Second Soundcloud account

So my first Soundcloud (music sharing website) account got full quickly so I ended up creating a new page. You can find it here.

This was from an open jam session at the local pub. I'm on guitar, my friend Martin is on drums, and friend and house-bassist Art is on bass. On Jazz and rock for entertainment there was a great jazz guitar player but I noticed he didn't want to take too many solos or anything when we had this jam.

Sunshine of Your Love is the first time I sang live in front of an audience a whole tune. Before I only sang choruses. Looking back to it I think my voice needs a lot more work. I got the words (fumbled a bit though) but I need to work on my pronunciation and melodic sense within my voice. That will take time and work.

There's an instrumental heavy metal jam called Soothsayer by this instrumental rock musician named Buckethead. He was an influence on me when I was getting into playing really fast stuff. We've been playing that tune at the jam a lot because it gives a lot of room for emotional melodies as well as a great rock feel and shred solos for the climax.

My friend Renee, a work associate who introduced me to the open jams sang on all three but her voice doesn't necessarily carry that well. At times it sounds like she could be mumbling. However, I thought her vocal improvisation on Jazz and rock for entertainment was wonderful.

You can check it all out below
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17

Buckethead cover Soothsayer

Here's a cover I did at the open jam of a very well known Buckethead song called Soothsayer. I winged it pretty hard, learned the song that day, and the drummer didn't know we were playing it until that night. I'd say we did a pretty good job. I could've shredded harder but I wanted to keep things simple, before anything fell apart lols. I played the song on my 7-string Jackson. The song has a lot of emotional and heart felt feelings because Buckethead recently came out saying that he has a heart condition, an irregular heart beat. He was and still is a big inspiration on my guitar playing and I hope he lives for many more years! Anyways, here's Soothsayer by Buckethead. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/soothsayer-by-buckethead

Happy Halloween

Halloween is here! This is probably the first time I've ever taken Halloween seriously as a holiday or ever really celebrated. Probably because I've been partying with my friends like its the second coming of high school. It's been a blast.

As a kid my mom didn't really allow us to celebrate Halloween. Being a strict Catholic and a bit of an overprotective moma bear she's against most things associated with horror and dark vibes. I'm not necessarily the opposite but Halloween is cool.

The thing that I like the most about Halloween isn't the partying or the candy. It's that evil vibe that really seems to go with it. There's something dark about Halloween that only lasts during this late autumnal period. To go further with this idea it could possibly be related to the change in the weather (winter is coming) but its not just that. It's also the way people think and interact with each other. Halloween ain't so big a holiday that people act totally different but people do seem to be more joyful. That's a great thing. 

I've been celebrating by listening to the band Ghost a lot. I wrote about them in a post that you can check out here. I literally just got into them this week and they're like the perfect Halloween band. They're dark gothic costumes certainly fit Halloween perfectly. I might delve more into more authentic black metal because of Ghost.

But yeah the whole festivities of Halloween have had me not playing games so much. Lately, I've been listening to music (Ghost mostly) and hanging out with friends. I've been working on getting my friends better on guitar and bass for our band that we're starting. So far we have the beginning of a simple song and we're playing the Adventure Time theme song together. The song started off as just a bass line I wrote for my friend to practice and its developed into something more. Not bad but we have so far to go.

I feel like I'm a great teacher but I can only provide so much training with them. They have to go the extra mile and become a better musician on their own. Hell, even though I've had like three great teachers none of them really taught me how to play with original style or creativity. I did that myself over time.

I have many ideas for the band. I kinda wanted a simple rock group with a strong punk, black metal, and pop vibe. By pop I mean have catchy metal riffs and lyrics, not like Taylor Swift or anything. I want our songs to have tasty arrangements that require musical prowess and skill but in the beginning I want things to be more simpler until the guys can learn to hang at my level.

That could be a while. In the meantime I'm still looking around for people to jam with and I'm still working on jazz standards. I'm also in the process of saving up for a cheap drum machine so when we start recording we'll use that because we don't have a drummer as of yet. We're gonna need drums at some point and I also want to get a keyboards player.

I gotta say that I love it when we all play with guitars and bass together. They're a couple of noobs now but they just might be good musicians given the right musical training and if they practice harder.


We're not even sure what the band will be called but knowing my friends it will probably be something that suggests a metalcore sound. They're really into the more modern metalcore bands whereas I'm more old school, more into the 60s and 80s sound of rock and roll.

We'll have to see what happens. Hopefully I can emerge out of this with a gigging band and get somewhere. Let's see what winter brings us. 

Who's that guitar playin' sonuva bitch, a question commonly asked, on his head a bucket of chicken bones, on his face a plastic mask. He was born in a cage, raised on a coop, children fear him, critics rage, he's half alive, he's half dead, folks just call him Buckethead.

