Cartoons, Anime and Musical Stuff

If the title hasn't already given it away, I've spent this week watching anime and cartoons. I have done other things, for instance I had band practice earlier, I have been playing a hell of a lot of guitar, and I have been drooling over Killing Floor 2. Weirdly, I have even done a bit of gaming this week, I've played about 10 matches of League of Legends, did a few levels on Serious Sam 3, and I pushed my monk through Westfall in World of Warcraft.

This week has mainly been about the cartoon/anime watching for me though. I was coming up on the end of Bleach (I had about 40 episodes left) and so I decided to power through that. Once that was completed, the season finale of Archer was available, so I watched that. After that I was stuck, but then I remembered an advert for a cartoon I saw on Disney Channel while I was at my mates on Monday.

That cartoon is called Star versus the Forces of Evil, and I for one think it is incredible. so far there are only three episodes, each is split into two mini episodes. I plowed through the three episodes in one sitting, and now I stare at the recent releases section of my preferred website waiting for the next episode(s) to be uploaded.

Since I could watch Star, I decided it was time to embrace my masculinity and watch Dragon Ball Z. It was actually a hard choice to make, a large portion of me said to watch Sailor Moon, which I had started in August, but I then stopped for some reason. I really don't know why I stopped, I was loving Sailor Moon. Finally to top off my cartoon watching, the season premiere of My Little Pony was uploaded last night, and so I watched that while I ate my breakfast this morning. I loved it.

As I also mentioned, I have been playing a lot of guitar this week. It's nothing new, but I thought I'd mention it because it wasn't until band practice earlier that I actually properly started playing anything close to metal. I've had a week of clean guitar and finger picking, only occasionally flicking to the bridge pickup and adding a bit of crunch, but those crunch moments didn't last long, it was usually for a quick lick or riff to just break up the strangeness of my clean guitar playing.

I've also declared it restringing time, but only for my three main axes. So far I've only ordered strings for one of my guitars, I'll have to take some of my wages out of my vault and put them in the bank before I order my next set just so I can continue to have an acceptable amount of funds in my account. I would have ordered the other strings with the set I ordered for my 8-string guitar, but I've only just decided what strings I'm getting for what guitar, and I'm still not sure whether or not to go with it, chances are I'll change my mind last minute.

I've also decided I should get an acoustic guitar, but I won't get one. at least not for awhile. It's time to buy an amp head, and that is more important to me right now. However, I will be buying an acoustic guitar at some point. Correction: three acoustic guitars. as it stands I want to own a 6 and a 12 string western guitar as well as a classical guitar. I won't be buying any that are too flashy, but they'll still be good, as long as I hand Nathan the money and get him to order them, he has more luck than I do.

As I said, the amp head is my next step, after that it'll most probably be a new bridge pick-up for my 8-string. Another 8-string would be nice, but I'm trying to be realistic. If I'm lucky and my repair idea works, I may not buy a new pick-up and simple try to sort out a pedal board for myself, I have some of the parts I want, such as the power supply and a delay pedal, I could probably also borrow Nathan's drive pedal for gigs since he won't need it then. Unfortunately, I'm still short on a few things, namely a chorus, a pedal tuner and some form of octaver or pitch shifter, which ever gets the sound I want.

I'm happy, at least I'm mostly happy. Nathan has ordered a mic, a stand, I believe he's also ordered a lead for it, and thankfully we already have an amp for it. I should be able to gig with my amp, but I'd feel much safer with a new amp head which can be easily transported, and isn't likely to explode on me. I have been warned by my brother that my current amp will probably do just that if I crank it up too much.

8 Strings?

As I mentioned in my last post, I have bought an 8-string guitar. It arrived awhile back, but I had to get it replaced, the replacement arrived on Tuesday, and naturally on Thursday (after the back of the guitar had been covered in belt scratches) the bridge pick-up slipped and is now very out of place. On the upside, I reckon I can give it a decent temporary fix.

