Smells like Teen Spirit as elevator music

Sounds good actually.

[Share] Four chords to make it big.

More than 30 songs using the same four chords.

[Share] by Alex Chan

The price of Sacrifice

When you see em play so confidently on stage, some of their acts seemingly random, and 'out of the blue'. Dont buy it. They prolly have done that hundreds, and possibly thousands of times in their private studio. Rehearsal is the only way to perfection. Practice makes perfect i guess.

After almost a year of inactivity, we are finally back on track. We've been through so much. Ups and downs. The feeling where we felt we flew, and conquered the world, to the moon and back. Now we're more down to earth. Setting monthly milestones. More email replies. Solid attendance. I guess all of us sacrifice something to be in this. Let's make sure we create something worthwhile here.

Before, I posted something about 10,000 hours of practice in any field make you half an expert. And the same goes with music i guess. Just like a relationship or business, we gotta dare to make mistake in playing music.

Innovation doesnt come from doing something 100 times the 'perfect' way. there's no point saying sorry. There's no point apologizing, or feel sorry even. If you want to innovate ( write your own shit, or cover a song with our interpretation, then you gotta allow yourself to feel the music. After 5 sessions, we know the song. We know them deep in our hearts. But we still crawl to our music sheets, trying to see how others played it. Trying to follow the tempo. Not feeling the music. Money and age can't buy confidence. Money can't even buy you love. Confidence can only be acquired from within.

And we certainly need that kind of confidence. The kind to tell ourselves we are somehow good enough to tackle a song. That we have our own flavour and way of flirting with our instruments. That we can handle it. Art is very different from science. Scientists have yet to understand how our grey mass helps us understand beauty, how we create beauty, and how certain electrical sparks create new shits. And they will never understand it.

Artists are powerful, and it's beyond words. Art can only be experimented, and innovated. And I think Dani and Californ have been good to us. I guess the next level is to play them to perfection, and then start doing it our way.

// this post doesnt reflect the opinion of this band, or rather one of the band mates, who has some thoughts and comments he wants to share. If you wanna complain, write in.

First for Singapore

"it's so much easier to just put your music out there for free and encourage people to come down to shows - pay to watch the live shows and enjoy the experience of being part of the music."

The pride of Singapore, this girl is the first Singaporean to be invited to play in the States. Making money from live shows and allowing her music to be downloaded for free, she proves to be a champion of the new business model for artists.

Full story.

Dani by Frusciante

Sundays...

Individual Progress

I've been thinking. Even if we practise an hour every day with our instruments, that will only be 7h a week. And a month it'll be 28h. And a year that'll be 336h. It seems so far to hit a decent amount of practice time. But we try. I did before going to sleep last night. Just plugged in headphones to amp and played for about an hour before going to bed. And boy did it feel good hearing the sounds inside my head of overdriven guitar.

We might marginally hit 2 practices a month for January, which is on track for 2010. As for gigging, we need to sit down and discuss how a wedding gig might happen. Assuming it doesn't fall between the time I go to HK.

Singing lesson to start this Thursday. Vocal coach has learnt from someone in Japan. Hope that this will improve vocals part of the band. We got work to do as a band that aims to surface this year. With Alex's involvement with people who WILL bring us the gig opportunities, it's how we make use of this outlet to justify our existence. As Attic Tractor, and not by any other name shall we be made known.

Sure we have our own lives to get ahead with. But I'm sure you're in this for a reason. And when the reason becomes compelling enough, you will want to do more than give it minimal effort to stay in this band.

Cheerios.
Dee

Sweep Picking Lesson

10,000 Hours: Bill Joy, Bill Gates and The Beatles

This is the story extracted out of the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. And of course I didn’t chose this book because of the author’s name, but the book chose me. Haha. Let’s dive into the meat of it. It’s a book about chance and skills. Let's forget Bill Joy. He's not as famous the other 2 names in the title : Bill gates and The Beatles. It seems that they're not the BEST in its time. It's because of the opportunity which was presented to them, and by chance and luck, they were already armed with a lot of experience and exposure in their respective fields. Read their background and you'll understand why. On hindsight, everything looks as if it's 'meant to be'.. or they were at the right place at the right time.

But the truth is that, I believe we should look ahead. Just like how the Beatles have clocked more than 10,000 hours playing in (maybe) lupsup bars before they reached 20, and how Bill Gates has been tinkering with Mainframes and computer what nots, we have to clock our 10,000 hours before we can say, let's play with some self-esteem.

Before that, we're just not ready. Practice makes perfect. There's no shortcut.