Jack Of Arts

March 1, 2011 Tuesday. Ironstone East Ouigab

Practice is going much better than Tayaw expected. He realized throughout the process that he having great experience with the guitar supplemented his mastery of his perfect pitch. He has already memorized all the sounds of all the notes he can play in each string of the guitar. There are a total of 49 different notes after considering redundant notes, and with the 144 frets on his guitar, he can give those notes different tone qualities to his choice. With this, he can easily replicate a melody with his guitar. Over the last month, he also memorized the sounds of the guitar chords he know and how they relate on specific frets of the guitar. This resulted in him able to figure out the chords patterns in a song and just play the chords in first try. With this newly acquired knowledge, he was able to come up with melodies in his mind and transcribe them in his guitar into riffs blended with chords.

He also had fun improvising solo intermissions on songs. He would play a song on the speakers and would mute the vocals on different parts of the songs while he improvises on them. He would go a level higher by muting whole parts and improvise on them like what jazz guitarists do; chord soloing.

The only limit he found for now is that he has not yet mastered how to transition his fingers to other frets he rearely played despite him being able to translate his ideas on the guitar. HE basically knows which frets he would press; his fingers would just not catch up with his brain. If comparing it to typing on the keyboard, he still has not yet typed a lot of words so he would not be able to type them smoothly on first try.

It's still not perfect, it's still in standard tuning, and he's just beginning, but Tayaw is already satisfied that with this level; he can be a traveling musician and can be a lead guitarist in a band.

He also started feeling something strange while on the process of coming up with his own riffs and guitar solo patterns. At times when he would come up with a good melody and play it on the guitar, his body would feel a tad bit lighter, his brain would feel tad bit clearer, and his senses would feel a tad bit stronger; and with the acc.u.mulation of his original riffs and melodies over the past month, he felt himself a tad bit stronger, a tad bit smarter, and a tad bit more sensitive. He also noticed that from his usual 8 hour sleep, he can now only sleep 6 hours and a half to feel fully refreshed.

He felt a little scared the first time he felt the enhancements in his body. However after a full body health checkup that includes a doctor's assessment, various MRI and CT scans in various parts of his body, and blood and urine tests; it concluded that he's almost as healthy as an Olympic boxer. He felt relieved and started becoming obsessed with coming up with his own stuff in the guitar.

The enhancements, however does not come by easy. He does not feel enhanced by each melody and guitar riffs he comes up with, but it has to meet a certain standard to be rewarded. If he could count, out of the more than fifty original melodies he played, he could count at most seven that reached the standard, therefore only seven enhancements so far. The seventh enhancement only came the previous night when he made a melody that improved a certain popular song's verse melody.

After getting up from his bed, he quickly washed his face and brushed his teeth and changed to a matching black hoodie and sweatpants. He drove to central East Ouigab to test his most recent enhancement. Arriving at the gym, he checked his height and weight which measured 181cm and 75kg respectively. He sighed at his height. Even though he's taller than the average male Teungebian height of 174cm, he would be a little bit more satisfied to reach 183 to be a six-foot man.

He did a few stretches and headed for the treadmill to test his running stamina. He gradually started slow and then maintained 18km/h level for half an hour before he stopped out of exhaustion. He basically ran almost as well as professional athletes. Tayaw never trained intensively and before he got his perfect pitch, he only ran 10 km twice a week that he finishes in 45 minutes. But now, he basically ran almost 10 km in only 30 minutes.

After a few minutes of rest, he went to the bench press and pressed a maximum of 100kg, a feat he never imagined before. He never had any weight training but after the enhancements, he reached this achievement.

After the gym, he went to a nearby ATM machine. After his last roulette roll, his View Points refilled to 9.1 Million View Points. In the whole month of February, Tayaw's Grimm's Fairy Tales Volume 1 sold a total of 4.3 million copies worldwide that netted him 10,850,000BGC (5.42M USD) in gross income. Adding to his prior savings, his bank account currently has 21,000,000BGC (10.5 M USD) in it.

This amount really made Tayaw rethink his plans. Should he still go to school? What's the use of an education with him already set for life with his current riches? He already acquainted with the future Percussive Corrections too so there's no need staying in engineering school. On the other hand, aside from practicing, he is very limited in his activities for the next 7 months until he turns 18.

He drove home after the gym for a quick shower and breakfast. He took a morning nap and continued to lock himself in his studio to continue practicing until the evening. Before going to bed, he opened his phone and started writing a text message.