This 8-string guitar actually turned out to be a better idea than I had originally hoped. My initial plans were to use it in Open F and play some nice instrumental music on it. Instead I took it down to Nathan's to show it off on the day he decides to start drumming.We jammed for a good ninety minutes, and during that time we had answered all our problems.

Our band had been struggling ever since our drummer decided to quit, and on Wednesday during mine and Nathan's jam session, I realised that we could work as a two-piece band because I could play both the bass and the lead parts on my 8-string guitar. This works out at a few more financial difficulties, since we were better prepared for our original idea, but overall it'll all work out cheaper for us, if we do it properly.

During our jam session we were also able to write a song, which was great since we'd have to start again with the song writing. Thankfully I was able to salvage and rework three of our other songs so we could still do them, they may sound different, but they still sound good. This knocks our current song count up to four, if I can get another six original songs I could happily start gigging, I don't mind doing the odd cover song (I have two in mind), but I'd much rather be doing our own material.

I also know that I need quite a bit more than just a few more songs before I can start gigging. The main thing being a decent place to rehearse. We unfortunately can't practice in Nathan's garage, his neighbours keep complaining, thankfully his dad plans on sorting out the back part of the garage (where we rehearse), which will hopefully involve some sound proofing.

Other things we need, amps, mics, and a few helping hands. Things I need: to sort out my guitar, another 8-string as back-up and/or different tunings and an amp that is NOT likely to explode on stage. Unfortunately for me, my brother has done a lot to my amp, and it apparently has a tendency to blow up if pushed above bedroom volumes. I'm not the only one who needs to invest money though, Nathan has a drumkit that needs quite a lot of maintenance, I'm also hoping he'll help investing in the mics and some amps for them.

In order for this project to work I need to start prioritising my expenditure. The first step will be to sort out this guitar as best as I can. The pick-up needs leveling, the strings want changing, and I'm putting some Schaller Strap Locks on for added security when playing. The pick-up leveling will be the hardest task since the screw is currently useless, my dad has an idea, and I have a backup idea, one of those ideas will definitely work. All the other adjustments on that guitar can wait, and so after that, I'll see about getting a decent guitar amp head, and then I don't have any clue what comes next.

I am quite excited about what I can do in this band, but I realise I've made plans like this before and something has decided to thwart them. I can only hope that that doesn't happen this time around, but I am already facing adversary. I hope this works out, but only time will tell, either way, I don't plan on giving up.

World of Warcraft and my New Toy

Just as I thought, World of Warcraft was a very bad idea, but not quite as bad as what I treated myself to yesterday, I honestly can't believe that I thought it would be a good idea to purchase what I purchased yesterday. In fact, I have no idea what I'm going to do with the magical item that I purchased yesterday. Thankfully, I have about nine days before it arrives, and so I've got that much time to think about things.

So what did I buy yesterday? Well, I'll tell you later but first I must talk about the scourge that is World of Warcraft. That evil games that sticks it's claws into your flesh and makes you spend countless hours beating the life out of murlocs just to hear them scream, and also because they drop a quest item, and they won't give you the last one you need for your quest.

I guess I'm weird, I love those adorable little terrors, they still scare the life out of me, but they're so much fun, and when you set the noise they make before they charge you as your text alert on your phone, you get some awesome looks on the bus. But murlocs are still terrors, and me being the idiot I am tried to tank them with my healer, but as it turns out, my healer is quite resilient.

I have been pretty much glued to that game all week, but annoyingly I'm about to hit level ninety, which, for me, is the highest level and so I've slowed down on my main, because I don't want to progress until I get the next expansion, which will be sometime after my new toy arrives. It's rather annoying, I have a character stuck in Westfall, who is set to level up alongside one of Nathan's characters. I have another character who is waiting at level 15 for one Nathan's characters so we can role-play together. I have a Pandaren mage who should really be doing Westfall, but I've done it so much as of late, I really can't be bothered to push through it.

