Funk is so cool. I'm listening to Run DMC/Aerosmith 'Walk this way' and it's such a classic. the riff just oozes sex appeal. and just now it was marvin gaye's 'sexual healing', and a little bit of prince's 'when doves cry'. my goodness. just the blues on a saturday night, huh? enough of that passe rock rubbish that cretinises you man.

Tennis today was brilliant fun, except for the rain. the funny thing was that i dreamt the day before that by the time it got to 4.00 it was going to rain, and true enough, it did. am i some sort of soothsayer or something? haha. anyway it rained here and there after half an hour and we couldn't really get to play: the rain stopped later on and we played for a bit more, we managed to get through two doubles sets, before it started raining again. sigh. never mind, i won all of them 6-0, 6-0, but of course, it'll be a much more different story if daryl were there. PLyaed squash and that was fun too. dinner was great. had rack of lamb spiced with mint sauce, while the rest had fillet, some seafood, pie, chicken, and sausages...and some lovely cocktails...i had a sex-on-the-beach with kahlua, others had zombie, some had island on the sun and what not...was quite fun and a nice way to end the week. thanks to jerald, hope there'll be more of that, would be seriously cool.

but today i was fishing out my KORG tuner manual and i found out something seriously cool...a new way to tune your guitar, so you can enjoy the benefits of just intonation instead of equal temparement, which is, seriously, the most ugly, stupid, tuning system there ever is. to take 2 cents off every 5th to make the circle complete is the most stupid thing you could ever do, since chords, harmony, doesn't ever sound like harmony any more. there isn't that shimmer, that resonance, that blend. something's just not right. bah. i think the tuning was much better last time, when i actually tuned the guitar to a chord, for instance G major--i didn't have a tuner then--and then i would sorta fiddle the notes in the chord until it was almost just-intonated, instead of it being equal temparemented--of course that chord sounded damn good while the rest were like crap. of course then you couldn't play any song, right? coz while G was perfectly just-intonated, C was rubbish, and so was D. no wonder it didn't work!
but now, i just realised...just tune it to E, and then barre! and you have the perfect solution. the KORG tuner gives you the position for a pure major 3rd or pure minor 3rd, so all one has to do is to retune some of the strings. E, no need, it's the root. for A, tune it up to the indicated mark, since it'll form B, the 5th, which has to be raised. for D, leave it. for G, tune it down, since itll form the third. for B, tune it up to the indicated, and for E, leave it alone. So you get a really nice chord for all the majors, and the minors dont' sound too bad as well: you have to barre, of course.

The truth is, we've been fed with equal temparement for so long, we've lost the knowledge of the beauty that music actually is. classical music, especially acapella, with the blend of voices, is really music in its purest form, where music simply blends and the harmonic overtones are fed nicely and blend in nicely and you can hear the shimmer of the overtones. especially during ac choir concert, my goodness, the whole auditorium was swelling with the sound of overtones. and only in that form can songs be truly appreciated. sigh. we should go back. js bach was wrong.

Everyone's getting so desperate about their lives now. their prelims, their A-levels, their universities, which to go to, bad common test results, et al. And i think we really have to put things into perspective. Yes, doing A-levels well is paramount in your education life: if you don't do it well, you've finished your education berfore uni on a low, and you might just miss out on a ticket to the train of success--a good university, and so on. However, yeah we can study and al that, but really please don't confuse your studying life with your actual life: you are more than your grades make you out to be. you've got a way-long life out ahead. you'll get married, get some pretty little kids, earn some bucks, drink some at a pub, listen to some music, get some love, hang out with friends, die, go to Heaven, if you believe in God, that is, and eternal life and so on....really there is no need to get all worried and desperate. yes, the time is short, but systematic revision should clear the little holes here and there?

i've been lethargic, a little sick, and very sedate and sane. been sober with songs like 'danny boy' and reading literature and thinking of victorian era age and the culture and all that, so not much pop these days, eh? scottish folk songs. haha. purvis dancing. well done.

but i really admire this little midi program called midicode that you can download (the demo) from www.midicode.com and it's really wonderful, coz you can access different scales that are in different intonation besides equal temperament: such as the just intonation scale, which is really quite wonderful, it's the pure form according to the chords, where the 5th is raised and the 3rd flattened and the 6th and 7th i think flattened slightly so that it forms the 3rd of the 4th and 5th chords respectively, and there are even javanese slendro and pelog scales! how accurate it is, i have no idea, but the fact that i can hear a chord properly without the buzz is good enough.

i'm trying to download some all saints and listening to garth brooks. what a great song.

Jamming today was positively brilliant...i played bass till my fingers are all aching and can't even type the keyboard no more. but it had everything, was super-fun. And it was like musical chairs: anyone could play anything....my band members, jon, and darren of course. we just switched from guitars to bass to vocals to drums, and seriously a whole lot of fun. played loads of numbers taken from a plethora of musical styles: american punk rock, to moffatts, to american indie rock like OLP and staind, to brit-pop of suede and radiohead...even some blues! how cool was that. even some original numbers: invincible, holiday, happy, nobody cares. it was good everyone just decided to have some fun and chill out after the terms.
class party was okay. played PS2 and had some dinner/ice cream, the usual works. and watching tennis: my goodness, roger federer was brilliant. he is a class act, with a classy touch, a brilliant one-handed backhand, and everything from the forehand, the serve-volley, the passing shot. talent incarnate.

listening to OLP now, wow. it's just inspiring and a great finale. thank you God i prayed it'll be fun. oh wells.
=)