs

Victoria — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I still love my new guitar, been playing it quite alot, I can't feel my fingers anymore, and I'm worried about carpal tunnel syndrome. I've also recently created an account at Last.fm, it annoyed me abit. But it does have some cool functionalities. Just don't use its 'Journal' facility, which would drive you up the wall really. I've had to retype my blog 3 times, which really really annoyed me. Why do people provide links on the blog edit page when clicking on those links makes your blog draft disappears, even when you use the browser back button to return to your draft?? So now I'm still angry with Last.fm. It will take awhile for me to forgive them. Hrmpph! They'll have to shower me with many many nice new music before I will forgive them. Anyway, like I have put up on my Journal on Last.fm, some of my current favourite songs to play on the guitar are:

Flying high - Jem
Tonight we ride - Jennifer O'connor
Dream a little dream - The mamas & the papas
She left on a monday - Bic Runga
You're so great - Blur
Archipelago - Mirah
你要的愛 - Penny Dai
關懷方式 - Chen Han Wei
月亮代表我的心 - Teresa Teng
Vincent - Vonda Shepard

They're great because they are satisfying to play, yet not too difficult. I'm a novice player with short stubby fingers and clumsy fat hands.

Bicky Boo

Victoria — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500

I bought a new guitar. I love it so much, so so much. It reminds me of the time when I had a dog. That sweet deep affection you feel for your pet. That's how I feel about my guitar, Bicky Boo. How I want to hug it to death.