 And I fired up Gmail before anything else at the office this morning. Outlook can wait. Pictures from the Failblog.org mailing list, on the other hand, most certainly can’t. But an e-mail from my good friend Tricksy, the band’s guitarist and my songwriting partner, caught my attention instantly. It was an article from 2003 on Lester William Polsfuss, or more widely known, as Les Paul. In it was an anecdote of how he broke his arm in an accident and later, had the doctor set it in a bent position so that he could still play the guitar; though the arm can never be mobile again. Perhaps the ultimate marquee of a true guitar player. Sadly, Tricksy ended his e-mail with the most dreaded acronym in the English language: RIP. For Les had left us, at 94. A legendary hero to the guitar playing community and the music industry itself, almost everyone was showering praises and sorrowful condolences all over the Internet. From Harmony Central, to Jamtank, to good old Reddit, no amount of words could suffice in paying tribute to the great man. Nevertheless, here’s mine... My earliest recollection of the Les Paul guitar would take me back to a sunny afternoon in 1994; as I was rummaging through my cousin’s cassette collection. And in between the grunge and alternative tapes, were the epic Guns N’ Roses records, Use Your Illusion I & II. Banging my head as I flipped through the album sleeve -- in awe of the amount of bad words I was learning within the span of one song -- I couldn’t help but noticing a small picture of Slash holding up his guitar in his usual, nonchalant yet super cool heavy metal guitarist pose. It wasn’t pointy, it was curvy. It wasn’t colorful, it was quite plain. It didn’t ooze that glaring ‘look at me’ aura that Eddie Van Halen’s guitar had. The amazing sound that was coming out of the speakers, though, was from it. And I saw no reason to not want it. But I was 11, and skint. So I could only dream of owning it. For many years to come, I’ve had numerous encounters with the guitar; mostly in pictures... but never in real life. In the arms of Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, I’ve watched with utmost scrutiny the immaculate design of the guitar’s body. Often time, on album sleeves while listening to my father’s record collection. It wasn’t until 10 years later that I managed to gather enough money to purchase my first electric guitar. Being a freshman in college without enough coins to do my own laundry at times, all I could afford at the time was just an ebony finish Epiphone Les Paul Special II. At $150, it was possibly a much, much cheaper, entry level version of an actual Gibson Les Paul. Essentially, it simply had to be a Les Paul no matter what. But I was happy enough, as far as I can remember. Recalling the way I ran through the insane Chicago winter back from class after learning that the guitar has arrived in my dorm puts a smile on my face every time. The guitar served well despite its shortcomings. I managed to gig with it once at the first Purdue University Battle of the Band as soon after, I was going through my Hendrix phase during which only an Olympic white Fender Stratocaster could fill the void. And the Les Paul was retired to collect dust on the guitar stand for about a year. To make things worse, it was under the rail track at the Evanston train station that I sold it off to a struggling musician after posting it up on Craigslist, for $90; an amount too small to match its sentimental value. One of the many things I shouldn’t have done in life.  I stuck to the Strat for a good two years thereafter. My collection slowly grew as well, though I never looked at purchasing another Les Paul. It was a phase of discovery and experimentation as through a part-time job, I could afford a few other guitars. Not to mention the vast amount of gears available on eBay. From a maple-necked Washburn, to a sunburst Epiphone Sheraton II, to a Martin acoustic, to a Japanese Fender Telecaster; the collection grew and shrunk like nobody’s business. But none really got the limelight as I lugged only the Strat to gigs. As 2006, my graduation year, approached, a sense of panic snuck in as I realized the need to sort my rig out before I return home to Malaysia. And so out went the majority of my gears as I needed to slim the collection down, and settled with an American Strat, a Gibson SG Standard, and a Fender Blues Jr. amp. With only one more semester to go before I leave for home, the writing was all over the wall for me to work extra hours to bring home the Holy Grail, a Gibson Les Paul. With two part-time jobs, and extra savings into my Les Paul Fund, I was finally able to collect enough dough. Through weeks of intensive prowling and bidding on eBay, the happiest day of my life (I’ve got no wife to be mad at such statement) came when at last, a 1992 tobacco sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard laid beautifully in its well, rather beat-up case; right in front of me. The first note I played on it still rings up to this very day (bent G to A on the 15th fret of the second string, by the way). I could barely put the guitar down since, to be honest. The sustain on the guitar rings like a bell and words can’t do justice on the sheer joy that I get when playing it. It fits the Blues like a glove. The Bluesbreakers, Cream, Freddie King, The Allman Brothers, you name it… the guitar can do it all. Though I can’t play them all. And who do I have to thank? No other than the genius behind the creation of the guitar itself. The pioneer, the inventor, the innovator, the wizard who cast the spell onto the design blueprint of the guitar which has changed lives, and threw colors onto the world of music until this very day. He deserves every bit of the fame from having his name on guitar headstocks everywhere. It’s hard for me to forgive myself for never catching his show having visited Manhattan twice. For years, up to the days of his departure, Les Paul played at the same club week in, week out. And that, according to the slide guitar maestro Derek Trucks, is how you live life. Thank you Les Paul. We owe you one.  Images: Juaini Shamsul
The solo and outro off You Gotta Take It Down. A change of aural mood perhaps from the previous upload. Recorded through some computer mic into Audacity on a cheapish Compaq laptop. Don't mind the growling toward the vocal part at the end. I was under medication. Looking forward to hitting the record button later this month. Cheers!
