Who Did You Think I Was

Probably no one. Probably a guy named Albert Le. Probably thought that was a song title. I'm supposed to post a resume somewhere on this blog, but I can't find the "additional information" section in the "about me" section. Does that make me anti-internet savvy? I don't know. Instead of doing my American Lit journals I'm procrastinating by writing another blog entry. I've already done three other ones with like a billion words in it. That's a lot more than 500. Next week I've got a lot of stuff to do. Tomorrow I've got to get an oil change (the oilometer (i know that's not what it's called) says it's at 30%, and if it gets to 20% my brother will beat me with the oil stick(jk(i hope))). So I'm thinking I'll go after my American Lit class. I thought about going before my PR class but then I'd have to wake up at 9 and i'll be groggy and yell in my car but then I'll get relaxed by Shutt[ing] [My] Eyes. Then Open[ing] [My] Eyes. Then having Hands Open and I'll set fire to something. And I'll Make This Go On Forever if you want me to, too. Do I try too hard with this? Probably. Next week I've got to take an advertising test, a PR test, a French examen auditif, and do an American Lit journal conference that I haven't started. I hope my professor doesn't read this. My American Lit one that is. This post sucks. Bye.

Set Fire to the Something Something

Third Ward. That's the song I'm listening to, by Snow Patrol featuring Martha Wainwright. She's a pretty good singer, she has pretty good songs also but it's not in my taste of music. It's more folk than anything. I'm pretty bored right now, I have a PR test tomorrow on the four-step something process. It's over the first two steps, defining the problem and planning and programming. Last night someone named Crystal(?) called me, from UT but I wasn't home so I got the message that Crystal called at 8:11PM. Except I don't know a Crystal, and I don't know how to get in touch with this Crystal character and this post-it note is useless. Snow Patrol did an Abbey Road version of this song, it's favorited on my YouTube account. I won't tell you my account name though, so you can't go watch it. Don't search for it, that will ruin what I've done. Last weekend I went to a GrammyU thing with Jason, it was pretty good I guess. I need to call someone to get an interview for an internship. One of the guys who was presenting stuff at a workshop told my friend to "shut the hell up", and I thought that was funny. I played with an Open Labs MiKo something or other, that was pretty fun. There was this Dalai Lama program where you could make him "chant" something in different tones and pitches and stuff. It was pretty funny at first, but then this girl and guy kept messing with it then it got old. I wonder if the Dalai Lama is thinking "what the F#*$?!" because I would. I wouldn't want someone dragging a cursor all over the monitor sporadically while holding down the mouse1 button for the sole purpose of entertaining themselves by making a computerized image of me chant at various pitches all while making my face squint and relax and repeat. Another good song is Another Kind of Green - John Mayer Trio. On Wikipedia it says he wrote almost all of his songs for his John Mayer Trio album or Continuum (I forgot which one) in about two weeks. That's pretty crazy. I wish I had a lyric book, or the creativity, or the guts to break out of the social norm to pursue a music career. But I suck. I wish I could have my own model of a Fender Stratocaster also. Maybe I can win the lottery and donate the money and they'll make an "American Fender Stratocaster Albert Le limited edition guitar in Olympic White, Sunburst, and Black" guitar for me. But then they would make me learn guitar and I wouldn't like it that much. I would just pay them some more and then they'll make a Squier edition one with my face inscribed on the pickguard. If I could Photoshop well I would show you what that would look like but I don't have it and I don't want to illegally download it and install it on my computer. But you can go to my first post, take that picture I posted, outline it on a sheet of paper, then use a razor blade to carve it into a Squier stratocaster at GuitarCenter, then you'll know what it looks like. If they ask you what the hell you're doing to their guitar and that you'll have to pay for it because you vandalized it and then you have to get the hell out of their store and never come back again say it's alright, because Albert Le will donate money to Fender one day. I'll probably only give like five dollars though, because I'm poor. I was just going to type how much money I put in the collection basket at church a week ago but I don't want to be vain and brag about how my five dollars changed the world because it was doubled by a generous beneficiary but I don't want to be vain so I won't say. The movie Se7en is pretty good. Brad Pitt is like 10th cousins once or twice removed to Obaminator or Clintron. I forgot which one. One of them is also related to someone else but I forgot who. I was walking on the Drag today after my advertising class, and this homeless man (not hobo, that isn't politically correct or good mannered edit: well-mannered) asked this asian guy (not me, I swear) to help him out with some change, and he ignored him and walked on. I was sure he heard him, because I was pretty close also. Then a WaMu employee came out and told him to move along sir, you can't stand in front of this store and do that. A couple of nights ago I went to go eat with Quy Ma (Aka Deina, 70 female gnome rogue US PVP Chromaggus tier 4/5 gear full s1 partial s2 gear 1500/1600 ratings more than two months of playtime) and Jason (Aka guy who wears thrift store vests) at McDonald's at like 9:30 or so and when we were leaving this old black guy (politically incorrect to call them African Americans. who said they are all of African descent? racist.) came up to us, well me, and asks me for change because his car ran out of gas and his friend is making up excuses and hold on baby I'm talking to someone alright and he's a grandfather and needs some gas and gets mad when I said no sorry I used all of my money buying a number one and sharing half a ten piece chicken nugget box with Deina.
I helped up a homeless man once, it was scary. On Saturday after I got back from going somewhere with man-with-thrift-store-vests a girl's dog runs in his apartment and she comes in and takes her dog away and apologizes. The Dalai Lama has his own website, I forgot to mention it when I was talking about him. He's better than I am, I only have this blog. But I have a cool v-neck that I bought last week. I'm going to wear it at an unspecified time this week. It'll be a surprise; you guys can see my sternum. I hear that's the new aphrodisiac. I don't know how long this is. The end.

