I was listening to my playlist today and John Mayer's funky take on the blues standard "Crossroads" came up. I really like Mayer's interpretation of this song. Here's a youtube video of a live performance with extended intro and solos from the Letterman show. I know some folks, especially blues fans, don't like to or want to give Mayer credit for his fretwork, but I dig his style.
A friend posted a link to a viral video of Noah's cover of LMFAO's tune "I'm Sexy and I know it", which I thought was awesome, so I looked at some of his other tunes. I actually thought this cover of Gotye's "Someone that I used to know" was even better.
"Just listen, and you'll hear" - Jimi Hendrix
I saw that quote in an NPR story about Jimi Hendrix earlier today. Here's the link to the story and the link to the podcast.
The 40th Anniversary of Hendrix's death is this weekend September 18th. He'd be 67 years old if he was still alive. I've never heard the song mentioned in the article... only problem is I can't find a copy of the song anywhere to download.
Over the past year or so I've gotten into Jimi Hendrix's playing in a very big way and now have a high level of admiration for what Hendrix was about. When I was younger I just didn't "get" Jimi, but I guess now that I've aged a little I have developed an unexpected level of admiration and respect. And most of the respect comes from listening to Hendrix's back-catalog - and the fine work on those songs that you'd never hear unless you searched them out. The popular rock songs that blanket the classic rock airwaves are O.K., but there's a whole different Hendrix out there that creates a whole new dimension - and without checking out his back-catalog via my emusic.com subscription I probably would've never heard most of it.
edit: after looking around here's a youtube video of the song that I came across. I guess the track was never officially released?
I was downloading some tunes from emusic today and downloaded an Indigo Girls Live album that impressed me (alot of live albums aren't that good but I like this one). The lyric of the day comes from there. I love this turn of phrase:
"I got bitten by the bitter bug and now I just can't get enough
of ill will and my own conceits, and I'm weary of the world it seems"
- Second Time Around, The Indigo Girls
I posted a tune from these guys a short while ago, but I gotta say this is one of the better rock-n-roll songs I'd never heard. I don't come across these very often.
I think they came out with this song in 2005, but if they'd have come out with this in the late 80s I'm certain they would've had a hit with it. Not sure how it did in 2005 though. Anyhow - here's a performance from Letterman. Enjoy.
A friend at work mentioned a band called the Darkness to me today. I vaguely recalled the name but couldn't remember their stuff, but I was listening to some of it today and I'm liking alot of their cuts on YouTube. I'm particularly impressed with how well they can pull some of their songs off in a live setting.
Here's probably their most popular song
I was tracking down some of my favorite songs from the 80s and found this one the other day. Please forgive the video as it is really bad - I didn't know the video was so strange as I only remember the song from a little cassette where I copied the tune off of the radio - but it really was a fun tune and makes me smile. If you remember it I hope it makes you smile too. I really miss this kind of stuff.
Slade - Run Run Away
Check out this song written in gibberish to sound like English. I think he's nailed Bob Dylan, and it's actually a pretty catchy tune. Well done.
Here's a link to more info:
linked to this from the Marginal Revolution blog.
I found this article about radio listening habits changing interesting. Instead of using the mail in diary's of daily listening behavior, the metering companies are starting to use technology to track exactly what channel your radio is on and what you're listening to (more similar to how TV ratings are calculated).
I participated in one of the radio diaries last year and agree with some of the critiques. If you're driving to work and change your channel several times - can you really remember all the channels you listened to and how long? During the survey period I'd often just turn my radio off if everything was bad (which was often) rather than keep flipping around and have to worry about trying to fill out the radio diary for channel changes
Some of the interesting findings:
- guys listen to more soft rock than they admit.
- people report listening to more classical than they really do.
- only 5 people in the country listen to smooth jazz, and one of them just died.
I am mostly a rock guy (mostly classic rock stuff), but there are definitely some soft rock music I like alot that most guys either don't like or won't admit to liking:
Sarah MacLachlan is one of my favorite musicians
Alison Krauss is awesome
Rose Reiter (unsigned) also falls into this category
I do have some mp3s in my collection that most guys wouldn't admit to that also can border on outright cheesy, but here's some I see as I scan through my mp3s:
Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart
Christina Aguilera - Beautiful (I still remember the first time I heard this song thinking it was brilliant.)
Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl
Martika - Toy Soldiers (a pop song I really liked from back in the 80s)
A couple Meatloaf tunes .... yeah they're really long
Pink - Don't Let Me Get Me
REO Speedwagon - Can't Fight this Feeling (makes my friends at work howl)
Shakira - Underneath Your Clothes
Sheriff - When I'm with you. (#1 from back in the 80s. Doesn't hold up well over time, but it was huge back in the day)
T'Pau - Heart and Soul
Bette Midler - The Rose
Frank Mills - Music Box Dancer (heard this when I was a grade school kid and found it online the other day)
John Mayer (maybe - I don't know, he's hugely talented but he seems to me to cater to the women more than most)
Mariah Carey - Vision of Love, Can't Let Go
Interested to see what ads google decides to pop up beside this post.
Got to be Real
By Cheryl Lynn
My best guess at transcription by Shane Milburn
There’s bass transcriptions and chord charts out there for this, but haven’t seen this funky part transcribed anywhere. Wanted to post as it gave me some trouble to figure out. It’s kindof buried in the mix in the recording and none of the sheet music I’ve found seems to show what’s going on.
Move it up 2 frets when song goes up a full step key change halfway through. I’m not much of a funk guitar player, but this seems to me close to what’s going on w/ the guitar. It may make more sense to somebody who’s more familiar with the genre.
Ebmaj9....D7........... Gm7
|---------------------|-----------------------|
|--3-3-1--4---3---1---|---1--3-3-1---3--1-----|
|--3-3-2--5---3---2---|---2--3-3-2---3—-2-----|
|---------------------|-----------------------|
|---------------------|-----------------------|
|---------------------|-----------------------|
................................What you feel…
Here’s how I think I’m going to voice the chords when/if I play those. Again, move up a full step when song changes key halfway through
Ebmaj9....... D7........ Gm7
|---------------------|-3--------------------|
|------------(6)------|-3--------------------|
|--7----------5-------|-3--------------------|
|--5----------4-------|-3--------------------|
|--6----------5-------|-5--------------------|
|---------------------|-3--------------------|
Playing the (6) note on the D7 chords above with the pinky just kindof sounds cool when chording, but I don’t think it has anything to do with anything in the recording.
Here's a live version of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing Little Wing - my favorite tune that he plays, and probably my all-time favorite guitar instrumental. There are similarities to the studio version, but quite a bit of differences too. This is a cover of a Hendrix tune (there are some cool live versions of Hendrix playing this out on youtube also to give you an idea of how close SRV's interpretation is to Hendrix's).
You can see he has trouble getting his amp to feedback for him in places. At the end it goes into a different song.
There aren't many songs like this one. It's somewhat unique even among SRV's stuff - maybe "Lenny" is the most similar - but there's just not much that sounds like this.
I was looking through one of my songwriting books and the name "Richard Leo Johnson - Glidepath" scratched on a page. I sometimes will jot cool things down when I see them - I guess I saw him on a TV show somewhere. For Richard Leo Johnson I wrote down "cool guitar-strum technique - reminds me some of Auten music on cable access." (the Auten mention is probably guitarist D.R. Auten - he's the only D.Auten I can find reference to on the web.)
I looked up a video for Glidepath and here's what I found. I still think it's awesome.
Here's a tune from D.R. Auten I found on youtube I thought was cool.
Here's a song I've had sitting on my PC for several weeks. It's really pretty rough, but I think the general idea of the song comes through. It's really just a slow strum that I just hummed along to for the longest time - and it might have not even had lyrics, but I put a reference to a verse by Marcus Aurelius near the end.
Here's the song: ...and make the best
I hadn't posted in a while, and thought to track down a video today I remember from high school. I couldn't find the performance of this that I was thinking of, but this shortened acoustic version of "Message in a Bottle" performed by Sting is pretty dang good, so I wanted to post.
The version I was trying to find had Sting just playing this song solo with his bass - at least that's how I remember it - but I can't find that version. This is very good though.
And here is another very good version - apparently way back from 1981.
Steve Morse is an incredible songwriter and guitarist. I'm not even going to qualify how good he is. When I was growing up, and after going through my guitar hero stages including Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Nuno Bettencort, and maybe a few others I came upon Steve Morse and just latched on.
