MY BAD: First off, play the video at the bottom and then read this. It'll make it seem really dramatic. It's been a really long time. But first off: JOSH GOT INTO SFCM! So stoked. I told him from day 1 he had what it took and he did. We're going to get a house in the Sunset(and live happily ever after?) district and I think that will make us both 10x better guitar players. The Sunset is like a beach town a good 20-30 minutes from downtown SF. I've been there often for parties and when I go to the beach and it's beautiful. School has been pretty easy. I feel like I'm finally in a groove as far as doing my work/practicing goes. Believe it or not, for the first time in a long time,
I feel like I'm pretty decent at guitar! I've upped my technique practice a lot and I think it's really showing. I recently picked up La Valentina by Ponce which is just...nice. It's nice to not play a piece that's going a million miles an hour and super stressful. I've also picked up Mudarra's Fantasia! Ha! It's one of the few renaissance pieces I can get into. I just can't dig the renaissance like some people can. I was given a somewhat challenging Pavane by Dowland at the beginning of the year and I've yet to learn more than the first 3 notes. Why? Because it just doesn't click with me. My Turina has really come a long way. I've played it for many, many guitar players and they all seem to like it. I want to audition it for Manuel Barrueco who is arguably my favorite guitarist. But I'm a bit unsure if I should. I've also been somewhat busy with the quartet I'm playing in. We're playing a Domeniconi piece which is pretty cheesy. I'm not fond of this schools guitar ensemble program. This is two semesters where I feel like I'm wasting my time. The first semester being put in a quartet because the large group was filled with masters students was ok by me. I had no problem with that because they are all fantastic players. 
But I think we should have some sort of system where we pick who we work with rather than David just assigning us. You don't really get much out of that because there's no motivation. We don't even really get to pick our pieces. This second semester, everyone was placed in the large group but I had a part where I only played a few 3rds in ONLY the 2nd of 3 movements. So that combined with a bad attitude quartet makes me wonder why I'm taking the class at all and if I should in the future. I already have all my ensemble credits so I can be done. I'm really stoked for Josh to come up next year. We plan on doing a duet and hopefully doing a competition or two.
CONCERTS: I've been going to my school's concert's a lot more. It's so nice to see your classmates just go nuts on their instruments. I saw the SFCM orchestra play Beethoven's 6 which was just...well...ok? Didn't really get to me. Then I saw a Cello/composition major have his graduate recital. Solo cello doesn't do it for me like I thought it would either. But he did compose a string quartet that sounded like Radiohead which was actually pretty awesome. He had a dancer from the dance conservatory dance(I just said dance in 3 out of 6 words) through out the piece which was added a really nice effect. It may sound a little odd on the surface, but if the composition is right, and the dancer is right, it's a really great experience to lose yourself in the art being shown to you. So I was pretty pleased with that concert. Back in late January I saw the absolute best guitar concert I have EVER seen. Pavel Steidl is hands down one of the best guitarist on the planet today. Youtube him! You'll notice his EXTREME facial expressions. To me, his facial expressions is the guitar talking to us. It's like Pavel isn't there anymore. It's like his guitar has it's own identity and personality and is just speaking to everyone through Pavel's playing. Never have I seen a guitar player use so much color. Never have I seen a guitar player with the left hand ability of Pavel. It was absolutely mind blowing. BUT(and this is a kind of disappointing but) his Bach Chacconne wasn't very good. He played it flawlessly but it just didn't seem to fit his playing. His best work was from the classical and romantic era. I met him after the concert and me and a few other guitarist talked with him. Great guy. I knew right when I walked out those doors that it was the best guitar performance I'd ever seen. As I had mentioned, I've been going to most all the school's performances. I went to the see the school symphony play Tchaik 6 and it just blew my head away. The concert hall was fully packed of people which is always an amazing site and the orchestra played out of their minds. Then after they played, a pianist at our school played Ravel's concerto for the left hand. You know why she's playing it? Because last year, 1 MONTH BEFORE THE CONCERTO COMPETITION, she broke her right hand and said fuck it! I'm just going to learn this concerto for left hand(extremely difficult) in 1 month. And she did. And she won. So it an amazing thing to see. I teared up at LEAST 5 times to how beautiful it all was. I also went to watch the violin concerto competition and the cello concerto competition which were both outstanding.