my approach on reading sheet music

You can find out the stuff I'm about to say pretty much anywhere online but I thought it'd be nice to post the way I read sheet music.

Reading sheet music is pretty easy, it just takes time and practice
before you can identify the notes on sheet music without having to think about it.
i'm going to try to make it as easy as possible for you to understand. I'm going to
assume that you know that there are 12 notes. CDEFGAB and C# D# F# G# A#, and that
C# is the same as Db and D# is the same as Eb. And if you ever see E# or B# being written,
E# is just F and B# is just C, but this is rarely written in my experience with
seeing any popular music.

There are 5 lines, and 4 spaces in between.


This is only applicable to the treble clef, if you don't know what that means, it
probably doesn't matter right now unless you play some bass instrument like bass
guitar or tuba or something.
From bottom up, the 5 lines are E, G, B, D, F. The way I was taught to remember this
is Every Good Boy Does Fine
From bottom up, the 4 spaces are F, A, C, E. So just remember the word FACE to remember
the spaces.
So if you start from the bottom line, and then go up to the next space, and then up to the
next line, and so on. You can see that the notes are EFGABCDEF. Which goes in alphabetical
order since I assume you know that after G there is no H note, it just starts at A again.

When you go past the 5th or 1st lines, they add "ledger lines" which just sort of extend the lines,
and let's say you'd see a note on the the first ledger line below the 5 lines, that would be a C. The note
past the first ledger line, which is just like a space, would be a B, and the note on the 2nd ledger line
below the 5 lines, would be an A. The note above the top line on the 5 lines, would be a G, and the note
on the first ledger line above the five lines would be an A.


-- The way I learned how to read sheet music easily without having to think in my head, "okay a note on the 3rd line, ok E, G, B. Oh it's a B," was from playing trumpet in high school. You could do it with guitar or piano also, I would just make sure that when you're memorizing that you're not just memorizing the shape of your hands, and that you're actually memorizing the placement of the note on your instrument, whether it be a a fretboard or a button or something.

There are also different "keys" you can play in. Really the only ones I'm going to talk about
are the keys of D major, G major, and F major, and C major, and A minor, since most of the
songs I've seen are usually written in this key.

