Saw Coheed and Cambria yesterday and they were fuckin amazing!!!! Loved every bit of it, they're phenomenal live and overall put on a great show. Also saw two other really good bands, The Dear Hunter and Circa Survive. The Dear Hunter impressed me with it's mixture of progressive rock and some avant garde elements that seemed to stem from Oingo Boingo. Overall great concert!

Also met up with some friends I hadn't seen in around 3-4 years, it was good catching up and meeting with them since it was such a long time. Definitely gonna be hangin out with them more often. Overall, fuckin amazing day.

After so many years of dreaming of making it to the Audio Portal's front page, I've finally did it. It makes me proud to know that a song I had written only a year ago has worked it's way in. My song, Cthulhu in your Dreams, aka my first DnB song/attempt. While it's in no way perfect, I'm very proud of it as it was a change in my song writing and it was a step forward.

I can only hope someday to return with new music, but until that day comes I can only reminisce on how much pride and joy that song brings to me. It's definitely an accomplishment and what makes me more happy will be the increase in exposure (though I know the 0 bombers will come too).

This is definitely a proud weekend for me.

So as of late I've gotten pretty creative. I have a new song in the works and I'm working on a stop motion film utilizing legos, set to be called Pirates vs. Ninjas. So far I've only been working on the idea of the film, which is going to be 9 chapters/parts. I'm going to try and emulate the style of Quentin Tarantino with this movie. I will be doing on the work myself as of now. This includes filming, writing, and composing the music score. I'm not sure when I'll be done with it, as I want to try an make a few shorter films to build into this one.

Other than that, life's been pretty decent, though it could be better. Still not too happy about the whole "single" business, but meh, that's life for you. It's just sad that I realized so late that most of it was my fault. But whatever, honestly, I'm just hoping my ex and I at least stay good friends.

My first update for the month of June. For the most part nothing much has really happened. Just finishing up classes and then I'm off for the summer. I think my main goal right now is to get a job and start making money again so that I can start getting the necessary tools for constructing my music (which I haven't been able to do much of lately).

Another goal is for me is to try and start another band. I really want to put my skills to the test and compose some of the best music possible. I'm mostly open to anything, but there are some styles that I'm more interested in playing as of now. My main interest lately have been mostly forms of extreme metal, along with neo-classical metal, and Baroque period music such as Bach and Vivaldi. But honestly I just want to start playing again.

My relationship has been going pretty solid, though I wish it were just a little better. I love my girlfriend to death and I constantly let her know that (not necessarily bombard her). But things just have seemed a little strained. I feel at times like she's ignoring me for reasons unknown. It really demeans me and makes me feel that she doesn't love me anymore (though I know this not to be true and that she still does). I don't want to do anything to cause her to push me away further. I don't feel that fire that I first felt when we started going out. I want to bring that same passion that I had at the beginning. I feel as if it's my fault and I really just want things to start being the same again. I'm doing everything to hold myself together as for the last month it's overall just been difficult. If things were to fall apart now, I think I'd feel completely destroyed and that the Reaper will finally have my life.

To lighten the mood up better, I think things will progress and get better. And I'll finally be able to say I had a good year for once in my life.

KING OF BLUES 9 DAYS FROM NOW!!!!

Yep, I'm pumped. As of now I'm getting my skills down and perfecting all the little things. One of these things is my finger positioning/the way I fret the guitar. I was noticing that I used too much of my fingers' pads and not the tips. Well now I'm practicing that and I'm working on perfecting it. So that means quarter notes in the ranges of 50-90BPM. And increasing I'm it by 10 daily. While I don't expect to get past 140 (possibly not even 120), I do expect to become more accurate. Along with that I'm learning more chords and scales that can be used. I expect to be fully prepared and I really want to do well on my first go at this.

On a side note, I'm thinking about making more goth styled music and making an album out of it. Mostly I'm making it for personal reasons, but I want to try and sell it (though not for much, maybe 2 or 3 dollars). After this I want to concentrate on my new style and start writing more towards that.

And as for my bands, I'm not sure. Both are on hiatus and I can't seem to figure out what I want to do with them. In one of them, the guitarist's amp is broken and he hasn't been in contact lately. The other, well that doesn't seem to be going anywhere (it could if it were possible to be more cohesive). I'm thinking the best decision is to find some different people and try again.

Well that's pretty much for now, I'll update next week after my performance. I hope I do well and meet some cool guys.

After a 4 month long drought of not producing any new music, I've finally come across something new. I'm quite happy with the final product, as it sticks to my roots and general composition style, but offers up a new sound that I can hopefully move forward with.

The song itself is in Em, but does variate between it's relative Major key (G). I also added in some different chords, a few 7ths and an add 9 chord which really changed up a lot of the sound a kept it interesting. The thing that should be most noticeable that comes with the way I compose, will be the multi-layered melodies, the way drums sound (though I've gotten a little better with writing those too), and the overall structure of the song. But the major difference overall will be the way the song in general sounds, as it's not my usual way. Structurally it is, but sound wise it'll be a changed of pace.

