Wednesday, November 26, 2008
6:19 PM
I came across this guitar last month, from guitarist magazine. Fender 'Arabesque' Telecaster.
Built by Yuriy Shishkov, one of Fender's elite senior master builders. Its quilted maple top and black translucent finish is off-set by hand engraved, gold-plated hardware and scratchplate. Truly, a work of art.
It is more expensive than my mum's car, which is 11,189 POUNDS STERLING.
It is so beautiful but too expensive (sob).
So I can forget about it, since my budget is only 5000 and below(RINGGIT! argh).
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
7:39 PM
Today's workshop is quite confusing though still quite interesting.It was an English who was sent by Rockschool to conduct a workshop here.
It was separated into two parts.
The first is about the Rockschool examinations.
He started talking about drums first, which is totally blank for me.
And there is a funny uncle, who keeps nodding his head and "yes" all the way. :p
There is no bassists there. So he skipped the bass part.
He then combined the guitar exam part with the guitar techniques session.
He explained several techniques and issues like improvisation, sweep picking, tapping, harmonics along with the exam format.
If I am not wrong, the exam starts with few pieces of songs, with some parts for improvisation by the candidate, followed by technical exercises with increased difficulties as you go, erm, sight readings/ quick study pieces, ear test and GMQ(general musicianship question). GMQ includes understanding the song that you are playing. The examiner can randomly asks you anything regarding that song, for example, what is the key and so on. And also understanding your instrument. (for example, what is neck's wood and blah blah blah.
Here comes the most important part of the session where he talks about improvisation. Erm, this is also the most confusing part. Actually, I also quite blur about this.
What I learnt is that we must understand the theory of chords, not by memorising the positions. by doing so, you can easily know the formulaes and also form scales and improvise based on the given chords in the song. This is because not every scales fit every chords. So only some scales only sound nice and suitable for the given rhythm. Make sense? I think so. I find it particularly confused and was about to fall asleep when he was explaining the theory behind the scales, the chords and usage of passing notes. One reason is because I dont understand and also I dint sleep well yesterday.
He explained some issues about tones and pickups. He said that you can lower the volume while distortion is on, to a extent that the tone is clean and no distortion. So during performances you can walk around and wont need remain near the pedals to switch the pedals on and off. The way he mess with the pickups, erm, is amazingly laxing. haha. He did it effortless. The rest of the parts doesnt worth mention, as it is relatively easy and common. Just some errors when we are doing sweep picking, tappin' and harmonics, that we need to take note of. After that, my teacher and me took photo with the examiner. Yup, thats all for the workshop. If I can get the photo, I will upload it here. (:
What I can say is, still a long way to go. Practising is still the important thing!! Good Luck.
-END-
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