The madness of term 4

Forgive my tardiness.

School exams are no excuse for poor BLOG-keeping, but it did suck up my entire brain. And during the times when it did not, there weren't even gigs to take my mind off it. Thankfully there was the Xbox, and the arrival of Assassin's Creed 4, to swallow the little time I had left after schoolwork did its damage.

The fact I had last been here so long ago was a nagging irritation - not an irritation to write, but an irritation with putting it off...and then putting it off some more. This week finally sees the downward descent of our routine as school is almost over. It was a rough term.

But I am excited. There is plenty planned for this holiday season to keep me busy, creative and entertained.

I've got some gigs with my band, K, Ray and The Bird, lined up. We have been working a little less this year - perhaps saving our energy for the tour we had in July, and recovering since. December, however, will see us play at least 4 shows - not exactly record-breaking but plenty of opportunity to flex our music muscles. Check us out on Facebook or www.krayandthebird.net for more info on those gigs. There's a festival in there, a carol service, a fun jam with our friends The Brother's Streep...it's gonna be a great holiday season for us.

I'm also going to be travelling to my good friends Mali and Cuan Korsten over the new year to make some music with them. It's always fun to jam it up with those guys, and launch into Battlefield 3 with Cuan when we have downtime :-)

Of course I must not forget I have a wedding to arrange. Gosh, it's so much work.

I am planning to post some updates from the gigs - photos, happenings, and so forth. If I do not stick with my word, I pledge to punch myself in the face. Repeatedly.

And I will also submit some more reviews soon. Just gotta write them...

Right, there we go. That felt more like an update than a post, but at least you know I'm still alive. I'll be back.

Album Review: Dream Theater

For those of you who don’t know, Dream Theater is a behemoth in the progressive metal world. Seen by many as the forerunner in the entire genre, Dream Theater carries the added advantage of sporting a line-up of musicians all recognized as geniuses of their craft. Which means you can forget about 4-chord progressions in a major key with a catchy jingle; musically, things are gonna get pretty intense. So one can only imagine the pressure placed (by fans) on this group to produce an album worthy of their super status.

Before we look ahead, let’s go back. Dream Theater last dropped an album in 2011, A Dramatic Turn of Events. It was their first album without drummer/long-standing member Mike Portnoy, who was also a heavy hand in the arrangements and production of their previous work. And I gotta say, his absence showed. ADTOE, while by no means a bad album, was underwhelming. It had some fantastic moments, but as an entire album, it just felt below par. And the production also seemed to suffer a bit. I had become used to the energy and (for lack of better word) loudness of the previous albums. ADTOE seemed subdued, especially the drums (recorded by the legendary Mike Mangini after the songs had been written). It all seemed a little less than I expected, and I was concerned that, without Portnoy, they were incapable of writing and producing an album as strong as their previous work.

So with the arrival of a new, self-titled album, I was keenly interested to see what exactly was what. Were my fears to be confirmed?

Well, from the start the band certainly means business. The intro, False Awakening Suite, is made of the sort of stuff you hear in movies when giant armies march into battle. That is followed by The Enemy Inside, a powerhouse song that blasts out of your speakers, before the band tastes some arena rock with The Looking Glass. And to the delight of fans, the instrumental track returns in the form of Enigma Machine, which is essentially a vehicle for the musicians to show their chops. Believe me, I’m not complaining. They haven’t earned their reputations for nothing, and it is sometimes staggering what these guys can do.

Things barely let up after that. The Bigger Picture, the first ‘ballad’ of the album, still has plenty of power, and a guitar solo that proves John Petrucci is not only capable of speed, but also finesse and melody. Behind the Veil has an early Metallica flavour to it. Surrender to Reason and Along for the Ride are both strong in their own right. I love how nothing on this album feels like filler, placed there simply to stretch a track listing. Each song has its own character, and its own style. My words here really cannot do justice to the diversity within each song. You really need to hear it to appreciate it.

