tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62225746103472583582024-02-20T10:02:28.747-06:00Glasgow Guitar GuyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-84894361386184781752012-07-13T12:52:00.001-05:002012-07-13T12:56:51.220-05:00Talk About Rock<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b0A8mqOV1jw/UABdHk_Ai5I/AAAAAAAAA0g/c0f5fN0v8H8/s1600/ROCK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="222" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b0A8mqOV1jw/UABdHk_Ai5I/AAAAAAAAA0g/c0f5fN0v8H8/s320/ROCK.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Let´s start with the name - this is very simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><strong>Rock and roll</strong>, like jazz, was a Negro (Black American English) term for <strong>sex</strong>, so in puritanical America, the music definitely had a <strong>transgressive edge.</strong></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Defining what rock is musically is relatively simple too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously, the main ingredient is the electric guitar, but to be precise, it´s the <strong>riff-based sound created by overdriving the valve amp into saturation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></strong></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">This overdriven guitar tone was achieved by turning the amp up full and letting the valves do their magic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By driving the poweramp section of the amp (turning it up loud) a great crunchy tone was produced – AC/DC, for example - though it usually deafened everyone in the room!</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The guitar sound makes a musical statement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What that statement is, is debatable. For starters, <strong>power, rebellion, mass</strong>.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Rock music evolved from early players such as Chuck Berrry in the hands of 60s performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guitarists like Eric Clapton discovered the beauty of driving a Marshall amp at full tilt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of these artists was a musical innovator, taking their musical influences from blues, classical and jazz and inventing their own, unique sound. </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Some early musical experiments were unsuccessful, however. Take the Kinks, for example,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who tore their speakers to make them distort, resulting, not in harmonic overdrive, but uneven, harsh distortion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The bands mentioned above created the template for what became <strong>Hard Rock</strong> in the 1970s, as some guitarists began driving their amps harder by using an overdrive pedal through their already overdriven valve (tube) amp. The music became more powerful, even more riff-orientated and the riffs more repetitive.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iZDVrvO6EHA/UABdOFmvC-I/AAAAAAAAA0o/OFOdNFOV3Mo/s1600/Scorpions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;"><img $ca="true" border="0" height="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iZDVrvO6EHA/UABdOFmvC-I/AAAAAAAAA0o/OFOdNFOV3Mo/s320/Scorpions.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">As I discovered reading British music papers like <em>The New Musical Express</em> and <em>Sounds NME</em>, the best rock bands were Journey, Kiss, Boston, Utopia, Angel, Rush, Rainbow, Van Halen, UFO, Styx, Starz, Angel, Whitesnake, Alice Cooper, Scorpions, Boston, Thin Lizzy, The Babys, Aerosmith, Montrose, Mott The Hoople, Foreigner, Rush, Sweet, building on the music of Ted Nugent, Free, Bad Company, Judas Priest.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In fact, <em>NME</em> covered the KISS 1980 British tour and crowned them the Kings of Rock. </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Then Hard Rock mutated again. By the late 1970s, amp manufacturers realized that guitarists wanted a more overdriven / distorted tone and began to add more <strong>valves in the preamp section of the amp</strong> causing it to distort more at lower volumes. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The result was an unpleasant, <strong>fuzzy tone which became the sound of Heavy Metal.</strong> This fuzzy preamp distortion severely <strong>limits how the guitar responds to the player´s touch</strong> (though it can give single notes a singing, <strong>sustaining quality</strong>). Using dissonant, disjointed figures and chordal movements added to dropped tunings and double bass drum patterns, all played to the extreme with screeching vocals, the music began the decline into the aggressive, mechanical banging of today´s <strong>thrash, death and black</strong> metal.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">These “genres” that lack the harmonically rich poweramp overdrive, musical substance, ebb and flow, feel, soul, or rock or roll, <em><u>aren´t</u></em> rock and roll.</span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">And in my opinion, they <strong>aren´t music!</strong></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">What do you think?</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-10293584908114801432012-03-21T04:06:00.002-05:002012-03-21T04:06:30.185-05:00Tommy´s Tracks 2 - That Made Me Love Mary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/F00Wx4940AQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-32617206221006387352012-03-16T07:55:00.005-05:002012-03-16T08:05:14.205-05:00The Beginner´s Best Musical Tool<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CHl3vvS0qs8/T2MZSgarXgI/AAAAAAAAAzE/lmhSYgKi_RU/s1600/Guitar+mags.