One of the dreams I’ve had for many years is to hopefully one day become a published author. Whether it’ll be for a short story or full novel, it doesn’t matter. Either way I just hope to become a published author someday. I have always been a reader… when I was a kid, I wanted to be an author when I grow up. You know someone who writes books and publishes them.

Although, I don’t agree with Stephen King’s left-wing politics, he is still a hero and inspiration of mine. I’ve read his books throughout my whole life pretty much. Started reading his books when I was a young teenager during high school. Admittedly, I still do read Stephen King books. Despite him hating Donald Trump on twitter and all, I still support his work. I still do read his books and watch all the movie adaptations. I’ve collected pretty much all of S.K.’s books over the years. I’m only missing “Danse Macabre” original hardcover and “End of Watch” his latest book.

What kind of books did I mostly read over the years? Well, mostly I read horror novels… I’ve read books by many horror authors over the years other than Stephen King… I’ve read books by: Anne Rice, Clive Barker, Rick Hautala, Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Ray Bradbury, Brian Lumley, Joe Hill, etc. I’ve read books by all those guys. You’re not a true fan of horror fiction unless you’ve read books by those authors I listed. There are still other horror authors I still need to read books by, though… I still need to check out Richard Matheson, Jack Ketchum, Robert Bloch, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campbell and others.

Yes, I have read other genres besides horror books, though. I’ve tried reading: mystery, suspense,  science fiction, young adults and even tried reading romance/erotica stuff some. Yeah, admittedly I’ve read the 50 Shades trilogy. Authors that I like outside of the horror fiction genre are Dan Brown, George R.R. Martin, Sidney Sheldon and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Reading is one of my favorite things to do. I’ve always been a huge bookworm. Always had a book in my hand.

I gave up fiction writing for a long while even though I did it some back in high school. I gave it up to become a musician so I didn’t give up writing completely. I wrote song lyrics over the years and tried getting into poetry and screenwriting a little bit. Writing is one of my favorite things to do too.

I’m always trying to improve my writing skills by studying grammar and build up my vocabulary ’cause both are crucial to writing. I really am thinking about getting back into fiction writing again ’cause I’m having all kinds of story ideas spinning in my head. I just gotta get a word processor on my computer and I will. For now, though, I can get back into story writing again on regular notebook paper like I used to do when I was a kid. I should probably get back into it.

Becoming a published author is tough but it can be done. Just gotta be more ambitious about it. It’s going to be expensive to hire an editor and literary agent but it might be worth it. How cool would it be if I could do this for a living? Write books and publish them. What books would I mostly write about if I did something like this? Well, probably mostly horror. I’m never gonna write a memoir about myself and staying away from writing books about politics. I’ll probably focus on fictional stories mostly.

I’ve contemplated getting back into fictional writing for a long time and probably gonna go for it. If I don’t get published and don’t make money off of it, so be it. I’ll just do it as a passion and a hobby kind of thing, ya know? I’ve always talked about writing a book but I gotta stop talking about it and actually make it happen! I would like my first book to be a collection of short stories, though just to see if I still got it.

Kev

I remember in 2006, that’s the year when I first started performing my music publicly. I recorded a 9 song demo which I released publicly right away. I recorded a 9 song acoustic demo — which you can hear my music here by the way, the first 9 songs is my demo — hoping to get gigs so I can play out at local bars, cafes/diners and music festivals… things like that,  ya know? Back in the day, I used to gig a lot. Played almost every venue in the Capital District and even a few small festivals. I didn’t have any interviews for the press or anything but I did get an interview for FM radio once (sorry, the interview wasn’t recorded, wishing it was).

After I started performing my music publicly, I sparked a lot of controversy for whatever reason. I started getting a lot of internet haters like mad. People were attacking me in message boards, youtube and facebook. It was crazy, ya know? People were attacking me everywhere. Even other local bands and local musicians were getting onto it.

I used to have a problem responding to internet haters and defending myself each time but over the years, I’ve learned to stay above ’em by ignoring them most of the time. I’m sure I still get “haters” and people in this area still do write me hateful things for no reason but I just ignore that stuff now. “Ignoring” is a powerful tool and it’s not hard to do.

