It seems like almost everyone has got a shitty gift at one point in their lives. While my grandma has bought me some cds that surprised me (such as Sublime’s self-titled album) she also had bought me a few cds which I initially thought were jokes. If you are reading this blog I’m pretty sure you know the album is Skee-lo’s “I Wish”.
I remember not minding the song when it came out but the rest of the album is horrible. It’s almost like a parody of a rap album. It seems like Skee-lo hasn’t done much since this album came out in 1995. He released an album in 2000 and that’s about it. Maybe I’m being optimistic but I think Skee-lo’s busy in the studio crafting what he believes to be the next “Pet Sounds“. It’s more likely that it will have more in common with “Metal Machine Music” though.
Atmosphere has a cd available for download on the Rhyme Sayers website titled “Strictly Leakage”. Here is the link to the page where you can download the album (and also check out their new single “Shoulda Known”). Scroll down a bit and you will see the link to grab “Strictly Leakage”. While the album title is a bit odd (<insert feminine hygiene joke here>) I really enjoyed it. Most of the tracks have a funky vibe to them which I love. I think I have an odd attraction to rap songs that use horns and guitar stabs. It kind of reminds me of DJ Shadow’s School House Funk albums.
I mean how can you not these lyrics from the song “The Things That Hate Us”:
“As American has herpes and hot dogs/Got lost between the mustard and hot sauce/Unprotected sex with that one you just met/You ain’t even got all your Hep shots yet”
I got my bass back from a friend the other day and started playing again. I haven’t really played bass (or guitar for that matter) in the last six months due to not having much time and ambition to play. It is kind of nice to start playing again but it is also kind of frustrating to get back to the point I was at before. When I started playing bass my biggest goal was to play fingerstyle. The reason for this being that I prefer the tone that comes from the fingers and felt it could also help my fingerstyle playing on guitar.
While it’s frustrating at times trying to play something that is faster with the fingers and not a pick, the challenge is nice. Now if I could only play some decent slap bass…
Although the album has been out since 2006, I still really like Wilco’s “Sky Blue Sky” album. However is there anyone else who when they listen to “You Are My Face” think of Steely Dan? Maybe it’s the influence of Nels Cline that leads me to think of it. I dunno, just at the turn around in the song it has a Steely Dan vibe to it for me. Not that it’s a bad thing.
If you haven’t heard the song “You Are My Face” here’s a live version of it:
Pitch correction is a process in which out of tune notes are corrected to sound in tune. Primarily it is used in recording albums where if a certain note is out of tune, software can be used to correct it. This is controversial to some musicians as they feel it allows singers who do not possess a great voice to come off sounding like they do. However this was only done with a single note until now.
I was sent this a link yesterday that pointed me to video demonstrating Melodyne’s Direct Note Access. It amazed me what it is capable of. An example they give is say a guitar is playing a C major triad (C E G). The program is able to analyze each individual note within the chord. This allows the editing of a note within the chord such as its pitch, timing, note lengths, etc… That means this C major triad could be changed into a C minor triad (C Eb G) simply by moving the pitch of the E note while the tonal qualities of the original C major triad remains.
The video best demonstrates what is possible with the program and isn’t theoretical. It is amazing and scary at the same time. While some of my favorite musicians keep the mistakes they make on their albums (such as Neil Young or Tom Waits) it also allows musicians to remove say an open string ringing by accident in a chord in what would otherwise be a perfect take.
Arguably the second most famous band from Boston (next to Aerosmith), Extreme has announced a reunion tour and a new album in the works. They have been a guilty pleasure for me since High School and my friends bugged the hell out of me for it. Then again some of them listened to Poison so who are they to judge. At least they didn’t listen to Winger or Grim Reaper though.
The odd thing is I didn’t get into them through their biggest single “More than Words“. I actually dislike the song. Although More than Words was most likely the first song I heard by them, the song that made me go out and listen to them some more was “Hip Today” which is from their final album Waiting for the Punchline. This is my favorite album by them and the critics hated it. There are other albums are more in the hair metal genre (III Sides to Every Story arguably fits in here too).
After Waiting for the Punchline the band broke up. Gary Cherone had a short stint singing for Van Halen (he was on the album III), Paul Geary (the drummer) went on to manage some bands including Godsmack and the Smashing Pumpkins and the guitarist Nuno Bettencourt did some solo work and formed a few bands.
Unfortunately the band does not get as much respect as I think they deserve. Although they began as a hair metal band they branched out. Gary Cherone has an amazing voice (reminds me of Freddie Mercury from Queen) and Nuno can shred like mofo on the guitar and still be tasteful. Listen to the following video to hear not only his great riff writing but his tasteful chops.