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CHl3vvS0qs8/T2MZSgarXgI/AAAAAAAAAzE/lmhSYgKi_RU/s320/Guitar+mags.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No, it´s not your guitar. It´s not your guitar mags. It´s not scales or modes, great as they are. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It´s not even music theory. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">What is this magical tool then, you´ll be asking? And how am I supposed to be able to afford it?</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kzQNJWwvRJQ/T2MzpabHfaI/AAAAAAAAAzs/m-QC5VWeD_4/s1600/Cotton+buds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="152" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kzQNJWwvRJQ/T2MzpabHfaI/AAAAAAAAAzs/m-QC5VWeD_4/s320/Cotton+buds.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The guitarist´s best tool!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here´s the good news.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It´s cheap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It´s widely available.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It´s the simple cotton bud.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Come again?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The cotton bud! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Because the first thing a musician has to do is clean out his or her ears!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Your ears are essential for the simplest of reasons (the amazing</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><a href="http://www.evelyn.co.uk/evelyn-glennie.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Evelyn Glennie</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">excepted).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you can´t </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">hear</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> it, you can´t </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">play </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But by "hearing" I mean </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">every, single note</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CnMbZfHXypE/T2Man4MmubI/AAAAAAAAAzM/4OREExioNYE/s1600/Big+ears.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CnMbZfHXypE/T2Man4MmubI/AAAAAAAAAzM/4OREExioNYE/s320/Big+ears.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I so got what it takes to rock!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Think of the many songs you can sing along
to with ease. Most people can do this. But can you hear each individual note exactly as it was sung on
the recording? Most people can´t. If you can, keep it up, because
it's the most important thing you´ll ever do in your musical
life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let me explain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our ears are very limited when it comes to
hearing multiple musical strands all at once. Our ears like to focus on
the main thing, like the melody or the guitar solo. Everything else in the
given piece of music becomes the background. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet the background is every
bit as important as the melody, sometimes even more so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Imagine you´re sitting in a noisy pub having a
conversation with a friend. People are shouting in the background, the
jukebox is playing and maybe somebody´s practicing some impromptu cosmetic</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> surgery with a broken bottle without the luxury of anaesthetic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But you're focused on what you're friend is saying
and the noise in the background just adds to the atmosphere. If the pub was empty, you´d probably go somewhere
else. And if someone shouted your name (or
“duck"!) you´d turn around to see who it was. Or duck.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KsHTfL9YGMc/T2Mh6PLgFPI/AAAAAAAAAzU/Ide6ufs9L_0/s1600/diving-ducks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KsHTfL9YGMc/T2Mh6PLgFPI/AAAAAAAAAzU/Ide6ufs9L_0/s320/diving-ducks.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, I said you were a DUCKING duck, <br />
clean your ears out, will you?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now let's “put this to music” and see what's
happening. The melody - your friend´s conversation - is the most prominent
part of the music and the backing is the atmosphere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Simply put, without the atmosphere, melody
doesn't say very much. And if something in the music jumps out at you from the
speakers (like “somebody phone the polis!") your ears decide that this is the
most important thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Why? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Because it's louder and takes precedence over
anything else in the music at that moment. That´s how your ears work and