I love what this guy said in this video at the end is that when you get a ton of haters and people trolling you for no reason, see it as a sign of success which is so true. It seems that each time I release a new batch of songs every now and then, I get trolled by a bunch of losers. Happens every time.

Why is that musicians get so many haters? Is it because they’re jealous of your success? Jealous that you’re a good musician and they aren’t? Maybe a combination of both? I almost gave up playing music live and releasing songs ’cause of all the negativity that I got through the Capital District music scene but I’m realizing that I should never have. That’s what they want you to do. You can’t cave in the haters. If you want to play music, you’ve got to say to them, “Fuck all of you… I love what I do and I’m not stopping for you.” That’s the right attitude to have. People scorned me pretty badly in this area. Creating anonymous accounts to attack me and all kinds of crazy shit.

I’ve learned to cope with it all, though and now I feel stronger than ever. I’m totally above the haters now. They don’t bother me anymore like they used to.

I’ve always believed that I’ve been overlooked and neglected in the music scene but that’s okay. I don’t do this for fame or popularity. I play music ’cause I enjoy doing it and that’s all you should care about. Fuck what people think of you, ya know? Fuck people and just play your music. That’s all you need to do!

I’m still planning to write new songs again and drive the haters crazy even more. Stay tuned.

Kev

I’m trying to stick with learning and practicing the piano. I am finding that learning piano is actually pretty easy. Not that hard at all like a lot of people trying to make it out to be. Maybe it’s because I have years of music knowledge is why I’m already getting decent at piano this soon. If you haven’t played piano before and playing guitar for a long time, you should already be good at playing piano ’cause piano and guitar are pretty much the same thing really. I find that guitar is a lot harder to play than piano. It really is. You can get good at piano a lot quicker than guitar anyways. I wished I started piano years ago when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, I used to mess around with the piano some but just to mess around and not actually play but this time I really want to play the thing. Why do I want to learn piano so bad? Simply because I’m always hearing piano music in my head and I’m always hearing myself singing over piano music. I want to learn to play piano hoping to get original piano songs out of me. A lot of my stuff that I write on acoustic guitar were originally intended to be piano songs. I just wrote them on guitar first ’cause I never played piano until now. I would LOVE to write a whole album with just me singing piano ballads. Just me and a piano, that’s it.

I would also love to learn some cover songs on piano too, of course. I’ve always loved to listen to piano singer/songwriters like Billy Joel and Elton John, of course. I also loved listening to Joni Mitchell, Ben Folds and another favorite piano artist of mine is Jerry Lee Lewis. To me, Jerry Lee Lewis is a big inspiration and Billy Joel is a hero of mine as well. I’ve listened to Billy Joel ever since I was a young child and still do listen to him. As far as Elton John goes, I’m not so crazy about his newer music but the stuff he did in the 70’s and 80’s was phenomenal. Beth Hart is another favorite artist of mine, she also writes a lot of piano stuff.

Piano is a lot of fun to learn. It’s easy to learn too. Learning to read music? Piece of cake!

Man,  I really would love a grand piano or an upright but no room at all so really, I guess I’m stuck with electric pianos for now which is no problem. Electric pianos sounds like a real piano thankfully. For now, I just have an old piece of shit Casio keyboard just for learning & practicing but sometime down the road, I’ll buy myself an even better keyboard.

I love piano music, always did. I  love guitar and will never give that up — ever — it’s just that as I get older, I want to do something different for a change.

Kev

Well today, I just hung out in a small town called Saratoga Springs, N.Y. which is a cool little town in my area. Hung out in that town all day to shop around ’cause this town has some cool stores. I had to go to Saratoga ’cause I needed a few guitar things from the guitar shop. I had to get a pack of guitar strings for both electric & acoustic. I also picked up a new guitar strap for my Mitchell electric guitar. Then I went to Northshire Bookstore and picked up a couple of books I need for my writing skills ’cause I’ve been looking to sharpen my grammar skills so I picked up a Grammar book and a Rhyming dictionary for writing lyrics/poems.

