Conditional offers

At the moment, i've got conditional offers from 3/4 of the universities i've applied to. All the grades needed seem perfectly achievable, with 320 Ucas points being the highest needed so far.

I'm pleased so far, as i've received an offer from one of my top choices, Cardiff. The offers from Bristol and Portsmouth I will consider, however for a while i've been feeling that either Cardiff or Liverpool are my top choices.
I've yet to hear from Liverpool, but should I not be accepted there, it won't be the end of the world.

I'm going to need to really work hard in the coming months. My Electronics teacher mentioned just before Christmas that we have 17 weeks left of college, not counting holiday weeks which account for another 5 or so. Still, it is not long, and with the current work load i've got, it's not great.

I'm currently way behind on writing a maximum 4000 word story for Creative Writing (Which i'm currently procrastinating from working on), and after this is finished I need to write a commentary on it, talking about my influences, styles of writing that I used, devices and other such things.

Alongside this i've got a lot of work to do on revising and generally keeping on top of Electronics work for the exams. This isn't too hard, but frankly a lot of the time I just don't give two shits about it, so convincing myself to get on with revision can be tricky sometimes, I often focus my college work efforts 100% on Music and Creative Writing, totally ignoring Electronics.
On the positive side, this is the only subject I study that I dislike, many people I know either studied or study many subjects they really don't like, but continued them purely for grades, just like I am with Electronics.

My Music BTEC is fairly relaxed for most parts. I can easily keep up with deadlines we're set, even if i've lost the "get work done as soon as it's handed to you" work ethic I had last year.
I say mostly, because one practical assignment that is coming up very soon, in three weeks, has been sprung upon us.
Each of us in the class has to compose an original song of some sort, and perform it on our main instruments. However the issue is with things like this, we often have a bottleneck on certain players, namely drummers and bass players, as our class is mostly comprised of guitar players.
Over the Christmas holidays, our teacher told us to get a basic song written, which most of us have done. However when he set us our 3-4 week deadline to perform them, he has not taken in to account practice time whatsoever. Many of us still are still not entirely finished composing, I for example have sorted out my part, and almost finished the bass lines, however still need to write lyrics and also need to jam with a drummer so they can write the drum lines. I'm finding this hard as i've written a tricky song, with odd time signatures, so getting others to learn the bass lines and drum grooves is proving hard. I could blame myself for making it so complicated, however I had no clue we'd get such a short deadline
However even others with very plain simple songs still need do practice more, and write lyrics too. I expect even if they get it all sorted and practiced, they will only just be ready, or even be a bit underprepared and put on a sub-par performance.
The thing that really fucks me off is that this exact same thing happened last year. We had to play a selection of three cover songs, and we were steadily working on it, practicing with one another, however then he also gave us a deadline that really did not give us enough time at all.

Anyway, enough of my complaints and procrastination..i've work to be getting on with...

New years ambitions

I've been thinking what I want to come out of 2015, and so I came up with this list of resolutions ambitions.

I think the most important thing is to get into a university to study audio engineering, specifically into either of my top choices; Cardiff or Liverpool.
To me, university seems like a good way to get out into the real world more, live independently, get to know more people, study a subject i'm interested in depth...there are lots of decent things about it and I just feel it's a logical step to take in progressing..through life?
Of course, I'll need to get decent grades for uni, so good A level results are by default an ambition.

Passing my driving theory test is also an important thing for me to do next year, mostly because of living in the middle of nowhere, which means relying on buses all the time. Being able to drive will also help with getting out and meeting people more often, as every time I go out, it's often a dilema of 'Why am I spending £5 on a bus fare to go out for half an hour" to exaggerate. Plus I need to be damn certain the plans i've made are going ahead, otherwise I may as well have chucked the £5 away..
I've booked my first (and hopefully last) practical test for the 9th of February, so i've got two months or so to bug my parents to come out driving with me!

Another thing I want/need to do is get a fucking job. I've been lazy about it this year. Tried looking around some local pubs, but they didn't need any staff. After that I got a bit lazy about it, but now that i'll hopefully be driving soon, it should give me more freedom in terms of looking wider for jobs, and not being tied to using public transport to get to them.

Musically, I want to practice guitar more often, and do more composition, maybe even have another shot at forming a band?
Also, more importantly I really want to get more recording done (of bands, sing-song artists..whatever I can do really), considering i'll be going to uni to study audio engineering, any experience will be good.
One thing I know that will be happening, is one of our music BTEC modules where we have to do Foli work and general sound design for a film or TV clip. This will probably be a good challenge, and i'll probably see if I can lead a few people from our class as a team, and go around collecting recordings for the project. We could always use copyright free samples downloaded off the web, but it seems i'm often prone to wanting to do things the hard way.