PUNK MUSIC/SHOWS: It was my best friends birthday and I was feeling like a jack ass for not being able to be there for it. But thankfully A Wilhelm Scream and Heartsounds were playing. Alfredo picked me up and we headed to what's probably my favorite venue ever, Thee Parkside. Heartsounds played much better than the last time I saw them. FUCK! SPEAKING OF HEARTSOUNDS! They signed to Epitaph!! After only about 8 shows together. It's shit like that that makes me really want to be in a punk band. Not that they "made it" and are just swimming in money or anything. But I'd love to be on Epitaph. Who wouldn't? Anyway, this was AWS's set:
Morrisey
Walden
Our Ghosts
Australias
Die While We're Young
Stab Stab Stab
Fun Time
We Built This City On D's and B's
Cancer Dream
Jaws 3 People 0
The Kids Can Eat A Bag of Dicks
William Blake Overdrive
The Soft sell
Famous Friends
Skid Rock
Killing It
Showbiz/5 to 9
The King Is Dead
Congratulations
DREAMING OF THROWING UP
The Rip
I KNOW! Unreal. The longest set they have ever played and they played just about every classic. The crowd was nuts. Although there was this one girl who was pissed that she was standing up front and people were getting pissed at people who were hitting her. It's a pit! That's what happens. It was an amazing set that I just lost myself in and as mentioned on here before, there's nothing greater than being at a punk show. My music rotation has been fantastic lately. I just got out of a Nothington/Get Up Kids/Half Hearted Hero phase and have now moved on to a Menzingers/The Riot Before/Gaslight Anthem/Older Nothington phase and it amazing as well. Smoke Or Fire comes out with a new album soon and We Are The Union just came out with one(waiting to listen to for the summer) so these first 6 months of 2010 have been great for punk music. I just wish I liked Against Me or Alkaline Trio enough to be stoked about their new albums.
ELECTRIC GUITAR: I finally started on the electric guitar journey just a few days ago. I borrowed my friends stratocaster and have been playing it pretty often ever since. It's so weird to just jump into this instrument again. The options feel endless. I want to do jazz, blues, rock, country, EVERYTHING. I just want to be good at everything. A friend of mine lent me 3 jazz books: One for chords and voice leading, one for improvisation skills, and one for scales/modes/patterns. Then I also have a jazz book that my ex girlfriend gave me my senior year of high school. I also brought up the Stevie Ray Vaughn book my older brother got me the same year and then an instructional book on blues that has been at my house forever. I think it's kind of funny how this whole guitar playing life has been going. When I was 14, if you had told me I would be playing Bach Violin Sonata's at 17, I'd call you crazy, and when I was 18, if you had told me I would be burning CD's of Brad Paisley and trying to learn every style of guitar and had hopes to go to Berklee or Musicians Institue, I would have probably never talked to you again. And I'm sure in another 3 years, I'll be doing something or have some outrageous plan that I never thought I would. In getting back to everything, I've been debating a lot on how to approach getting better. "Do I practice technique? Do I do nothing but scales now and then maybe in a month or two try to get into the different styles? Do I already have enough technique? Is it not even about technique? Maybe it's just about style now. How in the hell am I going to learn the fret board?" So while I'm still not completely sure what to do, I've started learning scales and the fret board because there's never really a time where that's not appropriate no matter what kind of style you're playing. I really want to work my ass off in the summer. No more Call of Duty 5 hours a day with friends haha. I want to find a place where I can just go and do nothing but practice. My house is way too distracting and Del Mar would start to get expensive if I drove there every day. I want to wake up by 10 every morning except when I have extra fun the night before which is actually pretty much every night which could be an issue. But who cares? I have a lot of life to live where I'll be sleeping a lot. Maybe I should just build a room. While I know Berklee will accept me, I want to get unbelievable good at everything. Berklee sometimes gets a bad reputation. They accept an enormous amount of guitarist so you get a whole bunch of different attitudes. A lot of people drop out. Some guitar players may not even be that good at all. But when you have over a thousand guitarist, of course they're not all going to be amazing. For this kind of school, I think it's completely on you whether you make it worth it or not. I know I won't get the attention that I do here at SFCM, but I'm ok with that. I want to go there to become a professional and be around the networking. I plan on getting a performance certificate from there and then deciding on what I want to get my masters in or if I even want to get a masters. This is all what I want to do right now though. Things could change in the following 2 years.
