I've had a couple of days off work so I've goofed around a bit with my recording software, just trying to learn the ins and outs of Cubase. And in between actually getting stuff done, I've been watching episodes of Classic Albums on Youtube. I watched the one for The Who's Who's Next album, as well as Rush's 2112 and Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. I don't know why I like them so much but they're all really interesting to me. Having the musicians explain or dissect their process really gives you a peek into their genius, and ironically, it makes them look like just regular dudes who happen to written some great songs.
The thought that keeps occuring to me tho is this: None of these guys made these records while having to hold a day job. In fact, these classic moments in music came after YEARS of practice, performance and preparation. So many resources of time and money went to these guys so they could practice their craft without being encumbered by the worries that the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis.
And really, I think that's why it's been so hard for me to get going on my own recordings. It must be easy to focus and concentrate when you know that there are thousands of people waiting to hear what you're going to come up with, and when you know your music is at least going to have a shot at being exposed to a pretty large group of sympathetic listeners.
It's quite another thing to write music, and to really put your heart and soul into it, to try and dig out all the emotion that you can when you know whatever you come up with is going to be pretty much ignored by everyone outside your family and close friends. THAT is a tough deal. I mean, I'm even writing this blog right now just to get some thoughts out of my head and "on paper" so to speak. But I'd be foolish to think that any more than 3 people will actually read this.
It's a pretty sad place to be in, really. When you THINK you have so much you want to give to the world, but it will never get past your own circle of friends.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The Four Seasons of Rock
Hey there blog readers,
So it's been another weekend working on turning Vivaldi's Four Seasons into a rock composition, and I thought I'd start this blog to keep whoever's interested updated on the process. There'll be detail about the process of deciphering the actual music in the original piece and getting it into guitar format, the recording equipment I'm using, some copies of my notes, and other such things. But as this is the first blog, I thought I'd tell you why this whole project occurred to me in the first place.
I think we're in the winter of rock 'n roll. It's looking very much like guitar rock is dead or dying (there's LOTS of reasons for this, but that's the subject of another blog), and if it's going to recover and take back it's place as THE culturally important music of the western world, there's gonna have to be a spring-like rebirth. I ponder pop culture a lot. And while I was doing that very thing, a thought about the rock timeline popped into my head. You could look at the history of rock music as going thru 4 distinct phases.
Phase 1 are the early years of rock, starting with Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis (and you gotta include blues and gospel in there too) and moving into the Beatles. This is the Spring of rock and roll. The beginning. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was the catalyst for thousands of kids to start bands. And in a way, that era after WW2 is the beginning of modern media culture as it coincides with the wide popularization of TV.
Phase 2 is the Summer of rock. This starts somewhere towards the end of the '60's (maybe Woodstock is the first day of summer?) and goes thru the entire 1970's. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and even acoustic folk like Dylan, CSNY and that ilk. This is probably when guitar rock was at it's most creative and intense.
Phase 3 starts with 1978 and the release of the first Van Halen album. Over the past decade, VH has eroded their own legacy so much that their influence on hard rock is VASTLY under-rated, but from what I read and hear, when Van Halen was released in Februrary 1978, it signaled a change not only for the sound of guitar rock in the following decade, but it changed everything about what kind of person was interested in that kind of music. Despite the fact that their first record was actually considered too heavy for the average rock listener, it attracted EVERYONE to guitar rock, and the genre became the most popular form of music in the world over the next 15 years. So this signals the end of the summer and the beginning of Autumn, with the year 1984 being a kind of labour day weekend of rock (I know this doesn't exactly fit the sequence of events on a calendar, but allow me this one stretch of the concept). This season starts with Van Halen and includes ZZ Top, Guns 'N Roses, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, and Metallica.