Later on, I hung out at the Saratoga Public Library most of the afternoon. Got myself a new Saratoga library card and borrowed a couple of books from them. I borrowed Joe Hill’s “The Fireman” (I’m a big Joe HIll fan) and a couple of books that teaches you how to write horror stories.

The reason I’m looking to sharpen my grammar skills is ’cause I’m thinking about getting back into fictional story writing. Ya know, write short stories and even full novels. I really should get back into it. I love to write ’cause it’s one of my favorite things to do.

That’s why I blog on the internet ’cause I just love to write and blogging it’s just a nice excuse to keep writing. You’ve probably noticed that my writing skills have improved a little bit ’cause I have been studying grammar a lot. Just want to improve my writing skills. Even though I’m thinking about getting back into fictional writing, I will always write song lyrics and will try to write more poems too. Reading and writing is just one of my favorite hobbies, always has been ever since I was a kid.

Also, an interesting thing happened earlier today while I was in Saratoga town. I wore my Trump MAGA t-shirt all day. I was walking the streets of Saratoga on Broadway, thinking that some angry liberal was going to confront me for wearing the shirt but thankfully no one did. Instead, I got positive responses wearing the shirt. I’ve had three different people look at me and said, “I love that shirt!”. So that means they were probably a huge Trump fan.

There was a bunch of young 20 something girls walking by me and one of them said to me, “I love your shirt”. I just looked at her, smiled and said, “Thank you”.

I love running into other fellow Trump supporters. It’s a good feeling. It was a good day today. I just had to get out of the house and do something.

Kev

So I find myself learning and practicing the piano a lot more all week. It’s a fun instrument to learn once you get into it. I just finally wanted to play something different other than guitar. Playing piano and learning to read music is not that hard. I’ve always loved piano ballads.

Whenever I feel I’m good enough at piano, I’ll start learning some piano covers. There are songs I want to learn like John Lennon’s “Imagine”, Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, Elton John “Tiny Dancer”, The Commodores “Easy”, The Righteous Brothers “Unchained Melody”, Simon & Garfunkel “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, Ben Folds “Brick”, Evanescence “My Immortal” and many others. Those are some of my favorite piano songs and I want to learn them.

I would love to get an upright piano or a grand piano but there’s no room for either of those so I guess I’m stuck with electric keyboards/pianos.  I just love the sound of the piano and want to play that music myself. I will also write original piano ballads myself which is something I’ve always wanted to do.

Another reason I wanted to get into piano/keyboard playing is so I can have the skills to learn MIDI controllers ’cause a lot of MIDI controllers have keys on them and I need to learn how to do that stuff. When I write original rock songs through DAW software, I would like to add in all kinds of instruments like strings, brass and other kinds of cool sounds.

Piano/keyboards is a pretty cool instrument. As long as you are pretty good at guitar and have been playing for a long time, you should already have plenty of music knowledge to get good at piano fast. That’s what happening with me when I learn piano. I’m already learning things quickly. I could get really good at piano in about a year or so. I just gotta stick with it and I will.

Kev

Once again, I find it interesting how when people decide to attack someone and when that someone attacks back, that someone is a bad person all of a sudden. I go through the same thing. What Donald Trump is going through, reminds me of how the local music scene treated me over the years.

You see, local musicians and people involved in the music scene, thought it was okay to criticize me and bash me whenever they wanted. They had no problem to make fun of me all they wanted like through social networking, message boards, youtube, even blogs, etc. I decide to call the local music scene out for this stuff and sure enough they’ll be like, “Oh no, Brock is a douche and a troll. He’s so unprofessional and hurting the music scene”.

Same thing going on with Trump and the media. Media attacks him, Trump calls them out and now they think he’s a bad guy for it.

The local music scene thought it was okay to criticize my music, my singing, myself as a person and all kinds of stuff but when I decide to attack back even more aggressively, they don’t like that. I’m not gonna name names but they know who they are and many of them probably still follow my blog… ya know, the haters in this area. People publicly trash me, I call try to call them out for it and some people say I shouldn’t be doing that. Just ignore them and play my music. Kind of messed up, ya know?

