We have a lot.
Well, we'll have to see how long we last. I'm pretty sure everyone in the band wants to continue all the way to senior year. With a lot of determination and cooperation I think we can make it.
Our priorities are grabbing every opportunity to play live at school or outside. We're probably going to play for three more school assemblies and maybe a few times for coffeehouse.
After we get that down, I guess the main focus is going to be on our own music. We all want to make albums and show everyone what awesome stuff we can come up with. It's a long shot, but we can probably make two full albums by the time we graduate. It's a wish.
Evan
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Altitude Zero
Awesome name right? We're thinking about making that as our new band name.
Mark and Kushal worship Jason Becker's guitar opus, Altitudes. I'm not really a big fan of it. Meanwhile, while we were brainstorming about various other band name ideas, we decided to call names that ended with X out (King X, Static X, etc).
Then I wondered...Altitude X? Altitude Zero would sound better.
And that's how we got the name.
Evan
Mark and Kushal worship Jason Becker's guitar opus, Altitudes. I'm not really a big fan of it. Meanwhile, while we were brainstorming about various other band name ideas, we decided to call names that ended with X out (King X, Static X, etc).
Then I wondered...Altitude X? Altitude Zero would sound better.
And that's how we got the name.
Evan
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Talent Show
Have some catching up to do...
So the Talent Show is coming up soon and we're thinking of some songs to play. We've narrowed it down to a few songs, our most probable candidate Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold. It's heavy metal/alternative metal. Cool string intro that's replicable on keyboard. It's also got a great duo guitar solo...lots of string sweeping (4:16). It's killer, but possible. Finally, the drum line changes a lot and involves fast double bass usage. It's a pretty big challenge, but I think we can do it.
More to come,
Evan
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Deeper Look
This post will be more about each individual member of the band and how we function together as a group.
Kushal
Great guitarist, great technique. Also plays the drums...he says he's better than Sebastion at drums lol. In general he's a pretty nice person and easy to work with. That's actually a pretty important characteristic - willing to concede and cooperate with others easily. Another thing that's pretty cool about him is that he's starting to work on his own music. Maybe we'll be able to put out some original stuff by a couple of monthes! He mainly listens to a lot of prog metal, neoclassical metal, nu metal, classic rock, ocassionally deathcore.
Me (Evan)
Classical guitar for over half a year (pretty good at it now, more a flamenco guitarist), electric guitar for...two monthes? Guitar wasn't my first instrument. I've been playing piano since I was four, flute since I was eight, and piccolo since...last year. I've always been a rock enthusiast since like 5th grade. I remember the first album I picked up was Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins. Man was that awesome. Favorites - thrash metal, visual kei, metalcore, alternative metal, alternative, pop punk, punk.
I'm the only guy in our band with perfect pitch. Ya! It actually helps a lot...tuning especially. Man the other guys in our band can't tune at all jkjkjk.
Since...I dunno, three years ago, I started composing my own stuff for piano. Basically ripping off classical composers and making my own stuff. Eh, oh, and music theory. Finished all my music theory tests including panel...last year-ish. It really helped me when I wanted to develop my own pieces, and now I'm trying to apply the same thing to rock music. Although...guitar is much different from piano I have to admit.
Kushal and I will eventually be the principal songwriters of the band. I'll try writing lyrics as well as music...but I'm not sure I'll do well with the lyrics lol.
Mark
Another great guitarist. Played piano since he was five? He's more of the ego side of our band. Has occassional outbursts with Sebastion, our drummer, but in general he's pretty fun to hang out with. Among all the guys in our band he has the most common musical tastes as me - thrash metal, death metal, metalcore, punk rock, visual kei.
Cole
Plays bass. ALSO plays guitar. Probably the most chill guy in our group. Listens to nu metal, alternative, alternative metal.
Sebastion
Used Kushal's drum set, now has his own. A pretty good drummer considering he took up drumming not too long ago. He's pretty chill unless Mark ticks him off...or any of us. We goof off A LOT.
Altogether, with our tastes and backgrounds, we form a pretty solid group. You can tell...right?
