This fall the music game genre is going to be interesting.  Guitar Hero IV: World Tour has announced that it will be like Rock Band: two guitars, drums, and vocals for every song.  The GH4 drum kit, which you can see here, is pretty cool in that it has two cymbal-like pads on there too, instead of having all the drums in a row.  Not that I know the slightest thing about drumming, but I assume this would feel a little more authentic.  The drum pads are also going to sense how hard you are hitting them, and adjust the volume of the drums in-game accordingly.  (Maybe Rock Band already did this?  From what I read it doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve only played it like twice in Best Buy.)  For the guitar parts, they are adding something I have wanted: open notes (as in, strumming without holding any frets).  They’ll represent this on the screen as a solid bar across the fret board (the same way the kick pedal is represented on the drums).  I haven’t heard much about how Rock Band 2 will be improved yet.  Konami, however, is jumping into the genre that they created ten years ago (but failed to bring to America) with Rock Revolution.  The drum kit for that game just looks wacky.

For me, I’ll probably only get GH4 for the Wii this year, since I already have one GH3 Wii guitar controller.  The downside is that there’s no downloadable content for the Wii (at least not yet).  Mainly due to the fact that there is only 512 MB of memory in the Wii.  I am thinking about getting a Playstation 3 (Gaystation 3 to the haters) soon, so I could get any of the games for PS3, but I’d really like to not have too many plastic musical instruments sitting around my living room.  So I’m thinking GH4 for Wii is my more practical option.

Tonight I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and started playing on my guitar and decided I’d record it.  So if anyone’s interested I put up a recording of myself playing Tonic’s “If You Could Only See” on the acoustic music page (you’ll also find it at the end of this post).  Which reminds me I never got around to making that page look nicer.  You know, using some CSS and what not.

After I recorded this I listened to the original again and realized I’m playing it way too fast, and my strum pattern is different.  I still thought it sounded ok.  I came up with a way to kind of play both parts on one guitar for the cool part of the song after “when she says she loves me.”  I guess you only know what that means if you’re familiar with the song, because I’m certainly not going to put a recording of myself singing out on the intertron.  I mean I’m not masochistic.

Download

if you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says
    when she says she loves me

I have made a few small changes to the site lately.  First off, I got rid of the “Home” page; the blog is now the default page when you come to my site.  Secondly, I replaced the “Contact” page with an “About” page, where I plan to put more information that could be useful to a new visitor to my site (not that I expect many of those).

But the big thing, that I just finished, is the triumphant return of the music page.  For over a year the page has said “I really do plan on putting something here someday.”  Well that day is today!  I found a Flash mp3 player, so that you won’t have to download the tracks to play them, since you probably don’t feel like doing that anyway.  I still need to do some work on the page—hey, did you guys know some scientists in a bunker in New Mexico invented something called CSS that can totally help your webpages look nicer??  I need to hit up some of that on my music page!  Also, none of the text there has been spell-checked, I’d prefer that you let me know privately if you find any mistakes or anything (as opposed to, let’s say, putting all my typos in the comments).  Lastly, look for the lost lyrics to “Why Me?”  Anthropologists have been searching for them for years, but they never looked in my brain.  I just did.

why me why always me

<--- THIS IS NOT LONDON BRIDGE!

Today while making my lunch I had Fuse on in the background, and I saw a video by the girl from Black Eyed Peas called “London Bridge.”  Only, in the video she is not in front of London Bridge.  She is in front of Tower Bridge.  There have been three London Bridges in London.  The first one was the famous one and no longer exists.  The second one is currently located in Arizona.  The third one still stands, but there’s nothing special about it.  You’d think someone involved in the photo shoot would have said “You do realize that’s not London Bridge you’re posing in front of, right?”

