Finally...

My first song of 2012 - nice little positive one too! Gotta love that happy ukulele sound!
Still needs a little work but I'm happy with the direction it's going....

I CAN'T SAY

She said "A penny for your thoughts"
I said "I'd give you a dollar if you told me yours"
Cause what's on my mind
Oh I just can't say

She said she'd tell a secret of hers
Only if I gave her mine first
Yeah but what's on my mind
Oh I just can't say

Secrets can eat you from the inside out
They chew you up then spit you out
Still what's on my mind
I just can't say

Maybe I can't say cos I don't know
Maybe I don't know cos I don't care
Well I guess she'll never know
Well I guess she'll never know

Yet she asks me what's on my mind;
Nothing girl, it changes all the time
She asks what's on my mind
And I can't say
(c) copyright Jordan Gowan 2012

Thoughts?

I'll be the first to admit it's not my best lyrical work, but hey, it was one o' clock in the morning, and I was tired. Either way, I'm just stoked I got something down! Bring on all the rest of 2012s songs!

One insanely creative day!

It started at 1.30 in the morning....

It's not like I'm an insomniac or anything (though sometimes I wonder if I am!) but I never seem to be able to sleep till at least twelve at night.

Still, that night I actually had a decent reason to be up at that hour. I'm not going to go into details, cause it was quite a confusing scenario and I'm still not quite sure what the full story was. It's significant enough to say that I was really worried about one of my friends from the hostel and as a result stayed awake just in case there was anything I could do to help. Though eventually the lateness got the better of me, I felt like I should be doing something even though there was nothing I could do, so I determined to stay awake until the whole thing was resolved.

However I was so tired by this point that I had to do something, anything to keep my eyes open. And with no reading material to turn to, I suddenly had a spur-of-the moment decision to write some songs.

This was actually probably the best idea I could have. I'd been feeling some sort of creative lapse all year, maybe as a result of being band-less for awhile.... I hadn't wrote any songs for months, and even lyrics, which usually come really easy to me, had been hard to find.

I didn't really have any idea of anything when writing those two songs. I just started writing, and it flowed from there.

Anyway, I only managed to get one song finished and started on another one before my tiredness finally got the better of me and I crashed out on my bed.

I had band rehearsal at 11 at UCOL today which was good cos it allowed me to get at least a little sleep! Despite being minus our drummer (we roped a few other people into help) it was actually a really good practice. We're doing blues at the moment which is such a cool genre, even though it's freakishly hard to play (well, the guitar fills & solos are at any rate..)! I still have got very little clue on how to play our control song, but at least we got some good advice by one of the teachers on the "feel" of the blues. I'm so used to playing fast and banging it out (albeit messily) that I forgot that was an important part of it.

The best part of practice today though was our 8-minute jam of "Sweet Home Chicago" by Eric Clapton. Our singer had left the room cos our time was up, but we kept going anyway. I wasn't even playing guitar cos our bass player had decided to take over (he's the man at playing guitar anyway), but I didn't want to just stand there and watch. Just for kicks I jumped over to the keyboard which was on and just started playing through the chords. Blues is mostly only 3 chords, so it wasn't really to difficult but I'm not exactly Mozart or anything so I think only every third note of mine was actually right... (I still have no idea how to play 7ths on a piano!). Still it was super fun anyway, and the first time I've actually done that in a band, improvise on an instrument I'm not really familiar with!

Speaking of that, I've actually been making a decent effort to try and teach myself piano lately. I don't know why, but something about being able to play multiple instruments is soooo much cooler than just sticking with the guitar (even though the guitar is still the coolest one out there!). So as well as my attempts at trying to play ukulele, I'm also trying to learn piano. It helps that there's sweet little keyboards at UCOL and I can just turn on Logic Pro, shove in some headphones and play the few chords/notes I know. I love Logic Pro, probably more than I should, considering I'm an actual musican whose never really subscribed to the idea of "computer music". But it's so much fun, and if you take out all the loops and play everything yourself, there's actually a fair bit of skill and creativity required! Can do some sweet recording with that! Honestly, if I had enough money I'd probably buy a Mac and one of those MIDI keyboards.... but I don't, so yeah.
Anyway, as I was saying before I got slightly carried away talking about the wonders of technology, I'm trying to learn keyboard in that way by looking up easy sounding songs on Youtube and trying to play along. But I mentioned this to my teacher today and he said he might get me some easy piano music to learn if I want. Score!