In my opinion, I think it’s a good thing to attack those back when you’re attacked first. Trump has been inspiring me to do that more. It’s called standing up for yourself and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think Trump has been inspiring his supporters to do that ’cause I’m noticing that Trump supporters attack those back who attacks them first.

We should have every right to stand up to things of what we believe in and that means fighting back at the haters & bullies that come after you. When people attack you first, don’t let them think it’s okay. Just don’t sit there and let ’em win. Sitting there ignoring them is not gonna do anything. Usually when you call out people for attacking you, they usually play innocent victim every fucking time. Happens with me each time I call someone out for attacking me. They’re like, “Oh no, I have freedom of speech” and blah blah blah. Just like what’s going on in the media against Trump.

This is all fucked up. I still get haters to this day and I try to ignore them most of the time but Trump is inspiring me that I shouldn’t ignore them. Don’t let people think it’s okay to get away with their bullshit.

Stand up for yourself. Whether you get attacked by liberals. If you’re a musician and if you get haters, fight back at them as well. No matter what you do as a hobby or a profession you’re gonna get your share of haters. If you hit Donald Trump, he’s gonna hit you back harder. He’s inspiring me to have that same attitude and you should too. Fighting back at your haters used to be wrong but Trump is making it normal. Be tough and rise above!

Kev

Listening to instrumental electric guitar music has always been my favorite thing. I’ve always loved listening to instrumental guitar music like Al Di Meola, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Alan Holdsworth, Eric Johnson and others. I haven’t gotten into Yngwie Malmsteen much but I should get into his music more too. I’ve been listening to instrumental shred guitar for many years and I’m thinking of becoming that kind of artist. It’s why I’m trying to improve my guitar playing chops. Learning music theory, ear training skills, improving my technique and all that stuff. I want to play guitar like those guys I listed and working my way up there.

In the past, I used to make my own instrumental music using MIDI software and want to get back into that stuff again. I would like to make my own instrumental backing tracks to jam killer leads over it. Yeah, I want to make instrumental music ’cause I love that stuff. Doesn’t mean I’ll give up singing for good, though. I’ll make both instrumentals and songs with vocals. I’ll make songs with vocals only if the song calls for it.

It is also why I’m trying to get good with piano/keyboards so I can have the skills to use MIDI controllers and learn how to use the”Piano Roll’ on DAW’s. It is why I’m trying to study and practice virtual drums & timing so I can have the skills to program my own drum tracks.

To be an instrumental artist, having a good ear, knowing music theory and having good rhythm chops is pretty important. I’m trying to get good with all those. It has always been my dream to make an instrumental shred album and one day I will. In guitar playing, I’m not a speed demon and technical god yet but I do want to get there, though. Just taking my time. A lot of guitarists like to rush but I don’t. I just want to be patient and not get too ahead of myself.

Instrumental music is awesome and I would like to start making that kind of music myself.

Kev

This is an interesting article I just found through facebook and I thought I would share it here. Why is it that some people find me very intimidating and might find others the same? For many years, people were always scared to death of me and I could never figure out why. People over the internet are scared to death of me and people through the local musicians community are scared to death of me too.

This article pretty much explains it all perfectly. This article is pretty much spot on. I like all these signs.

I especially love reasons #1, #2, #3, #9 and #10.

http://educateinspirechange.org/spirituality/10-signs-personality-intimidating-others-never-tolerate-7/

I may be controversial and a bit “extreme” admittedly but in reality, I can have a lot of heart and can be kind to people. Really, I do care about people, it’s just that I’m not afraid to be real. I’m just tired of fake people these days and there are plenty out there for sure. I’m just not afraid to be me and that’s the biggest reason people find me intimidating. I’m just not afraid to be who I want to be and that’s it, ya know?

Nowadays, people are afraid to be themselves. Like, they hide their honest thoughts to themselves and they try their best to fit in the crowd. Not me, though. People like to judge me as a mean person and a “bully” but don’t believe the hype. I can be good to others. There are people in my world who I look up to and check in on them to see how they’re doing and all that stuff, sure. I can be nice to those only if you treat me the same way you like to be treated.