And of course, as seems customary since 2005’s Octavarium album, Dream Theater end with an epic composition clocking in at twenty-two minutes. Titled Illumination Theory, it is everything Dream Theater stuffed into one enormous song. Crunching guitar, moving orchestral score, emotive vocals, huge bass and drums…this one song has everything. Is it their best epic song ever? Tough call. Octavarium set a very high standard. But it certainly comes close, and perhaps even matches it.

I also like the production. The songs are guitar-heavy, often driven by a crunching riff, and so the guitar sits high in the mix. I like the effect this gives. The album feels like the heaviest work the band has ever recorded. And few things get my head bobbing as easily as a punchy guitar riff. Drummer Mike Mangini has a thicker, more ‘old-school’ sound to his kit, which lends a slightly 80’s flavour to the album. Thankfully no 80’s cheese came along. The drums, definitely louder than ADTOE, sit very nicely in the mix, driving the songs with enough energy to match the ferocity of the guitar riffs. It all feels far more complete and full through my speakers.

There’s so much more that can be said about this album. Jordan Rudess, the mastermind behind the keys and orchestral score, is superb. He complements John Petrucci's guitar with subtle precision, and when he takes centre stage, as in the middle segment of Illumination Theory, it is properly epic, and enough to stir emotion even in metalheads. John Myung, the silent bassist in the background, is nicely audible in the mix and faultless. And James Labrie, the vocalist I often joke of as having the hardest job in rock to keep up with his band mates, sounds better than ever. He really does.

But as I said earlier, my words cannot do real justice to the entire album. There’s simply too much diversity, too much change, to sum it all up on paper. I have yet to find another band able to piece together ferocious guitar riffs, shifting time signatures and sweeping orchestral movements so cleanly and effectively, and make it all sound like it flows. This album is perhaps the best example of that. As a complete package, its best thing they’ve done since Scenes from a Memory in 1999. Praise doesn’t get much higher.

RATING: 9/10

MUST-LISTEN TRACKS:

The Enemy Inside

Enigma Machine

Illumination Theory

Don't judge a snare by it's colour

I like snare drums. They give me a certain artsy pleasure. Something about the design, construction, finish, and massive scale of variety makes me a sucker for them. I love how one drum can be so individual to the drummer that plays it; how the material used to build the drum, as well as the heads on the drum, and the tuning of both heads, and the snare wires below, all affect the end result when you hit it.

Sometimes my fiancé gets a little irritated with my snare fetish. Why do I need another one? Isn’t 7 enough? I understand that, to an extent. But we are no different to other musicians, who all want plenty of options to choose from. The only downside for us drummers is we cannot pack our sounds all into one foot pedal and carry it in a backpack.

Guitarists have effects pedals. Drummers have snare drums. And cymbals. And blocks. And double pedals. And lots of sticks. And many drum keys. Because we keep losing them.

My snares (left to right): Gretsch Catalina Club, Ludwig Supraphonic, Pearl Joey Jordison, Gretsch Catalina Maple, Pearl Virgil Donati, Remo Masteredge, Sonor Phonic

One of the things I like to do is buy and sell drums very now and again. Not like a business (although that would be fun too) but just for myself. So while I have my primary Gretsch drumkit – a thing of great beauty, I cherish her immensely – my second kit often changes. I like to sell off whatever the second kit is every few months and look for something new. It gives me an easy opportunity to try many different kits. (Recently that has also become a problem – something I will address next week). And I like to do the same with snares, although the selling part rarely happens. I just keep buying J

One of the snares I have been using is a unique little beast. The Pearl Joey Jordison ‘Power Piccollo’ snare. Joey is the drummer for the metal band Slipknot. Indeed. The drum looks the part.

I bought the drum on a whim. It is professional quality, and was on sale on Gumtree super cheap. And I had a student whom I knew would buy it from me for at least what I would pay for it, should I not like the drum’s sound. So I figured, why not? It probably won’t work, being a ‘metal music’ snare drum, so I’ll just check it out for a week and sell it on for a small profit afterward.