A week ago I set out to Guitar Center to get a very small and portable amp, since my current amp (seen blurrily in the background of this photo) is over two feet wide, weighs about forty pounds, and is a little too loud for the apartment late at night.  What I had in mind was a Marshal Mini Amp (which you may have seen in School Of Rock), or something similar.  However, the amps that size did not have very much oomph to them.  The guy there talked me into playing a Roland Micro Cube.  It was incredible that it could put out that much noise and yet be so small.  It can even run off batteries (six AA’s)!  Don’t get me wrong—you’re not going to worry about losing hearing unless you hold it to your head.  But you can very well drown out any conversation or tv in the room.  It also has a pretty wide set of effects:  chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, delay, and reverb.  In addition to that, it has six different amp modelers, including a very nice acoustic simulator.  The link I mentioned earlier has several pictures of the box and its controls.  But if you’d like to see it in action, check out this shot of yours truly rocking out:

See how awesome it looks?  And I had it turned up so loud that the camera picked up those yellow sound waves (betcha didn’t know that’s what sound waves looked like, didja?).  I’m also rocking out a black “teal” shirt (I wanted to put one on my cafepress store, but it won’t let me put up more than one black shirt).  And for anyone interested, I tried to give myself 1980’s hair band hair, but my attempt at doing so was less than successful.

For any who want to hear what this thing sounds like, I recorded a few short sound clips below.  If the audio quality is sub-par, blame it on the free-with-a-gateway-computer-six-years-ago-ness of my recording equipment.

Acoustic simulation
It’s amazing that it was able to get such a bright sound out of my Stratocaster.  Usually without distortion an electric guitar just sounds so flat.  I recorded two samples, both are also using a little bit of the Chorus effect...  I mean, why would you not use that effect with an acoustic-like sound?

• Galapogos (sic) - 0:14 - This song shows off the acoustic simulator with a song that picks one string at a time, rather than chords.

• Shine On - 0:14 - This song uses the acoustic simulation with chords.  Ain’t it purdy?

JC Clean
This is supposed to sound like the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amplifier.  I’m not sure how successful it is, but it does sound very nice with certain sounds (although obviously not as bright as the acoustic simulation).

• Shine On - 0:12 - I played the same song on the clean channel so that the difference would be quite obvious.  This one sounds much flatter to me, which is not my personal preference.

• Hummer - 0:29 - This song will show off an example of when the clean channel would be much better than the acoustic channel.  I’m also using the delay effect on this song.

Black panel
This is supposed to simulate the Fender Twin Reverb sound.  I don’t like it very much, because all it seems to do is overdrive the low end and make it sound like my speaker cone is torn.

• Zero - 0:10 - You can hear how only the low-end is distorted.  I’m not too very fond of this setting.

Brit Combo
According to the manual, “this is modeled on the Vox AC-30TB, the rock amplifier that created the Liverpool sound of the ‘60s.”  I don’t particularly care for this sound, it’s kind of like the “fuzz” distortion that Jimi Hendrix used a lot.  Just sounds to me like the clean signal mixed with a lot of static.

• Welcome To Paradise - 0:53 - This is a rather long clip.  I guess it kinda speaks for itself.  I boosted the low-end on the recording because my microphone didn’t pick it up very well..

Rectifier
This is really the only distorted channel I use on this thing.  It is modeled after the Mesa/Boogie Rectifier.  Much closer to the sounds of the mid-to-late nineties that I liked so much.  Unfortunately, the sound recorded does not match what was actually played very well at all.  In fact, the sound that was recorded is extremely obnoxious—I don’t know where the low end went!  In reality, the distortion is much creamier (that’s the best word I could think of to describe it).

• Welcome To Paradise - 0:52 - Once again, I’ll present the same song on two different channels for you to compare and contrast.  But really, I like the recording of this much less, but in person I liked it much more.  Stupid cheap microphone.

• I Caught Fire (In Your Eyes) - 0:09 - I wanted something that used the flanger/phaser (I can’t remember which I’m using in this song).  This was as close as I could come to the sound in the actual song, but I definitely fell short of what The Used recorded.

Well that’s all.  I know that was a lot of files, but it’s only three minutes of audio.  I wanted to embed the sounds in the page so that you could play them right there, but (from what I could find) there’s not a good way to do so that is standards-compliant and works across most platforms and browsers without requiring a plug-in, Flash, and/or javascript.

PS:  I do know that there is an audio output on the back of the thing.  In the past I have found those outputs to be noisier than placing a mic in front of the amp.  I haven’t tried with this amp though.  But as far as I know, pretty much all professionally recorded music uses a mic’ed amp, rather than the output from the amp.

