[Vai Freak] Glacius

Mood: Blurred
Listening To: Unk1 Final Version.mp3









Finally, the beat doesn't screw up! Sweet joy, and this time, it's FINALLY completed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I was supposed to come back on the 11th of December, but if you read my journal entry I posted in Schizzow's place, I screwed up on the tickets. 50% my fault, I admit, and the other 50% would be the counter's fault. -_-

Anyways, what's over, is over. Mum is dead pissed, father was dead glad that we were spending another night in KL since he doesn't see us so often, so on and so forth.

To clarify things, the RM1959.00 was to repair the KL's Toyota Camry 2.4v's bumper. I parked it, sideways in, and well, some asshole rammed the car from the back, leaving a huge dent and a couple of scratches, and just ran off while we were having dinner. Now, my dad was particular about the car, so...















WHATEVER.

Oh. And the KL taxi drivers are nuts. I wanted to get back to my place with a taxi from Sungai Wang, which is a 15 minute walk, simply because it was raining. But that idea changed when I found out the price was RM50.00. Goddamn.

And I'm never travelling with my mum ever again. She brings a shitload of luggages and many more on the bus. This was "our" luggage on the trip back to Penang from KL. The same amount of stuff, but even more from Penang to KL.


-__________-

I only had three bags. And well, my brother took his time to pick us up from the bus terminal here at Sungai Nibong, and I'm glad he did although I was shit tired because I only had 1 hour of sleep earlier that morning. Jesus wished me Merry Christmas as I found this on the floor.


Happy birthday, Edmund!


Yeah, the phone was given to Edmund. Lalala. I was kind enough to wait for 5 or 10 minutes, but I didn't see anyone who wanted it back, so..

Finders' keepers. Loosers' weepers!

Anyways, the KL trip was an average one. Good times, bad times, and emo times. Consider it as properly balanced. This is what I wrote on the night right before I was about to come back. It's going to be long, and .. Shitty.

10^th December 2006, 11:27pm

Finally, the beat I have been talking about, is completed. The beat known as Unk1 in my previous journals, of course. Ever since I got to KL, I have been working on the beat based on Graveyard shifts. That means when it’s midnight, I start work, and I end work whenever the sun rises.

It’s true enough, that I do stop when the sun rises. In fact, I’ve been sleeping at 6 or 7am in the morning daily, and waking up at 2pm or so, in the afternoons. I finally got a refreshing sleep after the first night. I slept at 6.30am, and woke up at 4pm. Not only I’ve been missing out breakfast and lunch, but I’ve also been missing out on the times to actually go around meeting people and shopping.

Lucky thing that I didn’t manage to go shopping as I’m already broke. The only shopping I ever did was just to get myself 3 PS2 games to bore myself out when I’m down in Port Dickson, soon.

Anyways, that was what I wrote right after I completed the beat (which I didn't, by the way. I only completed the beat today at 13 December). This KL trip has been a rather progressive one. I’ve seen, I’ve learnt, and I’ve accomplished some things. This journal will be seperated into several sections as followed:

Sights:
Cars
Traffic compared toPenang

Music:
The Beat
Recording Arts – Mixing

Events:
Family Dinner
The Trip So Far..

Sights - Cars
During this trip, I’ve seen cars that Penang seldom offers to the eye. I’ve seen a couple of Porches running around the town. Serious facelifts to local cars to look like their original manufacturer’s products – the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution __. I guess they’re more serious than the people in Penang. I gotta admit, some do look nice, and some are just plain scary. Not only I’ve seen a couple of Porches, but I finally get to see a damn Ferrari on the roads! Woo hoo! But I pity the driver though. It has to be tough driving such a monsterous vehicle in a city full of nothing, but traffic jams. Lots of petrol required, and since Ferraris runs only on Shell V Power..

*Salutes*

Nothing much here. Just saw a couple of exotic cars, and a new one to add to my car dictionary when it comes to Toyota. The Toyota Mark X.. It looks like a Camry, but it isn’t at all. Odd car by the way.

Oh! And I saw a few Skylines. Not the new ones, but the old ones. Sweetness. Genuine Skylines! Unlike the famous Put-Line we notice here in Penang.

Since I’ve been running on a weird Graveyard Schedule, I haven’t had the time to actually travel to PJ to go test driving Alfa Romeos.. Or to visit that Lamborghini showroom I’ve heard? I don’t know. Not a KL person.

I know, I know. All of you would say that it’s a normal thing to see these sort of cars in KL. Lay it off, alright? I never bothered about cars until this year, so to me, it’s like walking on your damn two feet for the very first time when you’re still a baby.

Sights – Traffic compared to Penang

Well, all I can say is that the traffic here is HORRIBLE, compared to Penang. So many indecisive and arrogant drivers here in KL. And the traffic lights? Speak no more. I’ve got a KL-Traffic Light phobia now. The red light shines just about 75% more than the green light O.O

But the roads here are great. Not so bumpy, it really spares the lifespan of the shock absorbers and suspension in every car. Penang? Gah.

But then again, I stayed in Bukit Bintang area, so it's usually packed. -_-

Music – The Beat.

