There was this day when I really wanted to go somewhere, but it was raining, money were low, I was pretty tired, and a million other different reasons, but the urge to go somewhere was too big, so I found one option that worked perfectly for me – I went to Tivoli. Why was it perfect? Well, first of all a ticket is only 2.20 euros, busses to Tivoli go every 10-15 minutes, the departure is from a little bus station a couple metro stations from the place I live and Tivoli is a place to visit for several times because it is not possible to see everything in one day and stay sane. So I’ve googled it and found out that Tivoli has a couple of villas that are worth visiting and I had to decide between ancient ruins, a huge waterfall and magic gardens. The first one and the second one were pretty hard to find, but the third one is right there at the bus stop, so that was it! The villa I went to was Villa D’Este. When I was walking through the hallways and rooms of this place, I had one thought – how can one live in a place like that? It’s like a museum, it must be tiring for the eyes, no empty spot on the wall, and I haven’t seen the furniture, I can imagine how it would look like, especially concerning the fact that this Villa belonged to the son of Lucrezia Borgia, royal family, should have been posh :)

But then I saw the gardens. These gardens reminded me of Bahai gardens in Israel because those ones also had multiple levels, fountains and figured stuff, don’t really know how to call it. Surely they are different, people actually live to make Baha’i Gardens beautiful, they are full of perfectionism, because that is one of the ways they honor God. Here the story is a bit different – this used to be someone’s property, now it belongs to Italian government and ruins must remain untouched :)As to me, some renovation might be good, because the building has some fractures, the paint is far from being fresh etc., but that doesn’t make the place less beautiful. Anyway, that doesn’t diminish the mightiness of the place, not for a tiny bit – the place is amazing, you can walk through the gardens for hours, always find something interesting and beautiful. I can not imagine how many people have worked to make it real, how creative were the people who had the idea of it in their head, awwwwwww :)

Oh, and also the town itself is beautiful! I’ve captured with my camera a couple of places around the Villa, not much though, but enough to get the basic idea :)

Anyway, you can read about Villa D’Este here, but I’m all about the pictures, so enjoy! :)

An interesting effect came into my temporary possession – it’s an effect unit I once recommended to a colleague singer of mine when she was searching for something that would satisfy her musical needs. I remember spending a couple of hours searching for something that would have a wide harmonic function and a couple of other effects for added interest, while not losing a single bit of the quality. I already had three TC-Helicon effect units myself, so I decided to recommend to Julia something made by them. (By the way, check her out on the web, she’s amazing, so if you live in Ireland or lucky enough to be in Riga at the same time with her, you definitely should visit one of her shows.) Here’s a short video, sung using a part of a new tune of mine, just to demonstrate some of Harmony G’s functions. I tried using as many effects as possible, and still make the tune beautiful as well.

Found this video on my computer, that I made during my bachelor studies, where I demonstrate some functions of one effect box I used to have. I thought this might finally be the time to share my tiny experiment with the world!

So, ladies and gents, I present to you my first vocal effect unit – Boss VE-20

One of the places I had visited in  Rome was the National Gallery of Modern Arts. Not that I’m an arts person – on the contrary - I know very little about the subject and I most certainly don’t get modern art, whatever that is. In truth, I think that most of the things that are now called “masterpiece of art”, “new generation”, “innovative thoughts”,“bright individuality” etc., are nothing compared to past works. I think, that the “artists” are depressed that they can’t create something new and try to hide their lack of creativity behind a “concept” – that is, selling air (putting feces in a can and selling it for millions for example)! Selling air, that is. Even so, sometimes it can be amusing and even interesting. During my stay in Rome, I had visited three galleries of modern arts, and this one is the best (in my opinion). In fact I had visited it twice: first when my friend Sasha came to visit, but we didn’t get a chance to fully enjoy everything they had, (because we were a bit late and had only 30 minutes). In that short visit I realised, that it was even more amazing, than I originally thought. It not only had pieces that made me doubt my brain and my sanity, it also had works that brought pleasure to my eye. Of course, the company of a friend made this experience totally worth it, so thank you Yoav for going there with me and enlightening me in the sphere of arts!

Well, it has been a while since I last wrote something here, but it doesn’t mean that I had nothing interesting going on with my life, on the contrary – a lot of stuff has gone down lately. The brightest thing that happened to me is the Jazz Day. Once again, I ended up in between of organizing an event and performing in one. I guess I will start with the hardest one :)