The Winter of rock creeps in with Nirvana and truly arrives with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994. Even tho lots of people see the grunge era as a rebirth of guitar rock, I think Nirvana's success took the wind out the sails of the genre. It became cool to NOT know how to play and sing, and that very quickly killed the grass roots live rock scene ("who want's to see a band that sounds like crap? Let's all just go to a dance club and get laid there.."). On top of that, Cobain killed himself at the height of his popularity, before he could become old and irrelevant, and that basically cast his whole career in bronze and made the legacy of his persona and his music untouchable. To this day, most guitar rock is low on skill and full of what I like to call "fake anger". It isn't about escapism or enjoyment, it's about how bad life is. North American kids don't have any REAL problems as compared to people growing up in, say, Africa or Russia or Iraq - you know, places where violence and starvation are everywhere. To this listener, angry and bitter rock coming out of the richest most prosperous generation in the history of the world seems a bit low on honesty.
ANYWAY... that's the winter of rock: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (the first wave of actually kinda talented, unique artists) and then their pathetic offspring: Bush, Creed, Puddle of Mudd and 17 years of crapulence, the most recent example being Chad Kreuger's fiefdom of 3 Days Grace, MDD, Nickelback, Thornley, etc.
So there it is - the four seasons of rock! Tune in next time where I actually talk a little about how I'm turning the Vivaldi piece into a reflection of this whole 55 year cycle of guitar music.
Cheers!
So it's been another weekend working on turning Vivaldi's Four Seasons into a rock composition, and I thought I'd start this blog to keep whoever's interested updated on the process. There'll be detail about the process of deciphering the actual music in the original piece and getting it into guitar format, the recording equipment I'm using, some copies of my notes, and other such things. But as this is the first blog, I thought I'd tell you why this whole project occurred to me in the first place.
I think we're in the winter of rock 'n roll. It's looking very much like guitar rock is dead or dying (there's LOTS of reasons for this, but that's the subject of another blog), and if it's going to recover and take back it's place as THE culturally important music of the western world, there's gonna have to be a spring-like rebirth. I ponder pop culture a lot. And while I was doing that very thing, a thought about the rock timeline popped into my head. You could look at the history of rock music as going thru 4 distinct phases.
Phase 1 are the early years of rock, starting with Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis (and you gotta include blues and gospel in there too) and moving into the Beatles. This is the Spring of rock and roll. The beginning. The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was the catalyst for thousands of kids to start bands. And in a way, that era after WW2 is the beginning of modern media culture as it coincides with the wide popularization of TV.
Phase 2 is the Summer of rock. This starts somewhere towards the end of the '60's (maybe Woodstock is the first day of summer?) and goes thru the entire 1970's. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and even acoustic folk like Dylan, CSNY and that ilk. This is probably when guitar rock was at it's most creative and intense.
Phase 3 starts with 1978 and the release of the first Van Halen album. Over the past decade, VH has eroded their own legacy so much that their influence on hard rock is VASTLY under-rated, but from what I read and hear, when Van Halen was released in Februrary 1978, it signaled a change not only for the sound of guitar rock in the following decade, but it changed everything about what kind of person was interested in that kind of music. Despite the fact that their first record was actually considered too heavy for the average rock listener, it attracted EVERYONE to guitar rock, and the genre became the most popular form of music in the world over the next 15 years. So this signals the end of the summer and the beginning of Autumn, with the year 1984 being a kind of labour day weekend of rock (I know this doesn't exactly fit the sequence of events on a calendar, but allow me this one stretch of the concept). This season starts with Van Halen and includes ZZ Top, Guns 'N Roses, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, and Metallica.
The Winter of rock creeps in with Nirvana and truly arrives with the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994. Even tho lots of people see the grunge era as a rebirth of guitar rock, I think Nirvana's success took the wind out the sails of the genre. It became cool to NOT know how to play and sing, and that very quickly killed the grass roots live rock scene ("who want's to see a band that sounds like crap? Let's all just go to a dance club and get laid there.."). On top of that, Cobain killed himself at the height of his popularity, before he could become old and irrelevant, and that basically cast his whole career in bronze and made the legacy of his persona and his music untouchable. To this day, most guitar rock is low on skill and full of what I like to call "fake anger". It isn't about escapism or enjoyment, it's about how bad life is. North American kids don't have any REAL problems as compared to people growing up in, say, Africa or Russia or Iraq - you know, places where violence and starvation are everywhere. To this listener, angry and bitter rock coming out of the richest most prosperous generation in the history of the world seems a bit low on honesty.
