Musicology | Love 'em, Hate 'em

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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Mr. Perfect wrote:This movie touched me in deep and mysterious ways. One of the most emotional experiences in my life and it changed me. I owe Sly a debt I can never repay.

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I preferred the musical:

CGPxlMpzqYQ
Mr. Perfect
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Mr. Perfect »

jerryberry wrote:
Mr. P,

Chet has no frets and a classical guitar but what is that specific effect? Do you know? Some sort of synth?? The fuzz on the e & a strings is really nice.
jerry, it's probably just the piezo electric pickup. The audio is rather muddy so it may make it sound "better" piezos are out of fashion at the moment. It's just an acoustic you can plug in.

Although it gives me an idea, a piezo through some kind of filter.

Edge here is sending an acoustic pickup through amp distortion and a filter but it doesn't sound remotely the same.

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Mr. Perfect
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Mr. Perfect »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote: I preferred the musical:

CGPxlMpzqYQ
Almost as good.
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noddy
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

Out of nowhere i decided to pick the axe back up again and try and restore my skills back to the levels they were at 25 years ago, a task fraught with frustration.

part of that was digging the strat out of the rust pile in the corner of the shed but my beloved old tube amp is long since dead.

i went out and purchased one of these new fangled "modeling amps" as a replacement, the fender mustang, and bloody hell! the technology has changed so much in the last decade its unbelievable.

solid state used to suck so hard, now i get really sweet sounding tube tones at practice levels in my lounge room out of a $200 amp which fits on the shelf.

obviously not as dynamic as a cranked tube amp but at practice levels its actually far superior because it can get good tones without bursting ear drums.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:Out of nowhere i decided to pick the axe back up again and try and restore my skills back to the levels they were at 25 years ago, a task fraught with frustration.

part of that was digging the strat out of the rust pile in the corner of the shed but my beloved old tube amp is long since dead.

i went out and purchased one of these new fangled "modeling amps" as a replacement, the fender mustang, and bloody hell! the technology has changed so much in the last decade its unbelievable.

solid state used to suck so hard, now i get really sweet sounding tube tones at practice levels in my lounge room out of a $200 amp which fits on the shelf.

obviously not as dynamic as a cranked tube amp but at practice levels its actually far superior because it can get good tones without bursting ear drums.
how goes it?


------
I purchased a lower-mid range drum set recently.

Drums are the one instrument I've always avoided fooling around with to a certain extent. I've never wanted to be the non-drummer guy who decides that he's the best drummer in the room.

I think that's a universal experience for anyone who has played with other professional or amateur musicians at one time or another. You end up sympathizing with the guy because a lot of times its the guitarist who doesn't really understand what they are talking about no matter how wonderful he or she may be a guitar. It's seldom the bassist or the keyboardist or the guy/gal on sax.

Of course the flip side is that a lot of drummers just don't fit with the rest of the band (at best) or they are simply mediocre. Nothing kills a piece of pop music (in the wide sense) as a mediocre drummer.

And that's where I'm at, a novice mediocrity. The few times I've sat behind a kit (as opposed to programming drum beats or suggesting something to a drummer, ) I've known two things:

1) I've a pretty good command of the rhythm; good timing, can play around a pulse. If you need someone to just keep a rhythm going, even more complex ones, I can do that.

2) I've terrible instincts on what constitutes good drumming; my attempts at fills are atrocious, I don't have a good sense of how to apply drums to a song I've not written etc etc....

Number 2 is what's I'm hoping I can correct with some actual practice though it may just be something ingrained. I don't think 'in drums' like I can think in other instruments. Arrangements in my head tend to have a tuneful or restrained percussive or need to be fleshed out after the fact.

I definitely don't have an ear for rock drumming. I hear it, I can feel it; I can program it into a drum machine; but unlike, say, a clarinet, I couldn't describe it in detail.
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Drum like you genuflect.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:Drum like you genuflect.
you could just say I'm screw'd :lol:
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

When it comes to bass, the ones I play the most (especially with other musicians) is from the oft-maligned Ibanez series.

I'll use a Ibanez 650 and 750. There is a wood difference between the two, making the 750 darker.

They are supposed to be metal or hard rock oriented but what I've found is that (after fixing the usual issues with Ibanez equipment) they are incredibly versatile and "customizable" to whatever you're playing.

What I like the most is that the neck and body is the most comfortable electric bass I've ever played. The neck is as thin as you are going to get on a bass without getting a customized and it allows for a good speed and a better approximation for what I'd do on a piano.
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

:)

it goes ok, but ive hit a sort of wall in the sense that part of my original drop off in desire was due to an entrapment in certain licks and patterns i had grown bored of and now i find those dreaded cliches are the first to come back.

not quite sure what you mean by
Drums are the one instrument I've always avoided fooling around with to a certain extent. I've never wanted to be the non-drummer guy who decides that he's the best drummer in the room.

I think that's a universal experience for anyone who has played with other professional or amateur musicians at one time or another. You end up sympathizing with the guy because a lot of times its the guitarist who doesn't really understand what they are talking about no matter how wonderful he or she may be a guitar. It's seldom the bassist or the keyboardist or the guy/gal on sax.
however i personally find guitar quite often boring because it seems more trapped in patterns than any of the other instruments and entire careers are built off cliches in the standard blues boxes.

i used to play in a classic 90's pretentious fusion thing - free jazz, metal and funk/blues mashups ala living colour, primus and mr bungle.

this time round i feel like im a frustrated bass player and i should have just bought one of those instead and really mixed things up :)

drums is something i dont have a physical affinity for, i see someone like terry bozzio and just cant grok the 4 limb seperations.

