Rocafuerte Reassembled!

Quick post here - I'm very happy to announce that Rocafuerte has found a new drummer! We welcome Ricardo Villarroel to the family, expecting some fantastic beats and creative energy for our existing and upcoming material. I would post a picture, but we haven't taken one yet.  We're working hard to bring him up to speed on our album tracks so that we can play some shows for the tail end of the summer and the start of fall. We should have something photo-wise before then, which I'll post in kind.

In other news, my birthday's coming (Wednesday, in fact) and I'm getting older. End of story. I feel like I'm doing pretty well on finishing video games (9 out of 20 for the year so far) but I need to knock some out in rapid succession. It's been too hot lately to play games; quite frankly I find myself sweating mildly while doing anything in the apartment, but especially while playing games and guitar. I also went to see Vernon Reid play at City Winery (near the Holland Tunnel) on 7/12 -- phenomenal show! It's always a pleasure to see him play and I just learned that he's got solo albums dating from the 90's. I must get them soon and add them to my rotation. I started this blog because watching guys like him play on stage motivate me to improve and I can't help but reiterate that fact. Every time I see a concert with such high caliber guitarists I feel the urge to learn something new or work on playing faster. Life always seems to get in the way of realizing those urges, though.

This week I will receive the final disc in the Rhapsody of Fire "Symphony of Enchanted Lands" saga, entitled From Chaos to Eternity. Their recent albums have been really great and I'm looking forward to the epic ending of this 8-album and 2-EP long story. I'm hoping for an excellent production and some crazy riffs and solos to get my head banging. I'll have more on that for my next post (promise!).

Meager updating

Work is hectic. Sleep schedule is screwed up. I managed to fit some cool things into my schedule, though. I did manage to meet Vernon Reid from Living Colour (see last year's Central Park blog post!) at a jazz club last week. We had a chat about several musically related things and I have learned much from the wise guitarist. I hope to present some of these new ideas in future blog posts and videos... I have been seriously negligent on making videos. For now, though, a picture:

I've been listening to a lot of Rhapsody of Fire this month; I caught up on their newer albums because they're finishing up the concept they began with way back in the 90's, 10 albums (!) ago. I can't get enough of their style of writing and Luca Turilli is a monster on guitar. If you like high fantasy and old school battle hymn style speed metal, definitely give it a try.

I bought a Nintendo 3DS on launch day, March 27th. You've got to see it to believe it, but you will probably either come off amazed or unimpressed. The 3D effect is really cool and I hope that the platform matures quickly. I'll probably have more info on that later.

Off I go then, off to work. April shall see an update early! I promise!

Another new year arrives...

2011 is here! Happy new year to you, my reader. I hope that, as everyone usually says, the new year brings new opportunities for greatness and success for you. I also hope that I may achieve some greatness and success myself while achieving some (make that many) goals I have set for myself. Before I look to the future, I would like to share a little bit of the past.

December 19, 2010 marks the release date of Rocafuerte's album, entitled Vuelo Letal. It consists of 8 tracks that the guys and I have worked on since the creation of the band. The album is available in a limited run disc format (only 300 copies right now, selling fast) and in MP3 format. The disc is available by request for only $5 (contact me or visit Rocafuerte's website or Facebook page for details) and at least the following music vendors:

• iTunes
• Amazon MP3
• Zune
• cdbaby
• DigStation

During the same weekend I recorded some guitar for a Michael Jackson tribute track sung by my cousin E.R.I.C. The song sports a pop/R&B flavor and I throw in some bluesy licks and a rocked-out solo to color it further! The video for the song Crazy Love has been released and is available on YouTube. The EP, "GROOVE" will release March 2011.

The future holds quite a few things for me. Rocafuerte is searching for a new drummer as our original drummer had to part ways to pursue his career. I hope to play many shows to raise awareness of our new album. I will also be practicing heavily this year to improve on my technique and learn jazz guitar method. I also have quite a large and much-desired task of learning much of G.F. Handel's Messiah in time for this year's Christmas season. Non-musically, I will be learning UNIX and Linux while refreshing and improving my database administration skills.

Here's to a prosperous 2011 for all!

Awaiting the Rocafuerte album release

It's December, and as promised, the Rocafuerte album, titled "Vuelo Letal" (Lethal Flight) will be released in the coming weeks. The master has been created and sent off for duplication. We're also working on getting the online distribution set up and generating some buzz about the album on Facebook and Twitter. If you're on Facebook, "like" the band Rocafuerte (found at this link) and if you're a Tweeter you can follow RocafuerteMusic. Once everything is finalized and ready for release, I'll drop the album art and ways to purchase or stream the music!

For the time being, you can find the first single off our album entitled "Pensando En Ti" (Thinking of You) on our Facebook page (http://listn.to/RocafuerteMusica takes you directly there) or the band's website. You can stream the song off the web site by clicking "Escucha A Rocafuerte" in the lower left of the main page. Share the song with friends and family!

