To The Woman That Crapped in My Car--What a Wonderful Story!

I'm kind of late hearing about this Craigslist posting, and from what I read, it isn't true.  Still, it's one of those things that sound like it could be true because it's just so goofy.  I think it would make a nice movie!  Man goes out with woman on first date, date craps in his car, comedy ensues, they meet up again, and they get married!  Come on Disney, what are you waiting for?

The story, fake or not, was so inspiring, that I decided to write a song based on it.  I changed the title a little to, To The Girl Who Crapped in My Car.  Girl sounds better than woman, I think, and who is gramatically correct.

I used my trusty PRS Santana SE on this.  That guitar is a great all around guitar.  It's got the wide fat neck which makes it comfortable for rhythm playing.  It also is fairly bright sounding for humbuckers, so you can get that chime without the hum.

Oh yeah, I didn't finish FAWM 2009.  I only got up to 5 songs.  I think that's the last time for me.  Once I complete something, I always feel like, that's it!  I'm done!  Since I managed to do it last year, I kind of just shrugged it off this year.

So maybe that explains why my next CD has been dragging on for the last four years!

FAWM 2009

FAWM 2009 starts tomorrow!  I'm looking forward to it.  I tried it in 2007 but failed to complete 14 songs in 28 days.  Last year I did finish, so I was happy.  I like it because it provides a motivation for me to write.  It seems I always need some kind of artificial constraint on me to motivate me to do anything.

I took one of the songs I did in 2007 and polished it up a bit, adding a needed bridge and made a video of it.  It's about a poor, lowly dishwasher named Fang Pi whose dream is to go to Taiwan and meet his idol, Ella Chen, of S.H.E.  Actually, I was thinking of making a series of videos.

In 2006, Ella Chen appeared in a Taiwan drama Hua Yang Shao Nian Shao Nu, known as Hana Kimi, where she plays a student from America who goes to Taiwan to meet her idol (by enrolling in an all boys school where he attends).  So my video is a play on that.

The song I used from FAWM 2007 didn't actually have a title.  It was a bunch of typical cliches I stitched together (on purpose), but I felt it fit in very well for the purposes of this video.

I used the Fender Stratocaster on it.  I find that this Strat (American made 2003/2004) has a very bright--almost harsh and metallic--sound, so I always have to tinker with rolling off the highs with it and try to smooth out the sound.  Once again, I recorded it through the POD 2.0 using the Vox AC-30 Top Boost setting.

In some ways I like the sound of my 1986 Fender Squire Strat better, as that seems to have more of the traditional glassy, bell like tone of a Strat.  I don't know--I must not be doing something right.

How to Play Toy & 61 Festival by Hedgehog

If you've never heard of the band Hedgehog, you should check them out.  They are a trio from Beijing, and they've been making some waves over there, especially their tiny powerhouse of a drummer, Shi Lu, who goes by the moniker of Atom.  In fact, all the members of the band go by monikers--the guitarist is ZO, and the bassist is Box.  Why don't people ever just go as "Fred" or something?

I just bought their latest CD, Noise Hit World, and it's pretty good.  If you're outside of China, you can get the CD from Mod in Mod.  They are also available on iTunes and Amazonmp3.com.  How would I describe their music?  I don't know--post punk?  Post New Wave?  These labels are getting more and more meaningless.  I guess you can say that they have a very fresh, pop sound with a splash of punk.

All the tracks are in English with the exception of the last, "bonus" track, which is in Mandarin.  I have the say, the English lyrics are kind of garbled, but they certainly are brave for singing in a language that is not native to them.

Anyway, I'm going to show you how to cover their very catchy lead track, Toy & 61 Festival. What the title means, I haven't a clue.

The song is only four chords--C Am G and F, so it's the key of C.  It's a basic 4/4 song, but it just goes to show you what inventiveness and creativity can do with C Am G and F.  The first thing I did was count out the beats of the song, which ends up being around 144 beats per minute.  Then I fired up Sonar--but you can use any recording software of your choosing--and set the tempo to 144.

The intro to the song is 16 measures:

C    Am    C     Am    C    Am    G   (play twice--2x)

All the chords are one meaure each with the last one, G, taking up two measures.  The opening riff is a very simple but catchy riff played over the D, G, and B strings--it's not hard to figure out, but the thing with simple riffs is that you really need to get the timing right or else it sounds horrible.  I have horrible timing so my cover version really sounds clunky in places.

The first verse is sixteen measures that comprise the exact same chord sequence as the intro:

Verse 1

                          C                       Am 

i can run and jump high in blue sky 

             

                        C                     Am

i hate nature science recognize 

                       C                      Am

i love play my toy and let them fight 

                   G

blamed by mum night i cry 

                        C                     Am

i love bathe in shine rave in night 

                   C                       Am

sing with friends follow your bands' 

               C                   Am

fashion type stylish hair 

                  G

touch your hands make me fun 

The Chorus then follows and is also 16 measures, comprised of this chord sequence:

C    G    Am    F

...so you get this:

         C                 G                  Am                F

when i was a child i can do all things i thought 

     

         C                 G                  Am                F

if i was a child i can try to forget now 

Play this twice.  Each chord is one measure long.  Then you get an instrumental break which is exactly the same as the introduction, so that is another 16 measures.  Then we have the second verse, but this time, it is played only over eight measures instead of 16.  I guess you can also say that in the beginning, they had two verses--each eight measures, and then they have this third verse:

Verse 2

    C                 Am               C                Am

hey baby i am wrong i will never do it again 

   C               Am              G

oh baby i am riot now i just want to be a bad boy(girl) 

Now, this verse has a slightly different melody.  In some ways it functions like a bridge, I think.  Then you get another 32 measures of the verse chord sequence.  Here is where you have some freedom to play whatever you want for the solo.  For the first 16 measures, I did my own thing over C major, and then for the last 16 measures I repeated their opening riff.