In D major, there are two sharps, C# and F#. So in a D major scale you would play D E F# G A B C# D
In G major, there is just one sharp, G A B C D E F# G
In F major, there is just one flat, F G A Bb C D E F
In A minor, all the notes are natural, A B C D E F G A B C

I just talked about these 4 keys, because they don't have many sharps or flats compared to other keys,
which is nice because most people don't like having to read a buncha flats and sharps, playing a song
in the key of C major or A minor is convenient since you don't have to worry about flats or sharps.
But sometimes, a song might sound better in a different key because of the range of notes, or some times
your band's singer's voice range doesn't mesh well with the key, maybe he can't sing high or low enough or something.

To figure out the flats and sharps of a certain minor scale, for instance A minor,
it's pretty easy. You just go up 3 half steps and use the flats and sharps of the scale of the note you stop on.
For instance, if you go up 3 half steps you would start with:
A
A# (or Bb) - 1 half step
B - 2 half steps
C - 3 half steps
So since you land on C, that means the sharp/flat notes in the A minor scale would be the same as the C
major scale, since there are no flats in the C major scale, that makes it pretty easy since in A minor
you don't have to worry about sharps or flats.

There are also things called "modes". Basically if you take a C major scale,
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

And you start on the 6th note, you would play A B C D E F G A. Which is just the A minor scale.
But if you started on the 2nd note it's called the Dorian mode, you would play D E F G A B C D. Which is called the D Dorian.
It sounds kinda like a minor scale, if you start on the other notes there are also other modes, but I'm just going to talk about D
Dorian since I see it used a bit more often than the other modes. A good example of a song written in D Dorian is
Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel.

To be able to distinguish between whether or not a song is being written in C major, D Dorian, or A minor, since all 3 have no sharps or flats,
the thing that probably gives it away is that what note you'll see a lot. Perhaps a melody will start or end on a C, which might hint it's in C major.
If it ends on a D or starts on a D, it could be in D Dorian. Just maybe though, it might not always be the case.

To create major chords, they will have the 1st 3rd and 5th note of the major scale. So remember 1 - 3 - 5
For example a C major chord.

C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Would have C E G in it. It could also have C E G C, or E G C, any combination works as long as you're sticking with C E G,and you can have as many
C's and E's and G's as you want it'll still be a C major chord. There are chords called slash chords, like if you see C/E, what that means is that
the chord is a C chord, except the lowest note of that chord is an E, for instance if you played E G C together. C/G would mean you would be playing
G C E.

so a C major chord would be C E G
A D major chord would be D F# A because
D E F# G A B C# D
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
The third note in the D major scale is an F#.

A G major chord would be G B D
G A B C D E F# G
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Notice that in a major chord, the 3 notes that form it are two notes away from each other in the major scale.

An A minor chord would be A C E
A B C D E F G A
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

To form chord progressions, a common chord progression in pop or alternative music you would hear on the radio is a 1 4 5 6
or a 1 4 6 5 or 1 5 6 4. Basically a mixture of 1 4 5 6 chords.
Basically this is what you would do, let's say you want to play a chord progression in the key of C.
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

To form a 1 4 5 6 chord. You would play a C major chord C E G
An F major chord, F A C
a G major chord, G B D
and an A minor chord, A C E
Notice that we wouldn't play an A major chord, for the "6" chord because we're in the key of C and C has no flats or sharps ( the A major scale has several sharps)

There are many chord progressions in pop music that might not use a 1 4 5 6 progression, sometimes they might involve the 3 chord or the 2 chord or something.

A good example of a 1 6 4 5 progression is the song "In An Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Now playing only major and minor chords can get boring sometimes, so to make things more interesting there are little things you can add to make your chords sound
cooler.

To for a major 7th chord, you would play the major chord, but add the 7th note also. It kinda adds this dreamy kinda sound to it.
C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
So for a Cmaj7 chord ( C major 7th), you would play C E G B

For a Gmaj7 chord, you would play G D B F#

Sometimes you'll see C7, or G7, this is just a dominant 7th chord, instead of playing the 7th note, go down one halfstep on the 7th note
so instead of playing C E G B like you would in a Cmaj7 chord, you would play C E G Bb. This gives it a sorta twangy sound that you'd
might use for blues or country or something.

