Alex Brooke

As part of my goal to get more of my music on this site, I will be doing some guitar tutorials with audio. I’ll start off easily with some scales and chord exercises. I’ll then progress onto some more advanced guitar techniques. I’d also like to put some original guitar compositions on this site including full tabs and musical scores.

For my first offering here is what I call possibly the happiest chord on the guitar. It’s pretty close to an E Maj 13th with a C# and F#. It’s a bar chord played on 11th fret. So try it out and feel all happy inside.

My life used to be an extended vacation. Now I’m working like everyone else it’s always a struggle to find time to do the things I want to do… In the meantime here is an update on the various goings on in this corner of Tokyo…

Guitarists I’ve been listening to

Recently I’ve been pretty inspired by Toronto based guitarist Maneli Jamal. He has a great youtube channel with videos of him playing his own original compositions.

I was intriguied to learn that he is selling  MP3s and the accompanying music scores and guitar tab if you are up for the challenge of attempting these pieces. I was thinking of doing some online guitar tutorials. However I like the idea of publishing one’s own original works as opposed to just guitar lessons. It stamps one’s unique creativity on the whole endeavor.

Great stuff, check him out and watch this space for some original compositions.

Places I’ve Been Eating at

Thanks to the suggestion of my friend Kelly from Tokyo Weekender, I have discovered Frijoes, an awesome restaurant that does deli-style burritos and other kinds of wraps. It’s super delicious and they do cheap lunch sets which is pretty special for the Azabu-juban area. If you are a hipster I am told it is just “Juban”.

I got talking to the manager, a cool Japanese guy who had lived in San Fran for a long time. He came back to Japan and opened this place just recently. It’s a damn good wrap and I might go and stuff my face today.

Ch-ch-check it out kids.

Music I’ve Been Listening To

I’ve been listening to the Japanese indy rock band Natccu pronounced Nachew. Great energy, arrangements, melodies and guitars. I featured them in the last Learn Japanese Pod Fun Friday Podcast.

They’ve been touring all over the place in recent years including their UK Debut last year.

I managed to find these cats through my friend Ethan who writes the Tokyo Werewolf blog which covers the underground Tokyo music scene. Ethan also happens to be one of the masterminds behind Pongzilla which is Tokyo’s first beer pong event.

Wouldn’t be cool if Ethan could get Natccu to play at one of those?!

And…

No that’s it. I haven’t got anythign interesting to say. I guess when I can pull another 10 hours out of the day with my magic hat I will be embarking on changing this site to have a more guitar oriented feel. It should include guitar tutorials and my own original pieces.

Oh yeah, and then there’s my Flash tutorials…

Let’s slow the earth down so we can have more hours in the day…

Guitar School and Music Online

I’m planning to make a selection of guitar tutorial videos. As I want to make a guitar school I thought it might be a good idea to make some videos to attract students.

Since music is a major passion, I can see this being a long term project. Since I also love composing music I want to put up some of my compositions on the web.

I was reading recently that Moby has put up some of his music which can by downloaded and used for free by independent and non-profit movie makers. I believe their is a clause on his site which allows him to get some royalties if the movie makes cash. That seems like a very good idea which I would like to try to.

Now all I need is another 24 hours in the day to do it. If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas please leave a comment here or email me. Yoroshiku very much.

こ れからギターを勉強するためにヴィデオを作りたい。これからギター学校を作りたいので普通のone to oneレッスンとオンラインレッスンもするつもり。何よりも音楽が一番すきなのでこれからこのプロジェックトを長く続きたいと思う。そして作曲が好きなの でウェブサイトにオリジナルな曲を載せて、無料と有料のLoopも作ろうと思ってる。最近Mobyがnon profitやindependent映画の監督のために無料にダウンロードできる音楽を作った。すごくおもしろい話なので同じようなこともしたいなと 思った。音楽を作るための時間を作らなきゃという問題があるけど。がんばるぞ〜！何かいいアイデアやアドバイスがあると是非コメントを書いて下さい。よろしく！

(English)昨日コーヒボットと一緒にTokyo Guitar Guildの最初の打ち合わせした。ていゆうか二人のギター飲み会だった。これから東京に住んでいる素晴らしいギターリストのサークルを作るつもり。それでいい情報や技を交流できるクラブを作ることができる。ギター学校もできるかも。頑張って見る。FacebookのTokyo Guitar Guildのグループも作った、是非見て下さい。興味のある人是非連絡してください。mail{at}alexbrooke{dot}com