I do have a problem with the Ibanez look (hah) .. that big hair and pointy guitar thing required eye bleach.

my main guitar is a sunburst american strat from the hendrix/stevie ray school of sounds - all my favourite tones come from those and i find the fat humbucker sound a bit one trick pony.
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Simple Minded »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:.....

What I like the most is that the neck and body is the most comfortable electric bass I've ever played. The neck is as thin as you are going to get on a bass without getting a customized and it allows for a good speed and a better approximation for what I'd do on a piano.
Amen Bro. If you can't get a good grip on either the neck or the body of these slippery bastards, it is tough to play them at all. Don't they make some kinda special gloves coated with Stick'em or something?
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noddy
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

the slippery analog bass is more akin to playing with the organ.

unlike the skinny necked electric bass and its affinity with the piano.

:P
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:the slippery analog bass is more akin to playing with the organ.

unlike the skinny necked electric bass and its affinity with the piano.

:P
Yep. Until you've mastered the art of self-love, all those other analogies are merely playing second fiddle......
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

I had a real nice organ attached with a Leslie; the upkeep and the horror of lugging it around made me cut it off. ;)
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I had a real nice organ attached with a Leslie; the upkeep and the horror of lugging it around made me cut it off. ;)
"Whiter Shade of Pale" referred to the organ player's complexion after lugging that Leslie from venue to venue.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

Teresa of Ávila
Simple Minded

Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Simple Minded »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I had a real nice organ attached with a Leslie; the upkeep and the horror of lugging it around made me cut it off. ;)
"that man is richest, whose pleasures are cheapest." - Karl Marx
noddy
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

Simple Minded wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I had a real nice organ attached with a Leslie; the upkeep and the horror of lugging it around made me cut it off. ;)
"that man is richest, whose pleasures are cheapest." - Karl Marx
single entendres cost nothing, i must be a billionaire.

can leslie play the flute ?
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Simple Minded

Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I had a real nice organ attached with a Leslie; the upkeep and the horror of lugging it around made me cut it off. ;)
"that man is richest, whose pleasures are cheapest." - Karl Marx
single entendres cost nothing, i must be a billionaire.
There has never been a better application of "To each according to his needs, from each according to their ability."

Most human males are Marxists...... behind closed doors. :P

Kinda makes one wonder how the whole "Marxism as an economics theory" myth got started.
noddy wrote:can leslie play the flute ?
If Leslie is a female, that is a horribly insensitive, sexist question, and you are a misogynist pig. If Leslie is not female, it's just another conversation between hipster musicians reliving their on-the-road sexual conquests. ;)
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Simple Minded wrote:hipster musicians
It may not have always been like this but you don't get to be a hipster musician unless your parents are rather wealthy and very connected.
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

its most amusing to think people would look back on the "corrupt corporate radio" days with nostalgia on its ability to bring in new unknown artists

turns out when given the choice to stream anything they want , people listen to their old favourites over and over and over...
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

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That's what they get for ritualizing pop music and attempting to turn all of it into a substitute for classical forms of music, with upper-class pretensions.

It's like Jazz; Jazz was ruined by consistent pressure to make it "serious".

My problem with fusions music starts there by the way; not too long ago I had a conversation about Miles Davis's Bitches Brew. Everyone praises the album to the skies for its jazz-rock fusion.

But I am of the opinion that it was the ruination of Miles Davis in that it wasn't really a fusion at all but a way (and encouragement) to indulge in a minimalism which he was predisposed to do. It was always present in his material but the tendency only got worse from there; and in a sense, the album can be viewed as a middle-aged man going through a crisis trying to impress his much younger wife.

It gets the praise it does for two reasons:

1) It is very good because Miles Davis was a very gifted musician surrounded by other gifted musicians and it was well edited. Just on skill, he was able to craft something that had more depth than any of the "rock" guys because he had a much wider palette to begin with.

2) It "gives in" to what cultural critic and Davis biographer Martha Bayles calls "perverse modernity". And I think it's fitting. It's an attitude that grew out of the avant garde and european 20th century art movements which did not tolerate anything not of itself.

According to Bayles, when we are talking about American musics, we are talking afro-american music which, unlike its european counterpart, actual developed a middle class, non-bohemian art scene. Jazz, blues, country on down the line, was a tradition of entertainer-entrepreneurs; and it increasingly becomes the case that the only American music praised is the type which sloughs off or repudiates this tradition.

So 'Motown' = unserious; but the Beatles farting into microphones is the height of urbanity.

And so it goes for Miles Davis.

I've heard Bitches' Brew suggested a million times to people as a way to get into jazz and it makes me want to pull my hair out. It's like suggesting to someone who wants to read English literature to start with James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and it gives the suggestion that jazz itself, without rock/avant garde/classical buttress, is an inferior or incomplete in some way.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

I usually try to suggest more accessible pieces like these from Duke Ellington:

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noddy
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

id agree that fusion is usually crap, except for when its not - i do enjoy mike stern (ex miles davis) but he uses distorted guitar as a tone more than a reference to rock, his live concerts more than his records

I cant stand the "running scales" type nonsense, except in the hands of someone like coltrane.

miles davis rarely works for me, except the early cool cafe stuff like kind of blue, i always figured he dissapeared up his own bottom on cocaine and praise after that.

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mingus and monk are my favourites, ive nearly burned out mingus "oh yeah" over the years.

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i did used to have a stomach for free jazz but i seem to have lost that as time passed.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Kind of Blue is what I had in mind-- instead of developing further from there; he turned into exactly what he was making fun of in the early/mid 60s.

And you're right, when fusion works it works. At the end of the day, it's music. I'm just not sure it's ultimately good for the soul to wade through so much muck. Same thing goes for a lot of rock.
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Re: Love 'em, hate 'em

Post by noddy »

most genres come back to a couple of songs from an inspired band/muso that created the entire scene and after that you can ignore all the pretenders.
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