Anyway, after all that creativity, we had a songwriting class in the afternoon where we had to compose a song about a blues performer (in a blues style of course). We got Stevie Ray Vaughn and wrote a song about how he died in a helecopter crash. Slightly morbid, but it was cool anyway. Nice little exercise under pressure, and I helped with the lyrics this time. :)

After classes I stuck around and tried to compose some more blues tunes to the half a song I'd wrote at 2 in the morning... I kinda got somewhere but it wasn't sounding fabulous, probably because I was trying to write it in a minor key and I can't even sing that well in a major key....
I gave up after awhile and went back home.

I finally had a breakthrough in the songwriting after tea though, where I at last wrote a full song. I'd got the lyrics about 1 in the morning, wrote it all out and then fell asleep.... it was relatively easy to write actually once I'd decided on a key. It's a nice, simple, yet cool little song and I was pretty stoked cos I wrote it on the ukulele too! (One of my goals for summer was to write an original song on the uke!). For the lyrics go here:

I think it's safe to say I had a pretty full on day. And I'm still pretty tired from my mostly sleepless night... so I should probably be off now.
Drop a line if you feel like telling me what creative stuff you got up to today!

Night!

Different perspectives...

On Thursday night my music class at Ucol had our first gig! It was a sweet night out, and everything just seemed to work really well. The other bands were sounding awesome, everyone's original songs were incredible, we were all looking pretty fine in our 1950s clothing, and the crowd was pumping. Pretty full on stuff!
The band I was in was second to last, which was both a good and bad placing. Good because the crowd was more packed because lots of people came late, but bad because all the other bands before us had played amazingly and set the standard really high.

Still, despite the nerves, we managed to get through it pretty well, and the crowd seemed to like it. Like pretty much all the gigs I've ever done (except Open Air last year) it seemed to go pretty fast. My favourite moment was when we played "In the still of the night" - an absolutely beautiful 50's ballad with some amazing harmonies in. It's just a really nice song to play.

Yet despite all the things which did go right, I was a little dissatisfied with my performance. I guess I let the nerves get the better of me, cos I rushed the second half of my guitar solo in the first song and it sounded horrible, and just a whole heap of other things weren't quite as polished as I wanted them to be. When I was onstage with Mayday I tended to jump around and go crazy, but I tried to be a little bit more reserved that night. Maybe that's why it felt weird...

Anyway, yesterday we had to watch back our performances, which were taped for us to critique. Which is an excellent way of improving your performance, I think! Still, I wasn't really looking forward to watching me fail onstage.

However, when it came to watching my band play, I was pleasantly surprised! My guitar solo actually sounded amazing! The transition out of it, which sounded so bad onstage, was barely noticeable in the recording as anything but bang on the money! While everything was really good, there were parts which were just plain awesome. And it was good cos it left me feeling encouraged as well as knowing what I could work at for the next performance.

I guess what I'm getting at here is there's always more than one perspective on things. While I could go into this in depth, for now I'm going to just focus on two: your own perspective, and everybody else's. Sometimes you think its not going so well. Maybe you lack confidence in yourself, don't think you're very interesting, or just feel like no one understands you. But sometimes the way you perceive things and what everyone else thinks of you are completely different. "Humans tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives", as one of my lecturers told me today. So don't be too harsh on yourself. Sure, try and improve, but don't want to change so much that you end up hating who you are. Cos who you are is awesome. Everyone else can see it, and you can too.

I finish with some deep words from one of my favourite writers of all time, Matt Thiessan from Relient K:

"I've been convincing myself that I'm worthwhile

Cos I'm worth what I'll convince myself to be."

You're an amazing person, and don't ever forget it!

Peace out,

Jordan

7ths! (and movies)

Guitar lessons today consisted mostly of revision on stuff I already knew, though it was handy learning how to construct a chords using notes ( which is actually awesome for making up alternate ways of playing ordinary chords - came up with some mean ones before!). So I must have been looking bored or something cause the teacher flipped over the whiteboard and told me I should play some 7ths....

I didn't actually have my guitar with me for once cause it was to windy to carry it safely, so I told him I'd have a look at a few when I got home, and that seemed to suffice.

I didn't think I had any actually, but then I had a look at my chord charts and they were all there, in every single major key! I was a bit surprised by this actually, but then again I got those charts like 4 years ago and there's still chords on there I don't know even exist!

Well, I really wish I'd played a few 7ths before because they sound so AWESOME!

I found a particularly nice one, shoved it in a chord pattern I'd been working on and it just made it sound a million times better! I had one of those "ahhhhh" moments - when you play something which just sounds so nice you just can't stop repeating it over and over and you're thinking all the while "Yes! I wrote that!"
Mean.

