Okay so learning to play the bass wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. My finger-picking is still a bit stiff but I found it quite fun to play. On top of the song we were practicing for Battle of the Bands (B.O.B.), I learned to play the bass riff for "Stand By Me" (Thanks Marco!).
My homework for next week's practice:
Practice B.O.B. songs
Master "Stand By Me"
Learn bass part for "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)" (See below for tabs and video)
--------------------
Play That Funky Music (Bass Guitar)
by Wild Cherry
Main Pre-Chorus
g-----------------| g--- -------|
d-----------------|repeat d--- out -------|
a----5-7------5-7-| a--- -------|
e-0-------5-7-----| e-0- -0-1-2-|
1 2 3 4 pick ups to...
Chorus
g---------------|---------|-----------|
d----3-5-----3-5|----%----|-----8-8\--|
a--------3-5----|---------|-----------|
e-3-------------|---------|-6---------|
1 2 3 4 4 times 1 2 3 4
LAY DOWN AND BOOGIE and play that funky music till you die
g--9-7---7-----------------------------|
d-----9----9-5-7-5-7-9-7-5-------------|
a--------------------------7-5---------|
e------------------------------0-------|
If at the end of B.O.B., I might even consider buying an acoustic bass. Ha! :D
I mentioned in my previous post that I play guitar... not well, in my opinion, but I play nonetheless. So for SFC, we're doing a Battle of the Bands at the end of June. We've got vocalists, a drummer and [maybe] a keyboardist. There's a bunch of guitarists, but sadly, no actual bassist... Which is where I come in. We have a bass electric guitar here at home but I don't think I've actually ever touched it. So... our first band practice is tomorrow afternoon. And here I am, at 10pm the night before, picking up the bass for the first time ever! Thank God for YouTube:
Intro - Hand position, etc.
Finger-Picking:
Open Strings:
Chromatic Scales:
Hopefully my previous guitar experience will help me shorten the learning curve. But for tonight... PRACTICE!
Where to start? I've picked up a couple of hobbies along the past couple years...
1. Snowboarding - I took up snowboarding after my first year of university and fell in love with it almost instantly. Yes, it felt like I got hit by a train after that first day, but with persistance (and ample padding), I can now confidently say I'm no novice. Anyway, our first big snowboarding trip was to Big White (Kelowna, BC). It was such an awesome trip, we went back the year after that. And since then it became an annual thing. After the first year, I made a big cardboard number for each year, which we took on the trip and frequented in our pictures that weekend (See pic below). Sadly, this past winter would have been "Big White 5", but due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. I got into a car accident), my snowboarding season ended before it even began. I'm not sure what this year is gonna be... Big White 6 or 5.5? (BTW, the cat in the pic is Farnsworth)
2. Guitar - I began to learn to play the guitar after my brother picked it up when he (and I) joined Singles For Christ. This was in 2007. It wasn't until 2008 when I started to consistently practice and learn to actually play songs. Now, I personally have 3 guitars. I believe my guitar playing is a constant work-in-progress...
3. Reading - This isn't really an unusual hobby. As a child I never really did like reading and as a teenager, though I read the occasional mystery novel, I never considered it a pastime. I don't think it was until I began to read Harry Potter did I really begin to like reading. And now my partial collection:
You can really only see the books in front. But on the 2 shelves, I estimate there are about 90 books. Also, I've leant out a bunch of books to my friends (If I didn't do this, all the books wouldn't fit on my two shelves). And I can't even count how many eBooks I have on my computer. Needless to say, I really like to read now...
4. SFC Theme Art - This one is hard to explain. The first one was supposed to be a trophy for a competition in a Singles for Christ (SFC) event. The year after that, it was more like a diorama. But for the past 3 years, I've made some sort of art work based on the SFC theme for that year.
2009 was "Moving forward in Christ": (It recently broke so I drew in the missing piece... can you find it? :p)
2010 was "The Good Life" (Fullness of Life in Christ):
2011 is "I Stand".... I'm actually working on this right now. Stay tuned for a future post! :p
5. Video Games - I like to play video games. I'm pretty awesome at Mario Kart and Bomberman (humble much?). I also like first person shooter games... Doom, Duke Nukem, Counterstrike, Call of Duty. After a long day, sometimes it feels good to blow things up :p
6. Candy Apples - This, I believe, was one of my more brilliant ideas :p My mom's been making a carmel by boiling a closed can of condensed milk (for three hours) since we were kids. Normally, the carmel would be used as a spread on bread or some other pastry. But one day earlier this year, I used it on apples (I don't know why I never thought of it before). The caramel is a lot softer than the stuff you get when you buy candy apples commercially (or if you use melted sugar). This caramel is more like a soft paste. Spread it on the apple, roll it around in crushed nuts, drizzle with melted chocolate (milk AND white), and add whatever else tickles your fancy that day (sprinkles, marshmallows, etc.). Yum!
7. Glove Squirrels - You might have noticed that I like arts and crafts. But since I started university, I never had much opportunity to do crafts anymore. Last Christmas break, I made stuffed squirrels out of unpaired gloves. My brother had sent me this link a couple weeks before that: Recycled Glove How-to: Make a Chipmunk Softie. I may like arts and crafts, but I've always sucked at sewing and, thus, disliked it. But I ended up making two squirrels over 2 days (the two on the left in the pic).
8. Directing/Film-making - This came out of nowhere. I had an idea for a teaser for the Creative Competitions for this year's SFC National Conference (in Whistler, baby!!!!). Next thing I know, they're asking me to make it. I made this story board (note: I can't really draw :p):
We filmed the whole short in one [really, really, REALLY long 14-hour] day. It took us less than 3 weeks to edit it. Here's the final product:
I couldn't have done this without the awesome cast and production team. This was fun, but tough work...
9. Kwek kwek - I'm not much of a cook, but sometimes I get cravings for the randomest things. A couple months ago, I wanted some Kwek Kwek, a filipino dish of deep fried, breaded quail eggs dipped in vinegar or a sweet sauce. Anyway, I used the following recipe:
FILIPINO RECIPE ~ QUEK-QUEK (KWEK KWEK) ~
PINOY QUEK-QUEK INGREDIENTS: 48 pieces quail eggs, hard boiled then shelled (You can also use small chicken eggs) 2 cups oil for frying
FOR THE BATTER: 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 egg white 2 tbsps. atsuete oil 1/2 cup water 1 tsp. onion powder 1 tsp. garlic powder 1/2 tsp. pepper 1/2 tsp. salt
Combine all the ingredients for the batter in a bowl. Mix well.
Heat oil in pan. Dip each hard-boiled egg in the batter, then fry till golden brown. Serve with vinegar or sweet sauce (see below) or sweet chili sauce.
FOR THE SAUCE: 1 pc. corn starch (Liwayway in paper packaging) 4 cups cold water 5 tbsp soy sauce pepper sugar salt (optional)
Mix all in a saucepan then heat the pot and continue mixing the ingredients.
Before it boils you will then notice that the mixture starts to be sticky. Continue mixing until you got the right stickiness.
Add pepper before turning off the heat.
10. Volleyball - I love volleyball. Enough said.
11. Buttons (A Fronda Farm Production) - The past two years, my brother and I have made buttons from local inside jokes from SFC.
We referred to "Jesus Loves BBT" in the video we made, too :p (see #8). I think we've already got an idea for this year's button. But it probably won't get made 'til the end of the year.
