“It’s indie rock and roll for me.”

1.  In your opinion, what was the purpose of this blogging activity? (Why did I choose to do blogging instead of more traditional writing activities?)

There are many reasons why I think Ms. Rumford had us do this blogging activity instead of more traditional writing activities. One reason would be because she probably wanted us to switch to something new. I mean, a whole year of written essays? BORING. So I think that might be why she wanted us to start a blog, so we have a variety of ways to present our writing. Another reason that Ms. Rumford might have wanted us to start using a blog to present our blogs would be because she wanted to educate us about other ways to present our writing besides having it on a piece of paper. She wanted us to know that you could also post it on the internet where people with internet access could read it. I think this is also why she had us try to use a wiki. My last reason that I think Ms. Rumford wanted us to start a blog was because she wanted us to know more about modern technology and how to use it. About half my class (or more) had never seen or started a blog, but I was one of the people who already knew the basics. Now about half the grade (only people in Ms. Rumford’s class) now knows how to make and function an account on a blogging site.

2.  What have you accomplished during your blogging?

During the whole blogging unit, I had always took the main focus of the entry very seriously. Since I am a really big procrastinator (which is a habit I am trying to change, especially since final exams are coming around) I start quite late typing my blog (about eight or nine in the evening) the night before it is due, so I usually stay up until right before midnight perfecting my blog, but also making sure it isn’t counted as late. One of my biggest accomplishments in blogging was that I scored pretty high in all of the categories listed on the rubric and got at least 94% every blog entry. That would have to be my biggest accomplishment all year, actually.

3.  What key concepts have you learned while blogging? (This can be about writing, research or technology etc.)

One thing that I learned about blogging was that you could have a cluster map to see how many hits you had. It was fun looking at how many little dots there were on the little map and seeing how big they were. It was really interesting knowing that some people were actually looking at your blog. I also learned that I am pretty good at putting voice into my writing. I guess that is because when I type, I type exactly how I would say what I want to say verbally. I find it more enjoyable to read when people write with voice because you can guess their personality, or if you know them personally, you would think “Oh my God, that is so him speaking!” Another think I learnt while blogging was that when we were given the freedom to write about what we want, I put a lot of thinking into what I want to say, especially when my entry is about my favorite band. This made me put more effort into the entry and research the band that I want to write about so I know about them even more. In conclusion, I try harder if I write about something I am interested in.

4. Based on the skills you learned while blogging, how will this benefit you in the future? This maybe inside or outside of school.

On all of my blogs (including this one!), I posted a music video. To post a music video, you have to deal with HTML codes to format text and things like that. When I was about nine years old, I was obsessed with blogging and a website called nicksplat.com and I had look at some other blogs that had gave tips on using html to change your site’s background and things like this. And as embarrassing as it is, I actually learned a lot from using that website. I now know how to move things to the center of the page using HTML. My knowledge about HTML will be very useful for me in the near future because in 9^th grade my elective is introduction to programming the first semester, and then robotics the next. We are using a system called Java, which includes HTML, so knowing some things about it is very useful.

Today, my post is about the band Avenged Sevenfold, which happens to be my favorite band at the moment. Avenged Sevenfold is made of five people who are all amazing at what they do: M. Shadows, The Rev, Johnny Christ, Zacky Vengeance and Synyster Gates and they all contribute a lot to the band.

Avenged Sevenfold had gone through at three bassists (Johnny Christ being the fourth) and one even attempted suicide. Justin Sane, who was the replacement of Avenged Sevenfold’s original bassist Matt Wendt, had a dramatic suicide attempt and found out that he had symptoms of severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. On the band’s second album, Waking the Fallen, the songs “I Won’t See You Tonight, Pt. 1” and “I Won’t See You Tonight, Pt 2” were about Sane’s suicide attempt, both of the songs sounding completely different. Part one is about the sorrow of Sane’s disorder and the suicide note he left before his attempt, making the song a slow melody with some piano, and the second part is about reasons that he shouldn’t have attempted suicide, making the song a typically hardcore screamo to express their anger.

Avenged Sevenfold has four studio albums which are Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, Waking the Fallen, City of Evil and Avenged Sevenfold (self-titled), which are all good, but my personal favorite would be a tie between their self-titled album and Waking the Fallen. Waking the Fallen is on my top two because there is a lot of guitar dueling (look at the video posted below) which makes the song sound so much harder to play, when it is actually because two guitars are playing at the same notes at the same time; one higher and one lower. I also have the self-titled album on my top two because it is different than all the other albums and all the songs have an interesting meaning to them. For example, the song A Little Piece of Heaven is about a man who kills their girlfriend. Later, the girlfriend comes back to life in the form of a zombie and kills the man. The man also comes back from the dead and they get married before going on a murderous rampage.

