Was supposed to help my brother do his wedding masterplan today, but... I ended up playing Diablo 2. Ahaha. Fucking waste of my time especially when im playing untwinked. Nvm, tml is a new day. We shall do new things in a new day.

Jiqing is coming back, like around now. I want my Shane Battier tee!

Dunno why, but i have thing for the bowens/battiers/kirilenkos. Glue guys they call it. Just go in and tame the opposing team's superstar. Hustle, block, frustrate, do whatever you can to deny the pass. If he has the ball, try to keep up, ask for help, challenge the shot. Essentially in NBA, when the superstar fails, the team usually fails. Unless u have alot of superstars.

Been sorta practising the songs i need to play for the wedding. It's a bitch la, slow acoustic instrumentals. Hardest to record, and easiest to cock up. Reason being, u have to hold the chords well enough to prevent buzzing, and let the notes ring sufficiently. Plucking wise u'll have to attack it the right way or the sound wun come out nicely. And slow songs means you really have to take note of all these things, cos fast songs you can always cover it up with the next coming note or smthing.

There's a reason y i din record any of my self-arranged acoustic instrumental covers. Cos they are bitches!

Audition 3 is out. Looks coolio, haven't installed it yet, but dear Johnson said it's solid. Apparently they have this new mixer thing, but i tot audition 2 already had it? Have to check out the guitar suite to see what's all the fuss about. Maybe can really record clean for once and let the comp distort for me. I wonder how much of a difference it will make. And oh ya, it can run VSTi la. Tt's like OMG? No more cubase bullshit for me finally? Really hope it does work, so tt i can get rid of cubase. But then, Cubase has Hypersonic, which is like a souped up VSTi tt gives u amazing patches for every imaginable instrument. Hmm. We'll see la.

My glucosamine pills are finishing, but i feel no difference. My knee still hurts whenever i sit too long. I think i'm sitting on the nerve or artery or smthing, but everytime i stand up my knee is numb or painful. Pfft. I tot sitting is supposed to be comfortable and relaxing? Guess it's not for my case.

My back is sore too. SBJ training is kinda affecting it alittle. Haiz. Getting old. And i'm only like 23+? Wtf.

The other day Phaedre asked me about scales. How to practise scales, how to get creative with scales. Answer: Sequences.

Assuming everyone reading this knows what is scale degrees. So we have 1 to 7. Instead of playing the scale up and down 1 to 7 to 1 like tt, you can do something different. As if all of Chang's practice routine/habits, it's all about patterns: (1* is octave)

Boring scale pattern:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1* 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 etc

Not so boring pattern (odd timing/quite hard):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1* 7 6 5 4 3 2 3 4 5 6 7 1* 7 6 5 4 3 4 5 6 7 1* 7 6 5 4 5 6 7 1* 7 6 5 6 7 1* 7 6 7 1* 7 1*

Paul Gilbert pattern (he does this everytime regardless of what scale. And he's good at it):

1 2 3 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 (then u start the same idea on the 2 and so on)

Triplets:

1 2 3 2 3 4 3 4 5 4 5 6 5 6 7 and so on.

In 3rds(quite melodic):

1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 1* (and back)

In 4ths (quite hard, depending on scale shape):

1 4 2 5 3 6 4 7 5 1*

Doubling (can be extended to all patterns, tripling works as well):

11 22 33 44 55 66 77 etc

Arpeggiation:

1 3 5 2 4 6 3 5 7 4 6 1* 5 7 2* 6 1* 3* 7 2* 4* etc

You can see it's all very "mathematical" when it comes to sequences. Simple patterns tt repeat by changing the degree it each time it repeats. Note that i only listed the scale degrees/notes and not the playing pattern yet. Which means, you can do it whichever way you want. Horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, some weird shit scale shape you've discovered.

Intervallic sequences will probably be easier to play horizontally as you can slide ur fingers up and down the neck. Pays well to be able to play horizontally.

Guitar Trivia: Do you know that Alex Lifeson of Rush only solos on one string?

Good night :)