ANYWAY... that's the winter of rock: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (the first wave of actually kinda talented, unique artists) and then their pathetic offspring: Bush, Creed, Puddle of Mudd and 17 years of crapulence, the most recent example being Chad Kreuger's fiefdom of 3 Days Grace, MDD, Nickelback, Thornley, etc.
So there it is - the four seasons of rock! Tune in next time where I actually talk a little about how I'm turning the Vivaldi piece into a reflection of this whole 55 year cycle of guitar music.
Cheers!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
People, it's time to expect more from our rock stars (or reasons why Porn Star Dancing is a lame-ass song).
Porn Star Dancing is, according to DJ's here in Peterborough, a "hit". Putting aside the fact that there really is no such thing as a "hit song" anymore (travel forward in time and read some of my future blogs on corporate payola in radio..), this tune has lots of facets in it's lame-a-tude, but one stands out among the rest.
1. The dude can't actually sing like that.
Auto-tune is a wonderful thing, especially if you're a rock singer who has no discernible talent. (huh huh huh, "nible"). For those of you not in the know on this miracle of modern technology - it's basically a computer program that can take a dying cat and turn it into Pavarotti. Not by force-feeding it pasta, but rather by altering the intonation of every screeching note to match the "correct" scale. Call it "singer in a can". Autotune is ALL OVER this song. How do I know? I played clubs along side these guys before they recorded this joke of a tune. The dude can't sing like that.
Is this what makes the song lame? No. Everyone and his brother is using autotune software. It's so pervasive that the listening public now expects it to be on the vocals, whether the singer is good or not. You gotta give the people what they want, I guess.
2. Zakk Wylde (formerly of Ozzy's band) is the lead guitarist - not the actual guy from MDD.
And actually I feel a little sorry for this fella. I can't remember his name, and luckily that's gonna pose no problem for me because in a couple of years, no one else will either, but I digress. The few fans who listen to this song and remark how cool the lead guitar is will be disappointed when they hear these guys play live, because once again, I have seen this guy in his former band (3 Star Seed). He doesn't have the chops to play the song as recorded. Zakk Wylde is arguably the last real guitar hero, and the guy from MDD is a pale comparison to 9 year olds with youtube videos of themselves playing "Erruption", not to mention any guitarist with actual talent and style.
Is this what makes this song lame? No. If you want killer guitar, you get a killer guitarist. And thanks to low-talent hip hop dudes, the trend of "featuring" another band/artist/rapper/Timbaland is alive and well. Sad but true.
And the winner is....
3. Most of this song is rock stars complaining how they have to pay for girls to take off their clothes.
In the song Panama, David Lee Roth sang "Don't you know she's coming home with me"? Vince Neil crooned (to a stripper) in Girls Girls Girls, "Tell me a story, you know the one I mean." Joe Elliot of Def Leppard sang "Love is like a bomb baby, come and get it on!" These are declarative, positive statements of confidence. These were men who went in search of pussy and FOUND IT!! They gave hope to all of us down here on the bottom rung workin our asses off to get laid. Hope that once in a while, dreams do come true. You DO occasionally run into a stripper with a female room-mate who's boyfriend is out of town and .. you get the picture. Dave, Vince, Joe and countless other REAL rock stars showed us what was possible! They blazed a trail to poon-tang! We regular babe hounds stood on the shoulders of GIANTS!!
The My Darkest Days guy, by contrast, spends the whole song complaining about how he can't get girls to co-operate with his poorly described, half assed fantasies. What kind of call to arms is THAT?? I know DOZENS of guys who can't get laid. I can hear about that every day of my life fer pete's sake. The guys in MDD are young, in a rock band, about to be really rich, and they can't talk a girl out of her underwear? THIS is what passes for a party anthem!?
And it's why Porn Star Dancing is a lame-ass tune. Rock stars should live in a fantasy world where there are no brakes to the constant flow of beer, girls and beer and girls. They should not go on record complaining that the girls they meet won't "play ball" as he so eloquently puts it.
We need to start expecting more of our rock stars, people!!!
