Jack Of Arts

February 1, 2011 Tuesday.

Tayaw woke up in a white void. "WHOA!" He was scared out of his mind until he saw the gleaming "Arts Records" words in front of him. "Holy sh*t! I thought I died!" Tayaw exclaimed in relief as he calmed down. Since December, he has been ignoring the View Points in his vision whenever it shined after each million points achieved. For example last December 28, while playing with his brothers around Ouigab, the View Points in his vision started gleaming when it reached 2 million.

Today, just like when he was pulled in the white void after he reached 1 million View Points, he realized that his View Points acc.u.mulated to a special figure he could no longer ignore. He was proven right when he saw that the View Points displayed 10 million. He also could not leave the void no matter how much he shouts "I want to get out of here!" so left with no choice, he touched the letters of "Arts Records" to access the giant roulette. The same giant roulette table appeared in front of him, but he noticed a small difference. Below the "Odd" and "Even" choices on the edge of the roulette table, are two 1-meter diameter disc shaped platforms made of silver and gold. He pondered what to do for a while and decided to step on the golden platform and shouted "EVEN!" before he threw the roulette ball into the wheel. As the roulette ball danced, his 10 Million View Points are also quickly reducing. As the Wheel stopped, his View Points emptied to Zero as well. "MY VIEW POINTS!" Tayaw yelled at the board. He was saving those points to roll for 'Works' or 'Skill Sets'.

As if not hearing him, a tile on the table slowly floated up and stood vertically just like the last time. This time however, the white tile changed its color into gold and words appeared on it. "Random Ability x 1". The next second, the letters started morphing again on the tile and affixed them into new word saying "Post-congenital Absolute Pitch" before speedily smashing into Tayaw's head. Tayaw felt a cool breeze followed by a bad throbbing headache comparable to the pain he felt when he first experienced receiving something from the roulette. He felt like it even lasted longer than ever. After he opened his eyes, he finally found himself back in his apartment, the headache gone as if it never happened.

After finding his bearings, he finally felt excited at his newly acquired ability. Judging from the dictionary definition of "Post-congenital Absolute Pitch", he just acquired an Acquired Perfect Pitch. This ability is one that Tayaw only read in history books. Perfect pitch, from what he read is last seen in classical music composers who can identify or play a musical note without a reference note. Tayaw does not read music but in his skill with the guitar, but he has an idea how it works. He headed down to his newly soundproofed, acoustically treated bas.e.m.e.nt studio and went to pick up his guitar. He opened the studio computer and played a random song through the speakers. After hearing a melody, he tried to play it in his guitar but he found the problem. While he can recreate a melody way easier than he used to, he cannot do it in first try; he cannot fully use his perfect pitch. After a few minutes of pondering what the problem was, he finally realized a possible answer.

He realized that absolute pitch is more of a sense than an instinct and should be practiced extensively to be applied. If you ask a person which is the color blue in a chart of colors, they can point to it immediately. If you let a person smell an orange blindfolded, and ask them what they smelled, they will immediately identify it as orange. This is the same with absolute pitch. Compared to Tayaw's other senses, absolute pitch's difference is that one cannot use it without a wide database like how he already has a database of the names of colors in his head. So what he hears a note? Can he name the note? Does he have another sound of the same pitch he can associate the note with? Can he play it on his instrument on first try?

With his question answered, he decided to first have to memorize and name all the notes he can play on the guitar. Even if he does, it's only a start. Just like how a normal person has knowledge of the names of the basic colors like blue, yellow, red, green, orange, and violet; Tayaw also has to know how the note sounds and which octave it belongs to. Just like how a painter knows the shades of violet; Tayaw also has to memorize the sounds and names of the notes that belong to an octave and where on the guitar they are. Just like how a painter knows which colors make up the color green; Tayaw also has to know how to differentiate individual notes that are played together in harmony so that he can reproduce it in the guitar. If he can achieve all of these, he can finally move on the next step: Application.