</span><b>this is very unhelpful </b>if you want to be a musician.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KsHTfL9YGMc/T2Mh6PLgFPI/AAAAAAAAAzU/Ide6ufs9L_0/s1600/diving-ducks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KsHTfL9YGMc/T2Mh6PLgFPI/AAAAAAAAAzU/Ide6ufs9L_0/s320/diving-ducks.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What d´ya mean, my arse is perfectly clean!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My advice is </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">not</b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> to spend hours practicing scale shapes all
over the fingerboard if you can't make music with the ones that you
already know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And guitar magazines, however helpful, usually condense a year´s study
onto one page and give the impression you should learn it all in a week. They also force feed the idea that the best technique is the fastest. This is rubbish. Tone,
vibrato, string bending and note choice are the <i>most</i> important factors in playing great guitar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To be a musician, you have to <b>hear </b><b>everything. </b></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJbxL3hyy7w/T2MqxJ-ZlLI/AAAAAAAAAzc/X5Yz1z500i8/s1600/fear+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJbxL3hyy7w/T2MqxJ-ZlLI/AAAAAAAAAzc/X5Yz1z500i8/s200/fear+(1).jpg" width="187" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Hear</i></b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">, I said! Get yourself a packet of cotton buds, for chrissake´s!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You have to<b> HEAR ALL THE SOUND.</b> So do the following:</span></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Listen to as many great players as possible and absorb ALL their sounds</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hum guitar parts - licks, melodies, solos and fills, etc., as accurately as possible till you recognise ALL the kinds of sounds players make</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Listen to how guitarists play notes then bend them, or make them wobble (<i>vibrato</i>)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Train your ears by listening until you can mimic ALL the sounds you hear</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Do this and you´ll definitely be... a <i>budding</i> guitarist! </span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-3867612335335511932012-03-09T05:39:00.002-06:002012-03-10T03:42:32.046-06:00The Jackson Rhoads Guitar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It´s a sad thing to discover a great talent after they´re
dead. This happened to me with Randy
Rhoads, Ozzy Osbourne´s guitarist. I
remember the day - March 20th, 1982. I
was waiting for my bus home from work and reading <i>Sounds </i>magazine, a great
source of information on hard rock.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was an article on the guitarist´s death in a flying
accident the previous day. (Won´t go into more detail, it feels wrong). I´d heard many guitarists praise Randy's
talent - not least Ozzy Osbourne.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Randy first came to attention in his own band Violet
Foxes. He then joined Quiet Riot and was
hailed as a great guitarist. He gave up
teaching guitar at his mother, Delores´, music store, when Quiet Riot, already
playing LA hotspots like Whiskey a Go Go and the Starwood Club, were signed to
a Japanese label and released two albums.
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Randy wasn't your typical rocker. Brought up
Catholic, he´s been described as “God-fearing”. He didn't partake of the usual rock 'n' roll lifestyle, preferring to seek
out classical guitar tutors in whichever city he played in to learn more about
his passion - classical guitar.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, he auditioned for ex-Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne
(definitely your typical rocker!) and got the job <i>while he was warming up</i>! Most
Ozzy fans acknowledge that Randy saved Ozzy's career as he had hired one of the
hottest rock guitarists on the planet, something the man himself has never
forgotten, mentioning Randy to this day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Not long before his tragic death, Randy hooked up with a
then not-so-famous guitar builder named Grover Jackson to design a guitar
nicknamed the Concord. Randy used it on his final tour and further redesigns
resulted in the Jackson Rhoads, also known as the Jackson Shark´s Fin. At the time Grover was working for Wayne
Charvel of Charvel Guitars and didn't want to put the Charvel logo on Randy's
guitar.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So he put his own
name. Jackson.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sadly, Randy died before he got to play his very own Jackson Rhoads guitar. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But the guitar lives on!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">In the wake of this tragic loss, Grover asked KISS guitarist, Vinnie Vincent, to represent the guitar. And so Vinnie became the first guitarist to bring this awesome guitar to the attention of the rock guitar fraternity. He did the guitar great justice back in 1982, playing it with sheer ferocity and skill, and taking the instrument to its sonic limits.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The stunning gold Shark´s Fin.