the zeppelin of burning dreams

But wait. My boombox doesn't even have an audio out. Dammit.

I've been trying to get the basslines of several jazz songs burned for me by Kevin Roy's younger sister, Krys (she's a ROY! haha). I'm not really clear as to who sang these numbers, but the voice apparently belongs to master diva Bituin Escalante. Aside from the fantastic work of Ms. Escalante, the rest of the instruments - around five to six other instruments, at least - are fantastically executed. But on the whole, the basslines didn't sound like something I couldn't handle; mostly scale-play on a major 9th scale, which isn't a scale I'm especially familiar with since I'm rooted in jazz and rock n' roll. But since I had just recently succeeded in mapping the basslines of the second Rurouni Kenshin intro song 1/2, which played around in successive notation and isn't much different from a simplified 9th major scale, I figured it wouldn't be especially difficult in tabbing "Bossa Manila."

Hell, was I ever mistaken. The difference between Bossa Manila and 1/2 lay in the way the 9th scales were used. 1/2's chord pattern is simple, with the bass just playing around and giving the song its liveley feel. Bass and drum coordination in that song is fantastic, I tell you, plus that electroacoustic guitar strumming percussively in the background. Bossa Manila, on the other hand, didn't involve a lot of play from the bass; if it were down to simple chord patterns, I wouldn't be complaining about the song here and now. However, the song utilized the 9th scale on the chords themselves - so it went a little like this: the stanzas had a mere two-chord progression with different bass notations depending on which part of the stanza it was the bassist was playing (i.e. there's a part where the bass has two second half notes, and other parts where the bass would go up to a sixteenth, all in just the stanza). Doesn't sound too difficult, no? But the music turns deadly come the refrain and the chorus; I, for the life of me, cannot figure out what the exact chord patterns are for the refrain and chorus, not to mention the shifts between the two. And there are two to three shifts within the entire song, and they all have different time notations. Gah.

Here's something else. If you put aside the amplifier settings (there's no way I can figure out the amp settings with the boombox I'm using), I'm guessing that the bass player had the neck pickup volume turned to halfway down, whilst he had the bridge pickup maxed out. This, coupled with the tone dial turned up to at least 7, gave the bass a mettalic, phat sound. And I'm not even suggesting the phat knob yet. This would further raise the lower end tones of the bass, which would transform the earthy, deep moan of the instrument into something more typical of a low-tuned electric guitar. The gain would be high enough to, as using Francis Brew's words, ". . . eat up the sound of your electric guitar" if the settings of the bass amp were to compensate by lowering the high frequencies and boosting the low and low-mids.

But what did the bassist of Bossa Manila do?

I'm thinking that he kept his amp settings at a more or less neutral setting; here's what I use when practicing on my Fender 60B amp: low is kept at five, low-mid is down to three whilst high-mid is kept in balance with the low, thus it goes up to five. High ranges from three to five. All this is modulated at a volume of 2, with the limiter off.

If the Bossa Manila bassist did this during the song's recording, he would've lost all the earthy thump from his bass. In my experience, in order for a balanced bass sound, you need to keep your bass's deep voice with a little kick from the gain in order to be heard well and sound good. Too much gain would make the strings sound too metallic, and a really deep voice would either drown out everything or not be heard. If your goal is to add spice to the music without being too intrusive in the main melody, you can opt for higher gain versus a balanced sound. So basically, you're an ornament, but a damn good one.

That's what I think he did with his equipment in that bloody song. So I basically can't hear the bass clearly. Can't even feel the thumps, which is where I would pick up my cues from. If I weren't sure about when a note should be played, I'd just listen closely for the deepest note in a given bar of music, and I'd pick it up from there. Which is where a bass booster in my boombox would come in handy.

Alas, I lack that one feature in the save-a-lot handmedown that sits in my room. And without an audio out, I can't even connect the machine to a pair of speakers that DO have a bass booster.

So I'm putting off tabbing that song until I get a more decent machine. Gah.

My bad. I wrote "jazz and rock n' roll" in the previous entry, where I should've said "blues and rock n' roll." Let me rectify that now: I'm no good as a jazz bassist, hehe.

Btw, my entry title? Check this out.

He makes a lot of good points throughout his blog entry. And considering that he used a scant three sources (KC Montero, the E'heads album filler, and Wikipedia). Everything else might have been taken from personal experience filtered through a net of logical thinking, but it holds. The logic is sound.

I noticed, however, that most of the comments after his entry were flooded with two words that most bands in the circuit have, in my honest opinion, misused and overused: suporta at respeto.

Support and respect.

These words have been a pet peeve of mine since I first saw them being used in the Agape mailing list. No, I don't think that support and respect are bad in themselves. However, I've seen the number of bands ending their super gig-schedule spam with these two words increasing in the past few months alone, implying in a very kind manner that (insert macho arnold scharzzeneger voice here) "Hey, we're playin' our own music right here, and we're not going to diss your music or anything, so don't diss us. We'll scratch your balls if you scratch ours."

Frickin annoying. One of the greatest things I've learned in these 22 years is that violence is not the answer, but it is sometimes necessary and fun for the creatively demented.

If pogi rock is a necessary evil, then I say that a necessary evil to pogi rock is criticism. If you don't criticize the actions of, say, a child, the little tyke will not grow up learning from his mistakes. Criticism is the sawmill to experience's knife. "Suporta at respeto" may be something that will sooner or later promote peace between the musical religions, but seriously, why pretend that tensions don't exist? Up to this day you hardly see Quezo and Greyhoundz playing with Slapshock due to that disagreement with the former Slapshock manager Samoo. Considering that the three bands used to be inseparable, saying that all problems have been put aside whilst lacking the original camaraderie is like a cold slap in the face. Can you say "You still fucked us up so we're not playing with you unless we have to, esse."

