My drumkit has soul.

I have to admit it seriously does.
nate

Wow..

Check out our new header! It's called the missing shoe. Amazing how one picture can tell a whole story.
nate

one of those days..........

Just thought I'd blog a really quick post, not that we've been up to much today. Practiced a bit more as usual. Read a few books, watched some tv.
Nothing spectacular.
It's been one of those mundane days. Even the weather hasn't been doing it's job. I mean it's spring but it's been rain, rain,rain lately in our small town.
I think I'm waiting for summer.
Reminds me of a song from one of my favourite cd's, Mhmmm [Reliet K], called High of 75. When I first heard the title I thought it was talking about 1975 but actually it's all about the weather.

We were talking together/ I said what's up with this weather/ Don't no whether or not how sad I just got/ Was on my own volition or if I'm just missing the sun

And tomorrow I know will be rainy at best/ And the forecast I know is that I'll be depressed/ But I'll wait outside hoping that I catch sight of the sun

Because on and off/ The clouds have fought/ For control over the sky/ And lately the weather has been so pi-polar/ And consequently so have I

But now I'm sunny with a high/ Of 75/ Since you took my heavy heart/ And made it light/ And it's funny how you find you enjoy your life/ When you're happy to be alive

And the temprature is freezing and then after dark/ There's a cold front sweeping in over my heart/ And we might break up/ If I don't wake up to the sun

Now that's a good song to listen to on day's like today.
And that's enough about the weather.

Jordan

Halelujah

Right so yesterday I spent all night teaching myself a song.
Someone randomly decided that I should look up the chords for Halelujah, a song by Paramore.
So I found this website which not only had the chords but had this video of this guy playing it on guitar. It was so cool!
The chords wern't actually that much help so I watched the video a few times and figured out what he was doing. I was stoked!
I only managed to get the opening done though but it was time to go to bed then.
I might finish the rest off now though.
And we got the chorus of Moonlight Shadows finished today, and the whole song is almost finished. It sounds great.
Gotta go!

Jordan

P.s I'll probably see if I can learn Wishes and Dreams next! I love that song!!

It sounds awesome..

Gosh..... our song sounds sooooo good.. So far we've got up to the second verse and it's sounding really awesome.
And me and Jords looked up a music video of this awesome as Paramore song on YouTube. He watched it and we somehow figured it out. So we've been playing it all day. Sort of. Jords will tell you the full story of that anyway.
Nate

$1 icecream day

Hello everybody!

I guess lots of people have been enjoying Labour weekend but actually up until about Saturday I didn't know it was Labour weekend. That just shows how well-informed I am.

Anyway today was extra special cos it was $1 icecream day! So everyone went and bought icecreams.

Me and Beka decided to be special and go get icecream in Woodville, so we went on a big roadtrip with a few of Beka's friends.

It was great fun.

And today we wrote the pre chorus of our new sog and we were going to do the chorus but ran out of time =(

We also went on a random run this morning which was about 4 km and I got so puffed and I've decided that I am officially really out of shape.

Having the silly ski injury doesn't really help much either!

Anyway that's about it for today. It was mint!

Jordan

must fly

Oh bother I've just remembered I havn't finished my guitar practice. So sorry but I must leave and play Tears in Heaven now.
It's like the meanest song ever.
Gotta go
Jaws

Moonlight Shadows

Oh man I'm really excited now because we've just got some awesome news.

First up we started writing Moonlight Shadows today at last which I was stoked about.

We tried to get the first verse done, but it didn't work to well. Turns out I'd written the start line with a tune similar to the start of Innocent. Nice one. It's funny how much of what you listen to leaks subconciously through your writing.

Then we decided that I'd go into our room and write a mean as introduction on the guitar while the keyboard men (N8 and Dan obviously) would write the verse.

And by the way we decided we wouldn't use the violen opening. It sounds cool but when we tried to write it the other day (when I hadn't written the lyrics, i.e about 3 weeks ago) me and Dan decided to practice it and ended up playing it about 50 times and by the end we were all heartily sick of it. There's only so much you can take. =)

So we decided it didn't fit.

Anyway so off I went into our bedroom and I made up the meanest ever opening. Then Nate got me in and he's like do you have anything and I said yeah but it's in the wrong key. But I played it to him anyway and he thought it was awesome.

Then we made it even better cos he made up this really cool strum which fits it so well. We practiced the opening with drums several times.

Then after peeling some potatoes for tea we went and polished off the opening and showed it to Dan then made up the entire first verse. Just like that. It was so cool.

Then we had to stop cos by now it was about half past six!

But we might finish it off tomorrow. If the rest of the song sounds as good, it'll be the best song we've ever done.