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Jackson Rhoads is now an iconic design and Randy Rhoads has become an iconic figure in rock music. Music magazines are still dissecting his work and giving credit to his pioneering, neoclassical rock musical abilities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But back to me at the bus stop. I caught the bus, went home and, though I wasn´t a fan of Osbourne, I bought some of his albums, <i>Blizzard of Ozz</i> and <i>Diary of a Madman</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Randy Rhoads instantly became one of my heroes. (I´ve so many guitar heroes it´s ridiculous). His solos ascended, then with a rapid flick of his Les Paul toggle, he caused a stuttering effect before descending again. It was like a P41 Mustang hitting its ceiling, stalling, then diving back earthwards.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D5pzEoR4PMk/T1njiGyf0wI/AAAAAAAAAyE/j7skn6By90E/s1600/Mustang+41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D5pzEoR4PMk/T1njiGyf0wI/AAAAAAAAAyE/j7skn6By90E/s400/Mustang+41.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then, in 1983 there was a snippet of KISS´s <i>Creatures of the Night Tour </i>on TV and I saw – or more exactly heard - Vinnie Vincent make some incredible sounds with a fantastic gold guitar. It was a Jackson Rhoads Shark´s Fin, so radical back then that I started pestering McCormack´s music store in Glasgow to get me one!</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1EMpZDz-TAE/T1npewoTDDI/AAAAAAAAAys/NRhdZxlnsG8/s1600/Jackson-Custom-Shop-RR1-VV-3T+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1EMpZDz-TAE/T1npewoTDDI/AAAAAAAAAys/NRhdZxlnsG8/s400/Jackson-Custom-Shop-RR1-VV-3T+(1).jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">30th Anniversary reissue Shark´s Fin, updated with Floyd Rose tremelo with fine tuners. Only 30 created!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, they´d never heard of it. (And I suppose I´d have looked pretty pathetic with a Shark´s Fin guitar in the </span><a href="http://thebarbiographer.blogspot.com/2011/11/parkhead-shuffle.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Prince Charlie pub in Westmuir Street</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, anyway). However, four years later Mr. McCormack was planning a trip to a music trade fair in Germany and I asked him to find out about Jackson guitars.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scotland´s first Jackson Charvel</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Next thing I know he has a Charvel (same company - long story, maybe for a future post) .......<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">....... the very first Jackson Charvel to arrive in Scotland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">And I got it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">I still have it - it's 27 years old now! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">My Charvel is so well-built it´ll probably outlive me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">So while it was sad that I didn´t appreciate Randy Rhoads while he was still alive, I remember him now every time I strap on my Charvel.</span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-66488336234317855512012-02-24T18:52:00.002-06:002012-02-25T06:01:33.946-06:00Tommy´s Tracks 1 - White Horses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RHgnuzuFSpw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><i><i></i></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-21199567160155970552012-01-23T15:04:00.000-06:002012-03-09T06:14:47.777-06:00The Fine Fifty Nine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br />Most guitar lovers covet the Gibson Les Paul 59, even if they don't use one. <br /><br /> Is it a better instrument than a 2012 Les Paul? <br /><br /> Yes. <br /><br /> Let´s do a little potted guitar history here. <br /><br /> Les Paul was a genius, in everything from guitars to multitrack to delay and chorus. The Gibson Company have always claimed that the Les Paul guitar was mainly their idea, but this isn´t true. In the 40s they laughed at the mad inventor with the broomstick and only came after him when Leo Fender got in there first with the solid body guitar. Gibson even screwed up the bridge on the first Les Paul, giving the guitar an arched top like a violin, although Les Paul preferred a flat top. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the 50s the guitar was built using the best tonewoods, Bumble Bee capacitors, silkscreen logos, deep tenon joint right into the neck pickup cavity, flamed tops, and much more. Gibson´s policy was to cut trees down only so far, so that the wood wasn't too dense and the guitar would have better sustain, better natural tone, better dynamics, and better natural harmonics. Most of these had huge baseball bat necks that contributed to the tone – although in 1960 Les Pauls had thinner necks - laquer that cracked easily, paint that faded into a myriad of beautiful colours, pickups with many different amounts of winding (hot and not so hot) all of which made each guitar unique. <br /><br /> Yet, incredibly, by the 1980s <i>no rock guitarist </i>wanted a Les Paul! Everyone wanted a Charvel, Jackson or Kramer. Eddie Van Halen got incredible sounds from his bastardised Charvel with it's Floyd Rose whammy bar. The Les Polsfuss was totally out of fashion (though it could could kick the bejeesus out of all of the above with its beautiful blend of mahogany body, maple top and warm - yet brutal - Alnico pickups). Even when in the late 80s Slash of Guns ´n´ Roses seemed to be playing a Gibson and resurrecting the Les Paul, he was actually playing a bastardised guitar with a Gibson neck. The body was built by a great guitar luthier called Max who could build a <i>better </i>Les Paul than Gibson, using the best possible tone woods. <br /><br /> So how did this