Before I get started I wanted to clarify that I didn’t make a post on Monday because Stephanie had made one on Saturday.  I’m still planning to make blog posts regularly.

Now onto my story.  Last weekend I went to see Thursday at Ziggy’s in Winston-Salem.  I’ve mentioned on this blog before that the last time I saw Thursday was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been too.  I was pleased to see that I wasn’t let down again.

However, I’ve noticed a pattern lately.  I’ll go to concerts, and listen to the less-than-awesome opening bands and think “Is this really worth it?  Standing for four hours just to hear some songs that I can listen to at home?”  Then the band that I actually came to see will come out, and I’ll be like “Oh yeah, that’s why I come to these concerts--these guys are awesome!”  But I’ll spare you another long, introspective rant today.

five four three two one let’s start a fire

This was a question I pondered last night as Grand Wizards Of The Aryan Brotherhood Hawthorne Heights walked onto the stage at Cricket Arena.  They were wearing all white, which I guess is to promote the Ohioan race?  It just made me think “how cute, they wore matching rock band costumes!  And it’s not even Halloween!”  Oh, and when they came out, they had three guitarists, not counting the bass.  And while I’m sure that talented artists could do some impressive things with three electric guitars simultaneously turned up to eleven, I didn’t hear anything of the sort last night.  I mean.. seriously.. three electric guitars??  Other bands have successfully rocked out with a violin or a piano.  How about two bassists?  I can’t think of any band that’s ever done that, and a good bass player can do things much more interesting than just playing the root note of every chord.  Or what about a rock band with a flute player?  All I’m saying is that there are much more interesting ways to use a fifth member of a band than to give him another guitar.  To be fair, I had a pessimistic attitude going into their set, since I only know one of their songs (“Ohio Is For Lovers”) that I don’t like (I mean, the chorus doesn’t make sense- “you know you do you kill me well, you like it too and I can tell”).  Then halfway through the set, he told everyone to take out their cell phones and light the place up.  After that song, he told us all to text “HH” to some number, at which point I leaned over to Garrison said “I think we’re too old to be here.”  Now I can identify with senior citizens who are told that all they need to do to get medicare is to log on to this URL follow the hyperlinks to the appropriate form.

Maybe I’m getting too old to identify with songs that all the depressed and angst-filled teenagers like so much.  I’m just not at a point in my life where I’m concerned with questions like “What am I going to do when I graduate?”, “Will I ever find love?”, “Why do my parents hate me?”, “Why don’t I have a cool cell phone?”, “How can I get more friends on MySpace?”, or <insert typically generic teenage moaning here>.  I mean, I’m happy with my marriage, I have a good job, and being a geek isn’t a Bad Thing like it was in high school.  What I’m trying to say is that I’m not really wanting or waiting on anything right now, the way I was when I was let’s say 15-to-21-ish.  Not that I think I’m somehow more enlightened than any other human being.  I’m really just saying my interest in music in general (and rock in particular) is on a decline because I just don’t identify with the lyrics as strongly as I used to.

So anyway, after Hawthorne Heights, The All-American Rejects came out and put on a pretty good (albeit short) set, and then Fall Out Boy played a better-than-expected show (I like their CD, but they were so terrible on SNL that I was afraid I wouldn’t like them live).  But this post wasn’t about them, it was about the thoughts that were running through my head as I was watching five preppy kids from Ohio pretend to be a rock band while thousands of fifteen-year-olds screamed along and took low-res pictures with their cell phones, presumably to put them up on MySpace today.

I don’t want for anything that I don’t have, all that I want is waiting for me there

Last week as I was driving across the barren expanse they call Central Florida, I stuck in a CD I burned a few years ago which I entitled “A Few Of My Favorite Things.”  This was burned back when I thought of a mix CD as A Work Of Art, the tracks of which had to be carefully and methodically laid out.  Well anyway I was pleased to see how many of those songs had withstood the test of time (albeit only two years).  So I’m gonna list the songs, what they’re about, what they mean to me, and my favorite lyrics from them.  And please note that I am not insinuating that the music I listened to when I was 15-21 years old is somehow The Best Music.  That is a mentality that can lead an otherwise intelligent, rational man to utter a phrase like “Metallica was the last good band” (someone I used to work with actually said that to me, and he wasn’t making a joke).  Without further ado, I’ll begin my long post.

