Keeping in the spirit of sharing myself with the world, I’d like to tell you the 24 things I want to do before I die:

1. I want to go to Japan.

2. I want to learn Japanese & dabble in other foreign languages.

3. I want to live in California.

4. I want to be on the cast of a TV show.

5. I want to write a book.

6. I want to be able to at least live on my own from doing what I love.

7. I want to meet all of my guitar heroes like Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Al Di Meola, & more!

8. I want to drive a car that’s worth more than a house.

9. I want to be a voice actor.

10. I want to have my own band & tour the world.

11. I want to inspire people.

12. I want to be a stand-up comedian.

13. I want to be the first American to create a successful anime series in Japan.

14. I want to travel around the world.

15. I want to build my own guitar.

16. I want to get my 4-year college degree.

17. I want to be a motivational speaker.

18. I want to get in better physical shape.

19. I want to improve my guitar playing.

20. I want to learn how to properly play the piano.

21. I want to have kids after I’m 30 years old.

22. I want a new wardrobe.

23. I want to move out on my own again.

24. I want to be happy.

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

On My 24th Birthday, I Give You 24 Things I Want To Do Before I Die

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

*Editor’s Note: Due to financial difficulties with housethegrate’s website, there is no link to buy his album as of yet. I’ve already emailed him and asked him for an alternative way for you guys to order Houseworks.*

For today’s album review, I’d thought that we’d review an independant release that most of you might be unaware of. This week, I popped in Houseworks, the debut album that I bought straight from the artist himself, housethegrate (a.k.a. house).

I had put off buying it for a very long time because my inner chronic music downloader thought it was flat-out retarded to buy music, regardless of its quality or whether or not I wanted to support the musicians.

Eventually, I just bought the album because I wanted to give back to house for being a high-caliber musician and for giving me so much good music already to listen to. I’ll admit, I was also curious as to how the new songs, as well as the songs that I practically burned into my cerebellum, turned out for the album. Let’s find out:

Personal Backstory

How I came to find housethegrate is almost an entire post onto itself.

You see, back when I was in ITT Tech, my friends and I would often go during our breaks to websites like Fugly.com and KillSomeTime.com and eBaumsWorld.com to watch funny video clips. For those of you who don’t know what these sites are, they were basically the YouTube of their day, but instead of people vlogging all the time, they just put up funny clips that were found on TV or that people recorded themselves or what-have-you.

One day, we stumbled upon (before StumbleUpon was around lol!) a clip of this androgyneous Asian (I still to this day don’t know if he/she is a he or a she) playing Super Mario Bros on an electric guitar, complete with sound effects! Needless to say, I was blown away by not only his/her playing, but by the concept of people using rock instruments like guitars to play music that was on video games that was mostly done with keyboards! I then was on a mission to see if anyone else had done something similar. Since YouTube wasn’t around at the time, clips of other people playing video game music were scarce and the quality was mixed.

After doing some extensive site-searching, I came across OCReMix.org (a.k.a. OverClocked ReMix a.k.a OCR), which was basically the jackpot of video game music performances and rearrangements. Although there were no video clips to be had of people playing the music, there was a seemingly never-ending amount of MP3s of video game music from just about every game imaginable! People did all kinds of strange and beautiful things to the arrangements: they would add a killer synth drum beat and techno-fy it, they would perform the music as a rock band would, and they would sometimes change the arrangement so much that it would almost sound like an entirely original piece were it not for the bits and pieces of video game music put in there. I felt like what the first kid who tasted sweetened chocolate for the first time must have felt like! It was bliss!

I eventually came across an excellent remix of a song from Ninja Gaiden 2 for the NES called NinjaScape. It was done by another excellent musician named Ashane, who it turns out had an older brother who also did remixs of video game music. His name was housethegrate. I loved Ashane’s other remixes like Red Cap Assault, which is a remix of the battle theme from Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for the SNES, so it was a no-brainer to check out what his older brother was doing.

While both brothers share an excellent melodic feel to their music, house’s music seemed slighty more mature and refined than Ashane’s. After talking with them online a couple of times, I found out about an indie rock band called the minibosses that do strictly music from NES games, as well as a monthly competition that Ashane and house participate in that’s held by the people on the minibosses’ forum called the Dwelling of Duels (or DoD).