Right now, my last ambition of 2014 is to find something to do tonight for new years..

Car

In my last blog post I said that I would upload more and better photos of my car.

So, as promised:

Also I should mention that I'm hoping to take the practical test around the end of January! That is if I can persuade my parents to come driving with me often enough..

Lack

I haven't been doing much of late. I can  pretty much summarize the last month by saying: gaming (lots..too much?), driving, lack of being social at weekends and being lazy with college work.

Being unemployed at the moment (At the moment, isn't necessary, and not that easy to find decent shifts, am likely to look for a job again in the new year), I find I have a lot of time over the weekends compared to other people working. This means it's not that easy to make social plans, so I haven't been going out many weekends. I can deal with it, but I find after a while I feel like I need to get back on track and regularly meet up with friends and hang out. I've also been slacking on college work, not to the point where it's hard to catch up (in most cases), but i'm not preparing ahead of time, and i'm starting to mentally feel that i'm not doing enough, which is probably true...

I've been using a fair bit of this up free time gaming, no-lifeing on World of Warcraft (usually two 4 hour nights a week at minimum, not counting the casual playing, which at a rough guess is more an hour or more per day?) which while it's kept me busy, lately i've started to become a little burnt out by it and sometimes thinking 'Why not play? I've got no particular things to be doing at the moment, and I don't feel like sorting out college work just yet'. I don't feel like quitting the game or gaming in general, however I feel like I should be changing my priorities in terms of the work/gaming balance and also spending much more of the times when i'm not gaming/doing college work socializing and meeting people.

I pretty think that I need to be more proactive. I've given myself enough time to laze out, now I need to get my life a bit more on track. 

...I could start by deep cleaning my now 2 months dirty room for fucks sake..

The positive thing that i've been doing is driving. I started lessons back at the end of September, and at the start of November, my wonderful parents brought me a car! This was both to start up an insurance premium, given how expensive it is for young drivers, and also to allow me to practice driving more. I now drive to college every day, which has benefited me a lot in terms of practicing routines and general driving skills. It's been nice to be able to drive in, as it means I can wake up later, and there aren't any repercussions if I don't get out of the house quick enough, which before would mean missing the bus to college. That said, because of this i've started to become very lax in my morning timekeeping, seemingly getting out of the door later and later as the weeks go by.

The car they brought me is a Toyota Yaris. It runs well, taking corners smoothly at speed, and generally in good condition over all for its age. Looking at the insides, you wouldn't think it was 12 years old. It's also really comfortable to sit in and all very straightforward to use. My only complaint about it is the fact that it's a two door car. Given that when i'm driving, someone is always in the passenger seat, I always have to shuffle the seats about to fit things in the back..but well, it's a minor issue, and frankly i'm lucky to have a car as it is...
I'm hoping to get the test out of the way around next January, so I can drive to and from college easily, it'll allow me much more mobility in terms of being social, and also in terms of jobs, I could then not be so restricted by assessing whether I could apply for a job based on it's distance from a bus stop.

Here is a rather shitty phone camera picture of my Yaris. I'll probably upload some decent pictures at some point in the future.

Looking forward

Last night, I was doing my usual thing at 1 am, lying in bed, not bothering to go to sleep yet, browsing random stuff on the net. For some reason I had decided to look up crazy university stories that people posted on the student room, which of course almost always involving being drunk. It got me thinking, not just about pranks to play and drinking games..

I'm looking forward to uni quite a lot. Obviously studying audio engineering is a big part of what i'm looking forward to, but a fair bit of it is of course the social aspect of it, and entailed with that, living in the city again. While nights out in Salisbury aren't the best..it was nice being able to decide on any given night to go out, and stumble back home at 2am. It's so much harder to even organise weekend plans now, no "I wonder who might be out, let's cycle to town and see" anymore.
I miss the convince of living in town.

Blog update (part 2)

The next gig I saw was of a rather different genre. The headlining band I had seen last year, with Karnivool. I went with my dad, and it just happened that the friend I saw TesseracT with last year was there too. I'll be honest that the main reason I went was because Animals as Leaders were playing. 