今回Regan Perry の”chill”というジャズっぽい曲のコードを練習した。基本のコードはEm7, Dm7, Gmaj, Cmaj7, B7。後でもっと詳しく説明を書く。

I hung out with the famous Coffeebot yesterday as we had our first Tokyo Guitar Guild meeting. Or rather, it was just two guys drinking gin and playing guitar. So from now on we are looking to make a society for guitarists in the Tokyo area for sharing information, tips, tricks and networking. We might even be able to make a guitar school too. For those who are interested please contact me at mail{at}alexbrooke{dot}com

We worked on some jazzy sounding chords from Regan Perry’s “Chill”. The basic chords are Em7, Dm7, Gmaj, Cmaj7, B7. There are a few extra chords he adds in there which I will write the tabs and manuscript for soon.

iPhone Review Feature

Ouch, we got a really crappy review on Learn Japanese Pod which is good because I’m sure the controversy will drive up site hits. But on a more serious note, it’s good to know that the iPhone has that feature. So you can not only review apps but also podcasts too. I’m hoping more people will send us iPhone reviews. If you have an iPhone and could help out teaching other people who to write one, please contact me by leaving a comment on this post or emailing me at mail(at)alexbrooke(dot)com.

I actually bought a book on how to program the iPhone with the misguided idea I would ever get around to using it. Luckily it is now in the trusty hands of Karamoon, a mover and shaker in the Tokyo tech world. I’m sure he can do something more contructive with it.

Flash Tutorials for Beginners

Which links rather badly into the next topic which is Flash tutorials. I am slowly writing Flash tutorials for beginners in an effort to teach myself and consolidate my knowledge. My angle is that although there are a lot of excellent resources out there for learning Flash/Actionscript, a lot of them tend to assume prior knowledge or miss things out. So I want to keep making these tutorials for beginners and that’s where I need your help. What tutorials would you like me to post? Please leave a comment or mail me. Ta!

Guitar Tutorials

As I am a guitarist and musician at heart, I want to do some guitar tutorials aimed at first for beginners. I may put some more advanced lessons up in the future.  So I need your help. What would you like to learn? What kind of format would you like the lessons? Video? Tab? Text? Audio? I would greatly appreciate your comments and ideas on this so I can make some awesome guitar tutorials for you. Again, please leave a comment at the end of this post or email me. Keep rocking!

While crusing BackLinkWatch to find out who is linking to my sites, I found a link to my site Learn Japanese Pod at News From South under the title “Other geeks” which made me chuckle.

Not only that, the guy who runs the site is a pro Flash developer. He says “My body lives in Brazil, my mind lives in Japan, and the guitar is my instrument”. That’s very interesting because my body is in Japan, my mind is in Brazil and I play the guitar too.

News From South is a cool site, check it out.

Tokyo Jam in Kichijoji from Alex Brooke on Vimeo.

Meet Keita ( guitar, vocals ) Kenji (guitar, vocals ) Ethan (drums) a.k.a Tokyo Werewolf and yours truly-ish on bass. In this vid you can see us jamming at a rehearsal studio in Kichijoji before our gig at Mandala, a live house round the corner.

Keita and Kenji are quite prolific in their musical output. Both of them write the melodies, lyrics and raps for their songs of which I have actually lost count.

Ethan introduced me to them back in the small and smokey Ruby Room open mic dive bar in one of the nooks and crannies of Shibuya. They asked me to play bass for them one night and the rest was history… well a few months at least.

We’re hoping to gig more regularly and somehow find cool places to perform but without the bizarre guarantee system in Japan where the band fronts the money for all the tickets in advance. Here in Japan, you aren’t just playing to bums on seats, you have to get them there too.

I’ll be posting more gig info up here soon.

This is a video of me playing with “Le Jardin de Luxembourg”, an all female accordion ensemble with musical saw from Japan. You can usually find them bringing smiles to the inhabitants of Osaka where they are based and I can’t wait to jam with them again. Yoroshiku.

My Ramirez guitar

I remember my guitar teacher standing over me and asking “Do you know what cojones are?”. I thought it wise to take that as a rhetorical question. Thankfully it was. “You gotta play with your balls” he went on and for a few seconds images too horrible to recount here flashed through my 15 year old brain. “What I’m saying is you have to play with some spirit”. Things became a hell of a lot clearer then and I remembered an angry Bill Hicks screaming “Play from your fucking heart”…

I inherited my teacher’s guitar and we went our separate ways. It’s a Ramirez classical concert guitar and is one year older than me which makes it…anyway… Let’s just say it’s a great guitar.