For those of you living under a rock

Oh, what a busy week it’s been. I’ve got my Dad visiting from Australia at the moment, and as I’ve recently taken up Jiu Jitsu, we’ve been talking a bit about Martial Arts. He’s what you’d call an ‘Old School’ Taekwondo practitioner who learnt in the late 70’s and early 80’s and has apparently been living under a rock ever since.

Back in the day, when Dad was cutting it up, Taekwondo guys actually had the nerve to kick each other. Can you believe that? Sometimes they actually kicked each other pretty hard, as I remember visiting Dad in hospital a few times and one particular grading where somebody got their leg broken. In fact, most of Dad’s stories about Taekwondo usually involve two guys kicking each other until one of them rides home in an Ambulance.

Fast forward twenty-something years later…

The Taekwondo my Dad learned, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to exist any more. At least not anywhere I’ve seen or heard about. The Taekwondo lessons I took as a young ‘un usually had the instructor making us do jumping-jacks (while counting to ten in Korean, just for authenticity) for about five minutes, then he usually said something like this…

“Alright, everybody. Get in line in front of the bag. Do a side-kick, then go to the back of the line.”

…in a listless, monotone drawl. Every class had us standing in line, doing one of the five ‘basic’ kicks – front kick, side kick, roundhouse, back kick and spinning heel kick – on a bag, then moving to the back of the line. I was not an athletic kid by any stretch of the imagination, but as long as Dad’s cheques didn’t bounce, they kept bumping me up the belts.

The look on his face when I told him what his beloved Taekwondo had devolved into was truly heartbreaking. His next disappointment came when I explained how the first UFC came about and how Royce Gracie bulldozed his way through ‘traditional’ stylists using the then-little-known style of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. “What?” Dad exclaimed. “Surely he couldn’t beat a Taekwondo guy?!”

Especially a Taekwondo guy. As cool as the Axe Kick may be, it’s damn near impossible to pull it off when you’re on the ground with a Brazilian guy working one of your arms with two legs, his back and two of his arms.

Because he’d never seen Brazilian Jiu Jitsu – and because I thought it’d be cool to show him what I did with my weeknights – I took him along to class. After he was done showing my instructor the scars on his knuckles and telling his best Taekwondo war stories, he had to admit he was impressed by the art and the particular school I go to.

In other business, I’ve started work on the grappling dummy I mentioned earlier. At the moment, I’m just hoarding PVC pipe like they’re going to stop making it and buying a whole bunch of tools I’ll probably never use. Last week, I made two of the ‘leg-bones’ by cutting some PVC to length, drilling a few holes and fixing the ‘hip’ and ‘calf’ bones together with mending plates and bolts.

I apologize for not taking any photographs, but to be honest, I got caught up in the excitement of it all. I promise I will when I make the ‘arm-bones’, which – for all intents and purposes – are made the same way as the legs. I’ve been searching for that ever-elusive service cable (that I hear is hellishly expensive), but so far, I haven’t come up with squat. The search continues…

…And now for something completely different

I’m still riding the tail-end of my latest infection so unfortunately, I’ve got nothing clever or interesting to say about Jiu Jitsu. Even less so than usual. However, in the name of doing something constructive with my time, this one’s for all you fellow guitar-slingers out there. Just a few of the weird and wonderful exercises I’ve been fooling around with for the last few months.

It’d be interesting to know how many Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys also play guitar, or vice versa. Aside from Eddie Bravo, the only one I can think of is Herman Li (Dragonforce). I’ve got no idea what he does with all that hair when he’s on the mat, but if he can blast a flurry of 32nd notes as he does a backflip on a trampoline, lands on his knees and chugs a beer without missing a beat, I’m sure it’s all in a days’ work. So, without any further ado and just for a little something different…

JON’S FREAKY-DEAKY DIMINISHED SCALE MAGIC BAG OF TRICKS

You’ve just got to love the Diminished Scale… or as I affectionately call it, the Cannibal Corpse Scale. Find a Cannibal Corpse song that doesn’t use the Diminished Scale in some way, shape or form and I’ll buy you a steak dinner. Aside from the Whole-Tone (Augmented) scale which also gets a lot of play in their catalogue, what possible motivation would a bloodthirsty Death Metal band have for using the Diminished Scale?