My favorite person in the band is Synyster Gates, but not only because he is the lead guitarist in the band, but also because as a guitarist-in-training myself, I would only dream of playing as well as he does. His picking is always very accurate, and his fingerings are so fast I can barely see them. What I like the most about him is that he plays his solos live, unlike some rockstars because they think that they might mess up in front of the thousand of people watching.

To end my post about the band I am totally in love with at the moment, I just wanted to post some videos for you guys. Hope you like them!

Second Heartbeat Live in the LBC:

Afterlife solo by Synyster Gates:

Today, I was looking up YouTube videos of Avenged Sevenfold and I came across a video by a band called Funeral For A Friend. The band’s video was in the “Related Videos” section for Avenged Sevenfold, so Funeral For A Friend had to sound at least a little bit like them. I had also noticed that my sister had liked this band during her high school years (she is twenty and has already graduated from university.), so I decided to check them out.

Funeral For A Friend is a Welsh band made up of Matthew Davies-Kreye (lead vocals), Kris Coombs-Roberts (guitar and backing vocals), Darran Smith (guitar), Gavin Burrough (bass and backing vocals), and Ryan Richards (drums and unclean backing vocals) and has a post-hardcore, emo and screamo sound to their music. I have recently downloaded their latest album, Memory and Humanity, and according to Ryan Richards, their newest album is most similar to their first album, Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation. Ryan says that this is because Memory and Humanity has the harsh screaming vocals and riffs, which are key components to Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation.

Personally, I give the album a rating of eight out of ten because when I compare my favorite songs of the album Memory and Humanity (my favorite song being Rules and Games) to my favorite Avenged Sevenfold song off their self titled album (which is Critical Acclaim), it seems to me that Critical Acclaim give a stronger message, basically giving criticizing what George W. Bush has done to the United States. These lyrics:

I’ve had enough, it’s time for something real
Don’t respect the words your speaking
Gone too far
A clone

They express the vocalists’ feelings towards George Bush. When he says “Gone too far, A clone,” he is comparing George Bush to an evil dictator like Adolf Hitler who abused his leadership, and tricked his supporters into killing innocent people. George Bush had done something similar by (in my opinion) butting into other country’s situations trying to “help them develop a democracy,” which is how the war in Iraq started.

Rules and Games (in my opinion) has a weaker meaning because it is either about someone’s past or future. The song is about a childhood transitioning into adulthood. You might think “What about teenagers?” or “How about people who are already adults? The answer to the first question is that teenagers are actually children who don’t know that they should enjoy their immaturity while they can and they think they are mature enough to be adults. My answer to the second question is that I think that adults are still children because they always have something to learn, and therefore Critical Acclaim is the song with the stronger meaning.

To wrap up this blog, I wanted to say that lovers of all different types of rock should listen to either Funeral For A Friend or Avenged Sevenfold. They both light up my day.

Here is the video clip of Rules and Games. (I would put Critical Acclaim up, but the lyrics are quite explicit.) Enjoy.

People’s music tastes these days disgust me. Many people nowadays only listen to mainstream, or what the majority of people listen to. On UrbanDictionary.com, mainstream as a music genre is defined as “A genre in music and other forms of media that is often defined by widely-accepted and currently-popular standards, trends, and hypes that have been established by the media, typically resulting in the promotion of superficial traits.”

MTV is the reason for people’s unoriginal music taste. People with UrbanDictionary.com who wrote entries on MTV mostly write about this issue, but they also write about things they detest about MTV. Some things they said were that MTV tells the public places certain bands in the wrong genres and that it brainwashes everyone that watches the channel.One of the entries on MTV were:

My problem with MTV is that people love everything that is on it (and that the most of the music on it is HORRIBLE). Here is an example of something that has on MTV:

And here is something that has never been on MTV:

Guess which one I like? I’m sure you guessed the second one; the epitome of cold hard indie.

In my opinion, MTV was better off in the 80′s when only music was played, but since the 90′s all the video clips made the channel more interesting. Why do I say this, you ask? My reason for this statement is that in the 80′s it was only the music on the channel that mattered and won people’s hearts. Now there are all these pointless TV shows and so, people watch this channel for the shows rather than the real reason the channel was started.

Indie, my favorite genre of music, goes against what MTV is made for. What is hysterical is that indie has a sub genre called “indie pop” which is basically stuff that is made for MTV but is still yet to be discovered. You might think that I am being hypocritical when I say I listen to indie music that is made for MTV, so to make sure that assumption is cleared up, I wanted to say that I listen to indie rock, not indie pop.

People who are reading this: please, please, please do not be tricked by MTV’s pointless entertainment and watch is just for the music. (And yes, I am a gigantic hypocrite.) And here is a video to end this post. This is The Con by Tegan and Sara.

