April 24th - Ample Sandwich Basin (music theory)

 24.04.2021

Nice enough day so far. Yesterday was too. Both days seem to be at least 65/100. Maybe today will go up to 70. Did some long awaited work in the morning. Internet didn't slack out on me, thank God. I'm too nervous about it. Well, I'm less nervous than I was before. Fell asleep relatively early yesterday, then woke up at night and stayed awake until I had relatively little time to sleep. That was okay. Except my mind was all jumbled up and I confused some things that I had to do. I reckon if I grow any more lonely I'll be even deeper in dementia, ha ha. Accidentally fell asleep during the day and woke up at seven past meridian.

Life is like a burning fire. Existence itself is. Endless, boundless, limitless movement and change. How can it stop? How can it start?

As you can see, I'm already enjoying my coffee. I came here to script myself and tell myself that it is indeed my duty to write music rather than just practice. It's been over a month since I started my last project! And I only had like 4 guitar sessions since then. I practiced way more, but I didn't do anything "serious". I'm thinking of turning one of my last jams - you know, the one on march 27th - into a real song. Maybe something short, like three minutes, because it's just not really heavy, but quite enjoyable.

Starting to feel like I've been playing FO4 too much. I always get so excited after I watch a couple youtube videos. You know, it actually feels great to know that the gamer in me isn't dead - I was worried, since I've been barely playing anything besides AI Dungeon since late december. And AI Dungeon is extremely stimulating - if you know how to stimulate yourself. Wow, that sounds disgusting, ha ha. But I actually don't mean anything disgusting by that for once. Maybe you're the one who has a dirty mind, he he.

The songs that I already wrote really deserve to be accompanied by more music, so I can have at least 40 minutes of enjoyable time. And it wouldn't be that hard to make some CDs - maybe even print some stuff at home.

Speakinbg of printing, I have so many little screenshots from videos on my phone with all sorts of tiny music tips. Like different scales on the fretboard, and open chords on the guitar - a lot of fun figuring out the notes on the string and alternative ways to play chords. In fact, I'm going to share something right now.

Here is is - Bb major chord in D Standard tuning. The thing I discovered a long time ago, but also rediscovered recently, is that you can take any three neighboring strings and play that shape, and you get the major chord! So that means we have a lot of different major chord shapes here. And you can do that with other chords and intervals - just put them in Musescore and, you know, find different fret positions. Not bad for a person that doesn't know anything, eh? I guess I do know something now, oh well.

And here's G Minor - plus a way in which I'd prefer to play it

You can pick any three notes and play them as a chord. Or you can assign some notes to one guitar and some to the second guitar to make everything less muddy - cause, you know, we're dealing with some relatively heavy distortion here. And that's one of the ways I like to write certain parts of my songs - specifically, the "melodic parts" - at least that how I call them, normal people call them either a solo or a bridge, or a fill. Apparently, I write my "melodic parts" like a jazz musician - the melody of the lead guitar plays over the accompanying chords, rather that just in the scale of the song, but of course, there's some deviations. You can hear it here between 1:58 and 2:23 -

Man, I can't wait to release my first album. I just wanna see it on my bandcamp page. And I wonder if I'll be able to do it before summer.

Anyway, I took too long. I decided that today I'm not gonna do heavy DLs. I'm taking too much time and it's already 9 PM. And I want a couple more cups of coffee. I'll re-brew them and pray not to be jumbled, ha ha.

You know, I've been noticing that anything from (modern) Bethesda games has been sort of randomly blowing up on youtube - any short random clip from TES or Fallout games. So, perhaps, it's my turn to start recording my gameplay, just so I may start finally uploading something on my gaming channel, since I'm not working on the video that I had in my mind for so long - because it's gonna take a lot of time. Realistically, how much time is it gonna take? I'd say about 5 hours, all for a 20-30 minutes video. And I already played for a long time. Maybe you'll see what I'm talking about if i ever finish it. I kinda wanna launch a variety gaming channel - so I can make videos of different games, and the main attraction on my channel would be my personality. Now that I'm saying it out loud it sounds awfully naive, of course. But I don't have reasons to be pessimistic at all. You gotta try if you wanna do anything. Or, rather, do something right away, and not try at all, ha ha. "Do, or do not. There is no try."

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Training session

Bench press

Some pushups for a warmup

70*15

90*10

110*10

120*10 - gotta get back in the benching groove. I know it's possible without interfering with the OHP, in fact, it should help. I just have to be more disciplined about my accessories.

70*10

Squat

70 - 2 sets of 10 - nice, feels good

Rubber lat pulls

Floor supported prone ring pullups

35 - after 20 it was more of a rest/pause

35 more - easier version (pelvis - the center of weight - closer to the bar, so the rings are a bit more vertical) - a lot of rest/pause, but not a very long pause, of course

A sets of biceps curls with an 11 kg fatgrip dumbbell

Some more curls, culminating with a 21 kg fatgrip dumbell curl for 10 reps, each hand, while standing at the wall (not completely strict).

Random pic of the day -

Church of the Addolorata, view from below