For one thing, both the Augmented and Diminished scales are artificial ’synthetic’ scales with no true tonal centre, built by stacking intervals in the same pattern over the octave. The Diminished inparticular (besides the Phrygian Dominant, Japanese Pentatonic and the Hungarian Minor, but that’s just a personal opinion) is one of the creepiest scales known to man. If you’re looking to make music that’d get you burnt at stake in the Middle Ages, the Diminished is the way to go!

For the purposes of creating mindless, finger-building exercises, I love the Diminished Scale. Besides the creepiness, it’s one of the few scales you can move around chromatically to your heart’s content… and it’ll 0still sound cool! In fact, if you get some of these exercises going at a decent pace, you’ve got the soundtrack to a nightmare… of H.P. Lovecraft*… while he’s tripping his balls off on Robitussin, Crack and whatever expired medicine he found in the cabinet.

Obnoxious Tapping Lick

-(t)–p—p–p–h–p–t—p–p–p–h–p———————-

–11–8–7–5–8–5–11–8–7–5–8–5———————

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t = Right Hand Tap

p = Pull-Off

h = Hammer-On

This quintuplet tapping lick is, among other things, the lazy man’s way of of creating a quintuplet lick without going crazy picking in uncomfortable rhythms or busting out the calculator. If you nail the 11th fret tap on the quarter or eighth-note beat and keep it even, the lick practically plays itself! From there, just move the whole thing up a fret (12-9-8-6-9), then another and another until your heart’s content.

Just to get the hang of moving around the fretboard, I like to go in ‘circles’, by tapping 11-12-13-12 over and over and letting the rest of the lick flow. It’s one of those licks that’ll (hopefully) sound cool anywhere on the fretboard on any string, but I’ve done it from 5th position B string (the notes are E, F#, G and Bb) for the sake of convenience.

Obnoxious Sweep-Picking Lick #1

Picking Pattern:

d    d    d     u    d    d    d    u    d    u    u    u    d    u    u   u

——————-5–8–8–5——————————–

—————-7————–7—————————–

——-5–8–5——————–5–8–5——————–

—-7————————————–7—————–

-9——————————————–9————–

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d = Downstroke

u = Upstroke

Basic sweep-picking usually involves just going up or down (with the occasional hammer or tap for a flourish), but this one’s got a little bit of a twist in the middle. The most important thing (which took me forever to nail) in this one is the ’switch-up’ in on the G-String, where you’re playing the 5 and 8 with alternate picking, then a downstroke on the 5 again that follows through to the E string. Once you get to upstroke on the 8th fret E-String, it’s the whole thing in reverse again.

I stumbled across this one almost by accident, as I was trying to come up with a Diminished version of some basic five-string Major and Minor triad arpeggios. Originally, it didn’t have the switch-up in the middle, but rather a crude hammer-on from the 5 to the 8 on the G string. This meant that not only did I have to pause for a split second between the G and B, but the whole arpeggio came out with only seven notes. By adding the switch-up, I kept it flowing with no pauses and coming out with a perfect eight notes.

Not only does this one sound super-creepy if you chromaticize it at mach-speed, but it’s also a bad-ass finger stretch that I’ll sometimes do at half-speed just to get my fingers working and the whole left-hand-right-hand chemistry happening.

Obnoxious Sweep-Picking Lick #2

Picking Pattern:

d    d    d    u     d   u    u    u

——-5–8–7–5——–

—-7————–7—–

-8——————–8–

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Ever notice how most rock guitarists (many of whom should know better) only use three fingers on the left hand? That’s the closest I’m going to get to Seinfeldesque observational humour, but the above is an entry-level diminished lick that uses just those three fingers. It’s pretty basic but like the tapping lick, once you get it rolling at optimum speed, you’ll blow your friends’ minds. For an extra level of difficulty (this time using all four fingers), try it on the D, G and B strings…

Picking Pattern:

d    d    d    u     d   u    u    u

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——-5–8–7–5——–

—-6————–6—–

-8——————–8–

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The trick here is getting both the speed of the sweeped notes and the alternate-picked notes consistent, but once you get it, it’s a great finger-warmer-upper.

Obnoxious Sweep-Picking Lick #3

Picking Pattern:

d    d    d    u    d    d    u    u    d    u    u    u

—————-6–6———————

——-5–8–5——–5–8–5————

—-6————————–6———

-8——————————–8——

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Position-wise, this one’s not unlike the variation of the last example, except that triplets are the order of the day here. For me, the most awkward part was the 8-5-6 (and backwards) on the B and E strings, but it’s just one of those things that takes practice like anything else.