That was a year ago. I have yet again found parting with the drum close to impossible.

First off, look at her. She’s a beauty, no doubt about that. Ignore the fact that those are Slipknot logos on the side and you have a matt black snare with a cool tribal painting on the side.

Second, she is beautifully constructed. I have long maintained that, pound for pound, Pearl Drumworks are the best overall drum company working today, across all budget levels and quality inspections. This drum lives up to that reputation of being seemingly unbreakable.

Third, she is LOUD. And for a drummer like me, who is not a hard hitter, a potent snare drum is a welcome addition.

But here’s the big thing. The character of this drum – the ‘metal music’ persona it seems to carry – is a complete misrepresentation of her real qualities. Beneath the goth black and Slipknot logos, this drum is massively diverse and capable. I have tried it at medium tunings and high tunings, with single and double-ply heads, using sticks, rods and brushes. In every scenario – with the correct tuning for that scenario – the drum delivered.

And it delivered well. In watching footage from one of my gigs, and seeing/hearing the drum in action, I really got to witness that diversity. She was powerful but sensitive, and surprisingly warm for a drum made of steel. It just sounded…right. And that was an acoustic, folk-rock band.

I took it to that first gig thinking ‘this will look cool and be fun to knock around before I sell it next week’. But within minutes I was completely won over. I genuinely thought it would be a one-trick pony. And it isn’t. And now I love her.

Yet another snare drum I never want to sell. Even though I am once again eyeing another one…

Also, as promised, my first Youtube video is online. Go check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLO0kQ9i_k8

It's time to be pro-active

Recently I have felt my practice routine stagnating.

That's a lie. Because I don't have a practice routine. I mostly st down behind my electric kit and fart about on my iPod, playing through the same playlist that makes me feel awesome about my drumming.

But that needs to change. I am seriously feeling a loss of momentum in my playing, and I need to do something about it. A few things, in fact. I'm here to discuss one.

Before we get there, my options:

1: Practice routine. Goodness gracious, it's nothing short of disgusting that I, as a teacher do not have a regular practice routine comprised of technicals, practicals, songs, reviewing past gigs for weak points. Probably because I don;t play enough gigs. I want more gigs..! I partly blame it on my attempt to play too many instruments very well, at the same time. At the moment I have a drumkit, guitar, bass, banjo, and trumpet sitting in my room. And I try to make time for them all. Can you spell N-E-R-D?

2. Fresh faces: I love my band K, Ray and The Bird. They are awesome people who make me laugh and I cherish them and the strange music we write. But rock music has always pumped through my blood, and I desperately need to find an outlet for my rock angst. If you know of anybody looking for a drummer, I am into most forms of rock, provided there are guitar riffs (not just chords) and the vocals are actually vocals, not pointless screaming. And don't worry K, Ray homies; I'm not leaving. But we all know you won't be adding any electric guitar riffs anytime soon.

3. Educational content: An idea I have had for a long time is to upload educational material to Youtube. Being a teacher, I can honestly say I have seen some definite subjects that need addressing, as well as songs/bands that fellow musicians struggle to interpret. I've held back mainly because it's not easy/cheap to properly record an audio track for a drumkit and catch that content on video. But you know what? It's never gonna be. And I have an electric kit, which I can line straight into Pro Tools and get crystal clear audio. And iPhones record great visual. Maybe I can experiment with recording audio from my Roland, playing the same track on my acoustic kit, and overdubbing the sound...hmmmm

Anyway, the point is this: I am going to pledge right here. Because when you pledge on the internet, there's no turning back. Within the next month I will have uploaded some form of educational material to Youtube. I am not yet sure exactly what, but it will come to me. Maybe a song cover with some explanation, maybe a specific subject dissected...we'll see.

If you are a muso and you would like some topic or other covered, please comment, or email me or something, and ask. I would be only too happy to oblige (assuming I can play it) :-)

Self-publishing - easy, yet a little bit difficult

A little know fact about me is I have written 3 books.