From there, I got the chance to listen to a lot of perfectly-legal music done by independant artists that strayed far from the norm. Because I was so passionate about the music and the ease of contacting these wonderful musicians, I then started acting like a total attention whore on their message board, which is why most of the members still don’t like me even to this day (keep in mind that I first joined back in 2005), but that’s another story altogether.

The Track Breakdown

This album was released back in 2006 and people are still talking about it even today!

The first track, Sanctuary, is a medley of songs from the CastleVania series. It has a big jazz fusion feel to it, especially in its quick musical changes.

The next song, Light In The Fortress, is a remix of a song from Mega Man X for the Super NES. With it’s keyboard-meets-guitar-meets-techno beats style, it is one of my all-time favorite songs.

Alien Corpses, which is a remix of a song from the game Duke Nukem 2, reminds me a lot of a rhythm section in a Joe Satriani song.

Up next is a short piece from King’s Quest 6 called Murdered By Flora. Although it’s barely over a minute long, I loved the nylon guitar work that house did.

After that, it’s Midnight Cocktails, a song from the game Leisure Suit Larry. This is about as jazzy as you can get without breaking out a semi-hollow guitar and plucking a bunch of jazz chords. The song’s very smooth and an especially good listen if you’re writing.

Madara: 1st Movement is a combination of songs from the game Madara, and another one of my favorites! It feels like a prog-rock song without being a 9-minute+ opus, which works out just fine for me.

The seventh track, Seized With Fury, comes from the game Final Fantasy 6. It is classic house, complete with backing orchestra and smokin’ guitar licks!

Malac’s Cross, a remix of a song from Betrayal at Krondor, is another short-but-sweet nylon acoustic piece in the same vein as Murdered By Flora.

Brinstar Minibossa, a remix of a song from Metroid, is next on the disc. It has more of an old-school 50s-60s jazz flavor to it compared to Midnight Cocktails, which has a contemporary jazz sound to it.

Track 10 is Walk On Water, a remix of a song from Sonic & Knuckles, and the most anticipated of the CD-exclusive tracks. It’s another great jazz fusion song that really reminds me of Al Di Meola in how the song is structured.

The next track, Crumbling Statues, is from the game Magic Sword. Next to Walk On Water, Crumbling Statues is the best of the new CD exclusive material. Once again, I’m getting an Al Di Meola feel from this track in terms of structure and it also reminds me of Light In The Fortress.

After that is one of house’s signature tunes, Waltz of the Dolls from Final Fantasy 4. Only housethegrate could take a waltz and make it rock! This track is also a fine example of house’s overall musical style.

Track 13 is Track 8. Wait, did I read that right? Yes I did! The 13th track is actually called Track 8, and it’s based on the game Metal Gear 2. It’s a slow, industrial-beats-meets-jazz-guitar-sensibilities kind of track.

Up next is Snowflakes on a Rosegarden, a track that house submitted for the DoD competition, but pulled the MP3 from the site because he didn’t like the way it sounded. Thankfully, he redid it an released it on this album! It’s quite a moving classical piano number.

Hurry!, the 15th track on this CD, has some nice alternative guitar picking that makes me think of what a combination between Alex Skolnick and Al Di Meola would sound like.

The 16th and final track on Houseworks is housethegrate’s masterpiece, La Hora Es Tarde, from the CastleVania 3 game. It’s a combination between prog rock, latin jazz, classical, and neoclassical music all rolled into one glorious track! If Jason Becker and Al Di Meola did a song together, this would be what it would sound like! If you only listen to one song on this entire album, listen to La Hora Es Tarde!!

The Goodies, The Baddies & The Uglies

I was estatic when house announced that he was releasing an album, but at the time, I didn’t have the money to buy it. I’m glad I eventually bought it though, as it’s one of my all-time favorite CDs! Housethegrate even sent me a written personal message in the album jacket when he sent the CD to me! How awesome is that?

Although most of the tracks on Houseworks are solid, I do have some gripes about this CD.

I could go into the fact that house put out way too much of his older and freely-available material, but most of it sounds great so I’m not gonna complain about that. What I will complain about is that the production value on the older tracks, and even on some of the new tracks, doesn’t seem like a leap forward that’s expected from an album release.

