Pamparo in Toronto

Amazing how much of how we feel can affect the songs that we play. Here’s a short 45-secs clip that pretty much describes how we are feeling now as we prepare for our very first trip to the Dominican Republic. We’ve been praying to God to give us a great weather to enjoy His creation and just to be able to spend time with the family.

Without further ado, I give you: Sunny Day

Have fun, we sure will

That is me! As I’ve always been since the first time I saw him smile, crawl, talk, walk, run, laugh, asks question, and I mean tons of tough questions, brush his teeth. Even the first time he made a mistake, didn’t listen, became cranky, bump his head and cried for no apparent reason. And as I see my one and only son grow with the knowledge of God.

Today is Father’s Day. There are two things I can do to celebrate. One is to just close my eyes and think of all those things that passed. And I can just open my eyes and slowly see him come into his own being.

Indeed, I am a happy daddy!

And I am not talking about fashion. I’m referring to the image on top of this site. My goal is to update it within 2 months. And my hope is that I can have enough enthusiasm to keep it up.

Anyhow, here’s the previous one …

So check it out every once in a while, i might even do this once a month

Bass players are the most under-appreciated member of a band, especially in worship ministry. Most people don’t even know why the bass exist. To some, it doesn’t matter much if the band have one or not. I tend to disagree with this and here are some of things I noticed on how a lack of a “good” bass player affects the “rhythm section” of the band.

1. Drummers
Drummers main tasks are keeping time and providing groove. You can ask drummers how a bass player is essential to grooving. There are a lot of things that can be done with drums, but without a good bassist, it’s just doesn’t sound right. Drummers need the bassist to help enforce the groove and the feel of the song. A drum beat/pattern can easily transform into different things with different bass grooves.

2. Guitarists
As a guitarist, it’s easy to say that a job of a bassist is easy. But as guitarist who also plays a little bit of bass, I can attest that it’s not as easy as we think. I am often limited to what I can do without a good bassist. Inversions, chord substitutions, triads/diads and modes can easily be taken out of context without the bassist enforcing the key and chord changes. Most times, I find my rhythm patterns are also limited to some degree. Either I get stuck with a bottom-heavy tone and/or I’ll play more power-chords and arpeggio with the root all the time. Not a good thing for a guitarist.

A lot of people may argue with me on this. That’s OK. This is what I notice and experience whenever we don’t have a bass player. Some band may be lucky to have a keyboard player who can play the bass parts.

So there it is. This is an appreciation to all the bass players out there. We need you, you are important!

In conjunction with the Open String Exercise post, here’s another exercise incorporating open-strings. It was actually faster and different phrasing than this when I first started but I couldn’t find a drum track that would fit. So I just adjusted it to the drums and here’s what came out. I also didn’t realize that the delay mix was a little louder than I intended it to be.

Here’s the MP3: Open String & Double Stop

Have fun with it and if you do change it up, please be sure to let me know