So we're quite proud of ourselves.

And guess what? At dinner Dad told us he'd ordered a part for that amp so he can finally get on to fixing it now!!!!!!!!!!

At last we will be able to hear Daniel.

Jordan

Yeah Beka!

High-fives all around - Beka got her full licence today! She got 93%! Nice one Buzz!
(Nate)

Guitars rock

Just in case everyone's wondering we did fix up Out of it All and it sounds millions better now cos we've added fiddly bits and it's all going great.
At the moment I'm really hoping I can get a job cos I've just decided I reeaaallly want a special effects pedal.
Or a new guitar.
Ok I'm not that drastic yet but my guitar isn't the best on the block.
But it's very extremly handy and I love it actually.
And the other day I was going to put I wish you were here on our blog but unfourtunatly it didn't have one of those funny music players which they have on myspace.
So then I tried to post it on like how we did our poor video of Break this Silence but that didn't work either.
Then again maybe that's a good thing because we peformed it quite badly.
And in the background you can hear Josh toppling dominoes.

Jordan

The coolest photo ever.....

I'm reallllly loving this picture of me at the moment..

nate

Mean pictures...

Well you see yesterday we went on a photoshoot. And it was realllllly cold. We got hot chips & ate them while taking pictures. There's this NZ Photo Competition.. I feel pretty sure we're going to win it with the awesome pictures we took. Here's us eating chips.... Then we took heaps of pictures of us being crazy... oh it was fun.. Oh and my hair was looking really cool... Beka gave me this awesome rhaircut and now I look like a rockstar..
This is the story of the missing shoe. It says a lot. And this picture's awesome.
Yea it was heaps of fun,

Nate

I Wanna Live

Like today could be my last day

To give

All I have before its too late

Goodbye to all the fear and doubt

Cause this love is what Life's about

-Stellar Kart

I need to write a drum solo..

Yes I do. A loooong one.

We need to write more songs.

We do. Cos some of the ones I wrote when we were first starting out aren't that great and now I think that I'm a much better songwriter.
The problem is however we've been off our feet trying to get everything fine with the new layout and the drums we're they're supposed to be and me in time, and Dan learning some of the songs on the keyboard and trying to persuade Dad to build us that amp for Dan's microphone (which he still hasn't done!) that there's not much time for writing new stuff.
Cos honestly we havn't written anything for our new line-up. The only thing we've done was
I wish you were here and that dosen't really count. It's kind of a bit annoying. Maybe our songs will sound better if we write for our instruments.
Not that I'm going to give up on all of our older songs. There's still Cling to the Cross, Turn on the Lights, Under this Sun, Around, and The Complaint to do.
*Deep sigh*
We'll find a way somehow. It's just a lot of work to do.
Well at least we can't say we're not busy.
With any luck it'll be all sounding sweet (like Stellar Kart [i wish!] haha) by 2010.
Bring it on!

Jordan

Rock-climbing

We havn't been doing much lately. We had a pretty terible practice yesterday. Two guesses.
I was out of time again!!! =O
Anyway enough about that.
Onto the good side.
Which happened to be Friday. (*Man I havn't blogged for ages!*) Me and Buzz went up to Flaxmere with the youth group to go rockclimbing. Mum came to and she didn't climb anything. She just got ropeburn. [that was probably my fault............] . Anyway up we climbed afer the instructer had given a far to long (not to mention boring) speech about how to rock climb. I'd already been before so me and Chris were like "Far out just get on with it!"
When we FINALLY were allowed to start climbing I zoomed up the wall........well kinda, then the instructer tells us to get down and swap with our belaying partners.
I was annoyed, to say the least.
Hehe anyway I managed to climb six walls over the course of the night and it was awesome. My hands did end up a little sore but that's all part of the fun.
The hardest one was probably the last one I was quite stuck there for a bit but I managed to make it all the way to the top.
There'd be a really good view of Flaxmere from there cos you're really high up (about 15 metres). The only problem is they don't have any windows. Kinda silly but I guess it's one less thing to worry about getting vandalized.
And you know the scariest thing about rock-climbing? When you're halfway up a wall clinging to a rock -which is far to small and attached to the wall by screws- and then it moves under you!!!!!
Of course you're all safely harnessed up and stuff but it's still quite freaky.
Anyway after that was all done we drove home. And listened to Linkin Park. Not the dodgy songs, the few good ones.
It was a awesome night.
I gotta do it again
Jaws

Not so bad..