Oh and I watched John Carter. Good movie, entirely unrelated to my previous discussion on 7ths haha.

I'm pretty keen to go watch the Hunger Games too, despite being informed by James that it's copied off some other movie. I don't care, the books are awesome, so I'm pretty keen for this movie anyway. Unfortunately the night it opens is when I have my first gig. :(

Oh well, the music's more important anyway.

Peace out,

Jordan

Update...

Today was pretty sweet! Learnt heaps of new stuff and our rehearsal was sounding so tight! Which is a bit of a relief because the band's playing this Thursday and to be honest I was getting a bit nervous about it. This is mostly because I lack experience with doing ANY sort of guitar soloing - during all my time in Mayday I think I only ever wrote three songs which had guitar solos.... pretty poor effort. So just the fact that I have to play a solo in every single song we're doing on the night kinda freaked me out I think. But yeah, got it sorted now. Can't wait for Thursday night - it's going to rock!

The happenings

So it's well into March now and I thought it was about time I posted something on here again. It finally looks like what little summer we had is finally over, cos the weather's been quite wet and cold lately. However that doesn't even really matter at my classes because the air-conditioning isn't working at the moment, so whatever the outside weather is like, it's always way to hot in there.
Into the third week of my course and it's still going good. Studying music is fun :)

The only problem I'm really having is this song by Buddy Holly called "That'll be the Day". It's an ok song, but we all have to learn it as our main cover song in the genre we're doing. And most of the song is so simple I could play it with my eyes closed. But then Buddy gets all sneaky and shoves in this ridiculously short and quick guitar solo, which I can't seem for the life of me to play in time. When I'm practicing by myself it doesn't sound that bad, maybe sometimes even about 80% correct, but as soon as I try and play it with the band, it never seems to work. And I've practiced it SO MUCH! Like probably more than any other guitar part that short!

And we have to play it live in like a week and a half....

About now is where I ask for prayer requests. :)

Hopefully I should have got it by then anyway. Man when that moment comes it's going to be good!
The rest of our songs are sounding really good though. I've had to translate saxophone solos into guitar solos twice now. Haha I need a pedal or something that makes my guitar sound like a sax!

Oh, and on a completely different topic, I went to Ashurst the other day with a group of friends and we played soccer! Which was fun, even though I hadn't played for about five months, and probably haven't gone on a run since then either.... Man by the end of the game I regretted not running more often! So unfit!

Anyway, that's about it from me....

I bid you goodnight!

Justice

"He has showed thee, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" - Micah 6:8

So at the moment, there's a lot of talk going on about this guy called Kony.

If anyone of you has been on Facebook in the last couple of days, you can't have missed it really. Most of it seems to be a video, or a picture or something. Yesterday my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to check this out.

Turns out there's quite a bit more to this than just another passing fad on Facebook. Shortly I'll outline the main points from what I understand or from what people have told me, but if you want a more detailed version I would definitely suggest reading Invisible Children's "official blurb" at http://www.invisiblechildren.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/history.html or watching the video at

http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ , then reading the "rebuttal" from

http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble.

Basically the main point is this. There's this guy called Joseph Kony, who is head of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) in Uganda. This man has not enough support from his countrymen to make up a sizable army to further his political agenda, so he kidnaps children. From villages all over the place, and these children are not just used as child soldiers but as sex slaves too. It's gotten so bad that the Ugandan government has had to move entire villages into refugee camps just for their protection, which of course just creates more issues such as sanitation, etc.

The whole reason this is getting a lot of media attention right now is not because this is a relatively "new" issue. Apparently it's been going on for years, and this organization called Invisible Children have been pressuring the US government about arresting this man for a while. However, it seems like 2012 they seem to be doing a really big drive, as if almost to say: this is the year where we're going to finish this, and this horrible man will finally no longer be a threat to Uganda and it's children.

The thing about this is they're going to need your support.

These days it's not enough to have a few individuals talking. It's not enough to have a company, or an organization talking. Even if a few famous people or politicians get behind it, it still can be deemed as unimportant. These days, the only way to set the world on fire, to get change happening, is to get everyone talking. And more than just that, get everyone doing. Sometimes all it takes is for people to get up on their feet to start feeling like they can make a difference. And if they start feeling it, then it can, and it will happen.

I love it when this happens. When something like this which has been sitting around is addressed in a new and fresh way. And even more than that, when everyone can get involved. I think to often we are blinded to the issues of poverty, child slavery, and lack or rights because we feel restricted by our mediocre civilian status. We feel like there's no way we can't make a difference, so we don't even try. And then something like this comes along, and all of a sudden everyone is talking about it! And we realize that maybe we can do something.