I’d love to unpack the concept of ’switching-up’ in sweep-picking some more for y’all, but it’ll have to wait until another time when I’ve got even less in the way of interesting things to say about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and my lack of skill therein. Until then, any one of these licks (when played over and over again) is a great way of letting your rude, clingy friends that you, in fact, want to be left alone.

If anybody out there knows the ‘proper’ technical name for ’switching-up’, holla back. I’m not so arrogant as to think that I invented it, but I’ve never heard it mentioned any place else.

P.S. If the half-assed attempt at tablature is unreadable, blame the good folks at WordPress. I did the best I could with the tools at my disposal.

* No disrespect at all intended toward the great H.P. Lovecraft. His stories were way ahead of their time and if anybody after Edgar Allen Poe deserves to be called the father of modern horror, it’s Lovecraft. I Am Providence.

Laying down the blueprints for a monster

I cracked. Sue me.

By the time you’ve finished reading this, I will have smoked a few more coffin-nails, as I have come off the patch. And here’s why. It makes me look cool, it makes me feel like a big man and if you can recommend anything else that snaps me out of a panic attack like a cigarette, I’m all ears. Until then, I’m smoking like a crematorium.

But it’s not all bad news, folks. Just out of curiousity, have you ever had this conversation with a training partner?

You: Hey, dude! Would you be so kind as to lie prostrate on the mat for about three or four hours while I perform a thousand armbars on you?

Other Person: Well, I would… but nah. I’ve actually got a life.

One of my instructors often mentions a piece of advice given to him by none other than John Will (my Chief Instructor’s Instructor… I’d list his credentials, but I really don’t have the bandwidth), which was a perscription of a thousand armbars a day.

Don’t get me wrong… a thousand armbars a day will get your technique down and you’ll be throwing them like nobody’s business. But the logistics are a little problematic. Especially for a guy like me. I’ve finally come to the realization that four hours of Jiu Jitsu (plus maybe a couple for sparring, depending on how masochistic I’m feeling on a given week) just aren’t cutting it.

Perhaps when I’ve spent a little more time at the school and gotten to know the folks (for the record, everybody there is really cool, which helps the process immensely) a little better, I might be able to persuade one of them to play ‘grappling dummy’ for extended periods. But until then, I’ve either got to (a) develop social skills that have been thusfar nonexistent, (b) use bribery and corruption, which I really can’t afford or (c)…

…build myself a grappling dummy.

Bugger it. I think I’m gonna do it. Good old-fashioned Kiwi DIY ethic is the way to go on this one. I’ve done a little reading and uncovered these fairly comprehensive websites…

How To Make An “El Jefe” Grappling Dummy

Grappling Dummy

What I’ve got in mind is somewhat of a hybrid of the two, with the spine, shoulders and hips of El Jefe and the knee and elbow joints of the other one. Needless to say, I’m going to need a lot of help putting it together, but fortunately, my Stepfather has a MacGyver complex. With a Swiss Army knife, a roll of duct tape and a little trial and error, this thing will (hopefully) come together.

I know what you’re thinking. A grappling dummy is no substitute for a real, live training partner. You are, of course, correct. But a real life partner won’t stand motionless in my closet, waiting for me to pull him out at some ungodly hour to practice my armbars until the break of dawn. At least not without some sort of financial incentive that I probably couldn’t afford.

Although I’m no Jimi Hendrix, I’m a competent guitar player. I can throw down on the fretboard without embarrassing myself. It took many years, but I got there by lots and lots of repetition. In the beginning, I never put the damn thing down. Ten hour days on the fretboard were the norm for me. In fact, it took many years just to get a handle on the seemingly simple yet intricate technique that is sweep-picking.

If I’d only had four hours a week in which to cram it all, I’d probably still be struggling with palm-muted downstrokes and hoping that some day I’d be able to pull of any of the riffs from Metallica’s ‘One’. I’m trying to apply the same approach to Jiu Jitsu that I took to learning guitar, but realistically, there’s only so much one can do in four hours a week. Drilling moves with a grappling dummy would be a lot like practicing scales, chord voicings and essential techniques and best of all, I’d be able to do it ’til my eyes bleed.

I’ll start picking up some parts from the hardware store, hopefully on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to take some photos of the process and whack ‘em up here. This is gonna be fun.