A shot at bedroom recording. Basically halfway through the track; which was as far as I got at the point of recording anyway. More to come! Together with the band. From the dim-lighted space... of the BBB studio.
Songwriting, as I'm starting to realize, constitutes a plethora of different approaches; just as it is with women. I'd previously been quite a firm believer in either one or the other when it comes to composing. You could begin with the words, and then the melody, progression and riffs that match the lyrics... or the other way around. Analogously, you could either come close to a girl at the bus stop and engage in a conversation similar to the following... "Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" "930am." "So you from around here?" ...OR, alternatively, if she's not wearing a watch... "Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" "No." "Well, it's time for you and me… to have a drink baby!" So you see, writing a song is in a way similar to talking to a girl. Every approach, resulting in a different result, which is nothing new really; as you could possibly deduce from the conversations above. But as I said, my two-way, ‘either-or' understanding of the process is a thing of the past. For I have, in recent times, discovered a few other aspects that influence the characteristics of a song. Things that go beyond sitting down and trying to come up with lyrics and melodies. In other words, the way the environment and condition that you're in, during the course of the song's formation, affect its mood. The constraint of time, for example, creates an urgency for the documentation of a song. More than ever as melodies could come when they're least expected. This, breeding a fear of memory loss. Legend has it that Gregg Allman wrote the jam band masterpiece Whipping Post using burned matches, on an ironing board because he couldn't find a pen in the middle of the night. "It came so fast. I didn't even have a chance to get the paper out. That's the way the good songs come... they just hit you like a ton of bricks." The excitement upon the unearthing of a melody plays a role as well. Everytime a new tune strike me, I get the same anxiety rush I got during my first encounter with Jessica Rabbit; as an 8-year old boy. Still do, these days. Under the same influence the other day, the urge to get some words into this new song we wrote crept into me. Not knowing the actual direction or story of the song, however, I simply penned down words that seemed to befit the notes; with none of the sentences making actual sense... Through the rivers I try to make it rightSee what I mean? A few days later, I tried to revisit the song and get the words sorted out. To rewrite it, if you will, and give some sort of a meaning to the whole song. No matter how hard I tried, though, no amount of newer, more sensible lines sounded better than the existing ones; leaving me no other option but to just stick to them. So the lesson I learned from this exercise lies behind the correlation that the nonsensical lines have with the melodies; as opposed to the logical ones. In other words, the chemistry between the words and the notes in which they are sung in, is more important than the construction of the sentences itself. Such is the beauty of the art of songwriting... logic is only as significant as the points on Whose Line Is it Anyway. A certain Mr. John Lennon may agree. Goo goo g'joob… Addendum: I got this super neat Sony Ericsson K770i a day before our session last weekend and being the giddy little girl that I am whenever I get a new gadget, I couldn't stop playing around with it and managed to capture the following bit along with a few other tracks we were trying to cut. It's in .amr format which is mainly for speech, which is expected of a phone sound recorder anyway. Hence the quality is no Dolby Stereo yet for those unexpected moments of enlightenment, I should at least be able to hum into the phone and get some melodies recorded. Here's two minutes of a yet to be named song recorded through it. The 3.2MP camera ain't too shabby either. At RM500 a pop, you can't go wrong with this bad boy. 