For example, even though I disliked the redone older songs like The Saltwater Room and Hello Seattle on Owl City’s album Ocean Eyes, I can at least admit that the sound quality was higher even though the overall song quality was not. I know that house didn’t have the budget that Owl City had, but I think that he could have done a better job mixing the songs.

With the re-release of so much older material (10 tracks out of 16 total), I’m disappointed that he didn’t put out a remix or a live version or even an acoustic version of at least one of his older songs.

Also, since the songs were fairly short (exactly half of the songs were over 4 minutes long and only three of them were over 6 minutes long), I’m sure that house could have also included video footage of him playing some of the songs or a behind-the-scenes of the making of Houseworks that would be viewable via computer or DVD player.

The Verdict

Despite the technical shortcomings and the re-release of a lot of otherwise freely available material, housethegrate’s Houseworks is a staple in the small-but-growing collection of rearranged video game music albums available for purchase!

6 Tracks To Give a Clicky-Click

- Light In The Fortress

- Midnight Cocktails

- Madara: 1st Movement

- Walk On Water

- Crumbling Statues

- Waltz of the Dolls

- La Hora Es Tarde

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

WAR 02 – housethegrate HOUSEWORKS Album Review

I recently came across a new news article on Jason Becker by ABC-7. They’ve interviewed Jason a couple of times over the past 12 years. Click here for the new article and short video interview.

In this article, they discuss Jason’s newest CD, Collection as well as his new signature guitar with Paradise Guitars USA.

I’m so glad that Jason’s continuing to make music, even if he can’t move or speak! I’m inspired and in awe of his dedication to creating music!

TheAndySan

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Jason Becker Is In The News Again!

Good evening everyone, it’s TheAndySan hurr with some rather interesting news.

I was reading USA Today while I was on break and ran across an article about a guitarist with ALS using a special system that converts his eye movement into words or to do tasks like surf the web. Hmm, this sounds an awful lot like Jason Becker, the insane guitarist who paired up with Marty Friedman to form Cacophony and later joined David Lee Roth’s solo band before being diagnosed with ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease when he was 20. But the guitarist-in-question is not; it’s Freddie Everett. Jason isn’t even mentioned. I think that, although there is nothing wrong with the article, it should have included Jason in it someway. Hell, even a name drop would have been fine! Here’s a link to the article, but I’m gonna put up the main story just in case it gets moved or something:

Device restores musical talent that Gehrig’s disease took

By Robert Davis, USA TODAY

The condition commonly called Lou Gehrig’s disease — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS — has left Everett unable to walk, talk or breathe normally. But a device known as ERICA, for Eye Response Interface Computer Aid, uses an infrared camera to track the glint in Everett’s eye so that he can manipulate software functions by moving his gaze across a computer screen. ERICA lets him do everything from type messages to mix his previously recorded music.

“All of us have a different definition of what quality of life is. For Freddie, it’s music,” says his doctor, Stanley Appel, founder of the ALS clinic at Methodist Hospital here. “Here is a guy who lived and breathed music 24/7.”

There are several eye tracking systems on the market. There are about 1,000 ERICA systems in use today, according to estimates by the manufacturer, Eye Response Technologies of Charlottesville, Va.

Hope — and maybe a longer life

Appel says the device “is giving Freddie a sense of hope.”

Everett played guitar and sang for 25 years, including opening performances for Ted Nugent, Sammy Hagar and Alice Cooper, before he was diagnosed with ALS in 2006 at the age of 47. Everett was known for his ability to bend the strings on his guitar to create unique sounds.

“He threw down good rock,” says Brian Austin, a guitarist from the local band Outlaw. “There aren’t too many people around this town that can do what he did. He was an artist. This is a bad disease.”

Everett performed for a time after his arms got weak. If others put his guitar strap around his neck, he could still use his fingers and his guitar’s whammy bar to bend the strings to hit memorable notes. But when he was no longer able to control his fingers, he stopped playing.

“After his last performance, he was very, very, very depressed,” says Everett’s wife, Annette. “He would just sit and look at his guitars. It is devastating when you have that music in your head and you can’t get it out.”

The disease attacks motor neurons, leaving otherwise healthy muscles without needed signals to and from the brain to control movements. On average, people with ALS live two to five years after diagnosis, says Linda Richardson of the ALS Association’s Greater Houston Chapter.

