Here’s last night’s clip of Jose and yours truly playing at Conspiracy Garden Cafe in Quezon City for an event by Beehive Productions. Many thanks to Abby Clutario, Eric Tubon, TJ Trinidad, and Andy Saunar of Beehive Productions for inviting us. Many thanks as well to a wonderful audience last night consisting of the bands Clubhouse, Paincake Patrol, Eight Moons of Jupiter, and God Bless the Unicorns plus friends:
This is my third performance as the regular keyboard player for JOSE at Musika. Here’s part 1:
I recently got this KORG KARMA workstation just right about the end of a relaxing vacation. I then decided to mess around with it once I got home and see what I can do with it. I thought to myself it would be nice to try and write a more or less picturesque description of what went on during that time I spent on vacation.
It’s been a while since I posted about my story as a “single” guy, and here’s one part of it.
Before I proceed, you should know the lady that has been for the most part the inspiration behind many of my solo piano improvisations from the past few days is NOT Genevieve. Genevieve is a friend of hers who, upon discovering that yours truly is a composer, issued a sort of challenge for me to write some music based on the name “Genevieve”. So, I went about figuring how to do it. I decided to use the name “Genevieve” as a melodic idea by assigning each letter notes or chromatic scale degrees. I made a diatonic and a chromatic version:
| Letter | Diatonic | Chromatic |
| A | 1 | 0 |
| B | 2 | 1 |
| C | 3 | 2 |
| D | 4 | 3 |
| E | 5 | 4 |
| F | 6 | 5 |
| G | 7 | 6 |
| H | 1 | 7 |
| I | 2 | 8 |
| J | 3 | 9 |
| K | 4 | 10 |
| L | 5 | 11 |
| M | 6 | 0 |
| N | 7 | 1 |
| O | 1 | 2 |
| P | 2 | 3 |
| Q | 3 | 4 |
| R | 4 | 5 |
| S | 5 | 6 |
| T | 6 | 7 |
| U | 7 | 8 |
| V | 1 | 9 |
| W | 2 | 10 |
| X | 3 | 11 |
| Y | 4 | 0 |
| Z | 5 | 1 |
After coming up with this table, I spelled out “Genevieve” with numbers from both diatonic and chromatic charts to come up with two tone rows:
| G | E | N | E | V | I | E | V | E |
| 7 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| 6 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 9 | 4 |
The top row of numbers is the diatonic version and the bottom row is the chromatic version. I chose the chromatic row as melodic basis for my improvisation. To make things simpler for me, I used a C chromatic scale as a point of reference, and this led me to devise a melody that is based on both Db Major and Db Lydian, and so the melodic theme for “Genevieve” spells out F-Eb-Db-Eb-Ab-G(natural)-Eb-Ab-Eb. To get the mood of the piece right, I asked “Her” about a general overview of who Genevieve was as a person. She said Genevieve was a pretty girl, the heartthrob among her peers who was a ballet dancer. Genevieve was also described as nice but feisty and energetic. This made me decide how to go about the particular rhythms to form the melody and accompaniment for “Genevieve” as you will see in the video of my performance.
Oh, before I go off track, remember Genevieve’s lady friend? Things between us are going rather well. That’s all I can say for now.
Months ago, I recorded some background music for the splash animation of “Ultimate Metal Concepts for Guitar”, a course by Eric VanLandingham released by GuitarZoom. The above video says it all.
Fridays can be filled with so much things to do. You can make the here and the now exciting.
After two weeks of what was an emotional roller coaster, one would be apt to resolve the conflict between the rational self and the emotional self. By the time things were about to come to an end, I was doing everything I can to prove myself, pushing out every ounce of strength, resources, and the mental resolve that I will be different from all those other people from her past. Unfortunately, none of that would help settle her own internal conflict. I ask why can’t we be together. Seems like there is something wrong with me or something wrong with my present situation that will never make it happen. I had difficulty processing the thought that no matter how much mutual admiration, respect, attraction (if you will) that we had for each other, it just wasn’t the right time. Perhaps her own situation would also prevent her from completely loving me or meeting my needs while I might try to do as much as I can for her (that is if we had the chance to be together).
The themes using the symmetrical octatonic and whole-tone scales represent the mind while those based on major diatonic scales represent the heart:
It is natural for man to look for that other half, “katuwang” in the Tagalog language. Living as a single guy can be rather difficult emotionally. Erik Erikson identified eight stages of human development, and apparently I still fall under stage 6, intimacy vs. isolation. I struggle with the fact that I have lost 14 years of my life in a relationship that didn’t work out in the end, and I felt the need to search for that someone, my “Eve” so to speak. Here is a reflection of that state as told via improvisation on the piano:
For some reason I will never find out, I was chosen by Chrissi Villa to write the music for her video/audio book “The Eskalets”. I was in a pinch back then, being busy with other projects, but then I recalled a number of themes from previous compositions that would fit well with the story. Like beads in a necklace, I strung together a number of themes from my old compositions coupled with newly written material and improvised passages, signifying how some elements of life are known while some are unpredictable. It was a gamble of sorts, very much like the little birds of the story who tried to take their first foray into flight. I felt happy that my old themes and new arrangements for solo piano was a nice fit for “The Eskalets.”
It’s been a while since I wrote anything that refers to GuitarZoom, the organization where I mainly work as a music transcriber, social media moderator, music theory and guitar answer guy, and now as a composer of background music. Anyway, GuitarZoom has a lot in store for this year, and this includes a couple of Blues and Metal courses.
For the serious intermediate metalhead guitarist, here’s a good course on Metal by Eric VanLandingham:
http://guitarzoom.com/ultimatemetalguitarconcepts/
(FYI, the music that you hear just before the lesson kicks in (the Djenty BGM you hear during the animation sequences) was written, performed, and recorded by yours truly.)
If you wish to be able to utilize pentatonic scales effectively, especially in a blues setting, you have to check out this upcoming course by Casey Smith’s called “Ultimate Power Pentatonics for Guitar”
(Again, intro animation music by yours truly.)
All of these courses come with my sheet music transcriptions in standard notation and TAB.
For more information regarding these courses as well as upcoming promos, go visit http://guitarzoom.com. For any questions regarding course content, music theory, guitar playing, or anything music in general, you can always email me at mark(at)guitarzoom.com. (FYI, I don’t handle customer service stuff and technical issues, but I’d be more than happy to talk about music with all of you.)
