A site that every musician should check out

A friend sent me a link to this site, I think it's brilliant. Thanks Dr. Noa

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/

On my iPod Playlist #15

These days I'm in a bit of a heavy and progressive mood so....and a lil jazz and hip-hop too

Arrested Development
Cheese
Chick Corea Electric Band
Concrete Blonde
Deftones
Down
Dream Theater
Dredg
The Explorers Club
The Gathering
Helmet
Gordian Knot
Immortal Technique
Imogen Heap
Incubus
Kidney Thieves
Killswitch Engage
Miles Davis
Peter Gabriel
Planet X
Queso
Return to Forever
Ritesh Das & Toronto Tabla Ensemble
Soulfly
Tabla Beat Science

Let's not be too sensitive now

You know, it's kinda sad how touchy people are nowadays. It seems the slightest thing will piss someone off.

A few things to never, ever, ever discuss - religion, politics, abortion, 9/11, world economics, world hunger, the destruction of the Amazon, the raping of Burma, all the various wars around the globe, world poverty, and the list goes on and on. If you try to bring up any of these, you will be met with resistance that this is not a 'nice, warm, fuzzy conversation to have in public'.

In fact, I think the only thing we can talk about is the weather, and that is such a fun, long and engaging conversation.

If you post anything online, heaven forbid you might offend someone with what you post. It's all about being 'Politically Correct'. When did common sense die and get replaced by being politically correct. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying we should all have the license to be an obnoxious as possible, but good common sense will tell anyone what's the right and wrong way to be.

And if you ask me, we spend so much time as a society trying to not offend anyone that we get nothing done in terms of real social progress. Really, what progress have we made in terms of human connections?

Perhaps if we just accepted a simple fact - that we are all different, and are each entitled to an opinion, whether right or wrong. If we accepted this fact, then we would show a lot more tolerance to differences of opinion and may even excuse people that rub us the wrong way. We could just simply brush it off as 'well, we all have free will and that's their choice, not mine and I choose not to react to it'.

Seems simple enough in theory but in reality, who am I trying to fool here?

Maybe we all need to grow a thicker skin and laugh more and grumble less.

As Van Wilder said 'You should never take life so seriously, you'll never make it out alive'

Just a lil note about Soundcloud and bandcamp

So I'm starting to post ALL the music I've ever recorded up on soundcloud as well

here's the link

http://soundcloud.com/the-sonic-revival-project

If you've missed the bandcamp link here it is too

www.cescoemmanuel.bandcamp.com

Happy Listening and spread the word!

Thanks

My music on Soundcloud

Cesco Emmanuel

All this fuss and in the end all is well

I spent the last year and a bit rehearsing like crazy for my grade 8 Classical guitar exam from the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London) in April of this year. It's the final step before starting the last three phases - Diploma, Licentiate and Fellowship.

So I practiced all the scales, arpeggios, interval scales, broken chords and dissected those three pieces I had to perform for the exam. I played over and over all those troubled areas, stretching my fingers to really fine-tune (no pub intended) all the mistakes.

I tried to sight-read as much as possible. One month before the exam I sight-read almost an hour a day. Sight-reading gives me the chills, I see a new piece of music in front of me and I instantly freeze. So I really tried to do as much of it as possible, just to get my nerves used to the idea. Unfortunately that didn't really help much as fear and doubt took over my sight-reading section in the exam and once again I failed that part.

But, I was able to score almost full marks in everything else and get a distinction! I will be forever thankful. I guess hard work and practice really does make perfect (or close enough)

Sometimes I wonder what this fuss is all about in life. Everything has its' own way to working out. But I guess it certainly helps to do our part as well.