Kalen Lu

For the past few months, I’ve greatly expanded my knowledge of music theory. In addition to now having Guitar Pro, I have a decent idea on how to arrange songs for the guitar.

For me, I make fingerstyle guitar arrangements which means playing the melody, bass line, and harmony on one guitar. From what I’ve been taught I’ll usually figure out the time signature, key, and tempo first. There isn’t really a particular order, it’s just whichever is easiest to find first. Depending on the song, it’s possible to just do a simple Google for piano sheets to get all that information. Most of the time, there will be piano sheets for popular songs, but sometimes there might not be any. Figuring out the time signature and tempo is easy to find just by listening to the song. However, my ability to identify chords isn’t that great, so usually, I just try to figure out the most played chord, or the scale that the melody fits into.

After figuring out those three things, I can get started on notating in Guitar Pro. I like to start with writing out the melody, then the bass line, then fill the in-betweens with harmony. Occasionally some songs have strange rhythms for the melody, but most of the time I can figure it out. For the bass, I like to just put the root note of the chord on the beat of a chord change. Later, I would decide if I want to change the bass line or leave it as one note. For harmony, I usually play the notes of the chord that’s currently in use whenever there’s space to be filled in.

Some things that I’ve found difficult throughout this process would definitely be chord identification, especially with non-open chords. The different places to play the chords in relation to where the melody is being played is also a factor.

There are still things I haven’t really gone into yet such as harmonics, percussion with the guitar, and different tunings. However, they are definitely things I’d like to utilize in my arrangments to make them more interesting than what I have right now.

Last weekend my family and I celebrated my grandma’s 80th birthday at Emperor Fine Chinese Cuisine. My dad had spent a couple of weeks planning the party and there were many relatives that came to celebrate.

We were able to reserve half of the restaurant as well as their sound system and two projectors. My dad and I arrived earlier than everyone else to help set up at around 3:00. While my dad sorted out his projection system and photo slide show, I was putting name tags on the eleven different tables. After that, we checked to see if my guitar worked with the sound system for my performance later in the evening. Once we were finished setting up, I pretty much just sat around until all the people arrived and we took our seats.

Once everyone arrived, my dad said a few words about why everyone was there. After that, there was a lion dance followed by a Chinese dance until the food had arrived. The plan was that I’d play a Chinese song as well as another song I had memorized when ever I felt like it. I performed the Chinese song after I finished eating, and then the other song once I got bored. My mom unexpectedly asked me to play the Titanic theme “My Heart Will Go On” which I hadn’t played for a few months. I think that it went alright, but the cable for the guitar got in the way of the percussion.

For the rest of the party, people talked and danced. Later on, we all took group photos before people started to leave. I think that the party went well, I had fun and there was WiFi too which was great.

Around two months ago, I wrote a post about a rhythm game called osu!. I wrote the post around a mere three days after I started the game and tomorrow will be around three months from when I started playing from July 6, 2018. In the past few months, I’ve learnt quite a few things which I’ll be writing about today.

If you don’t already know about the game osu! you can check the post I wrote in July. Basically, I just touched on the basics of the game and what my thoughts at the time. Back then, I was extremely new to the game and was really bad. In osu! there’s a ranking system and each player has their own number. When you start the game (at the time of this post) you’d be around rank 2-3 million. Currently, as of now, I am rank 148338 globally and rank 6171 in Canada. It’s pretty easy to get out of the seven-digit ranks. However, once you start getting to around the high six-digit ranks where I am, it’s pretty hard to climb up or even maintain your rank if you don’t play often. I only play on weekends, but I think that’s what makes me want to play the game. I can still enjoy the game and have fun, but I can also see my rank go back to what it used to be last weekend or even higher than that.

Generally, I’d say rank is a decent way of getting the grasp of a player’s skill, but it’s not always reliable. The way the ranking system works is based on how much “pp” or performance points you have. The current number one player in the world right now has around 14400 pp compared to myself having only 1800.