The "suporta at respeto" regime of commercial and underground rock these days is an epidemic far greater than the musical IQ drain of pogi rock bands like Hale. I mean, is it disrespectful to honestly tell a band that their set stank like a wet warthog? Well, let me ask you this: would you actually care to critique the music of a band if they weren't 1) famous or 2)friends of yours?

I'd always critique the music of a friend. If his or her performance bombed, he or she deserves to know. How else will he level up, so to speak?

So, to misquote one of the most ancient Hanna-Barbera characters Touche Turtle: Cueshe away! I remember (well, maybe I wasn't even born yet, but my parents DO tell me stories) when real pogi rock musicians - like Bread, The Beach Boys, even the Beatles when they started out - worked with a simple setup: an oildrum and strings for a bass, two guitars, a piano. They'd sing, all of 'em. Couples would dance around, since the pogi music back then was actually dancable. There'd be a buffet with a main dish and a punch. If it were held in a barn, the party's host was an instant celebrity.

Rock n' roll hit its apex when bands like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Queen were tearing up the stage. The grunge era was something of a wind-down for the fad, but since there were probably millions of guitars and effects in production, rock n' roll couldn't really be killed. That'd be a waste of too much materials. The music should have died during the mid-90s. Maybe it is dead; people are looking to the oddest fusions (dreampop and new metal, to name a few) of rock and something else to satiate their thirst.

You want to practice suporta at respeto? Respect the genre you're trying to play. Figure out what exactly you're playing for. If you don't respect the music you're creating as an entity in itself, then you don't have the right to claim respect and support for yourself.

I say it loud and clear for all to hear: pogi rock is a marketing scam. Strike me with whatever lightning you want. I will not waver from my stand.

Pogi rock is not pogi at all.

Theory is contested territory. That was quoted in an analysis of the graphic textbook "Understanding Comics."

I'm gathering material for this article I'm planning to write, a look at the form vs. content dialogue where comics are the vessel, and as has become the norm for most recent research works, I begin my hunt at the easiest place for information harvest, which is most probably Google. It hardly surprised me that, after putting the words art, comics and form vs. content in the Google search box, the name Scott McCloud dominated most of the entries in the first page.

For the uninitiated, Scott McCloud is one of the pioneers of graphic novels, taking up the torch that Will Eisner (who passed away quite recently, joining the ranks of Charles M. Schultz and Chuck Jones) began in the early 90s (my dating could be mistaken). One of his greatest contributions to comics is a new form of expression, called the 24-hour comics, a genre which even caught Neil Gaiman's attention (resulting in the almost-but-not-quite-24-hour-comic Heliogabulous).

Another of McCloud's contributions to comics is the book Understanding Comics. Here, he tries to explain through comic strips the sensibilities he has learned throughout his career as a comic artist. The first thing he explains is how form should override content.

Now, as an anti-formalist myself (although I seem to be slowly joining the enemy camp) this came as quite a shock. I've read some of Scott's other comics, and the content is impressive, in the same calibre as Derek Kirk Kim (of www.lowbright.com) and Kazu Kibuishi (www.boltcity.com), who both prefer to let the content speak for themselves.

By content, it's easiest to assume that we're talking about the art itself, and all the elements it encompasses. So what, we're looking at story, execution, and overall art style (which excludes the materials, theory, and technical execution; all these three are forms, or at least what a non-formalist like me can see as form.)

Scott, in the first few parts of "Understanding Comics," takes up where Will Eisner left off in his discourse on the so-called Sequential art, which is what Scott later on simply calls as comics. He calls the form, the entire genre, as the vessel for the content. So in this argument, he then shifts from what I originally perceived as the form: whereas formalists of the written word argue about form in language usage, form in execution, and physical form (for poetry), Scott takes the term form as applied to comics into the same league as the genre itself.

Basically, what Scott McCloud did was to promote the entire genre of comics into an art that was self-conscious about it's own existence and purpose. In theory, if McCloud makes this form of comics synonnymous to how Will Eisner defined Sequential Art, then the judgement of what is or isn't a comic becomes reliant on the content rather than the form, since the form has already been typecasted as an entire genre.

In other words, those works that fall short in the content department aren't to be called comics at all. It might not look good, but if it does it's job, then it can be justified as a comic.

Which is probably why Arnold Arre, a man of legend in the local comic scene for his works "The Mythology Class" and "Trip To Tagaytay" is still considered a comic artist despite some lacking elements in his obra maestra "After Eden."

Now that's curious. Although I sort of see what he's trying to pull (since I do have some issues with formalism in writing, after all) I disagree with what I think McCloud's trying to say. By totally bypassing the argument of form in favor of content could be a sign of decay in the technical intellect of the artist. There's a little bit of wisdom in retaining a little form, some conservative sensibilities that are essential to keep the work aesthetically beautiful at the onset. And anyway, McCloud's a little confusing. Why should you go through all the trouble of putting form first just to justify working on the content? It might be a sign of elitism.

Of course, I haven't done enough research on the whole form vs. content thing in comics yet, and I have to finish the analysis of Understanding Comics too. So I might gain some new insights as I go along.

Whoop-de-doo.

Why don't Filipino fictions sell?

Because only a scant amount of them are interesting. And around 60% of the books are revolutionary, or what leftists call "tibak."

It isn't that I hate tibak writing. I just don't like it. It comes off as fake. I don't want them to stop doing what they do, but they can be pretty annoying. I understand the plight of the poor, but half of these leftist writers aren't poor at all. And if they say that they understand the poor people's plight, then they're most probably saying fluff.

I'd like to help the poor and I think that it's important, but this isn't the way. I don't know what the way is, but hell.

Gah, i'm feeling bratty. Wahaha! No intellectual stuff today.