Finally, you repeat the chorus again, so that is another 16 measures.  The last part is an 8 bar outro, going over three chords.  When you have a song based on four chords, a very nice thing to do is to end it by using only a three chord progression--it really drives it home:

Outro:

C          G     Am      x4

As you can see, this is the chord progression for the Chorus with the last chord, F, left off.

The reason why I kept mentioning how many measures each part takes is because this is important when you build the song in software like Sonar.  Once I know how many measures the whole song is, and how many measures each part takes, I can lay down the drum part as the basis of the song.

I can't play the drums, and I don't have anyone like Shi Lu to lay down the tracks, so I use loops.  I think the best drum loops on the market is Drums on Demand.  I used a song set from their original Vol 1 collection.

Once you put in the drum track (basically dragging and dropping with drum loops), it's easy to play the guitar track since you now have a drum track to keep time with.  I used my Jay Turser semi-hollow body for the rhythm track.  It was plugged into a POD 2.0 using the 2A "Line 6 Clean" setting.

Once I have the guitar track down, I put in the vocals.  I then add the lead guitar (I used my Fender Stratocaster for this on the "Rectified" 5A setting on the POD.

I always add the bass guitar last.  I think I'm doing it backwards because I think you want to lay the rhythm section down first.  But oh well--I'm not a bassist--I always end up just playing the root notes of the chords.  I use a Yamaha RBX260 for this.  I also feed this through the POD with a setting of "Pre-amp", using a bit of compression.  I bought this Yamaha a while ago because before that I used to lay down a bass track using a midi keyboard.

Here is the finished track:  my cover version of Hedgehogs' Toy & 61 Festival from their latest CD, Noise Hit World.

So, all you kids out there should try it!  Believe me, making music on actual musical instruments is a lot more fun than playing Guitar Hero.

Lin Jiaxiang

I read on the Internet about Lin Jiaxiang, the Communist Party official who allegedly molested a girl at the Plum Garden Restaurant in Shenzhen. They have video from the restaurant's security camera on YouTube. You don't see what happened, but you can see the girl leading him to show him where the restrooms were, and then moments later she can be seen running back to her parents.

Well, things like that always make me think of a song, so I whipped up Lin Jiaxiang's Lament under my other group project: The 3 Represents and posted a video on YouTube:



You know, I have no idea why I feel the need to compartmentalize my music. Musically, it sounds the same.

I used my Jay Turser semi-hollowbody on this. I was going to use the Guitar Port, but because I'm lazy (it's on another machine) I used the trusty POD 2.0.

It is becoming harder and harder for me to sing. The difference in just five years is amazing. Not that I had great vocal range before, but it is becoming a huge strain as I get older. The good news is, I was a lousy singer before, so being a lousy singer now isn't too disappointing.

Six Songs in 90 Days!

Wow, I didn't even come close. Only six songs and then I just quit. I'm such a quitter. How did I get this way?!

Since President Bush was kind enough to give me $600 over the summer, I took that money and went on Newegg to buy the components I needed to build me a new Core2 Duo machine! This machine replaces my Internet Surfing/Gaming machine, which was a lowly Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz with 1 gig of memory.

My new machine runs Vista 64 on the Intel Core2 Duo E7200 cpu, which is their value line, but still--it is wicked fast for me--way more so than the old P4.

My DAW remains the Athlon64. Everything is working fine on that, so I see no reason to muck it up, although part of me wants to run Vista 64 on that as well so I can run Sonar 64.

Today I installed my old copy of Cool Edit 2000 on Vista, and it works with no problems. That was the best wave editor ever, hands down. I needed it because I was working with a recording of a lecture that had an irritating hum, and Cool Edit 2000 removed it fine without leaving any warbly artifacts. That program was well worth the $69 I paid for it back then.

It makes me sad that Adobe bought them out, got rid of the value edition, and then turned Cool Edit Pro into the $300 monstrosity known as Adobe Audition. I miss those old programs--programs like Homesite, Cool Edit, Paint Shop Pro. I can't blame them for cashing in and selling to a bigger company, but man, those programs really worked. Those were the days!

50 Songs in 90 Days 2008

You know, I started this blog in July of 2006 to document my progress in writing songs for my so called grand masterpiece. Well, it's been two years now and I haven't done jack squat! How the heck did that happen? What a loser I am!

Well, okay, that's not completely true, because I did complete FAWM 2008 this year, but those songs weren't meant for the new CD. And they really sucked anyway. I was happy with some of the lyrics I came up with though. But the melodies--good grief, they were so horrible. I'm in such a rut with melodies. I burned a CD of my FAWM songs and I was listening to them in my car, and they're just so horrible.

Well, on to something new, and luckily I have the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge to prod me. Yep, I first attempted this in 2002, and now I'm using it again as a tool to fight against my natural laziness. FAWM is hosting it, which is nice.

In 2002, I ended up with something like 18 songs, and from that I culled the songs to be put on my first CD (okay, actually the first CD I did was a piece of crap I put on the old mp3.com). This time around I want to use this as a springboard for songs, so I won't be weighing myself down trying to make demos of them as I go. I really want to end up with 50 songs that I can work and refine later.

Singing When You Can't Hear

I just realized something--I have the playback way too loud when I'm recording a vocal track. My vocals are bad enough as it is, but when the monitoring track is way too loud, you end up really pushing your vocals, and I end up all over the place.

So when I re-do my FAWM demos, I'm going to try monitoring on low volume and see it that improves my singing.