happen? <br /><br /> In the 70s the Gibson company evolved into <i>Corporate Gibson</i> and they began to use everything but the tree roots for their famed guitars. This made the guitars so heavy that guitarists started to suffer from the dreaded “Les Paul neck”. This encompasses a host of problems such as severe neck and shoulder pain and slouching over the guitar to alleviate the strain. <br /><br /> In short, skill and passion had been replaced by the greedy pursuit of profits and the quality suffered. The CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) router system and the plek system were introduced, replacing real instruments made by skilled instrument makers. <br /><br /> In my view, <i>corporate </i>is a disgusting word because wherever it appears there´s no beauty. So, predictably, Corporate Gibson sucks and quality is decreasing so fast that soon the mythical name of Gibson will stand for no more than crap. Mass factory built guitars are a complete rip off - what you now get from the Gibson Custom Shop (which is another story!) is closer to what you got from the Gibson factory floor in 1959. Bog standard, dense, hollowed out mahogany. Orville Gibson, a man who believed in quality to the extent of using fiddle back (flamed maple) on his guitars because he found it so beautiful on violin backs, would turn in his grave. <br /><br /> Now that Gibson have been taken to court for illegaly obtaining rosewood for their fingerboards, we now have baked maple instead. Gibson´s CEO, the profit-hungry Henry E. Juszkiewicz deserves to be taken and shaken. He has no love of guitars and no respect for the people who play them and is on record as saying that the higher the price, the more people – or fools - will believe they´re getting better quality. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /><br />To this day, Slash uses, not Gibson Les Pauls, but the results of what's known as ghost building. Gibson permits an independent builder to put their logo on Slash's guitars. Slash endorses Gibson and everybody makes a fortune. <br /><br /> In conclusion, while I'm still a Les Paul lover and own a nice, cherry sunburst with a great, powerful rock tone, when it comes to playing, I sling on a Fender strat. Even though it has wider fret spacing, much weaker pickups and a higher action, I love it because it's really comfy around my neck and I can reach the higher register without being obstructed by a huge mortice and tenon joint. A contemporary Les Paul is still a great guitar with a great tone - but it´s not worth <b>half </b>its retail price. <br /><br /> </span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-40752466883615137922011-12-28T12:04:00.000-06:002012-02-13T05:01:18.546-06:00Who Needs a Guitar Hero?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">An
interesting thing happened to me in the late seventies. I was learning to play the guitar by
listening to all the contemporary rock guitar greats to figure out what they
were doing. As you can imagine, my bedroom wall was covered with posters of
these giants of rock.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One day, in
a record store, I came across a poster of a really striking guitarist. Posing and pouting in a black catsuit, his
long, blond hair flying about, he brandished a white Flying V. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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thinking, this guy´s either something special or a complete plonker!<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some time
later I went to see a British band called UFO.
They had a guitarist called Paul Chapman, who I thought was really
good. I subsequently came across a UFO
album in a bargain bin and bought it.
Chapman was really good, so I bought a second UFO album.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet as soon
as the first, hypnotic solo kicked in… I could tell that it wasn't Paul
Chapman! This solo was like nothing
I´d heard before:- the tone, the vibrato, the microtonal bends,
all of it melodic and precise. The
guitar playing on that whole album was astonishing, so I checked the album
cover and noticed this guy with long, blond hair ……. A bit of research later, I
found out that the guitarist was, indeed, the poser with the Flying V.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He was none
other than the great Michael Schenker, of course.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have a
framed picture of that poster on my wall, for two reasons. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One:
because it connects me to the feelings I experienced when I first heard
Obsession. I still love it and it will
always be my No.1 rock guitar album. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two:
because it makes me feel good! When I
listen to that album thirty odd years later, I´m taken back in time. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Moral of
the story. The best thing to inspire any
guitarist is a guitar hero.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you don't
have one, <b><i>find one!</i></b></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-50038452200461835032011-12-27T08:27:00.000-06:002011-12-27T08:27:05.156-06:00Queen. Best Band in the World?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbnFx1ROptg/TvnVDEX1fKI/AAAAAAAAAp8/YSxmtSGJGFA/s1600/queen-wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbnFx1ROptg/TvnVDEX1fKI/AAAAAAAAAp8/YSxmtSGJGFA/s320/queen-wallpaper.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I admit to
a certain bias here as I loved Queen.