And then there's Grundan, my Horde character. I'm not a big fan of the Horde, I don't like their capital city, and I've played Alliance for so long I feel like a traitor playing as a Horde character. Unfortunately, I felt the need for a bit of variety, and that is how Grundan came about. Currently, he's only level nine and is fighting with a bamboo sword, but he really can clobber murlocs with that thing.

I also installed an Add-On to my client, It's nothing fancy, but I quite like it. I installed the Add-On called MyRolePlay, it basically just adds an extra window to the character screen, allowing you to edit a few minor things, and also help other players who have the Add-On understand a little more about your Role Playing character.

World of Warcraft aside, it's time to talk about my new toy. Yesterday I ordered myself a set of twelve guitar picks from Amazon, but more importantly, I ordered an 8-string guitar from Thomann. To be exact, I ordered the Harley Benton R-458 BK Progressiv Series. If I can help it I'm going to try not to djent on it, chances are that I will djent, but I'm going to try not to. I will play metal on it, but if possible I'm going to avoid djent. Djent isn't my scene. I'm going to try and do something closer to Rob Scallon's work, so I'll tune into Open F and see where that takes me.

Originally I was going to order the R-457, which is pretty much the same guitar, only it's a 7-string instead of an 8-string. I only really wanted a seventh string, but I encountered the R-458 first, and with it only being something like £8 more expensive I thought I had nothing to lose with it. I can still play the songs that require seven strings on it, so why not go a little further.

If I enjoy this eight-string, I may upgrade and get myself an eight-string ESP, but even if I do it'll be awhile before that takes place, ESP guitars aren't exactly cheap, and the 8-string I was looking at was £666, which is the coolest price tag for a guitar so obviously designed for metal. But speaking of upgrades, my amp should probably come next, that or I should start socializing.

A Weird Passage of Time

It's strange to think that it's Sunday evening, last I checked it was still Wednesday. Instead the sands of time have continued to flow, leaving me behind, but now I shall sit back and wait for the sands of time to flow since I have just renewed my WoW account and I'm now waiting for it to install.

Slightly more importantly, my copy of Hand. Cannot. Erase. should arrive tomorrow, and I can't wait to listen to it and also to watch the DVD. I love Steven Wilson's previous album, and I expect good things from this one.

As a final not, I thought I'd let you know that I've come to terms with my Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridge, but I'm still going to try and avoid them where possible.

Slow and Shreddy Wins the Race

Since it has been half term I have spent the majority of my time playing guitar and watching Bleach, and I have just finished watching the Dorje livestream on Youtube, So I this post has been a little delayed, but while I wait for the Centered and One pre-order page to load I thought I'd quickly get my post in.

I think in this one week I've made a great improvement in my guitar playing, I say that mostly because I've learned quite a lot of new things, such as modes and two handed tapping. I've had quite a nice amount of fun using two handed tapping, and I've been enjoying the Phrygian and Locrian scales, I have also learned the Dorian, Lydian and Mixolydyian modes, I already knew the Aeolian and Ionian modes, but I didn't know those names for them.

I find there is a great satisfaction in learning new things, especially when it has something to do with what you love, and what I love is heavy metal. Don't get me wrong, I don't cast an artist aside just because they aren't a metal band, I am quite partial to blues, prog and even classical music, but my preference is metal. When asked what kind of metal is my preference I usually say extreme metal, because I love the four sub-genres it covers, and it makes the decision easier.

Unfortunately my playing has one major problem, which I presume time and practice with help me overcome, everything sounds samey, on top of that, the Black Sabbath influences are very prominent in what I write, so I could really do with breaking free of this, and adding a bit more variation into my playing. I doubt I'll ever be anywhere near as versatile as Guthrie Govan, but I don't want to be limited as a metal guitarist.