A little more than a year ago, when I first started jamming with the guys, we didn't really have a name until we landed our first gig. I would give different answers everytime people ask me about the name of the band. Ranging from "me, Ikram, Imran and Naim" to "my senior from college and a few guys from PNB" to "some friends of mine" to simply, "a bunch of guys". Going up on stage for first time however, we couldn't really go with the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young approach. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we are Imran, Naim, Ikram & Asrif and we're gonna kick things off with Hoochie Coochie Momma Bring Me Back Ma Booty Lovin'." You know... words tend to get drowned when they're muttered through the microphone. Hence opening the night as such could possibly confuse the audience and lead them into believing that the name of the band is instead, Hoochie Coochie Momma Bring Me Back Ma Booty Lovin'; which is not that bad of a name if you ask me. So as much as we hated it, we just had to go through the painfully tedious process of deciding on a name for the band. Most bands would agree with that but well, it could go either way. I doubt bands like Free, Mountain and The Doors spent that much time figuring out their names. Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Gov't Mule, on the other hand. Sitting over a few drinks, still giddy after learning that our first ever gig was just around the corner, we brainstormed for a name, least expecting that to get four guys to fully agree on a name (such as Swashbuckling Privates, which was my favorite), would be as taxing as making Ozzy Osbourne sober. We wanted the name to be concise enough that you could pronounce it in one breath, yet substantial enough that it portrays the characteristics of the band. Something that -- as we would later realize -- can only be achieved through the band's music above anything else. Would Led Zeppelin have garnered as much interest as they did if the band had played Central European Polka instead of Rock & Roll? After a few (thousand) deliberations, we settled for The Big Pink, an homage to The Band's debut album, Music from Big Pink. Big Pink, being the name of the pink house in which the band rehearsed and recorded the album. I shall not repeat the words 'Big Pink' anymore in this paragraph. But I kinda like it so here goes: Big Pink. It's been a year now since we decided on the name. And the journey has been a lovely one indeed. Yet, through the months, we were occasionally displeased by certain discoveries pertaining to the name. There's a Peruvian Pink Floyd tribute band that goes by the name Big Pink. And over in the UK, an Electronica-ish band calls themselves The Big Pink. And bigger, they are becoming indeed with their major record label albums and official music videos. It's only a matter of time before they pave their way into the local radio airwaves and clubs. Not wanting to gather a massive crowd from the Dance scene only for them to find out that instead of two white guys on turntables, they're getting four Malay guys in bad clothing, we felt the need to change the name of our band. The Big Pink is now... Fed Hi. You know what it means. Some of you go through it everyday. Asrif
I've been doing a fair amount of songwriting recently; after deliberately abandoning it for a while now. You know... it's one of those things you'd voluntarily neglect upon realizing that you don't have the knack for it. Something I should seriously start consider doing about -- as the majority of women would approve -- my pick-up lines. In a sense, I've been quite blessed to have friends who have a pretty good sense of musical composition. Collaborating with them has provided the avenue for me to leverage on their talent, while learning a thing or two in the process. For I, possess the songwriting prowess of a deaf llama. The whole exercise, in itself, is filled with discoveries. For we are talking about melodies here; which not many things out there are capable of being more subjective than. So the challenge can come from a variety of angles as you proceed. Fitting the right melodies to a particular chord progression (and vice versa), sustaining the groove of a certain riff, knowing where to permit space, tempo, hooks, pauses, bridges... down to the ad-libs (e.g. "Maheeya hee... maheeya haa..."). In sum, I have learned, am learning and plan to learn, quite a handful. But what is knowledge then, without a sharing of it. On that note, I'm planning to share with you the progress of the songs that I'll be working on with the band. It may be in the form of pictures, audio/video clips, tablatures or even a few simple lines of notes. Some, may be my own while the other, may be materials I found over the endless hours I spend on the the force that is the Internet. Just a way of assuaging this strong urge I get after every session. One that makes me just want to throw whatever I'd just documented out there for the people's senses. Not necessarily for approval. More like, a mean of garnering their feedback, positive or negative; to 'fuel' my 'train' of thought. Eh? And I'm going to call the project -- wait for it -- Innervisions'. Well, it is up there in the title already. So anyway, 'Innvervisions' is the title of Stevie Wonder's Grammy Award winning 1973 album featuring masterpieces like Higher Ground and Living for the City. I thought it sounded cool and I can't quit loving Stevie so if the project is a success, by any measure, I'd like to dedicate it to him. To kick things off, I'll start with something that we all have. No, I'm not talking about guilty pleasures. I'm talking about the voice. Yes, the voice... nature's musical instrument. Of which mine... needs major work. Here is a video from a while back by Eric Arceneaux, a recording artiste and vocal coach, on warm-up techniques. You'll be surprised as to how simple they are. It's a 4-part video so if you wander around his YouTube page you'll find the other videos. Eric you're a top guy. Much love. Peace out, brother!
 Videos: Zhin's YouTube Thanks all! |
About
Fed Hi is a Blues Rock band from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The band was formerly known as The Big Pink. They are currently working on their debut recording in the studio. Asrif Yusoff: Vocals, Guitar Uda Bahar: Guitar, Vocals Ikram Omar: Bass Naim Aminnudin: Drums Contact 
Videos (Thanks Zhin!)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Malaysia License. |