LIFE: My life has been fantastic. I went home from spring break which was a fantastic time all around. I went to a bar called Fire On Water and had an amazing time but it ended really horribly which sucked since it was my last night in Corpus. Drove to Austin and College Station and had good times. I really missed driving. Being back here has been pretty good. I've been all over San Francisco the past couple months and am kicking myself that I didn't explore travel more last semester. I love this city so much. Just hanging out at parks is one of the most fun things you can do and all you're doing is sitting! But when the weather is perfect like it is 4 days out of the week and you have a beautiful view of the entire downtown, you don't need to do much more than just kick back and relax. This past Tuesday, I went to the beach by myself, drank a few beers, listened to Explosions In The Sky, and just relaxed. It was an awesome feeling because I had so much to do and just didn't care for that one particular day. Teeya showed up later. But don't worry, I obviously still got my work done on time and practiced a decent amount. I think everyone deserves a day like that. Where they tune out everything that they "have" to do and don't talk to anyone they "have" to talk to. I feel like me and a lot of other kids at my school and probably most young adults that are trying to achieve something become slaves of their craft(which is great! and the only way to succeed at something you really want!) and we sometimes forget to live a little. And living a little isn't just going out once on the weekend. That's to be expected! I know the weekdays are meant for school work and practicing, but maybe once every other week, go out and DO something on a Monday or Wednesday. I live in fucking San Francisco, California! I am 20 years old. I am youthful and youth is something that only comes around once. So everything about the experience felt very liberating. It was such a great time that I think I'm going to do it again this Tuesday and the Tuesday after that and the Tuesday after that and so on and so on. So if you're in SF, take the N to the last stop and go down the beach about half mile and you'll see me laying down with some beer and headphones. In other news, I'm officially out of the somewhat relationship I had. It
was something in between friends with benefits and an actual relationship. Pretty much a relationship cause I do like the girl. We essentially(complicated story) mutually ended it because summer is coming. But it was a fantastic time and I'm glad we're still good friends. But why does it always have to happen in April? Fuck! That's 3 relationships that end in April. I can't guarantee when the next time I'll post on here will be. Actually I can guarantee you that it will be once I'm back in Corpus. So that's about a month and couple days away. Get stoked. But yeah, life has just been great. I've been in the heart of downtown a lot more. Last night me and a few people just walked to Pier 1 and drank. We also strolled through this extremely classy hotel where there were tons of older drunk people having the time of their lives. We plan on going back there next weekend dressed up so we can maybe crash a party. Cheesy? A little bit, but it's worth a shot and it's better than staying home. 
I work well with being really fake and over enthusiastic with adults(I get it from my older brother, Roy). Then the following day I will be attending a CD release party for the Death To False Hope Records band, The Sweet Revenge. 3 story house, BBQ, beer, live punk bands playing outside on the patio. It will be a fantastic time.Sorry for the odd picture placement. It's hard to use when you upload them from photobucket. Anyway, this is what I was listening to at the beach. Enjoy!
Explosions In The Sky-Greet Death