Performance points are awarded for playing maps and the amount you get from a single map is based on the difficulty of the map, how well you played it, and the mods used when playing the map. This would seem pretty fair considering harder songs gives you more pp, but there are some maps that are so-called “pp farming” maps. Pp farming maps are maps that usually give you more pp than they feel like they should. Most of the times they’re around one minute in length, but there are exceptions. You could play a one minute map really easily and get the same amount of pp as a more difficult longer map. Of course, everyone could be playing these pp farming maps, but they’re generally looked down upon in the community since the people that play them usually just want to get higher ranks. Personally, my top four pp plays are all pp farming maps which I’m particularly proud of. I generally try to stay away from these types of maps, but sometimes I don’t really have the time or feel like playing, so I’ll play a pp farming map. I’d pretty much be done for the week as far as maintaining my rank goes. Other time’s I might just really like the song so I’ll play it and it turns out to be a pp farming map.

That’s why you can’t always trust the rank as a measure of skill. There could be some really skilled player that doesn’t really play that much and has a low rank, and there could be a really bad player that just pp farms all day. I’d say that I myself am pretty inconsistent since I don’t play every day my aim feels different each week. I have trouble FCing (Full Comboing) maps, but I can occasionally pull out a good play every now and then. I’d like to see how using a tablet may affect my play since the computer I use when I’m not gaming has a lower sensitivity than my gaming computer. If I used a tablet that I’d only use for osu! it’d be consistent whenever I go back. For now, I’m still deciding whether or not I’d like to purchase one. Other than consistency issues, my streams (streams of single notes to be tapped in rapid succession) are quite bad as well as my jumps (notes far apart from each other). Pretty much I’m still bad at the game and have a lot to improve on.

For now, my goal for myself is to get to at least rank 99999 without playing too many pp farming maps by the end of this year. This would make me five-digits in rank and hopefully by then I’ll have improve overall.

Yesterday was the release of the v6.00 patch which includes a new Battle Pass that goes along with Season 6 as well as some patch notes. First I’ll start off with the new Battle Pass and the Season 6 changes. I still haven’t played myself so I’ll just be writing on what I’ve read and seen from videos.

The Battle Pass this season doesn’t look too great in my opinion and I can’t really see a theme. The first tier 1 skin “DJ Yonder” looks kind of strange because of the large llama head which I’m interested in how the hitbox for that will work. The second tier 1 skin “Calamity” is one of those skins that have more customizable versions the more experience you gain. In my opinion, the 5th tier looks better than the maxed out one with the lights. The tier 23 skin “Giddy-Up” also looks like another strange skin with a person wearing a Halloween costume making it look like they’re riding a llama. I’m also curious about how the hitboxes will work with this skin as well. The “Fable” skin on tier 47 is my favourite skin from this Battle Pass although it kind of just looks like another normal skin that you might find in the item shop. The tier 71 skin “Dusk” also seems like your average skin. The “Nightshade” skin at tier 86 looks really strange with a seemingly normal skin wearing a smiling tomato head. The tier 100 skin “Dire” in my opinion is really boring for a tier 100 skin. After stage 3 it seems like the colours change going on and that’s about it. Moving on from skins, the gliders, contrails, and pickaxes all seem about average for a Battle Pass.

With the Season 6, they’ve added a new cosmetic item called pets which ride in a backpack with you. There seem to be three types of dogs, three types of dragons, and a chameleon. In my opinion, I feel like Epic Games should stop adding more cosmetic items. I get that as a free game cosmetics are how they make money, but now the trend of Fortnite is starting to die out. That’s why I feel like they should try and balance the gameplay mechanics more so that people like me who just want to play the game are more interested in playing.

Starting to get into the gameplay, there haven’t been too many changes to the map in terms of new locations. In Loot Lake, the middle house is now a floating island. In the patch notes, there’s supposedly corrupted areas, corn fields, and a haunted castle although I can’t say where they are on the map. Since I haven’t gone in-game yet it’s hard for me to mention all the new changes to the map.

New Shadow Stones have been added which make you invisible when standing still and slightly more visible when moving. You are unable to use weapons, but you have increased movement speeds in general as well as reduced fall damage capabilities. You can “Phase” which propels you forwards as well as through objects in the direction you’re facing. The effect of the Shadow Stones lasts 45 seconds but can be deactivated by holding down right click.