Recently I have been getting into metal music, thus becoming a metalhead. Considering this slight adjustment in my taste in music, I decided to expand my taste from “strictly indie” to “discrete genres of rock”, but indie still being my most especial genre.

Indie is separated in to two main genres – indie rock and indie pop. Indie rock is defined to be “a genre of music and cult following of younger generation which is striving to be different from pop music followers. Music is often underground, not known to popular audiences because of independent record labels. The musical style combines british punk, rock and roll, and heavy metal.” Indie pop is defined to be “Popular independent. The mainstream of underground media. The most popular music, writing, film etc. that is still not very popular.” Which are definitions from UrbanDictionary.com. On Wikipedia, indie music in general is defined as, “is a genre of alternative rock that primarily exists in the independent underground music scene. Indie rock musicians are typically unsigned, or have signed to independent record labels, rather than major record labels.” My definition of indie is irrelevant to the record label it is signed to. My definition would be “a genre of rock that is undistinguished by people who do not dare to use different sources to expose themselves to music that their peers are unaware of.”

A band that is the epitome of indie pop in my opinion would be Camera Obscura, and indie band from Glasgow, Scotland. This band is what I would call excessively indie because despite the band’s long existence (they have been a band for as long as I have lived), I do not know one other person who knows this band. Another reason that this band is the epitome of indie pop is because if you compare Camera Obscura’s Wikipedia page to a more mainstream band’s page like Avenged Sevenfold, it is undeniable that Avenged Sevenfold is the more acclaimed band, for Avenged Sevenfold has been around for about nine years and their Wikipedia page has supplementary details about the band, while Camera Obscura’s page only has crucial details.

People today do not acknowledge great music people out there are making, so I hope this inspires people to stretch out the places they find they’re music and listen to something new.

A video for this post:

Here is an example of indie rock. This is Shake! Shake! by The Subways. Enjoy.

This post is about something I would have never thought I would ever like – metal music. I wouldn’t actually say that I like metal, but I guess I do because I like the band Avenged Sevenfold.

Avenged Sevenfold is a metal band from California, made up of Johnny Christ, M. Shadows, The Rev, Zacky Vengeance, and my FAVORITE; Synyster Gates! Honestly, I think they have extremely stupid stage names, but I guess Synyster Gates was too embarrassed of the name Brian Elwin Haner Jr.

This metal band is my new favorite, which was totally unexpected, since I used to hate this band. But then again, hate is a strong word. Metal used to be my second most detested music genre (rap being the first), but now I wouldn’t say I’m in love with it; I’m only I love with Avenged Sevenfold. Ever since I actually started listening to Avenged Sevenfold instead of blabbing about how much they “sucked”, I fell in love with the guitar solos, mostly. Being an amazing guitarist in training, I always listen closely to guitar parts in songs. My favorite guitar solo by Avenged Sevenfold would be in the song “Afterlife”, which I have posted below.

Many people who are uneducated about music would think that Avenged Sevenfold is in the “emo” genre. On urbandicionary.com, emo’s definition is “Genre of soft core punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who don’t smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarves (even in the summer), ripped chucks with favorite bands signature, black square rimmed glasses, and ebony greasy unwashed hair that is required to cover at least 3/5 the of the face at an angle.” And metal is defined to be “A type of music characterized by it’s cacophonous wall of sound and accelerated tempo which is achieved through distorted electric guitars playing fast-paced riffs, with the driving drumbeat often utilizing hypersonic double bass rhythms and emphasizing the continuous pumping action, the bass guitar is often playing similar to the guitar, but more with the drums, so as to add to the overall heaviness and depth. It can manifest in many different forms and the spectrum of intensity is usually quite varied. From slow and heavy melodic grooves, to complex and precise blinding rhythms, odd time changes, and sheer brutality.. metal comes in many shapes and sizes. One common trait of metal is to have vocals dealing with dark subject matter, often sung with anger, aggression, and conviction in the form of screaming. Melodic smooth vocals are also accepted. Solos are an integral part of metal music, as the icing on the cake to complement the heavy intensity of the songs and add more depth and individuality. Real metal has a solo in every song, usually scales and arpeggios played with some changes often in 8th, 16th, or 32nd notes. if only a few quick licks. Metal is progressive and dynamic, and usually provokes feelings that are therapeutic to the listener. Metal is rock music that has evolved.”

The most obvious difference in the two definitions above is that emo music is sad, while metal is angry, and these two emotions are usually misunderstood by people. I listen to a little bit of both genres, and so one of the main differences in their sound is that emo vocalists, such as Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional, have higher voices, and metal vocalists, such as M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, have lower voices and scream the lyrics occasionally.

Below I have posted two video clips. Can you tell which one is emo and which one is metal?