Went down to Seattle for 3 days with Wendy and her family. The trip was quite fun and relaxing and not boring at all except for the long drives. Wish I had more time at the University Village shopping mall, it was a really nice place to wander around for a day or so. Our schedule was kind of tight, didn’t get to see much. One great thing I did was that I owned the gym at the hotel for a full hour, with HDTV and free ice cold water and air-conditing! Definitely don’t mind going back down there for more shoppings.

Been working out in my home gym lately, 2-3 times a week. Also been riding my bicycle around town, to supermarkets and malls etc. Sweating really makes one feel better and in fact, more relaxed. The $150 bicycle is holding up strong still, just a couple minor tightenings on various parts but that’s about it, possibly the best money spent in the last while. I got a huge bottle of Creatine powder today from GNC, going to load up with it and see what happens!

Also been working on writing songs and messing with Logic 9. Such a fun and powerful app which really does magic in terms of song arrangement. I finished up with my third song today, uploaded it to my SoundCloud page.

I’ve never really thought that I’d be making music again. Last time I made a serious piece of music was before I came to Canada, around 1994-1996 (The ones I made for my band didn’t count as they weren’t my compositions) I wasn’t even sure what stopped me from writing songs but it just happened. Lately I had a chance to pickup a copy of Logic Studio 9 (by pick up I mean, via torrent, lol) and got it set up on my Macbook. Last week I made a decision to bring my Roland XP-50 synthesizer down to my home office, and that actually got me started messing with Logic and actually got the synth and the Mac connected. I was shocked when Logic recognized my synth as soon as I connected it to the Mac via the USB MIDI adapter! It was such a dream come true since I’ve always thought that my synth is just too old and any new app would never be compatible with it, and it proved that I was wrong. And good thing’s that Logic is REALLY easy to use (not surprising since it’s designed for a Mac), very intuitive and I had no problem getting started (0 learning curve). I actually got part of the song done the first day I got it set up! I’ve also figured out a way to “dump” all the system settings on my synth into Logic so that the settings and patches can all be stored within the Logic project. Super cool. Now I need an audio interface that will allow me to have better control on the audio input/output (I’m getting static noise with the internal sound card, really gay), plus cleaner audio. Probably going for the M-Audio Firewire 410, which sells for ~$150-200 on eBay.

Also got a couple really cool software synthesizers recommended by Andrew. So far I’ve got Alchemy, Vanguard, and FM8. They sound super cool, and each of them has its own appegiator or pattern generator which basically plays a certain series of notes automatically when you hold a key on the keyboard. Just tons of cool stuff that I’ve never seen before!

Miyavi, “Guitar God” in Japan. I’ve heard of him years ago but somehow I rejected him and his songs since he looked slutry and so on. I somehow came across images of his wife - Melody - and somehow I stumbled upon a link to his video “Selfish Love”. I admit that I was speechless seeing his guitar performance - extreme unique style and god-like technique, and then I realized he wrote all of his songs, just crazy good. He’s pretty much all laid back when he plays his songs, almost like these perfect notes just somehow burst out from his fingers and guitar. I checked out a couple of his songs like the 世紀型行進曲 from his debut single…crazy skills and super cool riffs. I’m impressed.

Figured out last night how to get Garage Band on the Macbook to accept output from my Kalimba, also got the effects working in real time! So I can hear in real time the effects being applied to the Kalimba sound while playing on it! Super super cool. Now I just have to figure out how to do the same thing in Logic as Logic has wayyyy more effects and stuff. It shouldn’t be too hard I suppose. I tried to play E1M8 song in Doom with the “Wave Bass” effect switched on, and here’s the result:

 

 E1M8 (Doom) on Kalimba: Play Now | Download (887)

Played more on the Kalimba. I tuned it to D major now instead of the original G major by changing the C to C#. Pretty straightforward, just needed to push/slide 3 of the tines upward a bit. I wanted to play the Pachelbel Canon and it was in D major so the original G major tune was missing the C#. Also after the tuning I found that it sounded really cool playing it in B minor. Here’s a recording with the cheapass Macbook built-in mic, using Garage Band. The bass was like non-existent Maybe I’ll figure out a way to record it using the pick up built into the Kalimba…

 

 B minor on Treble Kalimba: Play Now | Download (35)

NOOOOOOOOO….

The sale for the tickets to the X Japan concert 22nd November in Paris was DELAYED. I can’t accept this. What if I don’t get to see them again. What if Yoshiki’s neck problem worsen (please don’t). Just let me see you guys once, once is enough (twice is better, and so on). Anyway I’ll be constantly checking the news on X’s official website to see when is the tickets for the show in Paris is going to be on sale.

Also heard that they are going to have a crazy huge show in Hong Kong sometime next year. No clue if I’ll be able to get a ticket to the show, probably will be fairly difficult for me, but I’ll try.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to X Japanese’s latest song “I.V.” they made after their reunion last year. It’s also one of the theme songs for the movie SAW IV.