Am I the only person who has heard enough about this album? I’m not a big fan of Guns and Roses to begin with and this album is so overhyped that it is going to disappoint almost nearly everyone. “Chinese Democracy” has been recorded for more than 10 years now yet all that has come out so far have been some demos and I wasn’t that impressed by them. The band isn’t really Guns and Roses any more either. Where’s Slash and Duff?
The album has turned into something you would expect in This is Spinal Tap. Except that movie was intentionally made as a parody.
For an interesting interview with a session drummer who played on some tracks for Chinese Democracy, go here: http://www.eqmag.tv/ Click on Brain and then Chinese Democracy (sorry, I don’t know any other way to get to it). Also his tracks may not be on the album if it is ever released. Who knows what the hell is going on with the album anyways.
A few days ago I was told by a friend who has a career in music about multitracks. In this definition they are tracks from studio recordings of each instrument before it is mastered. For example there are tracks for the bass, vocals, guitar, snare, hi-hats, cymbals, bass drum, etc. but they are independent of each other. So one of the files contains just the bass in the song while the other tracks contain different parts. These tracks are also generally not mastered so they have no been eq’d or had effects added to them yet.
When I first heard about them the first one I downloaded was Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” and I only downloaded the bass line. The reason for only downloading the bass line is that I love the bass in soul music and especially bass lines by James Jamerson.
This allows for people to look at and isolate certain instruments in a song which you cannot do with a finished recording. It also allows for one to mess around with the songs in terms of mastering it and coming up with a recording different than the studio version. Also there are some classic tracks floating around that are available as multitracks such as Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Marvin Gaye’s ”I Heard it through the Grapevine” and The Doobie Brothers “Long Train Running”.
I have pretty much no clue when it comes to mastering but I am interested in music and love messing around. Here’s a link to my attempt at doing this with Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” [Rapid Share Link]. There are a lot of things I want to try and fix within it in terms of eq’ing and where each part sits in the mix. It’s a first try though.
Neil Young’s 2003 album “Greendale” is probably one of my favorite records. It is one of those albums that I find that I listen to from start to finish without skipping any tracks. It has been called an “audio novel” and it definently is a concept album of sorts. It tells the story of the Green family and problems that begin to emerge within their lives. Different songs have different view points of the family and what is going on which makes it like a novel.
There are two versions of the album available. One of the versions has Neil Young doing an acoustic performance of all the songs in Ireland and the other contains a live performance of Neil Young and Crazy Horse performing the album while the film version of Greendale plays along.
One of the things I really like about this album is that it doesn’t sound like it came out in 2003. By that I mean it has a rough guitar sound to it and the volume of it is not pushed to the limit. Also there are certain parts in which there are ‘mistakes’ in it such as guitar licks being a bit off or pitchy. I like this because it is obvious that a guitar part was not just copy and pasted through out the entire track in Pro Tools. Actually I believe the band played the song all the way through and that’s how it was recorded minus overdubs and vocals. This gives the album character as it isn’t all shiny and polished, it’s rough like a Neil Young album should be.
There were no music videos made for this album. However I found this video of Neil Young and Crazy Horse on the Greendale Tour in 2003. It is part 1 of 20 but I believe you should be able to find all the parts of the concert using this one link. I might be wrong but I believe he played the album the entire way through on this tour.
Before I even played it I mocked Guitar Hero. I thought it was a lot like Dance Dance Revolution which I despise. I’ve played guitar/bass for around ten years and although I’m not great at it, I can play both instruments well enough to jam with friends. So I’m not Yngwie Malmsteen or Jaco Pastorius. Once I actually played it a bit, I changed my mind. It actually is quite a fun game (especially with a few friends and some alcohol involved).
A few of my friends who’ve played the game ask me if it is as easy to play guitar as it is in Guitar Hero. I find it kind of an odd question because they are two seperate things. There is a big difference between touching 5 buttons and pressing on a knob up and down in time to a song than playing a 6 stringed instrument that may have 21 or more frets. Not to mention on a real guitar there are many things you can do on it that you can’t in Guitar Hero (sweep picking, harmonics, pinch harmonics, tapping, tap harmonics, etc…) I don’t know if you can even do hammer ons and pull offs on Guitar Hero. At the same time, I’ll admit I suck at Guitar Hero. It just seems odd to me at times that some complex song, complete with guitar solos (such as Metallica’s “One”) is broken down to pressing 5 buttons.
Today I was at a music shop killing some time and saw a guitar book for sale that made me smile. It was songs from “Guitar Hero“. Maybe it’s just me but I found it kind of ironic.
Posted by 82muchf00d 
Posted by 82muchf00d 
Posted by 82muchf00d 