Comparing musicians is always difficult, but there's such an intense musicality and originality in what Morse does that separates him from the others. He does it with quality songwriting, accessible melodies, hooks, all within what to me seems almost impossible technique. While he can shred, he's different in that he doesn't use raw energy to drive his playing, but he still brings a ton of heart - it's just a different vibe - not the knock-your-head-off-with-overpowering-screaming-solos vibe, but a more finessed WOW-that-is-the-coolest-thing-ever vibe. He's considerably more refined in comparison, meticulous without being cold, and has headed far down the road less traveled in his playing. And this does nothing to take away from the other players mentioned above - but they do a different thing.
Here's a video I found of Steve Morse on YouTube. Perhaps my favorite guitarist. While the sound quality isn't the best, I found this to be highly entertaining and a good sample of what Steve Morse albums sound like. Hope you enjoy.
I just put up what may be a final version of the tune. Main changes from previous versions include
- quite a bit of drum edits - lots of new beats in different sections that change the mood considerably
- delay on harmonics
- cut out 16 bars early in the song to shorten it and reduce repetitiveness
- maybe a tad of EQ on some tracks
- removed some acoustic guitar parts that just weren't working for me.
- thinned out the song in a place or two that had multiple layers of the same thing going on.
Links are the same as previous:
Click HERE to hear the song.
If you want to download the MP3 click HERE.
On to something else before I burn out on this one. Getting close.
Made some revisions to the "Ay Oh" song this weekend. Getting closer to final. I APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS IF YOU LISTEN - IT HELPS ME ADJUST THE MIX. :D
- Added a couple brand new parts to hopefully better address the repetitiveness comments. Let me know if you still feel it's too repetitive. It is loop based, but I don't want it to feel overly repetitive.
- Added what I think is a pretty cool section starting at about 3:40. Kindof a cool funk groove thing going for a while and then
- breaks into an Allman brothers inspired 4 guitar harmony thing after that. I was grinning ear-to-ear when I started hearing this part.
- rerecorded acoustic guitars and added some parts.
- changed mp3 converter to get much better conversion. I'm not real good with my software, but I just found out Acid would render to mp3 and it sound considerably better now imho.
- haven't messed with any variations on drums yet, but I'm hearing some hand claps that might be some of final touches.
- also hearing some harmonized vox and a vocal variation in one part, but I'm not a good singer so this will be harder for me.
Here are song links from Unsigned Band Web to the newly posted mp3:
Click HERE to hear the song.
If you want to download the MP3 click HERE.
"Dreams" is one of my favorite Van Halen songs, and here's an acoustic performance by Sammy Hagar that I thought was a very cool take on the song. I've never heard this song done acoustically before.
Based on web searches, it looks like one of the most popular posts I've put up the one for good guitar songs for beginners from a while back.
In the spirit of learning to play guitar I wanted to post the chords used in the song I worked on over last weekend and posted in the previous post.
There are only 6 common chords for this entire song: Em, D, C, Am7, G and A
Really the only odd voicing used is playing the D chord form using the low strings instead of the more normal high strings. This is done to support the bass line which walks upward on the low E string from open string to the 2nd fret (F#) to 3rd fret (G) to the 5th fret (A).
-Em--D---C---Am7----Em
-x----x----0----0------x-----
-0----3----1----1------0-----
-0----2----0----0------0-----
-2----0----2----2------2-----
-2----0----3----0------2-----
-0----2----0----0------0-----
Play 2 bars of Em (8 beats), 2 bars of D (8 beats), 1 bar of C (4 beats), 1 bar of Am (4 beats), and 2 bars of Em.
The second time through play the same progression except when you get to the last 2 bars where the Em is there's some quick chord changes where the Em is: play 2 bars of Em, G, A, G, If you listen in the song you'll hear it.
-Em--G---A---G---- repeat
-x----x----x----x----
-x----x----x----x----
-x----x----2----x----
-2----0----2----0----
-2----2----0----2----
-0----3----x----3----
After you've learned the chords you can click HERE and play along, or click HERE to download.
I didn't do a very good job of recording the acoustic guitar part in this song, but you can hear it jangling along in parts to hear the rhythm of the strum, or just play it however you like. I may rerecord it better in the near future taking care to do a better job with mic placement.