I have got one thing that makes me quite versatile, I've got a guitar designed for country and blues and yet I can get some incredible metal sounds out of it also, and I have both channels nicely set up to give me a different sound, the clean channel is slightly driven which gives me a nice sound somewhere between Rush and Joe Bonamassa. My crunch channel gives me an excellent metal tone perfect for pretty much every sub genre of metal, it doesn't work so well for hair metal though.

It helps that the Marshall Valvestate 80 combo I use isn't really a specialised amp, I wouldn't call it one anyway. I can get many sounds out of it, for many different genres, I just have to set it up right. I'd like to upgrade my amp, preferably into a separate head and a cab, The head I'd like to own is the Laney Iron Heart IRT60H, and I'd get a matching 412 cab. I've been looking through a lot of amps, and so far that has been my favourite.

As for guitars, my current primary guitar is a Dearmond M-75T, it's an incredible instrument, but it has one major problem: the last seven frets are hard to reach. This is because the singlecut design is very chunky, and also very heavy, and so guitar solos that take place past the fifteenth fret become very difficult.

This means a change in guitar is necessary, the easiest solution would be to use the ESP that I own, but I don't like it enough, it's an incredible instrument (despite the awkward bridge, which I'm starting to like a little bit more), but it doesn't fit as well in my hands as my Dearmond, my current thoughts are to buy a Chapman ML-2 and then customise that to get a tone worthy of me, but then I'd just end up with an over the top metal axe that I probably won't be able to use anywhere but my bedroom.

Either way it's a long road for a budding guitarist like myself, but if I'm lucky I might be able to make it as one within the armed forces. As they say, slow and steady wins the race.

Random Annoyances

As I might have mentioned in my last post, I had my army interview this week, I believe it went quite well, but I can't be bothered to talk about that again, I went through it in my Bronies UK post. I also went through my Valentines Day in that post, and so I won't be talking about that either. I also had my nineteenth birthday on Monday, which went by pretty much unnoticed, I'm not complaining, I hate the fuss and attention that birthdays usually bring.

So surely something worth talking about happened during the week, and in fact something did. A prime example of which is I realised just how much I dislike Floyd Rose floating tremolo bridges. I'm going to point out now that it's not because they are bad in any way, I actually think they're quite clever, and they hold their tuning extremely well. I do however believe that setting them up, and dealing with them is more effort than it's worth.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with that system, in order to change the tuning on your guitar you can't just play around with the tuning heads. Instead you have to undo the locking nut, providing you have one, which most guitars loaded with this system do, then you can play with the tuning heads until you get to whatever tuning you desire, after that you have to undo the back plate, and then you have to adjust the tremolo springs until the bridge is flat (for lack of a more accurate term), repeat those steps as long as necessary, reattach the back plate, redo the locking nut, and then you can finally fine tune.

Doing that was far too much effort when all I wanted to do was set it for C# standard (1 1/2 step down). I also gave it a restring so thankfully the locks on the nut were already removed, but in order to restring you need to cut the bullets off the end off your strings, unscrew a small block from the bridge, insert the string into where you pulled the block from, replace the block and tighten the screw. I'll give it one thing, at least I don't have to hold the string in place at both ends like I do with the Bigsby on my primary guitar, but it's still too much of a pain for my taste.

I shouldn't really complain about it too much though, I've been given a damn good guitar, and so it's worth maintaining, it needed a cleaning, and it also needed a pick-up ring replacing. I might as well change the strings while I'm at it, and if I wasn't awkward, and I was willing to use .010 - .046 gauge strings and keep it in standard tuning, a nice portion of the setup could have been avoided.

I was also nicely annoyed when my precious .011 gauge D'addario string snapped whilst retuning my primary guitar, to make matters worse, I only had a .010 gauge Rotosound string to replace it with, a .010 gauge E string sounds weird when it's attached to a set designed for an .011 gauge E string.