1. Better Than Ezra - Desperately Wanting:  I’m honestly not sure what this song is about, but I know it’s one of my favorite songs ever.  He is obviously recollecting “better times.”  My best guess is that it’s about a childhood friend that died or got separated from him.  Either way, I think he’s talking about someone he was close to and how they both dreamed of better lives, but it didn’t work out for his friend.  Or maybe I’m completely wrong.  Any better Ezrites out there can feel free to correct me as to what he desperately wanted.

I remember running through the wet grass
And falling a step behind
Both of us never tiring
Desperately wanting

2. Linkin Park - My December:  A pretty depressing song about loneliness.  In fact, Jason once told me it made him want to kill himself back when I had it in my AIM profile.  He’s still alive, so he must have been exaggerating.  It’s a shame this song was a B-side, but I can see how they didn’t think it fit in with Hybrid Theory.  It saw some light on their remix album, but I prefer the B-side version.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s Linkin Park’s best song.  Somewhere in the neural network of my brain, this song is linked with this picture--hearing the song makes me think of that picture, and vice versa.

And I’d give it all away, just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away, to have someone to come home to
This is my December, these are my snow covered dreams
This is me pretending this is all I need

3. No Doubt - Don’t Speak:  Before Gwen Stefani decided to pretend she was a sex symbol, she was in No Doubt and they made some pretty decent music.  Don’t Speak is the culmination of that; a song that (as I recall) is about her and one of the guys in the band having a relationship and then breaking up.  If I’m wrong about that, well then it’s clearly about a relationship ending, which I think we can all agree is generally not A Fun Thing.

You and me, we used to be together, everyday together.. always
I really feel that I’m losing my best friend
I can’t believe this could be the end
It looks as though you’re letting go
And if it’s real well I don’t want to know

4. Foo Fighters - Everlong (acoustic version):  I specify the acoustic version of this song, because it’s a hojillion times more powerful in that version.  I think this song is about how you might feel at the beginning of love, when everything seems perfect but you’re afraid you might do something to screw it up.

And I wonder, when I sing along with you, if everything could ever feel this real forever?
If anything could ever be this good again?
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you-
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

5. Third Eye Blind - Motorcycle Drive-By:  My interest in this song took a while to develop.  It’s tucked in at the end of the album, and for that reason I never realized what a good song this was until two years after I bought the album, after I had ripped all my albums to MP3s and was able to listen to them in no particular order.  I was surprised to find that I had overlooked this really great song for so long.  It’s another one about falling out of love, but on a less depressing note.  More of a “this is over, it was great while it lasted, yeah things are gonna suck for a while, but it’s time to move on, and things will get better soon” kind of feeling.

You smile and say the world it doesn’t fit with you
I don’t believe you--you’re so serene--careening through the universe, your axis on a tilt,
You’re guiltless and free, I hope you take a piece of me with you
And there are things I’d like to do that you don’t believe in
I would like to build something, but you’ll never see it happen
And there’s this burning, like there’s always been
I’ve never been so alone, and I’ve.. never been so alive

6. The Smashing Pumpkins - Muzzle:  I made it a point to not include two songs from the same group, and obviously that meant I could only include one Smashing Pumpkins song.  I think when both lyrics and music are factored in, this has to be one of the absolute best songs Billy Corgan ever wrote.  I think Thru The Eyes Of Ruby would be in second.  And while Mayonaise (sic) historically holds the Kip’s Favorite Song Ever title, the lyrics just aren’t all that awesome.  To me, this song is about realizing that the world as a whole pretty much sucks, but having hope that everything is going to be all right in the end.  Later, I decided it was also about looking back at the way you felt about Life The Universe And Everything when you were sixteenish, and realizing things were never all that bad.  Since I couldn’t pick just one excerpt from the lyrics, I’m gonna quote two parts of the song.