Finally, the beat I’ve been working on for Anonymous is completed. I only had the first verse up and running since one week before my finals – which was 2 or 3 weeks ago. This trip has been a good one as I finally had time to spend for myself. I got a nice chorus hooked up, but faced some problems as I received wrong instructions from Anonymous. I had to cut, and re-do the chorus and left it “incomplete”. It doesn’t sound incomplete, but it is to me. Have to ignore that fact.

As stated during the beginning of the journal, I have been working based on Graveyard shifts. In fact, when I first arrived in KL at 4am in the morning, I switched on my mum’s laptop, and started off. I used 2 hours to plan and do everything via Reason. I slept at 6.30am since my dad woke up already. My mum has been working under Tourism Malaysia and in the roadshow that they held at KL Sentral. Every time she works, she brings the laptop with her, so I do not have an option but to wait for her to finish work, then I can start mine. I would usually start somewhere after midnight after a nice bath.

I’d spend my afternoons playing the guitar, or listening to music through the Zen Neeon my brother and his friends got for me during my birthday, either getting inspirations OR learning more styles and feels.

I guess you can say that I spend an average of 6 hours per night since I got to KL, just mixing, composing and arranging the song. You can also say that I’ve put most of my spirit into the song, and I’m finally done! A song that is not entirely my field and feel – completed. I guess composition is also another challenge to me as a musician. Composing something you’re not really capable of, y’know?

Now, I shall wait until the recording day, to see if everything goes well. Hope it really does!

Music – Recording Arts: Mixing

They say that art comes in many forms. Mainly through pictures, but some never see music as art. Well, I’m sure most of you know that music is also a form of art. But not only music, the way it being mixed, IS art by itself. It’s up to the Sound Engineer to think which instrument should be louder than which during some parts of the song. It’s also up to the Sound Engineer to think which instrument should be panned to the left or right speaker to achieve that certain melodious feel, so on and so forth.

In the bus from Penang to KL, I had my mp3 player on all the time, and studied a little bit about mixing. I finally understand how a heavy rock/heavy metal song should be recorded and mixed. Including solo instrumental artists like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani, and other genres. Pop, Rock, Classical instrumental, etc. I’ve studied and learnt the secrets of mixing to make it sound like that genre. I believe that it’s all about mixing when it comes to seperating the music genres.

Which leads to the topic, where my father asked me about my vision of life. I told him that either that I’ll end up in Australia, or Boston. Why Boston? Simple. Berklee’s Music College. It’s expensive, I know, but it’s also my vision and dream to achieve a degree related to music. And from what I’ve learnt so far, I might get a degree in Recording Arts, just like Wormy? I do enjoy mixing songs, but I’ve got a lot to learn, and a long way to go. I’m not entirely good in mixing songs, anyways. Never had projects to work on – also a reason why I want to re-do my recordings.. To practice and learn.

Or maybe get a degree in Arrangements. Composing is one thing, and arrangements of instruments is another. As I learn more through songs, I guess you can say that I’ve learnt that music is EXTREMELY wide.

Events – Family Reunion
This would be the main reason for my KL trip this time. To attend a Christmas dinner done by my relatives the right way. Trust me. Turkeys, and all that good junk. Besides that, they pulled off a Christmas gathering among The Siberts on the 2^nd Advent Sunday. I never knew anything about that, but whatever it is, it’s still a joyful Christmas dinner!

I guess I mainly messed with my uncle’s company’s newly purchased camera which costed them RM 6,000++? It’s a Nikon D70S. It uses a memory card to store taken pictures, and it’s not a digital camera. I don’t know anything about cameras, but I really had fun in taking close-up shots. To some of us, we know them as Macro Shots.

It’s a semi digital/analogue camera as you can manually set the focusing of the camera to focus on certain objects (Macro shots) or set it to auto-focus like any other digital camera. Y’know, when we’re all filthy rich, I’ll settle down with a camera similar to that instead of a digital camera. Hohoho.

Family reunions are fun. I managed to meet up with one of my cousins and talked about nonsense. All my uncles were fun to talk with, and one of them is getting a BMW 535i. My dad told me not to tell anyone, but you wouldn’t know which uncle is getting that car now, would you? So it’s practically safe. Lol. Besides, this uncle is not based in Penang, so I’m not afraid of anything. Lalala.

Events – The Trip So Far..

Overall, this trip was good. Learnt more things about music, got myself a new guitar, saw many new things, and well, finally got the vacation that I longed for. Away from home, away from friends, away from the Internet, and away from everything that distracts my musical self. Nothing but work, music and mixing. Isolation? Most probably. I enjoyed it, although it kinda sucks to know that there are no reliable mamak shops around the area I stayed. You wouldn’t wanna know how tough it was to work 6 hours straight without breaks on an empty stomach !%&!*$&!@$*!&%$.

Well, that's about it from me. Every time I get to a vacation, I always face one problem. And that's catching up with Multiply. Since I've got nothing else better to do, and my beat is already done to be sent (again), I shall check out some stuff and also listen to the beat at the same time to realise any mistakes.. Hmmm.