Haha, later
Evan
Kushal
Great guitarist, great technique. Also plays the drums...he says he's better than Sebastion at drums lol. In general he's a pretty nice person and easy to work with. That's actually a pretty important characteristic - willing to concede and cooperate with others easily. Another thing that's pretty cool about him is that he's starting to work on his own music. Maybe we'll be able to put out some original stuff by a couple of monthes! He mainly listens to a lot of prog metal, neoclassical metal, nu metal, classic rock, ocassionally deathcore.
Me (Evan)
Classical guitar for over half a year (pretty good at it now, more a flamenco guitarist), electric guitar for...two monthes? Guitar wasn't my first instrument. I've been playing piano since I was four, flute since I was eight, and piccolo since...last year. I've always been a rock enthusiast since like 5th grade. I remember the first album I picked up was Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins. Man was that awesome. Favorites - thrash metal, visual kei, metalcore, alternative metal, alternative, pop punk, punk.
I'm the only guy in our band with perfect pitch. Ya! It actually helps a lot...tuning especially. Man the other guys in our band can't tune at all jkjkjk.
Since...I dunno, three years ago, I started composing my own stuff for piano. Basically ripping off classical composers and making my own stuff. Eh, oh, and music theory. Finished all my music theory tests including panel...last year-ish. It really helped me when I wanted to develop my own pieces, and now I'm trying to apply the same thing to rock music. Although...guitar is much different from piano I have to admit.
Kushal and I will eventually be the principal songwriters of the band. I'll try writing lyrics as well as music...but I'm not sure I'll do well with the lyrics lol.
Mark
Another great guitarist. Played piano since he was five? He's more of the ego side of our band. Has occassional outbursts with Sebastion, our drummer, but in general he's pretty fun to hang out with. Among all the guys in our band he has the most common musical tastes as me - thrash metal, death metal, metalcore, punk rock, visual kei.
Cole
Plays bass. ALSO plays guitar. Probably the most chill guy in our group. Listens to nu metal, alternative, alternative metal.
Sebastion
Used Kushal's drum set, now has his own. A pretty good drummer considering he took up drumming not too long ago. He's pretty chill unless Mark ticks him off...or any of us. We goof off A LOT.
Altogether, with our tastes and backgrounds, we form a pretty solid group. You can tell...right?
Haha, later
Evan
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A Normal Band Practice
Man I wish I took pictures. Maybe next time I'll have some.
Mark, Kushal, Sebastion, Cole, and I usually meet up for band practice every two, three weeks. Typically on a weekend or after school.
If its during the weekend or a break, we almost always go to Sebastion's house to practice. It's not too far away from my house, a 15 minute drive, so I'm cool with it.
Now...HERE IT IS!
Schedule:
1) Jam, practice random stuff individually.
2) Play CoD 4, CoD 5, or Halo 3.
3) Walk over to Carnival (ice cream shop) and neighboring stores to grab something to eat/drink.
4) Fool around some more.
5) Practice...not so seriously.
6) Leave.
Pretty exciting right?
>_<
If only we were more productive.
Mark, Kushal, Sebastion, Cole, and I usually meet up for band practice every two, three weeks. Typically on a weekend or after school.
If its during the weekend or a break, we almost always go to Sebastion's house to practice. It's not too far away from my house, a 15 minute drive, so I'm cool with it.
Now...HERE IT IS!
Schedule:
1) Jam, practice random stuff individually.
2) Play CoD 4, CoD 5, or Halo 3.
3) Walk over to Carnival (ice cream shop) and neighboring stores to grab something to eat/drink.
4) Fool around some more.
5) Practice...not so seriously.
6) Leave.
Pretty exciting right?
>_<
If only we were more productive.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Our First Live Performance
Nervous as hell.
Quality isn't that great.
Thanks Jay for taking the video.
HERE IT IS!
Quality isn't that great.
Thanks Jay for taking the video.
HERE IT IS!
Song Suggestions?
The title is pretty self-explainable.
Song can be anywhere from 2-5 minutes.
We prefer pop punk, nu metal, rapcore, hard rock, heavy metal, punk, and alternative.
Song can be anywhere from 2-5 minutes.
We prefer pop punk, nu metal, rapcore, hard rock, heavy metal, punk, and alternative.
Our Band Name
We're kind of stuck on this one.
One of our best options was Red October. Red October was another name for the October Revolution in Russia, in which the Communists took over the government in a bloody coup.
Unfortunately, some of my friends pointed out that Red October would be a total ripoff of Blue October, a pretty popular alternative rock band.
