Last month I bought a USB MIDI keyboard controller (Edirol PC-50).
I’ve since been transcoding my favourite songs. When I was learning the piano years and years ago, I could easily work out the melodies of tunes, but couldn’t for the life of me work out chords. Now however, I have surprised myself by being able to work out the chords. As a result, I have found myself able to self-learn songs played with both hands, bass and treble :). It’s also been great for beginning to learn the basics of synthesizers. Having it either hooked up to my 5-35000Hz cans or tv with subwoofer, it’s really cool hearing pure synth sounds not in the middle of a song. If I’m going to mess around with making my own synthesized sounds (not using WAVs, that’s easy!!!), I’d have to get a small mixing board. I don’t think I’m ready for that, let alone with my employer’s financial situation at the moment.
As I’ve posted before, Summer Sonic has reawakened my music spirit. Twice in the last 30 days I’ve been to Club Diamond Hall in Shin-Sakae (A 25 min walk away) for various music events. I was invited by Jake, my housemate, the first time for the ‘N2B Festival Mutation’. There were different bands playing for around a 7 hour period, from 7pm. We arrived there at 8pm, and left at around 2am. It was awesome fun, and Jake nearly lost his hearing… The best moment was basically a DJ and two male dancers dressed in tour de france cycling uniforms, that were simply playing popular songs at a slightly higher speed and getting the audience pumped with participation. Every hand gesture they performed, the audience mimicked. Japanese audiences rock. They really get into it. Oasis - Don’t look in anger and Blur - Song 2 went down a treat.
On Tuesday night after work, I went to the same place again; this time for Punkafoolic; a series of punkish bands playing; including two I’ve heard before. Better Luck Next Time were good, but the Mad Caddies were excellent!! A trumpet and trombone in a rock-reggae band is so awesome; Ska is yummy. I was the only foreigner in the crowd, and being in the 3rd row, the lead singer, Chuck, complimented my moustache between some of the songs. I got some video of all the performers I saw.
A memorable moment was turning around from the third row, and seeing a bunch of audience members running/dancing around in a wide circle together (as often happens at these events). There was a little space in the middle, where a single couple were romantically embracing each other. Such a smiley lovely moment 
Olivia The Band were going to play, but due to a family emergency they had to cancel. I met all the band members from Olivia (based in Hawaii), who were all excellent blokes and invited me to perhaps go surfing in Hawaii… Unfortunately I couldn’t meet Better Luck Next Time, as the band members were swamped by their biggest fans…