From their first album, Queen, their music suited their name
perfectly. Grandiose, regal,
sophisticated, beautiful, soulful, arrogant, splendid. …there are so many
highflown words to describe the music of this essentially studio band that used
multilayers of vocals and guitars on their records. Bringing some of their songs to life, live on
stage, was quite a task for them but they managed to pull off the almost
impossible in their concerts, which is to their credit.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They were
an incredibly inventive band; I´d call it collective genius. While Queen were really Freddie and Brian
with their strong grounding in harmony, Roger was a good drummer with a
brilliant vocal range and John was a great, inventive bass player who could
also write good songs. Brian and Roger
were the rockers (as was Freddie until Studio 54 in New York got his disco
hormones raging) but John wasn´t. He was a a bass player of the times who loved
funky, bass grooves as heard on the hit Another One Bites the Dust (which
should, perhaps, have been entitled Another Queen Fan Bites the Dust……) and on
his brilliant Millionaire Waltz. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While it´s
true that none of Queen was a technical virtuoso on his instrument,
collectively they were musical wizards, with minds that absorbed and
encapsulated many styles soon moulded, uniquely, into a sound called Queen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With
seventies Queen, we had Freddie's beautifully distinctive falsetto voice that
could switch to a raspy tenor in the blink of an eye. We had Brian's sixpence scratchings against
the strings of his unique, home-made, wooden, wonder guitar that could emulate
anything from a horn to a cello. We also
had Roger's impossibly high, screamed harmonies along with beautifully crafted
songs, stunning arrangements, heavenly harmonies and melting movements.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And the
most commanding and beautiful singing voice ever.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sometimes I
wonder what they were on! In my thirty six years as a Queen fan, I have yet to
hear such perfect harmonies from any other artist, or such brilliant guitar
orchestrations as the likes of Brian May.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span>In my view,
no one can touch them, despite the inferior output that reared it's ugly head
in the band´s mid musical career. Queen
sounds will live forever in my heart and in my head and I judge everything
musical according to their standards.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Led
Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC, KISS, Van Halen,
Journey, Rush …. etc, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yes, I
think Queen were the best band in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And I make
no apologies for it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6222574610347258358.post-67771759669465681582011-12-26T15:59:00.000-06:002011-12-27T08:28:38.150-06:00Peas in an i-Pod?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Rw7kVzJz5k/TvjtVvw5MaI/AAAAAAAAApM/nbOA1bl5hEc/s1600/GivePeasAChance%2521_1100x1100.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Rw7kVzJz5k/TvjtVvw5MaI/AAAAAAAAApM/nbOA1bl5hEc/s1600/GivePeasAChance%2521_1100x1100.png" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tonight I'm listening to a musical genius who is a complete master of melody, harmony, chord stuctures, dynamics and lyrics. He´s also a wonderful vocalist and guitarist. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm talking about the great Todd Rundgren. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">Years ago, my cousin insisted I borrow a horrible album. I dragged it home, gave it a listen and thought <i>what a pile of trash</i>. But Rudgren was using typical pop and rock progressions fused with jazz-influenced movements and blended with clever, and sometimes complex, vocal</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"> harmonies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was one clever dude (that I probably hated for it). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Thanks John, for forcing bands on me).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I´m lucky to have great ears and a mind that can judge for itself. While I didn't like everything I was hearing, I knew that I was listening to someone with great musical talent and who was writing from the heart. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So I have a question. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Why is the melody being erased from music? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We press buttons to function from day to day. Our sense of melody and harmony – that we´re born with - is slowly decreasing. We can't survive without sound. We are sound. Like the atoms of which we´re made, we vibrate to stay together. Vibration is sound.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, we hear about good and bad vibrations. What are they? It's quite simple. Good vibrations resonate with our bodies in a good way (make you feel good) and bad vibes are the opposite. So imagine what happens when something fools you into enjoying bad vibrations. Imagine we only listen to synthetic drums and synthetic (by definition, non-natural) sounds. A drum has indefinite pitch (bad vibrations) and is never in tune. So what if you make the drum the strongest part of the music then add an unresolved (no resolving cadence) robotic loop. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You get continuous, robotic bass drum, low end bass loop with no groove or ebb and flow - and don't forget that the vocals are often rap with no melody. Ebb and flow, rhythm, is good for us because our heart beat actually flows (look it up, it´s true). Take that away by using computerized drum loops and we´re left with a monotonous, static unnaturally bad vibe. An invisible musical cage. And as we all know, or perhaps have forgotten, expression can't exist in a cage. But that´s the kind of music with which we´re swamped daily.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Canned carrots, canned peas, canned music. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As most good musicians know, melody is nothing without harmony. When we hear a melody with no harmony our ears have nothing to relate to, so they can't sense the harmonic stucture. But when we put harmonic structure (chords) behind the melody our ears <i>can</i> make more sense of it. When we hear a song our brains automatically absorb both the melody <i>and</i> the harmony. Even though you might not understand this interplay, you can hum the tune and get a sense of the movement behind the melody. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;">Rundgren's melodies, on the other hand, are strongly enhanced by</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"> contrary and oblique motion within the chord structures with the vocal harmonies giving a feeling of depth and breadth. And so we´re taken on a musical journey with unexpectedtwists and surprises. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We need to follow Rundgren´s example and bring back the Music Grocery where we could pick something fresh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not some pre –cooked, tinned peas in an iPod.</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0