"Good evening. Please meet me at the second floor of Grillque Restaurant near the campus on Friday at 11am. I have an opportunity to talk about with you. This is not multi-level marketing, but a personal opportunity from me. Lunch is on me." Tayaw typed and sent it to 6 people.

March 4, 2011 11:15 AM

"Where the hell is he?" Jenna complained after sending Tayaw her third text since 11AM. She felt out of place amongst the five guys who are sharing the table with her. "He did text you that he's on his way, right?" Bay-an who is next to her replied while browsing the restaurant's menu. "Yo. He said it's his treat, right? I didn't know he was loaded." Ike said. "He has his own pick-up truck and told me he made some money in his gig." Jenna told the group. "Oh. Now that I think about it, I play the sax, Bay-an here plays the piano, and Ike plays the drums. He probably wants to form a band." Ramil said as he snapped his fingers. "That might be true. I play bass." Inson told the group. "I played lead guitar in my high school band. Jenna, I didn't know you played an instrument." Hoon who is classmates with Jenna in Engineering Drawing, said.

"I didn't know you also play the guitar. I play the violin. It looks like he really is gathering us for a band. I think he was already planning this. One time he picked me up from the bus station last January, he was asking how well my skills are in the violin and if I sang." Jenna said to Hoon. "Picked you up? Are you two dating?" Hoon asked. "No. But we're really good friends. I know his type too. Hehehe." Jenna chuckled, recalling the times she saw Tayaw check out ladies. One was at school, Tayaw checked out a senior student with well-endowed bosoms. The other time was in ROH Factory when Tayaw's eyes were following a s.e.xy customer's h.i.p.s and bottom.

"Hey. Wait a minute. Maybe that's not it. Ike, what are you studying?" Bay-an who put down the menu suddenly said. "Mechanical Engineering. Why?" Ike replied. "Look. I asked because I've never seen you before. The others here, I've seen them before because we are all studying Civil Engineering. Now that you said you're also studying engineering, I just realized something. Why is Tayaw gathering engineering students?" Bay-an asked the group.

"Maybe because of convenience, and that I've all met you already before." Tayaw replied suddenly appearing from behind Ike. "Tayaw! Where have you been?!" Jenna asked in dissatisfaction. "What? I'm only fifteen minutes late. My prior appointment took longer than I expected. Have you all ordered already?" Tayaw asked the group. "Not yet. If you stood us up, we can't afford to pay what we ordered." Hoon said. "Let's order first before we talk. I haven't had breakfast yet." Tayaw chuckled. Hoon's words are true. Grillque Restaurant is very expensive for a student's budget.

After the group was done with their lunch, Tayaw suddenly said "Let's order desert." "Hey, can you afford it?" Jenna asked in nervousness. "Don't worry. By the way, are you all going to enroll for the coming semester?" Tayaw asked the group as he nodded at a server. "Yes" was their collective response. After giving the server their desert orders, Tayaw asked "Why don't you all enroll together? Be classmates or something? Ike can also enroll to match you five's schedules." This puzzled the group. "It's a good idea because we've already acquainted with each other today. But, Why?" Ike asked Tayaw the group's question. "By the way, why are you saying 'you all' instead of 'us'?" Jenna followed up.

"Oh. I'm quitting school." Tayaw said coolly. "What?! Why?" Jenna asked in surprise. "I'll talk to you about that later. Anyway. The opportunity I'm talking about involves you all, and me, as a group, and having the same schedules would make everything easier." Tayaw said to Ike. "Are you forming a band?" Inson asked. "Or a start-up?" Bay-an followed up. "A band." Tayaw said simply. While they already had inkling about it, the group was still surprised. "But we're amateurs though?" Hoon said, unsure of the idea. "That's true. Jenna said earlier that you make good money from gigs. So I think you're forming a band to join you. I don't think I'm good enough for that." Bay-an said. "Even if we are all good, can we earn enough?" Ramil also asked skeptically.

"You all raise good points. To answer your question Bay-an, we won't be having gigs, at least not yet. If you all join, we'll start practicing. And Ramil, don't worry. I will pay you all for the practices." Tayaw said which silenced the group.

"Ooh. That was quick. Thank you." Tayaw said as he thanked the server who brought their deserts. "Everyone. Let's finish our desert, and I'll tell you more of the details later." Tayaw said suppressing the questions for now.