What my heart wants to say

I don't care if u ignore me. I don't give a damn if u don't care for me. I just wanna let u know what i feel for you. Please undertsnd, I need u to stay in my life.

Rainbow

Beberapa waktu lalu saya membaca sebuah majalah. Di sana disebutkan bahwa ada dua band yang memiliki nama berbeda tapi arti nama kedua band tersebut adalah sama. Sayangnya, majalah tersebut sepertinya melupakan satu buah band lagi yang arti nama band-nya juga sama, yaitu pelangi. Ya, band-band yang dimaksudkan adalah L'arc en Ciel, Nidji, dan yang terlupakan adalah Rainbow.

Untuk L'arc en Ciel (Laruku) dan Nidji tidak akan saya ulas di sini, kelihatannya kedua band ini terlalu banyak dibahas di mana-mana. Namanya aja lagi naik daun., coba kalu lagi naik batang atau ranting. Saya hanya sedikit membahas tentang band yang terlupakan, yaitu band rock asal Inggris, Rainbow.

Rainbow didirikan oleh mantan gitaris Deep Purple, Ritchie Blackmore. Nama asli band ini adalah Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, namun beberapa waktu kemudian , setahu saya mulai album kedua, nama band ini dipotong menjadi Rainbow saja. Formasi awalnya ada Ritchie Blackmore (gitar), Ronnie James Dio (vokal), Micky Lee Soul (kibor), Craig Guber (bass), dan Gary Driscoll (drums). Tahun-tahun selanjutnya, Rainbow berulangkali melakukan bongkar pasang personil. Beberapa nama yang sempat bergabung di Raimbow selanjutnya ada mendiang Cozy Powell (drums), Bob Daisley (bass), Graham Bonnet (vokal), Don Airey (kibor), David Rosenthal (kibor), Roger Glover (bass), dan Joe Lynn Turner (vokal). Uniknya, nama-nama Powell, Rosenthal, Daisley, dan Turner kelak sempat terlibat dalam pembuatan album milik gitaris asal Swedia, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, meski memang tidak pada saat bersamaan (kecuali Turner dan Daisley). Bahkan Bonnet sendiri pernah bekerja sama dengan Malmsteen ketika mereka bergabung dalam Alcatrazz (yang memang didirikan oleh Bonnet).

Tahun 1984, Ritchie Blackmore membubarkan Rainbow setelah para personil Deep Purple Mk. II memutuskan bekerja sama lagi dan merilis album baru. Beberapa tahun kemudian, Blackmore terlibat perselisihan dengan vokalis Deep Purple, Ian Gillan yang membuat Gillan keluar. Posisi Gillan akhirnya diisi oleh Turner yang ketika itu sudah keluar dari band Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force. Sayang, album mereka bersama Turner, Slaves and Masters, mendapat kritik dari penggemar karena dianggap terlalu bernuansa Rainbow. Turner pun dipaksa meninggalkan Deep Purple, dan Gillan kembali. Namun, perselisihan Blackmore dan Gillan tampaknya belum reda. Kali ini giliran Blackmore yang memutuskan hengkang dari band yang ikut dia dirikan tersebut.

Blackmore kemudian mendirikan kembali Rainbow yang kali ini kembali ke nama aslinya, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, bersama dengan personil baru, termasuk vokalis Doogie White. Sayang, usia Rainbow kali ini lebih singkat, hanya sekitar 3 tahun, dari 1994 – 1997. Blackmore kemudian memulai band baru bernama Blackmore's Night bersama penyanyi latar Ritchie Blakmore's Rainbow, Candice Night. Beberapa tahun kemudian, vokalis Doogie White juga bergabung dengan gitaris Yngwie J. Malmsteen menggantikan vokalis sebelumnya Jorn Lande. White mengisi vokal di album Attack!! (bukan merk detergen lho) dan Unleash The Fury.

Ya, itu sekilas cerita tentang sebuah band yang pernah begitu berjaya dengan lagu-lagu macam Temple of The King, Since You Been Gone, Gates of Babylon, dan Street of Dreams. Hubungan unik antara para mantan personil Rainbow dengan Yngwie J. Malmsteen akan saya bahas lain kali.

Let There Be Drum Part 2: The Interface

Just like what I have promised you before, I will continue explaining the Hydrogen Interface, Now I'm gonna talk about the pattern editor, drumkits manager, song editor etc.

1.Pattern editor

Fig 1 Pattern Editor

This pattern editor is the “key” of all. This is the window where we must create the pattern. Just click on the part you want to play the sound. Kicks, snares, toms, crash/cymbals, hi-hats, cowbell and many more, depend on the drumkits we use. We can create as many patterns as we can. To work with other pattern, click on the Pattern Name panels above (use the '+' and '-' button)..The lines at the bottom side shows how hard we hit the part.

2.Drumkits Manager
With the drumkits manager, we can select which drumkits we want to use. By default, there's only two drumkits available, GMkit and Roland-808 drumkits, but we can simply import other drumkits.

Fig 2 Drumkits Manager

How to import drumkits?
Click the Import button

Fig 3 Importing Drumkits

Click Browse button, and select it from the directory containing the drumkits. Choose the drumkits we want to import. And then click the Import button.