Fail.
If you have ANY suggestions for a decent band name, we'd be grateful if you could post it in a comment below.
Thanks!
One of our best options was Red October. Red October was another name for the October Revolution in Russia, in which the Communists took over the government in a bloody coup.
Unfortunately, some of my friends pointed out that Red October would be a total ripoff of Blue October, a pretty popular alternative rock band.
Fail.
If you have ANY suggestions for a decent band name, we'd be grateful if you could post it in a comment below.
Thanks!
Catchup (October to March)
Wow. I didn't know making a blog was so easy.
This post will kind of summarize most of what we did from October to March. Enjoy.
So where do I start? Hmm. Well, I was originally going to write a stereotypical opinion blog about daily news, but I decided to pursue something more original and more personal. That's why I'm blogging for/on behalf of my band.
Name?
Still pending. We'll have one soon, at latest by our next performance.
Who's in it?
Me (Evan Yao) - vocals, guitar
Kushal Ranjan - guitar
Mark Taboda - guitar
Cole Manaster - bass guitar
Sebastion Hercher - drums
Style?
We all listen to metal and heavier rock. Kind of separate from the norm, I know, but it's pretty sweet; don't loud guitars, gritty vocals, and crashing drums give you a rush!?
A little history:
We formed around October. I don't remember when. Back then I didn't have an electric guitar, so I borrowed one of Kushal's (he has three).
In our first few months we started playing basic songs for basic coordination, since this whole "band" thing was kind of new to us (Kushal being the only exception). The Beautiful People (Marilyn Manson) was a good beginning song for us - easy chords, familiar song to all of us.
Next we moved on to slightly more difficult songs. I mean, the songs we played weren't hard at all, but its way different playing alone than with a whole band.
Around January we started taking things more seriously. Enter Sandman* (Metallica) was our next song on the playlist.
*The original music video had around 8, 9 million views. Copyright issues took a lot of YouTube music vids down recently.
We finally performed live for the first for our class meeting (freshmen only) on March 3rd. Our timing was off, my singing was horrible (people thought it was okay for my first time though), but we had a lot of fun and received much enthusiasm and positive encouragement from our peers. Here's the video of our performance.
Now? We're really taking things seriously. We're organizing longer setlists and coming up with more songs to play. In today's band practice we covered a couple more songs. WOOP WOOP!
When will we perform next? Maybe in three, four weeks. Until then, keep up the support!
Evan Yao
This post will kind of summarize most of what we did from October to March. Enjoy.
So where do I start? Hmm. Well, I was originally going to write a stereotypical opinion blog about daily news, but I decided to pursue something more original and more personal. That's why I'm blogging for/on behalf of my band.
Name?
Still pending. We'll have one soon, at latest by our next performance.
Who's in it?
Me (Evan Yao) - vocals, guitar
Kushal Ranjan - guitar
Mark Taboda - guitar
Cole Manaster - bass guitar
Sebastion Hercher - drums
Style?
We all listen to metal and heavier rock. Kind of separate from the norm, I know, but it's pretty sweet; don't loud guitars, gritty vocals, and crashing drums give you a rush!?
A little history:
We formed around October. I don't remember when. Back then I didn't have an electric guitar, so I borrowed one of Kushal's (he has three).
In our first few months we started playing basic songs for basic coordination, since this whole "band" thing was kind of new to us (Kushal being the only exception). The Beautiful People (Marilyn Manson) was a good beginning song for us - easy chords, familiar song to all of us.
Next we moved on to slightly more difficult songs. I mean, the songs we played weren't hard at all, but its way different playing alone than with a whole band.
Around January we started taking things more seriously. Enter Sandman* (Metallica) was our next song on the playlist.
*The original music video had around 8, 9 million views. Copyright issues took a lot of YouTube music vids down recently.
We finally performed live for the first for our class meeting (freshmen only) on March 3rd. Our timing was off, my singing was horrible (people thought it was okay for my first time though), but we had a lot of fun and received much enthusiasm and positive encouragement from our peers. Here's the video of our performance.
Now? We're really taking things seriously. We're organizing longer setlists and coming up with more songs to play. In today's band practice we covered a couple more songs. WOOP WOOP!
When will we perform next? Maybe in three, four weeks. Until then, keep up the support!
Evan Yao
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