But some live much longer, and Appel says one key to survival appears to be hope.

“The more hope you have and the more willing you are to fight this and hang in there, the better you are going to do,” Appel says.

ERICA provides hope, Appel says, because it opens the door to communication for both the person with ALS and others, ranging from friends to the medical team.

“Once he can communicate, you feel like you can communicate with him,” Appel says. “He can hear you. He can think. He can feel. His sensations are intact. His intellect is intact. His musical skills are intact. But he is locked into an inability to express himself to the world.”

ERICA allows people to turn their eyes into commanding tools. The $7,900 device uses an infrared camera to track eye movement across a computer screen. When the user pauses on part of the screen, the computer registers that, similar to the click of a mouse.

Shortcuts allow the user to order the computer to do many tasks with few clicks. It offers common phrases, for instance, when it sees where the user appears to be going in a certain message.

The device is also helping people who are paralyzed from traumatic injuries and other medical disorders, says Teresa Westerbur, an occupational therapist and assistive tech specialist who sells the ERICA devices across Texas.

While the first words some people transmit through the machine have been “There is a God,” she says, others get right to business, saying things like, “When you move me this way it hurts.”

“When you can give a voice to somebody who hasn’t spoken in seven years, it is very rewarding,” Westerbur says.

The will to live and make music

Everett’s family saw his mood lift immediately after he began using the device to do things as simple as send e-mail, surf the Internet and change the TV channel.

“This gave him a reason to want to live,” says his ex-wife, Cathy Everett. Before he got the device, Everett did not want to have a breathing tube permanently inserted into his throat because he saw no reason to extend his life.

Now he does. And he’s shopping for music amplifiers and gathering music from other artists to mix with ERICA.

Says Annette Everett: “That one machine changed his whole life.”

Freddie says in an e-mail, typed into the machine with his eyes, that ERICA “has changed my life and has given me the will to continue with the greatest gift that I have (been) given in this life which is music. … I will continue to make music and spread the love around.”

I’m gonna try to contact Jason about the article to see if he knew about it and what his reaction to it is. I hope I get a reply from him; fingers crossed! Wish me luck!

While I was at the music store today, Shane gave me a CD that was dropped off at the music store some time ago. It’s by a group called Double EZ Melt and the CD is called Extra Medium. I put up the album on MegaUpload so if you wanna have a listen, here it is. Double EZ Melt, if you would like me to take down the link, just leave me an email and I’ll take it down immediately (there’s a link at the top of the page).

Well, I’m gonna watch me some Bamboo Blade so I’ll catch you guys later. Bye now!

TheAndySan

P.S: It’s been 30 days since www.theandysan.com has been up (Yay, one-month anniversary!) and 2 days since www.spicymelon.com has been up. If any of you guys use Digg, StumbleUpon,
Reddit, etc., you can submit my stuff via the Share This! expanding button to your site of choice.

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

Jason Becker’s Been Overlooked By USA Today!!!1

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P.S: For those of you who can’t read leet, here’s the translation:

One Week Later…

Yo it be the Andy-San hurr in my dormroom chizzillin’.

This week’s been kinda quite. I’m still getting things ready for OSU, and all I have left to do is send out the transfer form and then wait for a response. I went on a walk to Wal-Mart with Dan to get some shorts cuz the ones that I have don’t fit me now. I’m sure with all this walking around and eating light, I’ll get back down to a size-34 with no problem.

In other news, I’m also still practicing guitar like crazy and I’m coming up with all sorts of heavy riffs. One of my sources of inspiration for coming up with my own riffs is Marty Friedman. He was a former lead guitarist for Megadeth and played in other bands like Hawaii and Cacophony with Jason Becker, who’s another of my favorites. Marty is also having a good deal of success as a solo artist and as a host of a couple of heavy-metal themed shows in Japan, such as my personal favorite Rock Fujiyama.

Oh, that reminds me. Ben recently got a new guitar for his upcoming 18th birthday (Happy Early Birthday Dude!!). It’s a Dean Dimebag Razorback Shards and it kicks ass!! I can’t wait to see it, hear it, and play it (if he lets me) for myself.

Well I’m gonna go and play some guitar so see-y’all next time!!!1

Andy-San

This Post Is Originally From: TheAndySan.com

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