"Practice makes perfect!"...

...says the one who's skilled enough to attain perfection. Which is also the same person who doesn't and will never exist. Ever. Because humans will never be perfectly skilled in anything because there's always room for improvement and, well, we just aren't wired that way, dammit.

School started a couple of weeks back (for those of you who don't know, I'm finally taking up Music Production in Benilde. Yay!) and I took it upon myself to practice with Logic Pro. I don't even know if what I'm doing is right. So far, I have these two tracks:

I'M NOT YOUR TOY by La Roux

Tempo's off in this one. It was meant to be a raw-ish vocals + guitar track (as made evident by the shitty tem- oh wait, my tempo's always shit). But things happened and I ended up having too much fun.

I DON'T WANNA MISS A THING by Aerosmith

This was initially supposed to be another auto-tune adventure (much like the Banana song), but it seemed too sincere of a song to auto-tune. Does that make sense? I didn't want to "taint" the song with my stupidity. I'm not implying that auto-tuned tracks are stupid, it's more of... the act of me auto-tuning things means I don't take certain songs seriously (POTATO-NA~). But since auto-tuned vocals are cool to some extent, the treatment was used on the back-up vocals.

I figured it'd be easier to practice on covers since the song's already structured a certain way. All you have to worry about is making it your own.

It was fun toying with midi instruments.

Keeping the ball rolling~

So apart from the album (which will hopefully be done around May or something), I've been lucky enough to collaborate with other musicians and form new bands. It's time that I step out of my comfort zone (a.k.a. beside or hiding behind my sister), explore the rest of the world and take on musical endeavors alongside other musicians.

So far, I have two new bands...

YOUR FACE

Your Face was conceptualized when Vince (full-time drummer of Vinnie and the Hello Kitties, part-time lesbian wannabe) and I drank too much coffee. We thought it'd be cool to have a band called Your Face and hear people talk about us.

"Your Face sucks"

"Your Face could've done better"

"I love Your Face"

"Your Face makes me cry"

"I want to see Your Face tonight"

"Is Your Face DTF (down to funk)?"

"What can Your Face do?"

"Your Face lights up my day"

etc.

That's... that's basically how we came to be. Because we were high on caffeine. #TrueStory

HOUSE OF HAMSTERS

Reese (1/2 of Reese & Vica; ) and I have been meaning to start something together for the longest time now. When we finally got around to it, we sat our bums down and agreed that we would make the most out of our ukuleles (in other words, we can't wield our other axes during gigs). And then we decided to name ourselves "House of Hamsters" because, well, it was the name we liked the most when we consulted this one band name generator online. This band serves as the outlet for all the songs we can't sing with our other bands.

❖

Apart from doing covers, both Your Face and House of Hamsters will be working on writing original material... In the future. Not necessarily in the near future because we don't exactly know what the future has in store for us. So for now, we'll be focusing on finding our sound. And we plan on doing so by covering a buttload of songs.

I'm really glad I got to collaborate with other musicians. After almost 3 years of being exposed to the music scene here in Manila, it finally happened. And I'll be sure not to limit myself to these bands. If an opportunity comes up, I'll do my best to take it and conquer it. God knows I've had enough of wasted opportunities, fearing the unknown, not trying hard enough, and giving up faster than I can scarf down chocolate. Have you ever seen a vacuum cleaner suck up cookie crumbs from the carpet? Imagine a monster vacuum cleaner gobbling up, not only the crumbs, but the entire carpet and flooring as well. Imagine all of that happening as soon as you switch it on. Yep, that's equivalent to how quickly I give up and the intensity of my discouragement when I do.

This year will be full of musical badassery. I'll be sure of it.

Musical. Badassery. Fo'. Shizzle.