Fig 4 Browsing the directories containing the drumkits

The drumkits must be in *.h2drumkit format. We can download the drumkits from Hydrogen official website, but it is usually in a compressed format (*.tar.gz, *.tar.bz2, or *.zip), so we've had to extract it before importing it.

3.The Mixer
We can adjust the volume and also the balance of each drumkits part separately with this mixer. Just click the volume control and move it with your mouse.

Fig 5 The Mixer

4.Song editor
After creating all the patterns needed, we'll have to combine all patterns in order to compose the full song. This is what this part used for. Remember, you may play more than one pattern at a time.

Fig 6 Song Editor

After completing it, we are now able to play the pattern. Use the Play button on the bottom panel.

I think it's enough for now. In the next tutorial, I will show you how to save the patterns and export them into other formats

Interupsi

Mohpn maaf, tutorial tentang Hydrogen saya hentikan sementara, karena saya sedang mencari cara agar dapat melakukan posting dengan bantuan editor HTML agar lebih mudah dalam menyusun gambar.

Let There Be Drums Part 1: Introduction

When I was only a kid, I had a little obsession of becoming a drummer. The problem is of course, I believed that my father would not let me. But I still love to hear the sound of the drums. Sometimes I imagined that I was the drummer of my favorite songs (by playing an imaginary drum). I always dislike a song with a bad drums sound (this is one of the reasons I dislike most of the Indonesian songs, the sound of the drums is so.....horrible).

Instead of never having chances to learn how to play drums, I always pay attention to the drummer of a band in every TV show. That is how I began to know how to play it. The normal drummer (not the left-handed drummer) always hit the snare with their left hand, while the right hand was hitting the hi-hat or cymbals. Not to forget that the drummers also used their feet to play kick part (the bass part). I still wanted to play drums somehow.

It wasn't until 2006, when I finally used SuSE Linux 10.0 as my computer operating system (I'd been introduced to Linux operating system the year before). I found a very interesting software named Hydrogen (a drum machine software) there. A software that can produce the sound of drums.? I said, wow!!

Then I started learning how to create a drum pattern by learning the demo included. Little by little, I tried to re-interpret the drum patterns used in my favorite songs, and of course created a new pattern myself. Now, let me introduce you to Hydrogen, An Advanced Drum Machine.

How To Get Hydrogen?

How can we get Hydrogen? It's easy, just get it from the atmosphere! :-P .(Sorry, I'm just joking about it). Some Linux distributions have included Hydrogen in their software repositories. If you used the SuSE Linux/ openSUSE distributions, Hydrogen has usually been included in the installations CD/DVD. Or if you chose Ubuntu distribution instead, you'll need to install it from the software repositories (both the net or the DVD repositories). Use apt or synaptics packages manager to install it in Ubuntu (or at least in the Ubuntu-based distributions). Or you may download the Hydrogen installation file from this address (there is also the Windows version). But I suggest, if you don't wanna get mad, don't ever install Hydrogen from its source-code.

Starting Hydrogen

This tutorials uses Linux Mint 4.0 XFCE Edition (an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution), but you can apply it in other Linux distros. To start Hydrogen, from the start menu, choose the Multimedia section, and then choose Hydrogen. The Hydrogen splash screen will then appear

Fig 1. Starting Hydrogen from the menu (sorry for the picture of Curious George behind it, I'm one of George's fan)

Fig 2 Hydrogen splash screen

Fig 3 The Main Window of Hydrogen

Hydrogen Interface

The Hydrogen interface consists of many parts, the panels, pattern editor, drumkits manager, song editor, mixer, and also instrument editor, but you can freely select which part to appear (except for the panels).

1. The Panels

There are two panels in Hydrogen, the top panel and the bottom one.

Fig 4 Top Panel

At the top panel, we'll be able to do all the things we can do with the menu. Saving patterns, exporting into other formats, choosing other windows to appear and so on.

Fig 5 Bottom Panel

At the bottom panel, we'll be able to play/stop/pause the pattern, set the tempo, set the mode of how we play the pattern (we can choose between the pattern and song). A song usually consists of more than one pattern that we combine.

In the next tutorial, I will explain the function of other parts and of course I will also show you how to create drum patterns and combine them into a full song. See you next time!

English...English...English

As an Indonesian, I realize completely that English is a foreign language. But why do I often write something in English here? Am I not proud of being an Indonesian? Or just to show to others that I have a really well English ability? No. I'm still learning. It's because one of my lecturer, who advised me to improve my English. He's been studying abroad (in Malaysia for the Doctoral Degree) for more than one year now.