A fantasy trilogy. I started the first one in high school (grade 10) as part of an English project. We had to write the opening paragraph and climax paragraph (because the entire climax of a story takes place in one paragraph right?) so I figured I might as well just keep writing. At that time I was reading heavily (I was a real nerd/dork in high school, reading, playing PC games, music instruments...I had no idea if a girl ever flirted with me because I had no clue how to read it. I just smiled back and agreed. Maybe I was secretly a big playa without even knowing it. One of my school friends told me I was.)

Over the past 10 years I completed the first book, rewrote it, wrote a second, rewrote both, then wrote a third, and finally made substantial changes to all three. And now we are here. Three books of blood, guts, spit and ass, with some romance and comedy thrown in.

Over the years I have given various versions of these books to trusted friends to read and assess. My only demand was that they assess it VERY honestly...as in brutal honestly. If it was total donkey twoddle I wanted to know. But the feedback was generally very good, and I was highly encouraged to get them published, which involves getting them edited, proof-read, ect.

I'll skip past the part of the story that involves me approaching mainstream publishers. Suffice it to say it was a waste. All of them have very, very strict requirements before they will even think about farting in the direction of a manuscript, and most of them are completely uninterested in the fantasy genre. Particularly in South Africa, where most publishers want non fiction or 'historically-based' fiction around a 'South African' story - in other words, a story from Apartheid, a man in a township, something like that.

So I had the option to approach overseas publishers (same strict requirements) or self-publish. I went for the latter. I figured, if I self-publish I have control, I have the say, I have all the power of decision-making.

And people always say self-publishing is easy. And it is, to an extent. The tools are all available online these days, and you can get a book ready for E-readers or physical printing at no cost other than your internet cap. The problem is, to really make it shine, you still need some green. And depending on how far you go, that can add up pretty fast.

After some online tampering: my beauties

For example, getting it set up for free excludes any editing. And unless you have a friend who does editing for a living and has no problem sorting it out for you, you pretty much have your own untrained eyes to do the work. And here's the truth: they are untrustworthy as hell. Trust me; you can stare at your work on a PC screen for hours, and still miss plenty. If you are gonna do it yourself, at least print it and do it on paper, with a highlighter in your hand or something. I also had some great friends who took the time to sift through my books and identify errors with post-it's, emails and word documents. Awesome. But after all that there's still some that snuck through. And editing ain't cheap. Once off, for sure, but still a fair amount.

What about cover design? I took the easier option; I bought online images, thus acquiring the rights to use the image (don't be illegal about it - just now your book takes off and you have a lawsuit on your hands. Can happen...), and they became my covers. But if you want a tailor-made cover, you're talking lots of bucks. Any quote I looked at was over R1000 per book, per design.

And marketing? The only way your book will sell is through excellent marketing. And that's the biggest expense of all, depending on how you do it. Word-of-mouth won't do anything for people on another continent.

Most self-publishing websites offer all these services and more, so if you are interested go and check one out and see what they can cost. You'd be surprised how quickly it can add up. At the end of the day, a professional product is still a professional product, and they don't come cheap. Ever.

So where am I?

Well, the first book is active online - I.E. for sale at the link below and on the iBookstore. It isn't perfect yet, but dammit, by now surely most of the errors are eliminated. The rest give it character, I keep telling myself.

I haven't really marketed the book, because I am still investigating editing options. I probably should just do it, but with a wedding around the corner (in wedding terms 7 months is around the damn corner) I have other things to save for. I am actually happy with the covers, but it might still be a better option to get ones designed. And for physical printing, the shipping costs from America are killing. I am still sourcing a local printing press to print my manuscripts.

What I did in the meantime, with the advice of a friend, is upload a portion of my book to a website called Wattpad, where you can share literature for free. I am hoping to gauge some sort of response based on that portion of the book, and hopefully encourage some folk to make their way to the digital store on Lulu or the iBookstore to purchase the entire story. And the feedback will be awesome. By that I mean getting feedback will be awesome. Not the feedback content will be awesome. Although it might be, but that's conceited...anyway...