One interesting part of the lineup was the opening act, Navene-K. This is an electronic solo project by Animals as Leaders ex drummer. He makes a lot of use of looping and playback software, playing a prerecorded electronic track in the background, playing guitar and looping it, then playing drums, encorproating electronic samples with it. I was mostly interested in hearing this because it was something NEW. People playing live drums along to electronic music isn't particular new to me, however what he was doing, creating almost all of the performance himself through his extensive looper use was. I'm interested in this as lately with issues organising a band, I've been entertaining the idea of playing dual guitar songs myself, using loopers & of course writing songs suitable for that use. His set was pretty good. On YouTube had watched one or two sets that he had done ealrier during the tour, but often there can be fairly big differences between live and recorded performances, usually to do with the venue and the sound engineers. 

Next up were Animals as Leaders. Needless to say, their set was incredible. The played a lot of material from their latest album, which I was pleased by, as I think it is their strongest one to date. Tosin, their lead guitarist used a lot of looping, playing rhythms and doing solos over them while Javier, their second guitarist played the bass lines. The fact the group did not have, or need a bassist was interesting, as at times, both Javier and Tosin were playing heavy, chunky bass lines on their guitars using slap techniques. The tonal creativity their axe-fxs allowed must have contributed to this, but it was still impressive, for them to have such a full, heavy sound with a three piece band that rarely relied on a backing track. During one of the songs, Tosin also used a rather strange seven string guitar which I never knew about, which can't be described with words..

Seeing him pick it up and play it was a rather odd surprise for me. In my opinion, they were the highlight of the night, partially because this was my first time seeing them, but also because they were just so tight live. 

TesseracT were on last, with a change since I had last seen them. A little while ago during the summer, they announced that their vocalist, Ashe had left the band (on good terms). In his place they had got Daniel Tompkins, who had sung for them on their album One, before Ashe joined the band. It was interesting having heard both vocalists live as it showed up each of their strengths and weaknesses. I think that while Ashe sometimes found it hard to hit the really high notes, his voice flowed so well, and he sustained notes much longer than Daniel. On the other hand, Dan had a much stronger voice, hitting incredibly high notes, and also had a better growling voice. One thing I was not expecting was that Daniel, who sung a lot of harsh vocals when he was previously in the band, seemed to mostly be sticking to clean vocals, which I guess is because that is the direction the band is heading in. I can't honestly say I prefer the band with either of their lineups, they both have different advantages. 

The next gig going to is Parkway Drive, Northlane, Carnifex and Heaven Shall Burn in Bristol!

Blog update (Part 1)

It's been a while since I posted on here, so I felt an update is long due.

Over the last two months, I've been to some great gigs, beginning with seeing Opeth & Alcest on the 10th of October. It was the start of the first tour Opeth had done since two years previous, not counting a few festivals last year, which Mikael himself said didn't go too well for them.
I went with my dad, buying the tickets for him to pay him back. For me, Opeth were on my 'bucket list' and rightly so. Aside from being a great live band, sounding very close to the original records (to me the material they played from Pale Communion sounded exactly like on album!), their stage presence was great, Mikael being humorous & joking with the audience, despite how he repeatedly mentioned how nervous they were, given that it was their first non festival gig they had done in two years.
Their set list was quite odd, they varied it between all 11 albums they had done, nearly covering every one. This meant playing a lot of their older more metal material, which was great. However given that I wasn't so acquainted with their pre-2005 material, some of the songs I didn't know especially well, however that didn't detract at all from the performance.

Alcest were an interesting support act, to define their genre, I'd call them a shoegazey metal band, often referencing death and black metal styles. I had listened to some of their music before the gig, however most of their material was new to me. Considering how full and ambient their sound is, it was hard to perfect this at a gig. They did it well, and it sounded good aside from the vocals which were set a little too quiet.
The vocals were another interesting thing about the band; they were all in French. It was a nice change, rather than to see yet another non-English nationality band write their music in English instead of their native language. The French language & the way it flowed also suited the music.
An interesting point, as someone interested in guitars, amps & audio engineering, it was interesting to see their guitarists using Jazz Choruses and slamming them with pedals to get a distorted sound; I've never really heard many metal artists getting their tone that way.

Considering Opeth have been one of my favorite artists for quite a while, buying merch was a must. While I am a little against the idea of getting yet another black band T-shirt, I felt this one was deserving.

Opeth Setlist:
1) Eternal Rains Will Come
2) Cusp of Eternity
3) Bleak
4) The Moor
5) Advent
6) Elysian Woes
7) Windowpane
8) April Ethereal
9) The Devil's Orchard
10) The Lotus Eater
11) The Grand Conjuration

Encore:
Deliverance