Impulse Grenades, the Suppressed SMG, the LMG, Bouncers, and C4 (Remote Explosives) have all been vaulted, but these five items can still be accessed through the Playground mode. The Grappler was tweaked in the way its momentum was affected by moving objects, as well as the number of shots you get, was reduced to 10 from 15. The Double Barrel shotgun’s damage was also reduced by around 30 from 143 and  150 which doesn’t seem like a lot but makes it a lot less viable than it was before. Dual Pistol drop rates were reduced down to 0.88% and that’s about it for weapon changes.

There were also some changes to the storm circles in terms of shrink and wait time, but that’s it for this patch (v6.00). I’ll check it out and play for a while to experience the new things, but from what my friends tell me it’s not so great. However, my expectations were never high for the game after the past few months anyway.

There are a few reasons why I don’t really play Fortnite Battle Royal as often as I used to. There are mainly two reasons, but one reason is just that of school. The other reason is due to the content that the developers have been adding to the game for the past few months.

I feel like the issue started sometime between early and mid-July when the double shotguns were removed. Back then there were already previous nerfs to the use of more than one shotgun, such as changing their pullout times. It depends on who you ask, but if you’re asking me, I’d say that the CQB META’s were pretty stable. The use of two shotguns wasn’t extremely overpowered due to the nerfs, which also made the shotgun and SMG  combo a viable tactic. One used slow amounts of high damage outputs, while the other was more of constant small amounts of damage. However, there was a nerf to all shotguns which made the delay of switching from one shotgun to another a lot longer (at least an entire second) which made having more than one shotgun useless. Forcing every player to switch to using SMGs, the number of options you had for CQB became limiting if you wanted to stand in the ring. There were a few new “META”s that people came up with, but they were never really consistent and a shotgun with an SMG still seems like the way to go as of now. Around early August the double barrel was introduced, but it wasn’t too impactful. After some balancing, it’s now something that could be used depending on a players preference and play style.

Moving on from the shotguns, around a week ago, the grappler and suppressed AR were added. I don’t really have anything against the suppressed AR, but the grappler doesn’t really seem to fit the game in my opinion. Some people may get confused when I say this item is “bad” because when I say it’s bad I mean it’s bad for the game. In terms of it’s use the grappler is extremely overpowered. It can be used to disengage from a fight, get really close to your opponent, gain the high ground, and travel from buildings all in around a second. If you spotted someone and you had a double barrel shotgun with a grappler, you could jump right next to them. All you have to do is click twice and the fight would be over. If you made a mistake in your building and fell a few floors. All you have to do is shoot your grappler and your back in the fight. If you didn’t have the grappler you would’ve had the low ground or just fallen to your death because of your own mistakes (as it should be). Although you can only use it 15 times before it’s destroyed, it still feels overpowered to me. And it’s not like I’m always getting destroyed by people with grapplers, but it’s the other way around. Sometimes it just feels to easy and “wrong” to be using the grappler. There are times when my enemies don’t even have a chance unless they can hear the grappler, but by that time it’ll probably be too late. In my opinion, the grappler should be vaulted (removed) as soon as possible or at least tweaked to make it more balanced. Something like a slower retraction speed after you’ve attached to something.

The last notable thing, in my opinion, is the Season 5 events. The rifts at the start were alright as a way for people to get around faster, and then there were the golf carts. Both of which ended up getting temporarily removed for bug fixing. After that were the many changes to the map, Lazy Links and Paradise Palms made sense as they fitted in with the modern aesthetic of the map. However, there were changes to one of the large mountains that used to have a house which now has a Viking style village on it with a waterfall which was kind of out of the blue. Towards the end of the season, they changed Tomato Town into Tomato Temple making it into a sort of ancient shrine which doesn’t make any sense to a player who’s not following with the story. A player not following the story would be me. As someone who just wanted to play the game, there were all of these theories about cracks in the sky, the Tomato Head, the Cube moving around the map, and all these things that just randomly start appearing in the game. Last season there was the rocket launch that transitioned into Season 5 along with a new villain lair, but not really anything that changed gameplay or the map. However, this season there seems like way too much going on that’s out of place with all the time travel and a random cube with markings on it moving around the map. Nothing really foreshadowed this in my opinion, unlike last season where the battle pass skins were themed around superheroes and villains. I don’t really know, but this season just doesn’t really sit well with me.