Jords doesn't want to write the blog - he wants to do his guitar practice so much cause he hasn't done it today. And its 9:00 by the way! :-)
So its my turn again.
I just noticed today, actually, that when you think of something bad, its not as bad when you do it. Take our paper-run for instance. We think - bother, the paper-run again - but its not as bad as we actually think it is.
Here comes Jords.
Nate

Songs songs & more songs

Well right now I'm loving that song Tears In Heaven. When Jords plays it on the guitar me and Beka are like, teach me that bit now! And he just rolls his eyes.
But I seriously just want to play that song! It sounds soooo cool! And then I can show off to everyone! But I have to say I want to play Zero by Hawk Nelson more!
Nate

Life is interesting.

Well I'm utterly bored right now, actually. Mum and Jords and Beka are rock climbing with the Youth Group. And Dad's sick in bed. So I have to look after the little kids again. 8-D

Out of it all

Wow guess what? We fixed up another one of our songs yesterday, one of the best one's I've written: Out of it All. It was surprisingly easy actually cos it's a mostly guitar song, and we just had to add drums really. Though it may be a tad simple, and I might see if we can add a few fiddly bits (which always make it sound better.) And the next song we're going to do is Turn on the Lights, then another slow song.....

And another exciting piece of news....apparantly you can apply for your band to go on the Debut stage at Parachute!
Not that I'm going to-not yet anyway! I think it'd be better to get everything sounding a lot better (including vocals) and maybe practice a bit on a few local stages before heading to the big event.
Oh well Parachute still will be awesome without Mayday!
Maybe in 2010
Jordan

Barricade the road that goes nowhere

I choose the true road to somewhere

-Parachute Band

nate

Cooler than ever...

Wow today when we did band practice and all got carried away and went hardcore on our song Kiwi On my Wall. Its a really catchy, groovy, song. Its a totally pointless song. Jords and Dan jumped up and down a lot. I couldn't really though.
And Beka cut my hair tonight which was rather exciting. Now I apparently look like a rockstar!
nate

Sea of faces

Yes this song is by Kutless.. a very cool band indeed.

And I'm not just a man

Who's been lost in this world
Lost in a sea of faces

nate

Home is best....

Oh man I'm sore all over! My legs and arms ache and my lips are sunburnt! Aaaaarrgh!!! But I had the meanest weekend of my life - it was sooooo much fun! There wasn't anything bad about it. The camp we stayed at was really cool - especially the table soccer..
But home is best....
Nate

Kutless are my next favourite band

This is a real quick post to say that I really love Kutless and I am so ever excited that they are coming to Parachute. Kerry let me borrow two cds and some of their songs are so awesome. They are so my next favourite band. Their rocky songs are really energetic and they'd be so mean to see live.
I am so going to mosh.
And the troops are all back now but the little kids are sick so we can't do band practice. =(
Nate's even more annoyed, though, cos he can't do drum practice with his brand new Rapture Ruckus drumsticks which Beka gave him.
And she got me a Kingston cd too and it's real cool. 8-0
Jordan

I'm all alone (in a crowd)

It dosn't quite make sense but it's true.
All my bros except Josh are off playing soccer up by the Lake and Buz is off to a concert, moshing to Rapture Ruckus, Mumsdollar and Kingston as I speak.
Well maybe not exactly now. But you know.
I just want to go to a concert right now and let the music wash over me while I'm jumping up and down.
It won't be a pernament soloution but it might help.
I don't even know if there is a pernament soloution.
Maybe you just have to live until you die.
I don't understand life.
It's a rollercoaster. Well I can't exactly say that cos I've never been on a rollercoaster before, so I can't draw any comparisims. But it goes up and down dosn't it? Like life.
Jordan

I'm cool........

Hey has anybody ever played guitar in the back of the van? Cos it seriously is the funnest thing to do when your practicing. Just make sure you have the van to yourself or certain members of the family might get annoyed with you playing the same song over and over and over. Which is what I mainly do in my guitar practice.
We were up in Palmy today and I was going "Arghh! I won't be able to do my guitar practice!" This would have been a very tragic tale indeed if someone hadn't had the brainy idea to bring it along (and no it wasn't my idea) So inbetween listening to Life Fm/my Mp3 (which is what I mostly did all day), I practiced my guitar in the back of the van. The seats were up so there was a bit of space and we brought Nate's beanbag too and it was quite comfy. Except I kept getting hot.
But oh well the experience was worth it.
You really should give it a go.
Of course it wouldn't quite be the same if you tried it with drums.
You'd probably go deaf in such an enclosed space.
Unless you were wearing headphones.
Which you bought from The Rip-off Chinese Trading Company, and were cheap junk. So you went deaf anyway.
Thus proves the advantage of guitar over drums.
Anyway, I've wandered off the subject.
So yes. That is what happened to me today.
Jaws

Nothing much..

