UGLYM3N

work, work and work. work has been pissing me off lately. when the next project goes live, i would be working for 7 days. now, its 6 days.

i have been “removing” my drums stuff these few days. i've been doing a lot of mental shifting from being a drummer BACK to guitarist. i feel like as if i'm a ball being kick around. well… not a bad thing, considering the fact that i've learnt more than drums for the past 2 years. i've learnt that with tenacity, GREAT focus, patience and don't-give-a-damn attitude, you can reach your goals. i have learnt so so so much over the 2 years, not only drums BUT how to achieve certain goals in life. it changed my life and i have used some of those experience in my career and it helped!

as part of my drum learning process, i subscribe to RHYTHM magazine from england. RHYTHM is a drum magazine packed with lessons with CD/video including minus one. i used to subscribe to MODERN DRUMMER from the U.S.A. i swicthed to RHYTHM just the beginning of this year. MODERN DRUMMER is not bad. it has stories and biographies of drummers and you get to read a lot of inspiring stories of how these drummers make music a successful career and how drumming improves their overall life. it comes with lessons but these lessons do not have any sound samples on them.

RHYTHM magazine comes with CD (including video in the CD) of the lessons examples. it doesn't have much drummers' stories and biographies, instead it focus on how to let readers improve their drumming. it has backing soundtracks for you to play along with the drums. i learnt a lot tricks there.

a few days back, after confirming a drummer to our band, i have switched my magazine subscription to GUITAR TECHNIQUES, another U.K. magazine that comes pack with lessons on CD/video. this magazine has the same concept of RHYTHM magazine where it focuses more on playing than getting to know a guitar player's life. that's one of the steps that i'm doing now.

i have cleared my room of all drum stuff. only a few drumsticks and practice pads were left in my apartment. the new aspiring drummer came to apartment last nite and took all the necessary gear to start off his journey with uglymen. i have passed him:

1. yamaha DTX electronic drums (belonging to michael — thanks to michael very very much for making my drumming possible)
2. almost all my RHYTHM magazines with CDs
3. original DRUMS instructional DVDs
4. DRUMS lessons in books
5. my cymbals: all SABIAN — 20″ HH leopard ride, 16″ HHX stage crash and 14″ paragon neil peart hi-hats plus a 10″ sabian B8 splash
6. my shure headset microphone – he likes to sing and i'm glad
7. my pearl eliminator double kick pedals – he loves the double chain, i'm so glad he did
8. my aluminium drum sticks and michael's pair of brush
9. my instruction videos which i've downloaded from the internet
10. my pearl dennis chambers signature snare drum (14″ X 6.5″), fixed with safe hoops + 20 tight screws and Dynamicx snare wires
11. shaker
12. drum torque – drum tuning device
13. ah hooi's proton waja floor mat (long story… better ask ah hooi)

(** chun wei, i bet u love those cymbals and snare drum — cause i love them very much, i'll miss playing them)

at first, i wanted to sell off the cymbals, pedals and snare drum so that i can get some cash to buy some guitar gear but i thought for a moment and our new drummer hasn't gotten some of the relevant gear. i guess i want to MAKE SURE our band sound nice, i lend all those gear to him. to play in a band with the music that you love (not the one that you can make money with), you gotta sacrifice and get the right gear to produce the right sound. having achieve a good sound and performance from good gear is extremely important to uglymen. yeah… we may be stupid and we probably ARE

stupid to invest in gear without any hope for return of investment (getting profit back). but, what the heck? there are stupid and smart people mah… there's so many smart people out there, let us be some blur-blur guys also good so that you guys can laugh at us, bwahahaha.

today, i trade-in 2 pairs of new and un-used VIC FIRTH 5A (hickory)

drum sticks to music world and bought myself a piece of PLANET WAVES 20″ guitar cable. my previous cable lent to ah hooi, ah hooi ties my cable in his bass bag, my cable no longer working because of ah hooi. tulan

we'll disclose who our new drummer is… some of you may have known him. he's as gay as us. i just got to know that he's into beastility, also very ngam with us. i like. we'll introduce him in our next post.

to ngap: thanks for the recommendation. i spoke to ah hooi about your drummer friend. after discussion, hooi and i felt that its better to get someone who has similar characters as ours.

if you guys want to know about the proton waja floor mat story, ask ah hooi.