Another annoyance of the week, I was able to start working on that Vintage Metal Axxe bass yesterday, everything had finally arrived. There were two problems, one of which has been solved. the one that has been solved involved one of the screws holding the P-style pick-up in place. It was worn down to the point that a screwdriver would do anything. I sat there for what felt like an eternity with a dull saw (all I could find) turning the once-cross-headed screw into a flat-headed screw. It worked in the end, but I wasn't happy about the whole ordeal. The other problem has put me at a bit of a standstill, the pots I had ordered were too small, so now I need to order some long shafted pots.

I have also been annoyed by things that don't involve guitars. Mostly a few of the things that occurred to me this morning while delivering papers, and the happy memories that keep popping into my head. Yes, happy memories annoy me, this is because of the nature of those happy memories. I'd rather not go into the nature of those memories, but my realisation this morning that the biggest mistake I have made in my life as of yet was going to Sixth Form.

I don't now where I'd be without Sixth Form, But I still firmly believe that that was my biggest mistake, and I reckon it'll be awhile before I make a bigger one. I might be wrong about that, but I don't fancy making another huge mistake any time soon. So those of you year 11 students thinking about staying on for Sixth Form, I'd strongly advise against it, go to a college instead.

Another Rally: Frozen Nuts! (And also some other stuff)

In case the title didn't give it I went on another bike rally, and I have just finished sewing the patch onto my cut-off. The Frozen Nuts patch was one of the three rally patches I wanted, meaning I now have the Another Piggin' Rally patch and the Frozen Nuts patch, the third patch of the three is for the Last Wolf Rally which I'll hopefully be going to this year.

Patches and rallies aside, for the time being t least, I have also been up to quite a bit this week. To be perfectly honest, this week didn't have the best of starts, self-doubt kicked in, and I spent the first half of the week thinking I'd get nowhere in life. Thankfully that disappeared on Wednesday, and the week could return to normality, which was good, especially since I had the first part of my army interview on Friday.

Thankfully it wasn't the real deal, it was a pre-interview in order to sort out my three job choices, since there is only a slim chance of me getting my first choice, I need to have back-up options. I'd also like to point out that I don't exaggerate when I say slim chance, in-fact I think a slim chance would be bigger than the chance I have. I say this because I plan to be a musician in the army, and I plan on entering as a bassist (but I will happily go for guitarist if need be). with there only being three army bands that require a bass guitarist, and each band will only need one bassist, there are only three potential jobs for me, that could be boosted up to nine by adding six guitarist slots (two for each contemporary band), but there are jazz bands which I might be able to slot myself into.

I now have two back-up jobs, I had to change at least one of my original jobs because the staff sergeant interviewing me, didn't want to send me into one of those job choices. This meant he gave me a nice big pile of job briefs to take home, sift through, select three jobs from and rank them in order of preference. The end result (in order of preference) was Musician, Combat Medical Technician and Military Policeman.

Army aside, the day before I restrung my bass. I used the thicker four strings of a five-string set (leaving me with a spare G string), and after about twenty minutes of playing part of the nut shot off making a satisfying ping sound. I literally busted a nut. I made a few quick measurement and ordered a new nut from eBay, while I was measuring I noticed that there was enough nut left to raise the string, but not enough left to hold the string in place. I decided to use my engineering prowess and I wrapped duct tape around the strings to hold the thick B string on the remainder of the nut.

The duct tape idea works quite nicely, but I had to put a bit more tape on not long after taking the picture, because the B string only stayed in place for two minutes of playing, I now get fifteen minutes of playing before I have to adjust it. At least I now have another nut on the way to replace my current on. Hopefully my new nut will be stronger, I order a graphite one to replace the original plastic lump.