Well I'm pretty excited right now. Tomorrow me and Dan are going up to Taupo on a bus for a soccer tournament. That's going to be mean as. And today the builder totally redid our sunroom. Lastnight there was a big hole in our wall and now there's a new sliding door there. It looks really weird.
Anyway today me and Jords did our song I wish you were here quite perfectly. It sounded really good.
Gotta go now
Nate

Randomly random

Today was the randomest day ever and I did absolutely no work to our band. But I did practice my song we recorded yesterday with the metronome to get my timing up to crack. I'm not sure f it worked, but yeah. Hopefully if I keep doing that my subconscious mind might catch on to something and play in time.

Oh yes and I'm writing a new song-but that's still not news cos I haven't finished it yet. I'm taking it nice and slow.

Here's some pictures we took the other day of us rocking the house down.

Jordan

Exciting news (very) 8-D

Okay...... so we tried to record Jordan's song "I wish you were here" yesterday on his mp3 which had a really low budget recording device on. And it didn't sound too great. Well, we were in luck today. One of Dad's friends was staying the night, and he happened to have an $800.00 recording device on him, that he uses for recording sermons.
Well he let us use it to record one song. We chose I Wish You were Here, so got down to it straight away.
Jords made a few mistakes and we got a bit out of time when the drums kicked in, but apart from that it went pretty well.
We listened to it afterwards. The recording device makes it sound so clear and perfect!
It took up 46 megabites, but it was worth it. We copied it onto our mp3's.
So that was real cool. And I'm going to listen to it it all the way to Waipukarou tomorrow. I have a dentist appointment. Aaaargghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wish me luck.
haha, cya
nate
P.S. If we can put it on our blog we will, so keep watching!

I Hate having not enough time

Not that I did today it's just that Nate and Dan went off to do soccer practice for 1/2 the day so I was left to do the paper run by myself.
Ok with Josh and Mummy and Kezi too, which was very helpfull cos if I had of done it by myself I would have got lost.
I'm not joking. I would have. I have absolutly NO idea what streets Nate and Dan do. I probably would have ended up on the other side of town. But yeah. After that I was stuffed so I just sat down and read my book. Well I couldn't exactly do band practice could I?
Not by myself anyway.
Man it was annoying!
And then when they finally got home, turns out Dan had a headache!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just my luck. I wanted to record a song too but yeah. =(
Still I guess there was one cool thing. Me and Nate practiced Turn on the Lights which has to be one of the bestest songs I've ever written and we just did it how we used to with me on the guitar and Nate playing the keyboard.
Oh it was good.
I just like it like that. Its ever so complicated when we get Dan trying to play the keyboard. Not that he's not good at it. In fact he's quite awesome and is getting along better than I expected. It's just the simple fact that you can play a song better when you've written it yourself.
(Which Dan has yet to do).
Apart from that it's going quite well apart from the fact that if we had a concert right now it probably wouldn't be even quarter of an hour long as we only have four songs completly fixed up.
Oh well.
Motto for the day: Smile when it sucks.

Jordan

Happy Birthday!

Well I was going to put up a picture of a cake but i don't have one haha so you'll have to just imagine one =).
Anyway today is October the Fifth which is a special day!!!!
So Happy Birthday to Jacob! He used to be my bestest friend then he moved to New Plymoth it was very sad.
I havn't caught up with him since early January which was quite a long while ago now, but anyway he's still one of my bestest friends. People you know from when you were two always are the best of friends.
Thats my theroy anyway.
He's sixteen now. That sounds really ancient. He's probably got his restricted and potters round the city in a beat-up car!
Na I'm joking if I know Jacob he'll be in his room drawing.
Happy birthday mate!
Jordan

Driving lesson

right now i'm brushing my teeth. seriously i am. anyway i'm going to write my blog really quickly before we go to church.
so we havn't been up to much lately except constant band practice i must say we're getting quite a lot better at playing together thankfully and i swapped my pick for a less thick one so now hopefully my guitar strings won't break.
hopefully.
anyway yesterday i had a drivig lesson it was loads of fun. i was quite good actually and i even passed two cars man i'm skillfull. so now i've made up my mind that i'm going to study the road code so i can get my learners. even though it's boring =(
oh well got to go now.

jordan

I'm lost for words

Most of the time I seriously am lost for words though. And it's not because I've seen something amazing. It's when I'm trying to say something but I forget the word at the end of the sentence. Or I forget how to say it so it comes out wrong. I can still remember when I said I thought a cat was very 'solomon'. I meant to say solemn actually but it didn't come out right.
It can get very annoying aye.
Actually I wrote "I'm lost for words" cos I didn't know what to write about.
Jordan

Failures and Violins make a bad mix

Guess what?

