Valentine's Weekend In Pseudo Review

My Valentine's Day is not over folks. It's tomorrow, because my girl was out of town this weekend ...unfortunately.
Dunno who the idiot is who planned that youth conference thingy over V-Day.
grrr.

Anyways, hopefully it should be a good day. I need to get to bed so I can get up earlier, for related reasons.

Today I didn't do too much in photoshop.
I did change my blog background to something for Valentine's Day a few days ago, for those of you reading this via a reader who didn't know...
It was hard to do - I wanted it to suit the month without coming off entirely gay.

I think it's good, though - it just replaced the snowflakes with hearts - another pain-in-the-neck blending mode experiment.

I think I want to emulate Lee's ideas somehow. His area of expertise is Illustrator, and he's incredible. You can find him at Leetopia. I love his blog look of late.

Today my brother was playing with a pic of Bowser in PS CS2 on our wrecked up old computer. I let him use my CS4 - I think it's easier to use - it's definitely faster.
I'm wondering if this will become a trend - considering we don't usually get along so well, it might be a good thing.

(Following Her) Into The Dark

I made a big discovery when I was playing bits and pieces of Lee's What It Does to Us this evening. I was about to go to bed, but I forgot to post here anyway.

I'll Follow You Into The Dark - by Death Cab for Cutie - an incredible song... was introduced to me by Eliza long ago, funnily enough, who I just got off the phone and/or texting with. What about it?

Well... Lee can play it. And I was playing two of the chords he uses in his song... the sound was familiar... and then it hit me! I thought I was just imagining it at first, but I looked up the video to go listen to it, and sure enough - Perhaps he was inspired by it, however subliminally... I love it! I'm going to learn it. I have to... It will be marginally difficult, and I was looking for a challenge in my next song to learn. It fits perfect!

I wasn't even thinking about that song at the time. It took forever to figure out where in the past I had heard that sound...


If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied -
illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs,
if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks...
then I'll follow you into the dark.

Remembering the Tune

I forgot the tune to Lee's What It Does to Us, and I've been trying to remember it for ages. I have the chords listed somewhere, but I couldn't remember how to strum it. It''s been killing me.
It's my favorite song, and not knowing how to play it has been frustrating. Now I know it, though, and I'm going to start learning it.

It's "do-da-de-da. very simple. It hits different strings on the up versus the down. It gives the sound color, and is "fun" to listen to. I just hope that I don't have trouble learning to match the chords and vocals.

the down is lower. The counts are down+up+rest+up , repeated quickly.

I can't wait to take a look at it. I haven't had time to do hardly anything, because I've been so busy. I'm excited, though. It's one of the best songs I've heard in a long time, and being able to play it (well) would make me happy.

Lee's Final Performance

My roommate/inspiration Lee is going home Saturday.
That means that tomorrow's his last day here.

I'm really going to miss having him around. I'm working on learning to play some of his songs; maybe being to play them will remind me of all he's taught me.

Hopefully I'll be able to begin writing songs soon with what I've learned; I haven't had the time as of yet...

I'll probably take up some of the songs he's played, such as
I Will Follow You Into the Dark (Death Cab for Cutie).
There's a few by Relient K he knows, too.
He's just the kind of guy who plays all the songs I've thought of learning to play; I've been thinking of learning "-Into the Dark" for a while now.


What do I have to say about Lee? Let's just say Lee's my middle name(it really is). I'll probably write a song about him at some point- there aren't many things out there that inspire me, and I've found one.

It'll be lonely without him; we'll keep in touch, but I'm so used to always having him around when no one else is... I guess I'll get over it.

But still- no one will replace Lee. Everyone should have a Lee. An awesome guy with endless amounts of talent and good music and speakers.

New Chords!

I'm shying away, it's my signature move...

Today I learned how to play a song my roommate wrote.
It's a beautiful piece, and uses chords I haven't used long enough to have memorized.
they're:

Bmin7 - 232x2x
A7 - 02020x

Used in combination with Em (000220), D (2320xx), and a form of G (xx0023) it's a great piece.
The verse is D-Em-Bm7-Em.

He's taught me much already, not only how to write good lyrics through example, but now I know how to use min7 chords wherever I want.
They replace the IV in a I-IV-V, and the key of the min7 is a note in the I chord.
I-IV-V is G-D-C, and G is made of G+B+D, so I replace G-D-C chords with G-Bmin7-C.
In D-G-A, I can use D-G-Amin7, too for example.