I have a lot of supportive people for a reason. In today’s society, it seems like being a real, honest and good person is intimidating to some which is sad.

Maybe all this is why I’m such an easy target by internet trolls and cyberbullies all the time. They can’t take that I’m a real person and it kills them.

I don’t mean to talk about myself in this post but to help inspire others as well.

Kev

In the old days in the music world, if you wanted to be a one man band, you had to learn every instrument yourself. Nowadays with all this technology, you can be a one-man band much easier and quicker like with all of these DAW’s, MIDI controllers/keyboards, music softwares/apps and things like that. You can easily create your own full band tracks if you know how to do this stuff.

Last week, I’ve spent all week teaching myself how to play piano and I’m really liking it. I tried to practice piano before but I guess I stopped for a while. Gonna get back into it full time. I really should.

I want to learn piano so I can learn how to play electric MIDI keyboards, the ones that has MIDI In/outs on them. I already have a MIDI keyboard but it’s a really old Casio but I just use that for learning and practicing. Whenever I want to record songs with a MIDI keyboard, I’ll buy myself an even better one in the future. The ones that have all kinds of instruments on it. I’ll try my best to find a better keyboard that has realistic sounding instruments on it as I’m sure there’s plenty of  them out there. If I were to get a MIDI keyboard, I would probably get one that is at an affordable price. Nothing too expensive.

The piano practice is going real good, though. I’m getting good at it already. I’m getting good at piano already ’cause I already have so much music knowledge. If you’re good with guitar then you’ll probably be good with piano ’cause both are pretty much the same thing.

I do want to make my own backing tracks with my original songs. Drums, bass and I’ll use tons of other virtual instruments. I would also like to have orchestration playing in the background in some of my songs ’cause a lot of my originals were meant to be heard that way. So could I make an album one day with nothing but orchestration playing in the background and me singing over it? That’s another dream project of mine to do other than doing a metal album. I could do both at the same time if I wanted… make an orchestration and metal album… do a prog rock kind of thing. That’s what the mighty Dream Theater have done, put orchestration and metal together. I’ve been listening to Dream Theater for a long time and they’re an inspiration for that goal. Dream Theater is one of my favorite bands for sure.

I also want to write piano ballads. Just with a piano and voice ’cause I like that type of music too and always wanted to sing over piano.

The piano is fun. Wished I learned how to play piano years ago but it’s not too late to start now. I just want to do something other than guitar.

Kev

So I’ve been studying drums, rhythm and timing even though I don’t have a drum set. I’ve been practicing virtual drums on GarageBand for the Ipad so that’s a good enough start.

Now that I have the full version for Mixcraft 8 DAW, I’ll be able to get drum software with it. Honestly, I’ve been looking at getting Toontrack EZ Drummer software for a pretty long time. It’s pretty popular software for home recording musicians. EZ Drummer has virtual drums on it and I can easily create my own drum tracks on that.

I’m going to look into getting EZ drummer pretty soon, $150 for it so it’s not that bad.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/toontrack-ezdrummer-2

I love learning drums and studying rhythm & timing. The more I do, the more I wish I had my own real drum set. I could get one but it would take up so much space in this room and don’t want to make a lot of loud noise. I could get myself an electronic drum set but even though that would be quieter, it would still take up so much space in this room so I’m better off getting drum software or a drum machine. I’ll probably get drum software instead ’cause that would be easier. Drum software would have realistic sounding drums than a drum machine, though.

I want to make full band electric rock n’ roll. What will I name the full band electric project? Well look at the name of this site, “K’brocking” is not just the name of the site, it’s gonna be the name of my online band project. So therefor, “K’brocking” is a band name that I just came up with. Cool, hey?

For bass guitar lines, I’ll have to figure that out. I’ll use either MIDI for that or I could find a bass player who has DAW and I can have that person record bass lines for me ’cause that would be pretty cool if I collaborate with a real bass player. Or I’ll just record bass lines myself but playing them on my electric guitar and just setting the pitch down an octave. I could do it that way too. I’ll figure something out.

I will get this EZ drummer software sometime, maybe later this summer.

Kev