We didn't write the song. I had a feeling it wouldn't work that way. I just couldn't think of anything at all except not-so-great rhymes and the other guys weren't helping much at all. =(

So we ended up getting nothing done except playing the opening a million times and man did I get sick of that violin. Not that I have anything against violins really. When they're background that is, they sound really cool. They just can be, what's the word, squeaky. I don't like squeaky things. Well okay, mice are pretty cute and I like Guinea Pigs a bit too (especially the late Darth Hamster) but animals aside I don't go much for squeaks. Especially in instruments.

But we finally found a use for Daniel's violin in our band (Something we actually were trying to when we started our band; in one of our songs-Cling to the Cross -it was going to be a violin song. So after I wrote the words I gave it to Daniel to turn into a song, and the long and short of it was we didn't like his version so we stuffed it and wrote it on the piano and I said we could teach Daniel the tune and he could play it on his violin but he said he couldn't so I didn't press it and that was the first time we tried to put a violin in one of our songs)

Anyway, as I was saying, we'd finally found a use for Daniel's violin but what use is a really cool opening if you don't have a song for it.

Then Nate suggested we make it an instrumental but I didn't like that idea so I tried (unsuccessfully) to write it myself. It didn't quite work out the way I wanted, so I couldn't be bothered any more, and that was the end of that.

I think if I really want to get it done, I'll keep thinking about it until some words get in my head, then I'll write them down on a bit of paper in my room and then get out my faithful accoustic guitar, which I actually like better than my eletric on the account that none of it's strings have broken and it sounds cooler, and then I'll fit music to the words.

That's how I wrote I wish you Were Here anyway and it seemed to work.

Anyway, speaking of I wish you Were Here I'm thinking of recording that song. Seriously. I don't know if I'll be able to get it on my blog or not but if I actually do it, and it all sounds good, considering I'm going to record it on my tiny Mp3 (which for real bands isn't the best option but hey we're on a limited budget here.) , I'll give it my best shot.

Jordan

Ps. Daniel still hasn't got an amp yet so we can't record anything else yet sorry.

My guitar string broke today

I'm pretty stoked cos I'm discovering new bands all over the place so I'm obviously going to have to update my influences.
Also we checked out some of the people who are coming to Parachute, there was this cool as band called Arms Reach who kind of looked about as crazy as us (if that's humanly possible) and this other mean band called Smalltown Heroics. Kind of a random name but we had a listen on their website and man did they sound cool. Kind of a New Zealand version of Stellar Kart. I wish we could say that about Mayday!!!!
They have DEFINITELY influenced us (Stellar Kart that is) but the unfortunately the similarities end there.
I guess if there's a band we sound like it's ummmm................... I can't think of any! I guess that means we're original then. And I like originalaty. (If that's a word that is. If it's not it is now cos I've just made it up. It's very original.)
Anyway yeah. That's what we've been hearing.
Oh and we heard Moala's sole project today too! She's in Mana3 by the way. It sounded really cool. Except for I wasn't listening properly cos I was changing one of my guitar strings. Silly guitar. Since I got it about four months ago, all it's strings except one have broke.
At least I know how to change it quickly now as long as I have a screwdriver, a spare string, a decent pair of sidecutters and guitar tuner.
Musn't forget them if we ever have a concert.

Jordan

New song on the way!

Today we were going to write a song but we didn't get around to it. The usual way that we write our songs is to wake up at 6:00 in the morning. Then we write the music for the song on the keyboard. After that we fit in the drums and guitar into it and practice it until we know it good enough.
That's getting a tad boring now. Too much work. So we're going to write our next song, Moonlight Shadows, altogether, and just sing the tune how it sounds right - the Ground Zero way!
And now I have to finish cause I want to draw cartoons.
Seeya,
Nate

Wake me up when September ends

Yup, I love that song!!!

And guess what? We finally got one of our songs perfectly fixed up. It sounded so perfect, something I didn't believe was possible yesterday.

(It's mostly cos Nate is playing quiter-good on him!!!!) And for once my guitar is on time. YAY!!!!!

So I'm happy aye.

By the way I so totally want this:

It's a Vox guitar organ with 18 knobs!!!! Oh you could do so much with that guitar.

The only problem is for some reason the idea never caught on and only about 80 were made so the chances of getting one is very rare because even if I do find one for sale it's going to be like $8000 at least.

So I guess I'll just have to admire it's picture. Haha.

Jordan