Posts Tagged ‘beach’

Where is my ass?

June 15, 2008

What a misleading title.

I have missed out on writing for the past month and that upsets me greatly. Actually it doesn’t, it just means I have a lot of writing to catch up on. But here’s what I’ve been up to.

Summer has snuck up on us and I finally decided to take back my love for the beach this year. I grew up on the beaches of Newport, quite literally, and then as I got busier and busier with work I stopped going for the past few summers. So I am finally hitting the beach every time I see the tide rise up the shore and the waves start crashing hard(for Newport anyway). I bought a skim board also and have been riding that baby. I may not surf at all but I know I can skim in an inch of water and go SUPER fast, like lightning.

My good ol’ pal, Ian, has been working on his rock opera all year called Eternal Child. I helped him record a little bit in the studio and have been practicing his songs awaiting the big performance this coming Friday. It has turned out amazing and I am super proud of his musical AND story’s achievement. It is something that I have never come close to because I pull all the excuses of a job and an education out of my ass to put off that stuff that I really love. Ian has found a way to so FUCK school and FUCK work to do that stuff, and I applaud him.

So now what I have decided to do is, not say “fuck it all”, but just use what I have. I don’t have full access to a band all the time and I am convinced that me and Ian have two huge musical visions that would currently clash at the moment. I have a computer, I have guitars, and I have a set of headphones. Living in an apartment means no loud music, so I’m going to start my musical journey through a set of headphones (a damn good set of $200 Bose headphones) and pre-programmed drum beats off of Garageband. My plan is to be a one man band (for now) and just make the music that I’ve been creating in my head all this time, but never put down on paper or guitar.

I just got a boner thinking about it.

Bye Bye,

-Ryan

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Better Than

May 5, 2008

As school is finishing up and the weather is getting warmer (and Iron Man is in theaters!), thoughts of this summer are looming. 80% of the summer will be spent working, but the other 20% is what’s important. Depending where someone lives, the summer could be the most profitable time to forget about play. Above everything people hope for, they hope this summer will be better than the last.

I can’t tell you much about how last summer went for me, but I know it could have been better. I live practically on the ocean and I hardly went to the beach all summer. That might have been because I don’t have the sexiest chest, just the sexiest nipples. I did a lot of thinking about getting slightly fit enough for the beach, but I guess it’s just not in me to care. After buying a few weights and a bench I realized that.

The thing I want to work on most is my guitar playing. I know for a fact that I am better now than I ever have been, but with more practice, just like everything else, I can be better. I was recently watching a live “White Stripes” DVD and was amazed at Jack White’s playing. It occurred to me that he can play like that probably because he spent days and nights in his garage just playing for hours.

Maybe I’d have more practice time if I got off the internet for a bit…

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The “Sing Your Balls Off” Mobile

February 11, 2008

I would love to be playing a lot more shows then I currently am(zero). One problem I run into is the lack of a practice space. I live in a house with people living upstairs and downstairs. The problem with that isn’t playing guitar, but practicing vocals. Singing is basically screaming, and I can’t just scream for an hour in my house. Especially when I’m writing vocals because that goes through a painful sounding process which I would prefer nobody else heard.

Today I decided to transform my car into a mobile practice room and pulled into the beach parking lot. I situated myself in a backwards, twisted way so i could comfortably hold my guitar on my lap. And then I started playing. And checked out the surrounding area and then got to singing. It was nice having the privacy of being able to sing my balls off and nobody there to listen to a voice lacking practice. It was a little awkward at first, getting used to my own singing voice again.

I sang a couple Foo Fighters songs to get warmed up and then went right into a song I’ve been working on. Getting the vocals down on a song is harder then I remember. When I was in a loud rock band you could scream until you got it right the way you want to, but just one acoustic is a little tougher because it is much easier to notice when you’re singing terrible notes.

I also started a new song writing method. Over the past week I came up with a few different parts that I knew I wanted to use in one song. And then today I sifted through a pile of different lyrics I had written and picked one out that I thought was pretty decent. I probably wrote it about six months ago, so i hesitated because things have changed since then and I don’t quite feel the same. But I like the fact that I can revisit older feelings and try to express it through the song as much as possible. I matched different riffs with different verses and choruses and now i still have a bunch of random pieces to a song. But now that I have all the pieces I will put them together tonight and then take my mobile practice room back to an isolated area and practice, practice, practice it for the open mic this Wednesday.

Last time I played an acoustic show was rough, only because I honestly didn’t practice at all. Hopefully this will change. Can’t wait to be shitting myself right before i get up on stage. But I think that load of shit helps me do better. Thats gross, I’m gonna be sitting down and everything.

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