At some point, when I decide I have done all I can for that first manuscript, I will officially launch it, backed with some proper marketing and all that jazz. Big announcements, party, opening specials, that sort of thing. And then parts 2 and 3 will need to follow soon after. In the meantime I just keep writing other stuff. I never got into writing to make money; it was always a fun thing to do. And it always will be. If the stories hit a note with other people and they want to support, awesome. If not, I doubt I'll just stop. Art, in any form, should be done for oneself, not for others.

And on that philosophical note, I bid you farewell.

Want to read some of my book for free? Go here: http://www.wattpad.com/23490485-baldornad%27s-chamber#.UhEsx5JmiSo

My online store on Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/eman101

GAME REVIEW: TOMB RAIDER

RATING: 7.5/10

IF YOU CAN LOOK PAST THE FEW ISSUES THIS GAME HAS, IT IS A FANTASTIC SINGLE-PLAYER EXPERIENCE.

Should there be a list of iconic video game characters, Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft would undoubtedly rank pretty high. And with good reason. She has been around for 17 years, through 9 previous games on multiple platforms. Can you think of a more popular female lead character in the history of gaming? Exactly.

So, given the recent tendency to reboot older franchises in both games and movies, it came as no big surprise Lara Croft was reborn, her story told from the very beginning. After all, how can one ignore one of the greatest characters in the industry’s history?

I must admit I never played any of the older titles. I didn’t own a console, and my PC at the time, a state-of-the-art-in-it’s-day Pentium 2, could barely get the games to run. And I was more interested in FPS’s anyway. Assassin’s Creed was the game that really got me interested in a sort of free-roam open adventure world. So when the new Tomb Raider was released, displaying a darker, grittier Lara (very Christopher Nolan I thought), I was immediately interested.

As the game starts, our young Lara is aboard a ship called the Endurance, looking for adventure. Things get going quickly. A violent storm dashes the ship against rocks, and Lara barely escapes to make it to the shore of a nearby island. But this island is not uninhabited. Men with guns (of course) patrol everywhere and some strange followers of a cult are up to something. Added to that, some pretty strange things are going down. Lara spends the game finding other survivors from the Endurance, finding ways to get off the island, and trying to figure out what on earth is going on around her.

After being shipwrecked on the island, Lara finds herself in a strange tomb

That’s all I will say about the pretty solid storyline. Pacing is good, and enough is added to the story at the right intervals to keep you going and interested. A brief backtrack via a camcorder will fill in some of the events before the game started.

Gameplay is standard third-person with the ability to swivel which shoulder you overlook. Lara will automatically take cover against walls and behind barriers when enemies are nearby. Most segments of the game give a fair amount of leeway with regards to how you go about your objective, and wandering off the standard road will often uncover handy boxes of supplies or one of the several optional ‘tombs’ for you to explore. If you get lost or confused at any point there is a handy ‘survival instincts’ button (LB in the Xbox) that will point out the direction of your objective, as well as valuable information around you. That button will prove to be useful, especially when you enter a tomb to plunder its hidden treasure.

The yellow ray of light shows your next objective when the 'Survival Instincts' button is pressed

On the subject, I must admit I enjoyed the puzzle-solving quality of the tombs, yet always found it odd the precious item Lara found at the end was never revealed. Each time she would reach into a lit up box and pull out…something. But we never know what.

At the start of the campaign Lara has nothing but her hands to defend herself, but as you make your way through she will uncover various weapons, ranging from the trustworthy bow and pistol to rifles and shotguns later on. Scattered all around the island you will find ammo for your artillery, as well as ‘salvage’. Salvage works as a sort of credit system in the game. Each crate you snap open awards a certain amount of salvage, which can be used to upgrade Lara’s weapons and other gear at resting camps (checkpoints). You will also be awarded skill points during the game, although I never figured out what exactly for. Every once in a while I just noticed they were there. These are used to upgrade…Lara, for lack of a better phrase. You can make her deadlier in combat, better at hunting, a faster climber…whatever.