In my mind as I was floating far above the clouds
Some children laughed I’d fall for certain,
For thinking that I’d last
Forever...
But I knew exactly where I was

And then these lyrics are from the end of the song:

And the world is drawn into your hands
And the world is etched upon your heart
And the world, so hard to understand
Is the world you can’t live without

7. Our Lady Peace - Thief:  A song about watching a loved one suffer and slowly die from a terminal illness.  The closest experience to this in my life thus far is what we went through with August last year, but that was hardly the same thing.  Raine does an excellent job of conveying his emotions through this song.  Especially if you’ve ever seen the video with the heavy heavy rain in slow motion.

I can’t see the thief that lives inside your head
But I can be some courage at the side of your bed
I don’t know what’s happening and I can’t pretend
But I can be your, be your... I’m here
It’s a long, long get away

8. SR-71 - Alive:  A song about a woman finally working up the courage to leave an abusive relationship.  Mitch said this song was about a friend of the band.  Although I myself have never been exposed to an abusive relationship, I still find this song pretty moving.

She won’t talk about it, she’s made up her mind
But as the front door shuts behind her she whispers, “give me a sign.”
And feels the power of the engine as she climbs to sixty-five
Every piston sounds like freedom, every white line says goodbye
She’ll find strength in her anger and the truth in his lies
When the last scar finally fades she’ll have a new life

9. The Nixons - Sister:  I like this song, but not that much, so I’m not sure why it ended up in this mix.  It seems a little random.  Anyway, it’s a song about the guy’s sister, and there are probably more circumstances to it which I would fail to relate appropriately.  I never even had a sister, making it extra strange that this song ended up here.  Oh well.  No need to quote this one really.

10. Jars Of Clay - Love Song For A Savior:  As most of you probably know, I am what some might consider an actively religious person (depending upon your basis for comparison, and the connotation of the word “religious” in your personal vocabulary).  So it shouldn’t shock you that a Christian song ended up in the mix.  Jars Of Clay was labeled “Christian Rock,” but the only song that label could really apply to is Flood, as the other songs aren’t really what most would call “rock.”  In fact, this song is by far the prettiest one on my CD.

He’s more than the laughter or the stars in the heavens
As close a heartbeat or a song on her lips
Someday she’ll trust him and learn how to see him
Someday he’ll call her and she will come running
And fall in his arms and the tears will fall down and she’ll pray,
“I want to fall in love with you”

What I’ve just posted really contains only the “primary” group of songs on my CD.  I’d list some of the “secondary” group, but I’ve already spent way too much time on this post and you’re probably about tired of reading it (assuming you’ve even made it this far) so I’ll end it here.

I’m the first kid to write of hearts, lies, and friends

This may be weird, but I enjoy walking in the rain.  In college I only carried an umbrella for a short time during freshman year before realizing it was kind of a hassle.  After that I just never used one.

If I were in a rock band I’d wanna do one of those cliche videos where we’re playing in heavy rain and it’s in slow motion and everyone’s jumping around and the water is flying from people’s heads and guitars, and did I mention it’s in slow motion so that it looks totally awesome.  I’m trying to think of a video like that but can’t remember one off the top of my head.  “Thief” by Our Lady Peace has a video where it’s raining, but not for the purpose of being cool so much as to symbolize sadness.  I think there was a Live video (Dolphin’s Cry maybe?) where they were playing in rain (I think?).  Oh I think I just remembered which one I was thinking of- the “Perfect” video from A Simple Plan, where they’re playing on the roof in the rain.  I just think that’s really cool looking.

Anyway it’s something I’ve thought about during the last two days’ nearly-constant downpours, so I thought I’d blogify it.

Rain falls on everyone, the same old rain

I just watched Say Anything (the first of several movies in my queue that I’d label “classic teen movies I’ve never seen”).  I really liked it, but it made me end up feeling depressed, even though it ends up happy (if I just ruined the ending for you.. you should have watched it sixteen years ago).  It’s really because it made me think about how that 18-20 part of your life is so short and confusing and once it’s gone it’s gone.  And throughout a lot of the movie I was thinking about the lyrics to the Good Charlotte song “Say Anything,” a title which may or may not have been inspired by the movie, but the lyrics could have so easily been the voice of John Cusak’s character in the movie.  Anyway I guess I’m done with my comments on the movie.  I’m not sure if anyone else enjoys reading these types of posts..

Please don’t walk away,
I know you wanna stay
If you just give me a sign
Say anything, say anything