Ambidexterity

Recently, I've decided to upgrade my old Squier Strat for a 7-string Ibanez 7321. The strat is about 4 years old, so decided to give it a clean, which included a complete restring.

Now, a bit more background - I'm an avid Guitar Hero player, quite good, but can't really bring myself to play it often enough to be among the top league of players. Plus, it's not really very popular here in Aus, so while I've won beer and an IPod from T, I doubt i'd be able to earn much more. It's still fun though, so I figured I'd use the opportunity to learn a new skill - ambidexterity. You see, there's this option to play 'lefty-flipped' = everything reversed, where you strum with your left hand, and fret with your right.

I'd never noticed until I tried, how hard it was at first. You see, while it was easy to think what you should do, muscle memory inevitable took over. When playing normally, you always fret (left-hand) slightly before strumming (right-hand) so you're holding notes down before you hit them. Your left hand naturally learns to move a bit before right, so when you flip, suddently you're strumming before notes are held (= bad). Similarly, transitions between chords with the right hand, or simple strumming patterns with the left, would suddenly be much harder.

Which leads me to think that hand preference is more a thing of repeated action, than actually being better at one. You see, I began practicing in such a way that mistakes weren't tolerated (that is, starting by just finishing expert careers, but now aiming at 100% for expert songs, so far acheived on two of them! :D) and my progress isn't too dissimilar from playing normal-handed.

Now back to my original story - I decided to restring it flipped, with the strings in reversed order, to try to learn to play normal guitar flipped. I already know all the theory, tis just a matter of muscle coordination, so hopefully by next year I should have it at a reasonable stage :) At the moment, strumming still feels kinda odd, and my right hand feels strangely inflexible, but Wonderwall is starting to sound ok :) But yeah, in short - ambidexterity is a weird thing, it'd be nice to be able to use either side equally, and although it seems hard at first, practice does seem to help a lot...maybe it'll come in useful one day.

Note also that it can be quite odd - if you try to write left-handed, it's much easier writing the letters correctly than writing them as mirror imaged, I'm guessing in this case we remember the visuals more than the muscle movements. However, some things are easier to do wrong-handed when outright flipped.

In other cool news, my indoor soccer team won our grand final! That's two seasons in a row, especially good this season as we only just made it into the finals themselves, never expected to do that well, and it's also my last full season here in SA (...for a while, at least). Secondly, a Melbourne uni team of coders recently won our ACM regional - I was hoping these three would win, they've all been taught in the high-school program I help with, and what is more, check their team name! :)

Holidays on now, which means honours talk soon, and lots of thesis writing....fun....adios for now!

myTunes

So, happy September everyone! The following is the usage stats of my site for August, each bar representing how much data was downloaded from it per day by visitors:
The lowest horizontal (i.e. about day 1's total) is roughly 80Mb/day, which I used to be happy to hit - that translated into about 50-75 listens per day on mp3 sites. Then it kinda slowed down, and I thought I was in for a slow month...then August 24 happened, and BOOM. I mean, some rise was to be expected due to the end of the Olympics, especially as my listeners mostly seem to come via a chinese-language site, but still - almost 250Mb/day. Strangely, the # listens doesn't seem to gave grown much, people are just listening to songs for longer it seems. I've also had a number of odd referrers (= sites people get to mine from) include a few spam, one that looks like a ringtone site, and another apparently from ninemsn :S Maybe it was after the 20th = Pegasi's first gig, but either way, hopefully it'll keep up!

On the topic of music, and gigging, we received feedback on the performance. Most was good suggestions, stuff expected to be said about a band at their first gig after being formed for 3 weeks. However, a few things said - although not surprising comments - did kinda annoy me. They were - (1) The guitar playing was 'too complex', (2) Not enough hooks, (3) Stick to one genre, and (4) The song structures were too unusual.

Those who know my music tastes will know my #1 band to listen to, almost exclusively, is Dream Theater (with Fastball high up for their composing skills). Lets see some of the reasons I listen to DT and shun most other music:
(1) They're skillful - most parts are amazingly complex, yet still appealing to the ear (e.g Overture 1928)
(2) Most songs don't have catchy hooks, instead almost all notes and lyrics are important (e.g The Great Debate)
(3) Their range of songs is diverse, newer ones especially are not repetative (e.g. Constant Motion vs. Wait For Sleep vs. Endless Sacrifice vs. I Walk Beside You vs. Never Enough)
(4) Structures are rarely simple, with guitar/keyboard/drum fills and unusual time signatures added yet still sounding great (e.g. Honor Thy Father, Forsaken)

Not that I don't think the judges are bad for putting that feedback down, but it certainly is the way of the industry now to have repetative songs, whether inside the same song - i.e. lyrics repeated over and over again, the same riffs played CCVCCV, e.g. The Veronicas new 'hit' - or between songs by the same group [e.g. i have to say it - Dragonforce], or worse, songs that sound like songs already out there [*cough* I'm looking at you, Rogue Traders and Kid Rock].

And that's not to say that the artists themselves are to blame for this, it's just business. Instead, for me it's the consumer who wants 15 seconds of catchy song, either for their ringtone, or to appear on an ad, or simply because a four-minute song is too long to listen to...(*points at DT's Album/Song, Metropolis pt. 2*). So once you write your catchy, yet musically vacuous 15 seconds of hook, the next step is to play it over and over and over and OVER again, add some drum track, and dance around a bit. If you're already famous, you get some radio play, and because your hook is played 12 times per song, it'll get stuck in everyone's head! Meanwhile the musical intellect of the average listening is in a skydive.

Revolt against the dumbing down of our musical culture! It's time for a new style, where songs have over 1 minute of non-repeating sections, where lyrics and verses ACTUALLY MATTER, and where minor 7ths, suspended 4ths or added 13ths can roam free, safe from the threat of power chords!