Overall, I think I’ll still play the game like I’ve always had, just never as often or with the same enjoyment as I used to have. I have my interests still in CS:GO and osu! is getting a lot more fun with harder maps.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Guitar Pro (7.5) to write a fingerstyle guitar arrangement with the help of my music teacher on the song W:Wonder Tale. This week I’ll be writing about my experience with the program and kind of how it works.

First of all, I believe that this is a great program with lots of things to learn. Even now, I still don’t know a lot of things the program can do or what all the different buttons are for. However, I have a pretty good understanding of the writing part for guitar. At first, I was having trouble even adding measures, but I eventually got it. The way you input notes is pretty simple (at least for the tablature).

I input the notes through the tablature instead of the actual staves where you would read A,B,C, etc. With the tablature, you can just input the fret number on a certain string and it’ll automatically fill in the note in both the tablature and staves. You can also adjust the rhythm of the notes either from the side or the plus and minus keys.

There are a lot of specifications to notes you can choose, whether or not it’s dotted, a set of notes should be plucked at once or arpeggiated, tied, and lots more. I think it’s good to watch some videos on the basic functions, but afterwards, you can kind of just open a new file and mess around with settings and try things out. That was how I learned most of the things I use although there were some things that I had to look up. However, I haven’t experienced any technical issues yet.

One thing I found a bit troublesome, at least for me, was the need to specify the duration of each note. I understand that it’s necessary to be read correctly and for the program to play it, but you have to select the note and then manually adjust it using the plus/minus key or by clicking since there are no individual shortcuts for quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.

Overall I think that Guitar Pro is a great program. It is around $70 USD though, but there’s a free 30-day trial which you can use to see if you like the program.

This week I started going back to school after the summer break ended which I wasn’t really looking forward to. My class isn’t too bad and the teacher is better than the only other grade 8 teacher this year in my opinion. So far we haven’t really done much in class and we’ve just been doing “icebreaker” activities for the past few days even though pretty much all of us already know each other since this is our last school year at the elementary school. Because of that, I don’t really have anything to write about regarding school so I’ll just write about how my summer went.

At the very start of the summer my brother, mom and I went up to our cottage and stayed there for two nights until we decided it was too hot for us to want to stay any longer. There wasn’t anything, in particular, that was that exciting besides our uncle’s new boat which was a lot more comfortable to ride in compared to our grandfather’s fishing boat.

After the cottage trip, I’d pretty much just stay home and play games or go out every once in a while for a walk. Pretty much by the end of the summer, the only games I really played were osu! and Counter Strike since Fortnite was at the point of adding so many new things I just couldn’t bother myself to keep up with it. In my opinion, Fortnite is slowly losing players and definitely won’t be as popular as it used to be by the end of the month. A lot of my friends also have kind of the same general opinion on the game and haven’t really been playing it as much. I don’t think I’ll stop playing, but I won’t be playing it as much as I used to. osu! has been pretty fun for me and I have seen some definite improvement in myself since I started playing at the beginning of summer. I’m also trying to get back into Counter Strike, but with school starting, I don’t think I’ll be able to play as much as I’d like.

For the last week of the summer break, we had to go to Montreal for one of our uncles’ wedding. We stayed in Pembroke for a few days which was fun and then we went to Montreal closer to where the wedding was. The wedding was pretty good besides the outdoor ceremony which was really hot and the loud music. The food was good and I got to talk with one of my cousins. The day after, we went back home and I had a day to play a little more although it was mostly just osu! so I could maintain my rank since I can’t play between weekends.

Overall, my summer was pretty fun, I didn’t do anything too exciting but I enjoyed my self and had a good time for the most of it. I’m not particularly looking forward too much about school since being in grade 8 has a lot of the high school transition stuff to worry about.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a music theory teacher come over to our house two times a week for music lessons. These music lessons are mostly on the theory since most of the time I just play without actually knowing how the music was made or why it was made the way it was. First, I’ll write about what I’ve learned from the lessons, then I’ll write about what I think about my teacher and the methods of teaching he uses.

So far, most of the things I’ve learned are pretty basic like how to find the key of a song, the different chords, and scales that work in the same key, and how to identify chords on paper. In addition to the note theory, I’ve also learned more about recording music and how to enhance audio to make it sound better in different ways. We haven’t really gotten into anything too complicated though and I’m just experimenting with different effects and tools to see how they change the way the audio sounds.

