09 January 2021 - Hard overhead press workout, New drumhead, Different modes of the pentatonic scale

 09.01.2021

Nice day. Nothing too disturbing. Had very light coffee made from 100 beans - didn't boil it almost at all, and it cooled down very quickly. So I had another 100 bean coffee, but this time I boiled it and felt the hard effect. Might have been too much.

Overhead press

Warmup

90*2

105 - 2 sets of 2 - should have only done 1, lol (according to the program)

112 - 3 sets of 2

115*1 - nice, very easy, pretty strictly.

40 - 2 sets of 15

Pushups (short range)

10

20

100 with rest/pause, took me 1 minute 47 seconds. I wasn't trying too hard, to be honest. But it felt nice. Immediately got way too hot, and now I'm too cold in the cold room 😁

That's about it for today. I guess I want to post some pics?..

My new Evans TT16HB drumhead for the 16'' floor tom - I love the way it looks, at sound quite nicely too. I think I should tune it lower, at first I really cranked it up.

Maybe I could post a vid of myself playing. As I mentioned before, I really improved my pedalwork. Maybe I should do a lot more than that, haha. But I'm running out of hype. Caffeine barely affects me anymore. In the summer, a mere 78 beans used to turn me into a raving beast. Wonder if it's seasonal, or perhaps I'm just tiring out my system by working at high percentages, or maybe I actually have developed tolerance to caffeine and I'm going to need to have another "self-intervention" soon 😂

Well, I did not forget about the

    RANDOM PIC OF THE DAY

I really do enjoy posting these for some reason.

A nice pic of a Gibson SG Junior from 2003?

Taken from here - https://kizanski.com/Images/Adjusted/SGjr/

Couldn't really access the main page of the site - I guess it's just someone's forgotten personal site.

Well, no, wait a second, I managed to find it - http://kizanski.com/inventory.html

Perhaps it's a collector/seller site.

Oh, what a lovely guitar site. Thankfully, I managed to overcome my desire to buy a new guitar. I think I'll buy a Cort X250 if I ever manage to save up enough money.

---

Some time later.

I played bass a tiny bit, I planned to record some parts for my current song, but instead I spent about two hours trying to dial in a nice bass tone. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't accidentally listened to my bass playing through my guitar plugins. Distorted, panned bass with increased treble sounded so good, so I had to try and figure out a nice plugin setup to create something similar, but something that wouldn't interfere with guitars (?), and something distinct. For some reason I just really prefer clean(er) bass most of the time. I tried to use a Metalzone emulator in TH-U, and put the bass signal through two different amp models, something similar to what I use for guitars, but I just kept being unsatisfied. I remembered about the BOD plugin, put it on, got a semi-decent clean sound. Basically, I think I either am very bad at dialing decent tone, or maybe I'm too picky and I just can't decide whether I want a clean(er) bass tone or something more distorted.

Anyway, after midnight I was done playing - hadn't really recorded anything, deleted the bass parts that I recorded at first. I sat down and decided to practice a tiny bit, and figure out different modes of the pentatonic scale. I created funny associations for them in my head, so they were easier to remember. They were mostly tied to the shapes on the fretboard, i.e. like a couple steps, or three even pieces. Then I decided to find out more about these modes, so I asked a question on Quora, and almost immediately received a decent answer - let's see if I can embed it.

Read Martin Turner's answer to Do different modes of the minor pentatonic scale have any names? on Quora

The embed inevitably takes you to Quora, so I'm just gonna copypaste it for better convenience.

"

Martin Turner

·

43m ago

Guitarist. Since 1979.

You can call them Joe, Ted, Fred, Bill and Mike if you like.

The regular modes only have names because the Greeks chose to categorise them with those names—and then, during the medieval period, the names were retained, but what they meant changed.

There’s a good article here: Pentatonic scale - Wikipedia

Essentially, there are five possible modes of the pentatonic, based on notes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (of the pentatonic).

In the key of C, these would be based on C, D, E G and A.

1. On C, it’s the Major pentatonic. You could call it the Ionian pentatonic, if you like.
2. On D, you could call it the Dorian pentatonic. It has also been named the Egyptian Suspended.
3. On E, it’s referred to as the Blues minor, or the Man Gong scale, and you could call it the Phrygian mode. But it isn’t really the blues minor, because the blues minor is a hexatonic with one blue note, or a septatonic with two, or a nonatonic if based on the diatonic natural minor, or an 11 note scale if based on the melodic minor.
4. On G, it’s referred to as the Blues major, but see the note above. It’s also called Ritsusen and the Yo scale. You can call it the Mixolydian pentatonic if you want.
5. On A, it’s the minor pentatonic.

None of these are the universal or ‘official’ names, because they are widely used in different folk musics, and each folk music has its own name.

Although you can play in the G key on the C pentatonic scale for blues, you can also play a minor scale over major chords, and that can be blues as well. Blues doesn’t really naturally categorise itself into anything. Those blue notes, you know."