That bass has a few more problems with it, which should be fixed by the next post. as it stands it an active on-board pre-amp which has died. I don't really know much about electronics, but I do know that the wiring is a mess, and it makes no sense to me, or to Nathan, and so I have decided to remove all the wiring and the pre-amp, and replace everything. I'm even going to replace the pick-ups with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound P-J set. This will leave me with a pot connected to nothing (I'll ground to that) and an empty hole where the battery should go which I'll fill with a block of lead hopefully adding enough weight to counteract the headstock heaviness of the stock bass. I will at some point also add a set of Schaller Strap Locks, and buy a decent strap.

I have also had a bit more misfortune with guitars this week, this time it was my primary guitar. I've had her tuned down a step-and-a-half for six days, and so when I decided to tune her back up to E standard the 0.011 gauge high E string snapped and struck me on the infected scab on my right middle finger. My finger hurt enough as it was, that string really didn't help. Thankfully the Rotosound set I bought awhile back for another guitar came with a spare 0.010 gauge string, which will suffice for now.

I have now also decided it was time to restring the guitar I got off my brother. I've been putting this off for awhile because the Floyd Rose Floating Tremolo bridge seemed like it would be a ball-ache to deal with, I've also decided to replace the busted pick-up ring holding the neck humbucker in place, I'd like to replace both pick-ups at some point, but I don't really want to do something that will annoy my brother since I don't fully consider the guitar mine. That guitar is now back in her box after a vigourous cleaning, and there she will remain until her new pick-up ring arrives.

Hopefully I can get both of those guitars finished and theoretically, I should be done working on my guitars until June, when my Epiphone and Harley Benton basses get restrung. That is, of course, unless I buy a rolling tune-o-matic bridge, which won't take long to fit.

Anyway, as some of you know, this weekend was the weekend of the 29th annual Frozen Nuts Rally! Naturally as soon as we arrived some woman with a very hoarse voice came up to us and gave us a tongue lashing for something that happened six hours prior to our arrival. One of the lads from the Greedy Pigs started a very loud argument at four in the morning and kept everyone awake for the next three hours while they all shouted and screamed at each other. If you were one of those unfortunates who were affected by their arguing, I have a very strong feeling that disciplinary action will take place at the next meeting, but since I'm not a member of the Greedy Pigs, I can't say anything with any certainty.

Other than the bad start, the rally was quite enjoyable, I was only there for the Saturday, and so I didn't get to the the Jalepenos perform, but I hear they were good. I did however see half of Disturbin' the Peace's performance. I say half because I went outside for a breather during there interval and all the booze, the cold and the fact I had been awake since six O'clock that morning all struck me at once. I just couldn't continue, and so I dragged myself to the tent and slowly drifted to sleep.

I may have missed the half naked sexy girls, I may have missed Disturbin' the Peace cover a Rush song, but I did witness the worst proposal ever, which naturally took place in the middle of a hen party. I then saw (about five minutes later) the newly engaged woman fall over on the dance floor, spilling booze all over the singers pedals and the monitor by his feet. I reached out to help her up, and she gave me a really dirty look.

The bride-to-be from the hen party also randomly gave me, and a few other confused looking dudes, a big hug, while someone followed her with a camera. As soon as she stepped away from me, Dion (Nathan's dad) walked up to me and said "You lucky git, I've been eyeing her up all night." I on the other hand was eyeing up another member of her party, that entire group were wearing corsets, and one of those corsets looked like it was about to pop, so I was eyeing up the owner of that corset.

At some point between the proposal and the band kicking in, the bride-to-be had a male stripper, I get the feeling that he was her soon-to-be husband, judging by everyone's reaction. He didn't do the full monty, but it was still funny as hell to watch. Shortly after that I went to get me and Nath a drink, and on the way back from the bar I congratulated the newly engaged lady, turns out she has a voice that can break glass, I don't know if that's normal or just because she was drunk and/or excited.

I am also aware that none of this post is in chronological order, but the rally has thrown everything out of perspective and so I don't actually know what order anything happened in, I just know within two hours of getting to the rally I had had four different beers in three different pubs, one of those beers was a can I had bought with me, which I drank by the fire.