Now all I need to do is add the guitar solo (say what!?) and create the final mix. For the most part I believe this song is another "Vampire Love Affair"/"Cthulhu in Your Dreams"/"Cellar Door" for me. Essentially a song that will open up a new horizon of possibilities for future songs to come.

Note- I've also managed to once again drastically improve my guitar skills again in short span of time, so hopefully I can make this solo worthwhile and not something messy like I've put out in the past.

And please exclude LaForge's metal collab 2 as an example for any of my solos. That went down the drain for me due to the fact that I was practicing with a band for 2 weeks straight and my equipment wasn't anywhere near my house. So I was unable to produce a worthwhile solo since I couldn't practice/perfect one (I got my stuff about a day before the deadline for the solo). Also the drums (that were overall complete and utter rubbish/shit in my opinion) threw off a lot of the sounds of my solos (especially the first one).

Lately I've been hearing a lot of talk about the lack of creativity in modern music and it irks me a bit. Music is an art form and as with any form of art, it progresses and evolves. Modern music evolved based off what was happening before hand. For example, things like hard rock and punk, along with the influence of Black Sabbath helped to revolutionize and bring about the genre of Metal (in particular, thrash metal). Then with Slayer's influence on thrash, evolved the genre of Death Metal. This is just one example of an evolution in music, as there infinite possibilities that I could list.

But the main fact remains, music is an art and will evolve as so. People are constantly saying it's becoming stagnant. Though if you take a closer look, music has actually evolved a lot in the last 20 years. We've seen an evolution from grunge and alternative rock more to hard rock and metal (that's usually influenced heavily by what was done by bands like Maiden or Priest). And for the pop side, electro and house in the 80s has influenced a lot of the pop music being written today. Rap has also evolved (maybe not in lyrical content), but in structure it definitely has. Also the strong emergence of electronic music is becoming more relevant due to groups like Pendulum and Julien-K.

While we may not be getting the nostalgia we're looking for in music today, the point is that good music does exist and it just takes a bit of listening and willingness to open your ears up to a new experience. Which is something people did when bands were popping up in the early 60s and rock was still young. Also for people to say music is over commercialized, I'd just like to say, bands/groups/artist had even less control over the direction of the music in the past. In fact most of them were sheep to the system and only put out hits to make money. One of these groups, were known as the Beatles, early in their career their music was heavily commercialized and produced for the exclusive thought of making a "hit". To say music in the past wasn't or isn't nearly as commercialized as music is today, is a lie.

Btw the music I primarily listen to is progressive, avant garde, and different in style. But I'm also open to anything that sounds good (which is why it is impossible to list all my favorite groups).

(Some of) My (primary) favorite musicians and bands: The Mars Volta, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, Frank Zappa, Mr. Bungle, Pink Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush, Muse, Tool, Mastodon, Avenged Sevenfold, S.O.A.D, Serj Tankian, Rage Against the Machine, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Al Di Mieloa, Led Zepplin, Alice in Chains, At The Drive In, Incubus, Dream Theater (though not so much these days), Klayton/CellDweller, Pendulum, Julien-K, David Gilmour, Syd Barrett... And of course, Pinkly Smooth.

Well this month has been fun so far. Had my wisdom teeth removed and it's been a bit of a bitch to eat right now (which sucks because I love food). But it feels like things are healing up nicely and I should be going to a follow up appointment pretty soon.

Also went to another anime convention recently. Was really fun and enjoyed most of what I can remember, which really isn't much because I got pretty drunk the second day (raves and drinking mix well). And apparently I met some royalty, because the king and queen of England came by to have some rum.

News concerning music, I recently entered the King of Blues competition at Guitar Center, so I've been studying my scales (primarily blues, pentatonic, jazz, and bebop scales, along with dorian mode). And I also bought a new guitar after no longer having my Les Paul (which I kind of miss). But I now have another Ibanez, my baby Lucrecia (aka my new Ibanez RG350DX). She sounds amazing and so does the tube screamer I recently bought.

Well that's pretty much it so far, I'll probably update again later this month.

So lately a lot has been going on, I've been able to hang out with my friends more and my life seems to be moving in a more positive direction after two lackluster years. I have a pretty girlfriend, whom I love dearly and great group of friends that I finally feel I can relate to. Now all I need is a job and things will be almost complete.

So far the job hunt hasn't gone well, with only 1 interview in two months. Still I hope something will pick up, considering that I'm really hurting for money right now and I'm bored being unemployed.

Yet, I won't complain further, I know things will get better and that something will come around.

Also I'm now running another band, which is kind of a hard rock improv band. We currently have a drummer, two guitar players (one being me) and hopefully we'll be getting a singer soon. After that I'm hoping to get some shows and start playing.

Well that's my update for this month.

P.S. - The Shred War is currently on hold until further notice.

So my friend and I decided after he had made this video of him shredding that we'd have a shred war. Well thus far both of us are laying it down and neither one has pulled out the big guns. And it looks like this war could last awhile (at least until we run out of guitar equipment to buy and skills to improve). But here's what it looks like so far.

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