While I haven't studied both sides of the issue in full, I have seen a bit from both of them. And my perspective, my opinion, is this.

I support this completely. Sure, the organization itself might have it's faults, but overall I think they're trying to do the right thing. I think it's horrible that people like Joseph Kony can do things like this and get away with it for so long. As the oldest guy in a large family, it's fair to say I have a reasonable grasp of children, and I cannot even begin to imagine something like that could be happening to a family like mine over the other side of the world. Once again, as in my blog I posted in early February (http://maydayrockstar.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/what-about-all-times-we-dont-give.html) , I am reminded about how when we are given a decision, given a call to "act justly" like Micah mentions, it is all so easy to sit back and do nothing. Yet we cannot ignore this call! As this passage I wrote out at the top of the blog says, this is what the Lord requires of us! And maybe you don't believe in God, or you're still trying to figure that out. That's fine, but surely you believe in mercy? Surely you believe in justice? You don't have to be a super perfect person to figure this out: one of the most important ideals any human should have is to help out those in need. Those worse off than you. And in this case, these are the children which Kony has abducted, and forced into something which is just another name for slavery. I think that this has gone on to long, and justice needs to be demanded of this man.

But in saying that, I don't think it should stop there. There are many, many situations which call for justice in this world. And so often, while going after the big ones like these, we forget the smaller ones too. Sometimes it can be as simple as helping out or donating to a homeless person, something I touched on in my earlier blog (see above link). I think that this Kony thing is starting a fire, and I want to toss the branch that is me onto that pile. Let this man and his atrocities be stopped. But let us not stop there. In the words of Hawk Nelson "One little revolution could turn it all around".

Spread the word!

What are your thoughts on this? Any "facts" which I missed out? Do you support it or not really care? Drop a line, and let's get the discussions started!

30 followers!

I've been holding out for so long to get my 30th follower! Makes me feel like my blog is actually getting somewhere!

I suppose now that I've got that many I should go out and make this blog a whole lot more awesome than it is...
So while you're waiting for that to happen, you should leave a comment and tell me why you like this blog and decided to follow! It would mean a lot to me to get some feedback... I do so love getting comments on my blog.

And now to do some work....

Day 3 and the ones before

So university is pretty much rocking my world so far!

On the first day we pretty much did introductory stuff. It wasn't too exciting but we got to have a look at some of the stuff we'd be doing, so that was great. Oh and we got shoved in our bands too. Straight out like that! Me being incredibly lucky Jordan as usual somehow winded up in a four piece - one more than Mayday! I was kind of a little bit disappointed about this, because I kind of wanted there to be another guitarist in there so we could make up all those sweet two part guitar solos or whatever, and that someone could take over the soloing if I couldn't handle it....

But hey, I'm not actually worried about it that much, cos the band I did get shoved in is actually pretty awesome! Our first practice didn't actually sound quite as bad as I thought it would go. Everyone else seems to be such good musicians, I'm clearly going to have to step up my game! But it's mean, they're all nice as about it and I've been getting lots of help (especially with the guitar solos :P...). At the moment we're jamming out some rock and roll which means a LOT of Buddy Holly and "That'll be the Day"' practice.... it's a good song but I really am starting to get a bit sick of it.

The thing I love the most though is just the jamming. Yesterday we got told that we had to write a song in this genre. So I just went home and mucked around with a couple of riffs that sounded pretty 50s to me. I took them into band practice today, and the rest of the band actually thought they were good! Our rehearsal mostly was trying to get "That'll be the day" down though, so afterwards we went back to the main building to just jam it out. And once we got into it, and with a few tweaks to my original riff, we got like the whole song, lyrics, structure, and all, in about an hour! And it actually sounds amazing! It was like one of the few times where I just make the music, not write the words or anything, so it was kind of a weird feeling in a way, but also pretty cool too. ARGH I love writing music! Haven't done it for months, so it was so great to create something original out of a whole pile of ideas again! IT'S SO AWESOME! Really can't wait to play it live either, it's going to be mean! If you live in New Zealand, make sure you're there when we perform it! (And if you aren't, by a plane ticket! :D..)

And after all that, the whole group practiced our item for UCOL's graduation. I'm not going to say what it is, cos I know Beka reads my blog and don't want to give it away! But it sounds absolutely beautiful.

No doubt about it, this year is going to be amazing!!!

Catch you on the road,

Jordan