Sometimes you'll see suspended (aka sus) chords, like Csus2, or Csus4, or Dsus2 or Dsus4
This basically means, you replace the 3rd with the 2nd or 4th, depending on what it says after the "sus"
So instead of playing C E G for a C major chord, Csus2 would be C D G, Csus4 would be C F G.
Dsus2 would be D E A, Dsus4 would be D G A
Remember that in a sus chord, you're replacing the third... you get this sorta floating kinda feeling. When you play sus chords, they usually
sound well when you follow it with the major chord, like if you played Csus4, and then C major, it would sound cool. If you ended on a Csus2
or Csus4, it might sound weird, because your ear feels like the melody or chord progression still needs to be resolved.

Sometimes you'll see add chords, which are like sus chords, except you don't replace the 3rd, you keep the 3rd and add the note that it says.
a Cadd2 chord would be C D E G. Since D is the 2nd note of the C major scale. Add chords sound good with the regular major chord too.

First blog post ever.

Not really. I had a Xanga once, way back when I was in like seventh grade or something. I don't use it anymore, and the last time I checked it was during senior year or something. Maybe last year, I don't remember. I used to write what I did pretty much everyday, a line or two recapping what cool things I did like spike my hair or learn a new rave move or something. That was pretty sweet. I think it's still there, but I don't want anyone to see it 'cause it's pretty embarrassing. I thought I was all hardcore and cool back then. I think. Yeah it's weird how people change. House guy on House, M.D. would say that people won't change but I won't listen to him because he's not real and my parents told me to not believe in not real people. Did that sound dumb? Probably. So this is for my advertising project and I'm supposed to write three 500 word blogs. That's like writing three college admission essays. Right now I'm listening to The Format- Tie The Rope; it's a pretty good song. Too bad they've broken up like two months ago for no said reason. They still play some weird board game though to try to figure out who murdered who; at least that's what their website says. I don't really think that having a band name as "The (Insert random noun here)" is pretty clever. Like The Format, or The Killers, or The Strokes. I can make up a name right now, like The Blog. The Crapchute. See? There isn't that much creativity. The only "The _____" name I kind of like is The Postal Service, that sounds kind of cool. The Format is playing on my playlist again, I don't think it's on shuffle. Yeah, I just checked and it wasn't on shuffle. But The Postal Service is really cool, too bad they only made that one album sending each other various song parts to each other via the postal service. See the cleverness of the name? At least there's a background to their name, not like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. They said that their name had no apparent meaning and they only picked it 'cause they needed a name. Fall Out Boy's name came from a show they had where they didn't have a name at the time so they asked the crowd what their name should be and voilà, Fall Out Boy. Panic! At the Disco changed their name to Panic at the Disco; what a buzzkill. Yeah, I said it. Their new album sounds like Maroon 5 plus a less annoying voice. There probably is a better band to compare them to but I am not thinking hard at the moment. He does have a pretty cool singing voice though, just like guy from The Killers. I bet they don't even kill people. Not even killers at all. So faux. I'm so trendy, I've used two French words so far. Maybe that makes me cliché. Alt + 3 is ♥, I just found that out. I know a bunch of the accents for French on the keyboard because this year my teacher makes us type up compositions. I think this is more than 500 words but that's okay because I'm procrastinating doing my American Literature Closed Reading Exercise 6 or 7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't that good, I don't know how they won that Grammy award for their album. Well I do, it's because they have that one catchy song, "Maps". But other than that, the rest of the album isn't that great. Some songs are alright but she's no Feist. But who am I to judge, I'm no musician right now. They probably know way more music theory than I have, and have gone to >0 tours. The Arcade Fire is an alright name. At first I didn't like Radiohead's name, but then I started listening to their music and they're alright. Thom Yorke is cool, too. Pete Dougherty (sp) got thrown in jail for 14 weeks because he violated probation. I think it said something like he was on probation and last year he said he had a turning point or something in his life then they caught him in possession of crack cocaine, heroine, cannabis (weeeeeeeeed), some drug, and something else all at once. Pretty funny, I think. He's cool though. Can't stand him now. Get it? Probably not. I wonder who's going to read all of this. If you do, tell me. I think I'm going to write in this a bunch about random stuff like I did just now. Except I don't know, we'll see. I'm not that funny in blogs. Or probably in person. Woozle wuzzle? That wasn't funny.