For Malaysian Electric Guitar zer0es

Music has a language which is the structure with which you form the music. Technique is the mechanism you utilise for fluency in expressing that language. The sound made is the product of how you use the technique to express the language. And how you use the technique to express the language to create the music is entirely up to you. It’s not up to Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai,  nor Eric Johnson or Eric Clapton. They, as with all the other guitarists worthy of being called a guitarist, have their own ways to express themselves with the electric guitar.

It’s not about practicing to levels of proficiency till you’re a copy of them; till you could go round haughtily claiming to the denizens that you can play as fast as Malmsteen, including the pouting lips and sucked in cheeks. Or bend and shake the notes like David Gilmour complete with pursed lips and puffed up cheeks. Or tap like EVH with grinning lips and smiling cheeks. You only need bona fide guitar heroes to broaden your vocabulary of how the music can be played. Theirs is their own expression. Just as yours should be your own.

If you want others to drool when you play note for note of what others could; if you want them to cream at the flurry of notes at the same speed, or even faster; if you could make all the facial expressions and do all the moves - than all you’re looking for is to be regarded as a good mimic. You’d be no different than a well-trained simian. Or local rap artists who prance around like they’re the bizkit just because they actually believe they sound black and from the projects. Ignore the apologists who say they’re using the form and expression of others but make it their own. Yeah, that’s not mimicry. That’s thievery.

So get your own sound. Forge your own expression. Find your own sense of fashion. Get out of the local mindset that only accepts something as good only when it’s able to mimic something that is already good before. When you got the language and discovered the technique, and stored a library of how it’s done -close your eyes, silence your mind, reach down deep inside and let it flow using the language to give it form and the technique to give it beauty. And only then would it be interesting to lend you an ear.

But if you’re merely playing like someone else with roving eyes to see whose watching and a grinning sneer that says, “Ain’t but a thang”, then join the queue at the next Idol line.

Desperately Seeking Susan Storm

To anyone out there who’s a fan of the Fantastic Four even before it hit the big screen, like it has in recent years – why did it have to be Jessica Alba to play Susan Storm?

In the comics Susan was a Caucasian blonde. [I was going to include 'buxom' but i can't be sure if that's from actual childhood memory or pubescent fantasy.] Jessica Alba to my perception through the media, is not in her natural state Caucasian nor is she a blonde, and hardly what i would call buxom [if memory serves me the way i'd like it to]. So why her?

Does she also not look ridiculous all dark-skinned but with hair so obviously blonde out of a bottle? Or did her skin tan as she got her powers? I wouldn’t know coz when i saw her on the promotionals, i just got so put off from wanting to watch the movies. And never in the comics was there any suggestion that her and Johnny were only half siblings. Despite being The Human Torch, Johnny Storm might not be the brightest spark in the team but surely he’s smart enough to know that with Alba’s skin tone Susan could not be his biological sister. Unless it’s been an accepted fact that one of the Storms procreated interracially.

But no no, no – no such nonsense was even suggested in the comics. So why the Alba chick? To appease the Hispanic market? To allow for tanned or naturally darker skinned girls with dyed blonde hair to identify with the characters more? Or was it some hair dye company that wanted to get their product across to dark skinned lasses that blonde could be the way to look coz it says so in the movies? Or was it simply the sponsorers who would only go away quietly if they used Alba coz she seems to be popular in some way unfathomable to me?

The only reason i’m ranting about it this late is coz i just had to watch the Rise of the Silver Surfer. I’ve known all along that when the right technology came along, SS would be the coolest to bring to the big screen. And sure enough, it was. As for JA, i’m only glad i did not watch it in the cinemas coz then i would not have been able to fast forward whenever she came on. But those scenes where they had to have Susan with the Silver Surfer, she was so wrong for the part. It was just all wrong. Only right thing would probably be that she’s the one with the power of invisibility, of which she should have used more throughout the movie.