Ok so i failed the boyfriend test again. Stone me please?

I was really thinking that you could handle this yourself this time. I mean i did handle myself when it happened on me last year. Oh well i guess it's not the same.

Part of you wants me to not overprotect you, but part of you forces me to hawk over your every movement. So what's the deal this time?

It's tricky every single time. We learn abit each time dun we?

I still love u silly :)

On stalking, i dropped by alvin's blog just now by chance. See, i din wanna stalk him, but i just somewhat linked to him from another poor bugger getting stalked by me. Oh well. Can't help it la seriously. I wonder if he's reading mine. Tricky.

Yiwei sent me a seriously killer comic. It's so fucking funny. Kai and I havent laughed so much in a while. I'm lazy to put it up here tho, cos it's also kinda big. And it's in chinese. Probably not then. *shrug*

Next week is quite killer. I have 1 presentation, 1 test, 2 assignments and 1 project. Wholesome curriculum in NUS they say. Yea it probably covers the entire grading spectrum. Hmm. Like Ronald says: I'm loving it. Ya right.

Guitar Update: Lesson 8: Vibrato

Beez once said that a guitarist is as good as his vibrato. Which to me makes quite alot of sense, cos it's probably the best way u can express your emotion on the guitar. I judge most musicians by their vibrato as well. It's really about how you use it and how well u can control it.

When you hear professional recordings, it's quite clear that every recording artiste has a solid vibrato, be it singer or guitarist. To me, it shows how expressive they really are.

As far as im concerned, my vibrato doesnt sound very pronounced in my recordings. Or at least they dun really hit my standard. One thing is due to recording stress, and one thing is lack of practice. But in regular playing, i feel that i have a pretty decent vibrato to brag about. I really worked on it during this vibrato-phase in my life. Everyday was just "vibrating".

Anyways, the lesson today was pretty challenging. Vibrato with normal notes is simple enough for me, but vibrato with bent notes is remarkably taxing. Especially when each lick is played 48 consecutive times, 4 times each through each key. My hand strength has always been weak, and probably my bending technique is not solid enough. So add in the vibrato, it just becomes quite taxing.

So much so that i have to stop and stretch for quite a while before continuing the licks. F key is especially hard to play at the root position, cos it's just so near the nut. But i shall focus more everytime i reach F. Must overcome F. >.<

The licks today are standard blues licks, stuff that u will hear in almost every blues record. Stuff u'll hear in my solos. And standard stuff is stuff tt kills your fingers if continuously played. But i feel improvement in my bending and vibrato already. Just have to practise more until the technique sinks in solidly.

Little additional stuff i'm trying:

Been trying to do the "rake + bend" trick, to get more intensity out of the bend. Sounds really solid if done well, sounds super crappy if it's just abit off. The brushing technique has to be very precise and well muted to sound solid. Oh yea and more quarter bends into my playing. Getting more bluesy with each quarter note bend.

Overall Thoughts:

Today i totally figured out the whole shebang about classical music. Classical composers dun really play their own pieces. It's just not possible for them to play every single instrument themselves. They also dun have any means of recording, so it's not possible to find any "Beethoven's Greatest Hits".

So what Kai said is correct. Every orchestra tries to play the score as closely as possible to approximate the composer's musical vision. So it really doesn't matter which orchestra plays the piece, cos presumably almost every reknowned orchestra is solid enough to deliver the pieces. So every piece of classical music heard today is actually just approximated by some famous orchestra. Beethoven din play anything. He just wrote the piece.

In other words, it really doesn't matter what you download. It will more or less sound the same.

The other way i saw this dude holding a little score book on some Strauss piece. And he's just reading and swaying to the music. It's like listening to the piece by sight reading. And i believe tt's just the score for one of the instruments.

Imagine what Beethoven is hearing when he's writing his symphonies. No wonder he went deaf. If i'm hearing an orchestra whenever i go, i'll definitely go deaf too. And go crazy as well.

Now i know why musicians are so angsty. Cos they keep hearing stuff. Some hear more than the rest, so they are more angsty.

Do artists go blind if following the same argument?