Arrows can also be used to scale drops and pull over unstable structures

All pretty good, right? I think so. The game certainly feels good to play for the most part. Aiming is easy and comfortable, and there is nothing quite as rewarding as a neat headshot, especially with an arrow. Scaling rocks and large cliffs is also pretty fun, blighted only by the occasional strange camera angle. The ‘shanty town’ and ‘monastery’ sequences in the middle are breathtaking and had me hooked for hours. Little changes in the gameplay throughout the game add a nice touch, and solid voice acting makes it all the more believable. And thank you Square Enix for syncing the audio and mouth movements of the characters.

Like any game it isn’t perfect, and two specific areas stand out to me as weaknesses.

Pistol in hand, Lara enters the burning village to hunt her enemies

Sometimes the dynamics don’t quite make sense. Lara will jump as if she is attached to a rope, sailing through the air at a strange and unnaturally long arc to reach a cliff on the other side. And then two seconds later, a similar jump will be no more than two feet forward, followed by a long fall to death. When halfway through a long jump in more or less the right direction, Lara will suddenly correct her course mid-air – like a ball hitting the boundary of a track. It’s not a train smash, I admit, but it does detract from the game just a little.

Also, I have to say the small changes to the gameplay I mentioned earlier do become tiresome eventually. How many times can you navigate Lara down a slippery slope, shooting out barriers and missing trees? Only a few; then it becomes tedious. The changes are welcome, but overuse tires them out.

Ropes are regularly used to move across larger portions of the map

As for multiplayer, I had not tried it. I heard horror stories about the servers being a complete mess. What I do know is you can be either a survivor or a scavenger, and the two teams square off in different match types. So nothing ground-breaking (to my knowledge).

I have to add, however, that the good points of the game far outweighed the bad. Playing through the campaign was great fun, and I am excited for what the team at Square Enix will do next for our reborn heroine.

Overall, I am happy I played Tomb Raider. And you should play it too. It is a well told story with enough game time to make it worth your cash. Just look past the small bits that aren’t quite up to scratch and you will have a great time.

WHAT GOES ON TOUR

In 36 hours I will on my way for a short tour with K, Ray and The Bird to the Garden Route. It's sort of like going on holiday, except you take some music gear along and play in a few venues a couple of times. So I'm going to tell you a little about my packing methods for such a tour.

1. DRUMS
Duh. Not gonna get far without my instrument. Although I have a fairly large kit, I usually take a small one on the road. I'm not yet cool enough to have my own drum tech, and having less drums to pack up on tour can go a long way saving time and energy. Added to that, transport space is normally an issue anyway. I do pack a spare snare, just in case one decides to die on me. And I also pack a third snare head, for worse case scenerios. And then some small backups, like screws, duct tape, wingnuts, and so on.

2. CLOTHES
Call me adventurous, but I pack the bare minimum. I've never seen the point in taking a giant mound of clothes on tour. If anything goes horribly wrong, there is always somebody selling something somewhere.

3. FOOD
I eat badly on tour. Normally, we all do. It's so difficult to stand over a stove and cook a decent meal, and much more social to go out and have a pizza. I did once make a fire and cook some meat. Anyway, I take some Coke and biltong for the drive, and small things to nibble on during the day. And Coke. And also Coke. And plenty of Coke.

4. WIMPY
Rule 1 when Emil goes on tour: don't eat boring breakfast at home. Leave early and stop at a Wimpy for a cheesegriller breakfast. Mmmmmm, cheesegriller...

5. VISUAL AND LITERARY ENTERTAINMENT
I must admit, usually our tours are so busy there's little time for anything at all, other than play, eat and sleep (not nessecarily in that order). But when we do get some downtime that isn't spent dozing off, I like to read, and maybe play some PC games. DVD's are also great.

And that's it. Don't really need anything else. Except money.

I'll keep in touch during the tour. Usually something stupid\insane\hilarious happens and then I'll be first. To post about it.

Stay safe people!