Finished forensic medicine’s ‘extra’ test this evening. Still have final examination for the semester, and it is just around the corner.

I have received two offer from my friends to do a wedding/engagement photography, but the date of the event prevent me from accepting it. And the other thing is, I am not confident with myself to do a wedding photography yet. I have never tagged with anyone to know how a wedding photographer do their work even once, and I have no experience of doing such job. I am afraid that the artwork then will be sub par. For me, wedding is such a beautiful thing that the job of documenting it in form of meaningful photos is a very serious matter and it should not be ruined by a a work from hobbyist photographer like me. To my friend(s) if you read this, I am so sorry to not accepting your offer.

During my time as a child, as a teenager, I have always struggled to get what I want. There are nothing that can withhold me from achieving things I’ve wanted. The principle had brought me a lot of victorious moment and I hungers for more. But, the principle was defied during my time at Matriculation, it was a mistake to over enjoy it. It was more than frustration that overwhelmed me quite for a long of time. But now, I am right back on track, and it almost halfway through. I don’t want to ruin this opportunity.

This is a video of Naruto Soundtrack “The Raising Fighting Spirit”. Originally composed by Toshiro Matsuda. In this video, I have recorded three tracks for the guitar, a lead guitar, another one to harmonize the lead guitar, and the rhythm guitar for backing. This song dedicated to [anis] which is now struggling with her clinical years. Busy, tired, lack of time for ownself, and this song is to enlighten you :p

Enjoy

I have played guitar seriously since I was 11 years old. I have taken a classical guitar class during the earlier days, but halted as I have to continue my study at Sekolah Menengah Sains Teluk Intan (SEMESTI). During my time at SEMESTI, guitar is forbidden. You can’t bring your guitar to dormitories. However, I managed to play in a band during an event after PMR, which the band is a complete disaster with all tuning problems, lack of confidence, lack of knowledge and lack of everything (at least for me..hehe). But, from there, I manage to get a position in the school’s orchestra (which became a group of clowns being laughed at during the Wind Orchestra Competition at Sekolah Dato’ Abdul Razak). I played bass guitar in the orchestra.

But the most important thing that I want to address here is how a person (Mr. Mastor Jarkaseh, please google him), despite of the major lacks in instruments at the school, managed to made a huge leap for the school’s music field. Everything about music back then were related to Mr. Mastor such as nasyid’s minus one, rock band’s arrangement, orchestra, kompang arrangement, piano accompaniment during “Negaraku” and so on. He never get angry when we do mistakes during practice (usually music teacher is so fierce, which is the reason I hated music lesson at primary school). And there was one time where Mr. Mastor replace our drummer for our orchestra practice session, and everyone stopped playing, stunned with the sounds he made from a broken drum-set with teared cymbal, torn snare and everything you could imagine. By the way, he is very-very-very good at drums while he can play the piano and guitar as well. Once in a while, I learned how to read sheet music from him (there was only one class that take music lesson during that time, and it was not my class).

“Belajar elok-elok, awak ada peluang belajar yang bagus. Saya dulu tak ada peluang, terpaksa mula lambat”

“Kalo awak nak baca muzik, awak kena baca pelan-pelan, jangan hafal not-not yang awak nak main, awak kena baca”

“Saya ada rm50 je ni, awak makan la berempat, saya tak apa”, kata Cikgu Mastor sambil hulur not rm50 kepada budak-budak band.

And he taught me how to play the “Hati Emas” guitar solo, one of the first guitar solo that I’ve learned and improvised by myself.

This guitar cover was made for [anis] for her birthday. I like the melody of the song, so I studied the song for about a day, then I recorded it. There are mistakes here and there. I recorded 3 takes for this song, but I gave up as there was still mistakes done on the 3rd take. hehe. Sape suruh malas praktis.

Enjoy. Thanks Mr. Mastor.

Paul Gilbert influenced me a lot in my guitar playing. This is one of  my favourite Paul Gilbert’s song. Lots of melodic shredding (I cannot really appreciate music with least melody, but there is always an exception to some type of songs).

I started to like Paul’s playing when I saw how he has this kind of picking styles, which is rhythmically super-accurate, and the pick sounds is very obvious, which I like very much. Besides that, his tutorial videos never let me down, because he is also good at teaching (it’s not like some tutorial videos with the guitarist  showing off , speeding like there’s no tomorrow, and no real kind of teaching happened).

In this video, there are some flaws in my playing besides my playing is not as accurate as Paul Gilbert’s playing. I kind of realized that my playing is very sloppy when I see my own video. But, who cares? I am pleasing myself, not anyone else.

The Curse of The Castle Dragon. Am I cursed? ” No, its me myself.”

Enjoy.

*UPDATE: I have changed the video host to YouTube because Flickr cannot play the full video, somehow it play the video halfway and the video finished there. Adoi…

The time moves at a very calm pace at the moment. Nothing to rush, nothing to be finished but it was so boring.

I have made another track, which is slightly longer than the last one that I have posted. This track was much influenced by In Flames. Heavy melodic backing track with simplistic guitar solo. In the initial part, the licks was done with some Wah added to the sound which the Wah was from my Line 6 POD XT Live.

Recorded just like before with me on everything (no bass guitar though).

Photography? Wait till I have new photos, no photography outing at the mean time.

‘F’ word for Streamyx for being such sluggish and slow. The only thing that I adore Streamyx is that they have the distinctive patience when being cursed like crazy by me. It was tiresome for me to make this post.

Enjoy.

Tomorrow I will present my case, yet I am procrastinating by doing this track.

Yup, this is not photography, but I love guitar too, so I guess there’s nothing wrong to put it here (this is my photoblog anyway ). This track was originally composed by me, the person who don’t have much knowledge on reading sheet music or complex music theory. The tracks cannot be categorized as a song, as it is too short. Jingle is more suitable, although it is also not exactly a jingle.

The solo track was recorded one timer via my Line 6 POD XT LIVE directly connected to my computer via USB (professional microphone is too expensive, plus I don’t have tube amp to produce decent quality of sound). The guitar used was Ibanez PGM30 with standard pickups. It is not the prestigious Paul Gilbert PGM3, it is just a guitar that Ibanez made for people who cannot afford the PGM3. But still, the guitar cost me an arm and leg. The software used for recording and mixing was Ableton Live.

The backing tracks was also played by me and it was recorded using same method like above. There are several backing tracks layer, which I played one by one and mix it all up together with the solo track  using Ableton Live. The drum tracks was arranged by me using Acoustica Beatcraft (I am not a drummer, so don’t expect fancy drum line).

This is for my solitary diamond

Enjoy!