Overwatch Halloween skins are here

So they finally decided to drop that Halloween holiday celebration with new in game cosmetics, most important of which are new character skins. They will available for three weeks. Which seems like a long time so I'm definitely gonna grind some loot crates and try to get some of these cool skins.

"The new “Overwatch Halloween Terror” seasonal event offers the gorgeous skins, along with some themed profile icons, victory poses, sprays emotes and highlight intros, inside glowing jack-o’-lantern loot boxes. Over 100 seasonal items are now available." (Kotaku) 








 






The witch mercy, Frankenstein Junkrat, and Frankenstein's monster Roadhog are incredible skins. The rest are just like meh. Like they could've done much better on any of the other skins but these three are so well done that I'm down to grind and possibly throw down on loot crates to make sure I get them. I was only able to get a few of the Olympic Games skins. I'm gonna play a lot more this holiday season and make sure to get a lot of these Halloween skins.

I love the holidays. Halloween is so awesome. I'm going as Buckethead to this anime convention (Aklibafest) this weekend. Got my plain white mask, just gotta go to Kfc and get a bucket. It's gonna be tight. The voice actor for Winston is going to be there.

Stoked.

Overwatch getting Halloween theme soon

Word on the street is that Overwatch is getting Halloween themed loot boxes! Pretty sick eh? Our first real holiday with Overwatch and cool things are already happening. Imagine what they'll do for Thanksgiving and Christmas!

People on Reddit found some sort of leak that suggests Overwatch is getting Halloween themed loot crates. Each loot crate will have up to four cosmetic items including at least one Halloween skin, highlight intro, emote, victory pose, player icon, voice line, or credits that you can use to unlock other items.

The post says that more than 100 themed items are available and if you get repeat items you'll get coins. Nothing on when this goes live but it will end at 4 pm ET on Noember 1st. People are thinking this will all hit the live servers sometime next week.

People on Reddit aren't happy with the fact that if you get repeated items you just get coins. People are hoping that the coins will be special Halloween themed coins that you can use to buy Halloween loot but I think that's all wishful thinking.

Its good to have in game parties and themes like this. It really brings the community together and brings out the better in them. The Olympic Games theme was so great and there were so many people playing the game all the time. That was like the golden age of Overwatch. Summer Games and Season one Competitive. Great times! I hope this brings some new players to the table and keeps the existing ones active on a daily level.

Also, I love Halloween. I'm going to Akiba Fest (anime convention) and Halloween parties this year as Buckethead, the shred metal guitarist from right here in California.

Pretty cool.

Nun chuka kata by Buckethead

      So I'm starting a new series where I write more about music, in particular writing about favorite songs and/or songs that I think people should hear. The first song for this series is Buckethead's Nun chuka kata.

     This is a great tune that sounds like a pure heavy metal climax that mixes the music up with techno and hip hop beats. At the same time it sounds like a pure quiet gentle sort of sound. The guitars are pure rock and roll power chords but the lead guitar parts are these harmonious melodies that sound sad and euphoric. What he's doing is this tremolo guitar riff for all the melodies. It sounds like a countdown to something that was once great. The whole tune is kind of a linear progression until the end where Bucket plays a super fast orgasmic guitar solo. This is the stuff that Big B has been known for all his life since he was young guy first featured in Guitar World. He's doing a ton of 3-4 per string scales and trying to add some melody in there with the flare. There's even some bluesy lead guitar stuff that sounds like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page but with Big B's gymnast-like technical prowess. It sounds like he just recorded this tune live, especially the guitar solo. Although the solo shows a lot of grandiose guitar technique it still sounds very sloppy in parts which is strange because all his newer guitar solos all sound flawless on record.
     I heard this song when I was around 18-19 and at the time it was one of the greatest rock guitar instrumentals I've ever heard. And trust me I've heard a lot of instrumental shred guitar stuff back in my day. I've since moved on from shred and rock and now mainly focus on jazz. But when I hear a song like this it brings me back to my shred guitar phase. I've even seen Buckethead in concert in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I went with a friend and I can say that although Buckethead played amazing, sounded great, and looked cool he only played for about 45 minutes and the show was over. For a while I heard that he was retiring from music but recently I heard he's playing a concert in Milwaukee again. The album that this song is on is Monsters and Robots and its the final song on the album, probably the best. 

Buckethead: Halls of Dimension album review

 

     Buckethead's 57th album and 4th album this year, Halls of Dimensions. There are no songs per se and the tracks too all just seem to mesh into one giant track. The interesting thing about this album is that there are some classical guitar parts in there amongst the heavy metal riffs that add extra flavor to this album. Later towards the end of the album there is typical Buckethead free-shred fare but this time with talking and what sounds like other guitar music going on at the same time. It's all over the place and lacks structure. However, the trademark Buckethead shred was worth it only if you are a hardcore fan, which unless you are enamored with shred-guitar won't be too many people. Here's the album right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-ljXj0yXk