Performance wise, he can apply his perfect pitch in improvising in stage. Just like how a singer adlibs when doing vocal runs; Tayaw can also improvise when riffing the guitar, only much more accurately, more spontaneously, and with less amounts of practice. If you compare Tayaw's current improvisation skill on the guitar to typing on the keyboard, Tayaw has only mastered using the numbers keypad and basic shortcut keys while looking at the keyboard. But if Tayaw's theory is correct, with enough practice, he can improvise just as easily as typing on the numbers keypad without looking. Given more time, Tayaw can finally master his application of his Perfect Pitch to the guitar, like how a touch typist has mastered all the keys in the keyboard and can type without looking.

People who had not theorized how perfect pitch work would think that perfect pitch can be trained. But as a musician, Tayaw knows it's impossible to memorize sound accurately. He himself only trained his ears to relative perfect pitch. A person with perfect pitch can immediately answer the question "What note is X?" Meanwhile, a person with relative perfect pitch will have to be asked "If this is note Y, then what is note X?" to identify Note X.

"Memorizing notes without a reference note. I can't even begin to imagine how to do that without absolute pitch." Tayaw smiled at himself as he plans how to train his newly acquired ability. He still has a long way of mastering it so he diverted his attention to another matter; his finances. Today is the day Topaz sent him the sales of his books in the month of January and his royalties. Because he already has a good idea on the number of book sales, he immediately logged in to his online banking account to see the transactions.

After a few minutes, Tayaw closed the laptop a few million richer. After the international release of his book in December 15 last year, his books sold a combined 1.1 million copies in December alone. This netted him 2,500,00BGC in royalties after deducting Chala's shares. After the multiple language release that started in New Year's Day, his books sold a combined 3.4 million copies which netted him 8,000,000BGC after deducting Chala's shares. So today, he currently has 10.4 million BGC in his account. (5.2M USD)

He was already rich back in New Year's Day so he registered for two health insurance policies for himself, which is ironic because he's currently healthier than he ever felt. He also owns two life insurance policies with his brothers as beneficiaries. He also offered his parents to pay for the remaining mortgage in the house, which they accepted. With these expenses and still lots of money left, Tayaw does not know where to put his money in. He's still a minor so there are a lot of things he cannot buy or engage in with money without an a.d.u.l.t supervising. For example, buying a house. He could have already bought the house in Ironstone, but his age limited him to. He also does not want to bother his parents to accompany him.

If he knew he would be this rich this early, he could have convinced his parents for emancipation. But now, with only seven months before he turns major, applying for a long process of emancipation is meaningless.

Today is the first official day of the school break. Tayaw is not intending to go back home to Okuba for the whole month and a half break from school. He made an excuse to his parents that he would be busy finalizing the second volume of his book, when in fact, he was already done transcribing and copyrighting it during the exam week when he had nothing left to do. He also gave the manuscript to Chala and started the negotiations with Topaz Publishing. The reason why he wanted the whole school break for himself is to practice his skills freely.

Him being originally a rhythm guitarist has great skills in modifying chords while playing but when it comes to his solo; he could only resort to riffs he practiced and learned from Hoon and other musicians in his previous life. He would start his solo with chords then do riffs, then fill them more with appropriate chords based on the scale to sound fuller. Now that he plays his guitar with the stomp box, his usual solo no longer sounds full enough. He now wants to insert chords in the riffs themselves to make it sound like a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist is playing at the same time. The sound he wants to achieve in his guitar playing would sound more close to blues and jazz guitarists than finger style guitarists.

With his newly acquired sense however, he scratched his initial plan and would start mastering his perfect pitch. This new goal for him would be like hitting two birds with one stone. It would also be a start for his long journey with the guitar. He is only so far familiar with standard tuning and the dropped D tuning. With his perfect pitch, he can not only master standard tuning, but other tunings as well.

After solidifying the plan in his head, he took his pick-up truck out of the garage and drove to East Ouigab's biggest butcher shops and supermarkets to buy food that will last him the whole school break. Aside from corresponding with Chala about the book, Tayaw will lock himself in his house and do nothing but learn and practice in his newly built 110,000BGC studio with instruments played by the people he knows.