1. The dude can't actually sing like that.
Auto-tune is a wonderful thing, especially if you're a rock singer who has no discernible talent. (huh huh huh, "nible"). For those of you not in the know on this miracle of modern technology - it's basically a computer program that can take a dying cat and turn it into Pavarotti. Not by force-feeding it pasta, but rather by altering the intonation of every screeching note to match the "correct" scale. Call it "singer in a can". Autotune is ALL OVER this song. How do I know? I played clubs along side these guys before they recorded this joke of a tune. The dude can't sing like that.
Is this what makes the song lame? No. Everyone and his brother is using autotune software. It's so pervasive that the listening public now expects it to be on the vocals, whether the singer is good or not. You gotta give the people what they want, I guess.
2. Zakk Wylde (formerly of Ozzy's band) is the lead guitarist - not the actual guy from MDD.
And actually I feel a little sorry for this fella. I can't remember his name, and luckily that's gonna pose no problem for me because in a couple of years, no one else will either, but I digress. The few fans who listen to this song and remark how cool the lead guitar is will be disappointed when they hear these guys play live, because once again, I have seen this guy in his former band (3 Star Seed). He doesn't have the chops to play the song as recorded. Zakk Wylde is arguably the last real guitar hero, and the guy from MDD is a pale comparison to 9 year olds with youtube videos of themselves playing "Erruption", not to mention any guitarist with actual talent and style.
Is this what makes this song lame? No. If you want killer guitar, you get a killer guitarist. And thanks to low-talent hip hop dudes, the trend of "featuring" another band/artist/rapper/Timbaland is alive and well. Sad but true.
And the winner is....
3. Most of this song is rock stars complaining how they have to pay for girls to take off their clothes.
In the song Panama, David Lee Roth sang "Don't you know she's coming home with me"? Vince Neil crooned (to a stripper) in Girls Girls Girls, "Tell me a story, you know the one I mean." Joe Elliot of Def Leppard sang "Love is like a bomb baby, come and get it on!" These are declarative, positive statements of confidence. These were men who went in search of pussy and FOUND IT!! They gave hope to all of us down here on the bottom rung workin our asses off to get laid. Hope that once in a while, dreams do come true. You DO occasionally run into a stripper with a female room-mate who's boyfriend is out of town and .. you get the picture. Dave, Vince, Joe and countless other REAL rock stars showed us what was possible! They blazed a trail to poon-tang! We regular babe hounds stood on the shoulders of GIANTS!!
The My Darkest Days guy, by contrast, spends the whole song complaining about how he can't get girls to co-operate with his poorly described, half assed fantasies. What kind of call to arms is THAT?? I know DOZENS of guys who can't get laid. I can hear about that every day of my life fer pete's sake. The guys in MDD are young, in a rock band, about to be really rich, and they can't talk a girl out of her underwear? THIS is what passes for a party anthem!?
And it's why Porn Star Dancing is a lame-ass tune. Rock stars should live in a fantasy world where there are no brakes to the constant flow of beer, girls and beer and girls. They should not go on record complaining that the girls they meet won't "play ball" as he so eloquently puts it.
We need to start expecting more of our rock stars, people!!!
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Justin Beiber and The World Series
First off, I don't know if I'm spelling his name right, and I don't care.
What I do care about (a little anyway) is the fact that adults (and kids who are turning into adults soon) have accepted Justin Bieber as something that's worth listening to. What the hell? He's in a montage at the start of a World Series baseball game! Does anyone at Fox understand who watches baseball?? Do they think there's an 8 year old girl audience for baseball they haven't been focusing on enough?
Is Hannah Montana going to be the feature act at the next UFC event?
The creators of Kids Incorporated were 20 years ahead of their time. Because now, children's entertainment is all the rage - for middle aged sports fans apparently.
What I do care about (a little anyway) is the fact that adults (and kids who are turning into adults soon) have accepted Justin Bieber as something that's worth listening to. What the hell? He's in a montage at the start of a World Series baseball game! Does anyone at Fox understand who watches baseball?? Do they think there's an 8 year old girl audience for baseball they haven't been focusing on enough?
Is Hannah Montana going to be the feature act at the next UFC event?
The creators of Kids Incorporated were 20 years ahead of their time. Because now, children's entertainment is all the rage - for middle aged sports fans apparently.
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