Skip to main content

Day Three Hundred Forty Nine (Year Two)

Oh, today has been a decidedly fun hodgepodge of musical awesomeness.

We've got a 6 song Stones sampler in the current run of in-store plays, and this fact alone started a conversation between myself and one of the managers about the always fun Beatles vs. Stones discussion.  He (and I) both prefer the Fab Four over the Stones, but still.  I believe his opening statement was something to the effect of "Y'know, on the whole, there are about 6 Rolling Stones songs that I really like, and this disc doesn't have all of them on it."  We both agreed that the Stones are more of an acquired taste than The Beatles are, which led us to a discussion of their musical brilliance, and that led me to proclaim "oh, have you seen the coolest Beatles thing ever made?"

The coolest Beatles thing ever made, for those of you that haven't spent the last two years obsessively following my postings, is this:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beatles-the-beatles/1101794317?ean=9780793518326

Yep, it's the COMPLETE scores.  And when it says COMPLETE, it means COMPLETE.  Like, every guitar solo, every lyric, every handclap kind of complete.  It's a truly amazing work.  And it essentially provides, for someone crazy enough to do it (maybe me, someday), a complete primer on how to recreate all of the amazing things they did from 1962-70.

Another thought that occurred to me today: it would be great fun to go through the book, and trace the evolution of their songwriting based on the order in which their singles were released, and subsequently, the order in which the albums were released.  Imagine everything that one could learn about constructing popular music from such a study.

And speaking of constructing popular songs, apparently there is a Youtube video of a guy who works at a guitar store in Chicago that has gone viral without my knowledge.  In it, he plays 100 guitar riffs that trace the history of rock & roll in one fell (12 minute) swoop.  I watched it.  It's incredible.

Anyway, they hyped the video in a story on NPR.com today, which is how I found out about it.  Here's the link.  Check it out.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/07/08/156393911/the-shredder-behind-100-guitar-licks-speaks

I've got other stuff to talk about tonight, but somehow this seems perfect for today.  I'll hit the rest of it tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Six (Year Four)

Today was the first official day of the second half of my "album-in-a-month" challenge. As for today's goals, I wanted to see what I could get done in regards to track order, and get at least a little bit of a start on the lyric writing process. I spent more time working on the track order question than I did on the lyrics today, but as a result of that, I ended up with something that I think will work in terms of order. I did sit with the notebook for a few minutes at the very end of the day, and got a solid starting line of lyric and some other ideas that I hope will be jumping off points for lyrics. What I'm thinking I might do, however, is switch my focus from the lyric writing part of the process directly to the recording part of the process.  That way, if I can get the music recorded and burned onto a CD, I can take the music with me in the car, and listen and try to see what images and thoughts the music brings up.  It's a tactic that has worked for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Ninety Nine (Year Four)

Tonight was one of those nights where absolutely nothing went right, but somehow, some way, I managed to get into the studio for a little bit, and make what felt like good progress, all things considered. I went back through the second half of last night's chapter in The Guitarist's Guide To Scales Over Chords , just to make sure that I had a decent grasp of everything that was covered, and then made the move to the next chapter. After the theory-heavy chapter I had just gotten through, it was a great relief to have the next one be more music (playing) centered.  It was all about putting the scale examples they cited in the early chapters to use in a musical context. I've seen a great number of books try to do this in a successful manner, and end up failing spectacularly, but so far I'm liking what this book is putting forward.  They give you "starter" examples, that don't necessarily make the best use of note choices, etc. and then present you with an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Ninety Two (Year Five)

Today was the last seminary village cookout of the year. While we were all sitting around the picnic tables eating dinner, I got a chance to talk with a few of the Mrs.'s classmates about guitar related stuff. As it turns out, more than one of them wants to be more proficient on guitar. I'm not saying that this will lead to more teaching opportunities, but I told one of them that I would throw a folder together for them. Essentially, anytime I get a chance to talk shop is a great chance for me to reinforce some of the things I have been focusing on. If nothing else, it gets me thinking ahead to tomorrow's day off and a chance to get into the studio for a decent amount of time.
Post a Comment
Read more