When I met him last year, it was when returned to Indonesia for celebrating Idul Fitri (and I had promised to send him my Final Task report), he said to me that most Indonesian students had abilities which could compete with the students from other countries. The problem was, most of the Indonesian had a lack of English ability. That made them hard enough to compete with the students from China, India, and even Iran (who had better English ability). So he told me to improve my English (and also to take care of my health, knowing I ever suffered Bell's Palsy about two years ago) That's the main reason now I often write something in English

Talking about English, I never had an English course formally (means I had no certificates of English course at all). I learn it by myself. I learn it by reading articles, magazines, books (I even bought some English novels just like The Three Musketeers, Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man In The Iron Mask, and I also have an English version of Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix - sorry I'm a die-hard fan of Harry Potter) and of course listening to the musics. Ever since I was in the elementary school, my father have always asked me to listen to English song (and I didn't mind at all cause I loved it). He also asked the same things to my older brother and sister (currently my father also asked my youngest stepsister). He always believes, English will make his children better than him (because my father is never able to speak English himself, he was formerly a Math teacher). English would then become my favorite subjects in High Schools.

Well, talking about writing in English, I always write words/poets (I often call them lyrics cause I often write in a songwriting style) in English. I never even wrote (and maybe I will never write) it in Indonesian. I began to learn how to write it when I was in Senior High Schools - but none of them was ever finished :-) - just to write something for a girl I had a crush on. Cause I couldn't stand seeing her. It always made me nervous whenever she was near, and I always tried to stay away from her (I believe I wasn't the only one ever having a feeling like this). And then I thought, the words I wrote would say what I wanted to.

When I entered the college, many more inspirations came. The words I wrote then talked about anything, about my crush, about my sister, friendships, and about my mother (I always love to write something about my late mother, cause I really love and I always miss her so much).. Remember, I always wrote the words in such a rhyme, cause that was what I ever learned from the songs I listened to. But most of the archives (including the one I wrote for my mother) are now missing. I don't remember where I've kept them (I haven't had any computers yet at the time so I wasn't able to type them and just wrote them in papers).

Only a few of them I can find which now I upload them and all the new materials in my other blog. You know why? I have to make a confession now. I think I've began to have another crush on a girl. I realize I've fallen in love with her ever since the first day I met her, the day we talked each other. But I have always lied to myself instead, that I've got no feelings for her at all. And that really makes me hurt cause truly, something 'bout her always makes me wanna get closer to her and even keep an eye on her (my ex-girlfriend sometimes had a suspicious mind about it and it made us often had a fight). Lately, the feeling is getting stronger and stronger. But I think the problem is finally solved now. I've been trying to be more honest to myself.

Back to English topics, even though there'd been a plan of posting something in Javanese, in a few minutes I'm gonna post a software tutorial. And this time it's gonna be different cause I wrote in English completely. But there's something forgotten, since a few weeks ago, if I had to write in English, I decided to write in US English only.

Learning To Be Human

Well, it's just my opinion about a TV series, an animated one. At first, it was my cousin, a second grade of elementary school student, who often watched it. Then I began to love it too. Alright, I'm talking about Curious George.

George is a monkey but his “friend”, The Man With The Yellow Hat, or simply called The Man^*), really treats him like a human child. The Man teaches George anything human do. The Man also buys George anything George wants, even if it is a hat or a children toy.

George even behaves like a human. Eating anything human eat (cakes, donuts, candies, ice creams), plays game with other children (a really human game), riding a rollercoaster, discovering something new, and even solving problems. See an episode when he created a hat. A really wonderful hat. Cause that hat could also become toys. The upper side of the hat could spin and so on. Or in an episode when Chef Pisghetti thought his cat, Gnocchi, had caused scratches on all the restaurant's chair. It was George who found Gnochhi didn't do that, but a new employer who carelessly pulled the table.

But funny things often happen. Not just because he is unable to speak in human language (but people always seem to understand what he talks about), but George often misinterprets what The Man has taught him and misinterprets what other animals do. Like in an episode where The Man taught him about planting seeds under soil, then the seeds would grow bigger and become a tree. But, George thought the other way. He thought about anything that was buried under soil would grow bigger. So he then buried papers, canned food, and some other things.

Or in an episode when The Man taught him to write number 1 and 0. He then asked him to order 1 dozen of donuts. But George then wrote it by adding so many zeros behind the number 1, that the donuts maker thought he wanted to order 100 dozens of donuts.

In other episode, when George knew about a bear in hibernation during the winter, he also tried to do the same thing. Eat as many food as he could, covered his the window in his room and turned the lamp off (so it became dark and looked like a cave). But when he finally woke up, the winter wasn't over yet.

There are other interesting episodes to watch from this series. Watch the adventure of George and The Man, and also sometimes with other animals like Hundley (a very neat dog), Charkie (also a dog, but Charkie is a very bouncy and playful dog), Gnocchi (a cat), and Jumpy Squirrel (who is often being disturbed by George's “adventure”).

I think this series can teach children to be creative like George do. George is a really creative monkey I can't even do what George does. The series also teach children try to solve any problems happened. I guess George is learning to be human (by doing anything human do).

But there is one thing I also learn from the series. Don't choose a monkey as your pet. Cause, in spite of his creativity, George also often causes a trouble and causes a room so messy.

*) The Man With The Yellow Hat is the man who brought George from Africa. His name is never mentioned both in the book and in the TV series. In spite of being called The Man With The Yellow Hat, it's not only his hat colored in yellow, but also all the things he wears.