A sad bit of band related news comes in the form of the departure of our drummer. He's gone off to Maryland to pursue his career in chemical engineering, a field in which he's worked hard to obtain a PhD. We wish him well and much success. We are in the search for a new drummer and hope to make that a quick and easy process. Finding a suitable drummer never is quick or easy, though.

This month is proving to be a very busy one. I have some other things I'd like to share but it's just not the proper time yet. Until next time!

A November Update

October has been a very busy month. Rocafuerte finished mixing the album and moved on to mastering. Currently, the mastering process is just about finished and our release bracket of mid-December 2010 is still in place. I've been doing a lot of overtime at work. Games are movies are piling up at home. I had the sudden urge to finance a PC upgrade because Final Fantasy XIV ran terribly on the configuration. As of now, my PC upgrade is complete and everything runs ultra-smoothly on it. I yelled like a mad man when I saw FFXIV going between 40 and 60 frames per second (smooth-city baby), so you could say I'm pleased. I spent just over $300 on a new motherboard, a memory upgrade and a larger and faster hard drive along with a newer model DVD drive. With any luck, I will recoup those costs by putting all of my old equipment into another case and selling that!

For the past 2 weeks I've been listening to reference versions of the Rocafuerte masters and everything is coming together really well. I can't really say much because I want the experience for all listeners to be fresh, but I will say that it sounds absolutely amazing. We should be starting the replication process just after Thanksgiving.

In other news, I'm working on building a low-power, low-cost computer to practice some database management and improve my knowledge of UNIX (via FreeBSD) so that I can expand my career knowledge and make some crazy money (not by driving a crazy taxi) in the near future.

Ahh this probably sounds boring. I'll have more exciting news once the album is released!

Recent Musical Reflections...

My Zune's Car Pack (the car-lighter adapter plus RF transmitter) died on me a few weeks ago, so I've been restricted to listening to CDs in the car on my commutes. I used this as an opportunity to put some quality time into some new CDs I purchased over the month of August as well as become more familiar with Judas Priest, a band that I truly feel I have a musical connection with. I've been using my Zune Pass song credits to buy Priest albums (thank goodness they're mostly 9-10 songs minus the bonus tracks, which I'm not wholly interested in) and those albums have been subsequently burned to CD-R for my listening pleasure.

In addition to Judas Priest (which really doesn't need any explanation; their music is really good) I have been listening to the new Maiden album, the two recent Disturbed albums (Indestructible and Asylum - released 8/31/10) and Chinese Democracy - you know, that album by Guns n' Roses that is probably still a Best Buy exclusive on disc.

The Rocafuerte Album...

is almost done! The guitars, bass and most of the vocals are done. We need to re-record one song on drums. Next up will be mixing and mastering and I'm hoping that we can release this baby by the end of September.

Our first run will have 8 songs - the songs we have had on tap from the birth of the band. Shortly after we will have a limited run with a bonus track that I will not announce yet! I do promise that it will be chock full of epic, metal goodness.

In other news, I'm currently absolutely obsessed with Dragon Quest 9 for the Nintendo DS. I bought it the week it was released (week of July 11) and have logged 70 + hours in as of today. I'm near the end of the game but there's so much content and so many goals I want to achieve that it will take a crowbar to pry me off this game!

I also bought a couple of new CDs lately. A few weeks ago I bought Nightmare from Avenged Sevenfold, featuring Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater. The songs are very catchy, great to listen to and Mike absolutely kills it on the drums. Today, I bought Iron Maiden's The Final Frontier (Mission Edition). I haven't listened to the whole thing - half the album so far - but it sounds like I will have to get used to it. It's definitely not a commercial effort (nothing immediately catchy so far) but the music so far sounds like it desires attention. I'll try to set some time up to just listen on my earphones to dig the details.

Oh yeah, and I turned 30 last month. Yay for me!

Here's to hoping I can update sooner!

Living Colour @ Central Park SummerStage 6/5/10

It was a bit of a rough day for me but I ventured out to Central Park (first time in a while... I really need to go there more often!) to catch Living Colour play for the SummerStage free show. I was expecting to see hordes of people and not be able to truly experience the flavor that is Vernon Reid and the boys; to my surprise, there were just enough people to be a huge crowd but not so many that I couldn't get close to the stage. I took some pictures and some video of solos and whatnot that I'll post on the blog soon.

Although just being in the environment was amazing, I was absolutely stunned at the quality of Vernon Reid's guitar skills. Guitar Hero 3 fans -- all that crazy mess in the solo of the newly recorded Cult of Personality is but a figment of your imagination until you see him play it in person. That and the other songs that were performed - admittedly, I know nothing of their catalog but am starting to play catch-up as I write this - were really pleasing to the ear. The music was sometimes fast, sometimes groovy, sometimes really low and heavy. The variety really inspired me to continue what I've been doing as of late; some of the new riffs I've been working on have departed from the old derivative metal formula.

UPDATE: Pictures and video are now available!

Living Colour Central Park 6-5-10