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 (24)

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 (27)

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.

I’m pretty happy today since I got to play with this new FREE music sequencing software that Andrew sent me, called “MilkyTracker”. In fact I’m ULTRA happy with the software, it’s so awesome…! I got to create my own waveforms (i.e. sounds) and thus creating my own “instruments”. You can start creating from scratch by drawing the wave forms (yea, drawing them!!!) or you can start from a default waveform like a sine wave or a sawtooth. I had so much fun creating sounds!!! You can even create sounds from a drumkit like bass drum/snare/hi-hats… isn’t that fxxking too cool!?!? Also available are loads of built in effects that you can apply to individual notes, like tremolo, panning, volume sliding, vibrato, arpeggiating…and so on. The possibilities are just unlimited.

A description of Tracker from Wiki: “Tracker is the generic term for a class of software music sequencers which, in their purest form, allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across several monophonic channels. A tracker’s interface is primarily numeric; notes are entered via the alphanumeric keys of the computer keyboard, while parameters, effects and so forth are entered in hexadecimal. A complete song consists of several small multi-channel patterns chained together via a master list.”

Here’s the screenshot of Andrew’s song in Milky Trakcer. Somehow color of his app looks cooler which is unfair….! Anyway, I was messing with it for the whole night, and made this little crazy short piece (the first song below). I think it sounds okay…lol
The second song below was made by Andrew, it’s pretty awesome IMO.

 

 First song made with Milky Tracker [0:31m]: Play Now | Download (30)

 

 Andrew's first attempt on Milky Tracker [0:30m]: Play Now | Download (22)

First of all, I want to share this great Japanese song “??????????” (meaning: A flower that only blooms here) from the Japanese pop group “????” (Kobukuro). Very nice melodic song with great lyrics. My recent favorite group for sure, in addition to HY.

Here’s a translation of its lyrics from Japanese:

Anyway, I went to work today at the Burnaby office. Yea… how sad it is to work on a Saturday! BUT the trip was really worthwhile as I got to see the nicest sky and weather of the past…two months? Great great weather and clear sky…unlimited visibility….it was just the kind of weather that would make anyone smile Too bad I didn’t bring my Canon digital camera but I did carry my mini camera with me (the $9 one that I bought a week ago) and took some crappy pics but at least show you how great the day was!