My teacher, Sean, has done a good job of teaching me how to analyze music in my opinion. He asks me questions to make sure I understand what we’re doing as well as answering any questions I have. He tries not to make things boring and to make sure I’m at least somewhat engaged in something we’re doing. Work to do in between lessons is also given, but it isn’t too much work to do given the amount of time. Depending on how much I know, he tries to keep explanations to my level of understanding which makes things easier for me.

Overall, I feel like these lessons are useful in some way or another without being boring or hard to comprehend. The way things are taught is also engaging since I am able to choose songs I like to work on as well as ask questions.

A few days ago I downloaded a new game called osu! which is free to play and can be downloaded here. It’s a rhythm game where you have to click circles to the rhythm of a song. You could also use your keyboard instead of clicking.

There isn’t much to the game besides clicking/tapping a single circle, click/tap hold and drag, or click/tap hold and spin. Those are the main movements of the game. This way, beatmaps (basically levels) can be mapped in different difficulties. A lot of players use a tablet instead of a mouse since it uses more fine motor skills using a pen. I’ve only been playing for a few days, so I’m not sure whether or not I may want to consider purchasing one. However, it is something I have in mind. osu! is the first rhythm game I’ve played on a computer, but I’ll say that I enjoy it a lot. Since the game has a large community, you can go to their website and find a variety of different songs. Sometimes they might not have a song you’re looking for, but most of the time you can find something enjoyable.

So far, I’m not very good at the game compared to the average player, but it’s been an enjoyable experience from when I started even after seeing players that are way better. Although after seeing a player do better than you might make you feel bad, I feel like in osu! it just shows you that you can always improve. The game is very simple in its core mechanics, but things can get complicated quickly.

I’d recommend this game to anyone that’s looking for a rhythm game to try out or someone who’s looking for new games to play. If you’re interested you can download the game from the osu! website.

This past week there’ve been lots of new items, changes, and the Playground LTM. I’ll be writing about what I think is interesting as well as what I feel will affect my playstyle.

First, I’ll go over the new weapons which are the Stink Bombs, Drum Gun, and Dual Pistols. The Stink Bombs were the first of the three to be added. They’re also the only weapons I’ve gotten a chance to use. They are a type of grenade that when detonated produce a cloud of gas that deals five damage to health every half a second. The cloud lasts for nine seconds which can deal 90 damage to player’s health. Which will either kill them or leave them at low HP. From my personal usage, you can use them to push an opponent out of a 1×1 if they’re trying to heal or you could trap them in your own 1×1 and throw a Stink Bomb to try to kill them.

The Dual Pistols were second after the Stink Bombs. The Dual Pistols are two pistols that use medium ammo and when you click once it shoots twice. Each bullet does a base damage of 41-43 damage depending on the rarity. For comparison, the Legendary SCAR does 36 base damage. There is no first shot accuracy which is kind of the only big downside. If you ask me, I think that these pistols do way too much damage per bullet. If you land two headshots and one body shot you could kill a player with full shield and health in just two clicks.

The Drum Gun looks a lot like older versions of the Thompson which is a real weapon that was made decades ago. It uses medium ammo and can hold 50 bullets in the magazine. The Drum Gun has similar fire rate to an SMG with a base damage of 26-27 depending on the rarity. I feel like this is another weapon that you’ll just pick it up to use a few games and then not use it ever again unless it’s the only gun you have. Compared to even a grey AR which does 30 base damage it’s better for overall use. The only thing I see the Drum Gun going for itself is the fire rate and the magazine size.

All shotguns’ damage to structures was reduced by 50% for the pump and 25% for the tactical and heavy. From my perspective, it will make build fights less fast-paced since you now have to switch to another weapon if you want to break down a wall or ramp fast. If you were using a pump you’d have to use two shots to destroy a wood wall that’d just been placed, but now, you have use four shots instead.

Another big thing to mention is the fact that when you edit a wall or floor you can no longer see through the grey pieces that you click on. This makes seeing people through your walls a lot harder. The “quick editing” to get an accurate shot on a player standing on the other side of a wall will now be harder to do since you can’t really see too well while editing.

These past updates are pretty interesting since lots of new weapons are coming out as well as changes to damage of weapons that are kind of dominating in usage. I think that playing the game after these updates will be different especially with the new editing change.