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Music Monday: Dream Evil

I has found some new (to me) awesome. My mate Jenesis tweeted a link to a video by a band called Dream Evil. Since Jen has largely impeccable taste in music (by which I mean that he likes the same stuff I do :P ) I gave it a listen … three minutes and 26 seconds NOT wasted:

Newly a fan, I checked out some more, such as:

and:

Seriously, how could you not love a song called “Fire, Battle, Metal!”? :P

Wikipedia tells me that the band was put together a bit oddly; in fact “until the moment the first promotional photos were shot, the entire band had never been in the same place at the same time before. Some members did not even know each other.” Despite that, they rock. Very much. There are shades of Maiden, shades of Priest, they’re named after a Dio album … Well cool. \m/ Some of it is also rather reminiscent of Malmsteen’s vocal stuff.

By which I don’t mean Malmsteen singing … ;)

Music Monday: There *is* an International Day of Music!

Well, awesome. After I posted a few days back suggesting there should be a National or Global Day of Music, Kristie Addison from Transit of Venus posted a link to  the website of the International Music Council (a body I’d certainly never heard of before) – specifically a page describing an International Music Day proposed by Lord Yehudi Menuhin in 1975.

The intention of this day is to encourage:

  • the promotion of our musical art among all sections of society;
  • the application of the UNESCO ideals of peace and friendship between peoples, of the evolution of their cultures, of the exchange of experience and of the mutual appreciation of their aesthetic values;
  • the promotion of the activities of the International Music Council, its international member organizations end national committees, as well as its programme policy in general.

Coooooooool. Roll on the 1st of October. 8)

The idea was:

We hope that this first International Music Day will constitute a major achievement among our’ activities, and that it will become an annual event for the propagation of greater knowledge of our art, arid for the strengthening of the bonds of peace and friendship between peoples through music.

And I think that’s bloody brilliant. 8)

Conversely (perhaps), Steve Silberman today tweeted a link to an article in the New York Times: “In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back

“People used to sit and listen to music,” Mr. Fremer said, but the increased portability has altered the way people experience recorded music. “It was an activity. It is no longer consumed as an event that you pay attention to.”

Instead, music is often carried from place to place, played in the background while the consumer does something else — exercising, commuting or cooking dinner.

I’ve noticed this in my own habits recently. I don’t tend to sit and just listen to music anywhere near as often as I used to; rather I have it on while doing something else while riding the train to work. Sad, really. I’m not so concerned about the sound quality issue the article describes – except for the loudness wars: over-compressing everything till all dynamics are lost and the damn song clips. I’m thinking it might be best to steer clear of “remastered” classic albums for that very reason. Anyway, personally I think a decrease in quality is perhaps a reasonable trade-off for ease of access, and getting more people experiencing more music.

… Except that they experience it as background, as wallpaper. Hence in fact the driver for the loudness wars, because if your song isn’t as overall loud as the next guy’s, it will be experienced as lesser – or perhaps entirely missed.

I don’t really know the answer, but pushing this International Music Day might be something. Getting people to see music as something special, not as background, and to celebrate it again, would – I think – be a really great thing.

So get to it folks. 8)

My new custom guitar!!

Oh. Baby. Yeah. I’m here today to tell you: there is nothing – nothing – like a custom guitar. No way will a production instrument compare. To illustrate, I will describe the guitar I have just collected.


Oh. Hell. Yes.

This is truly a fantastic instrument; I can hardly keep my hands off it. It plays like a dream, and the tones it produces are fantastic. It looks awesome, and is mine – all mine. Everything about it is how and what I wanted. It’s not the product of corporate compromise, or appeal to the lowest common denominator; the good stuff isn’t kind of “averaged out”. The care and attention to detail is something that of course doesn’t happen in a mass-produced instrument, and it really does make a difference.

Anyway …

Mostly custom

This all started some years back, when for the first father’s day after our daughter was born, my wife and I agreed that I’d get a custom guitar made by Adrian Hamilton – a friend, and wonderful luthier in Auckland, NZ. The result of that was actually more of a mostly-custom, as it involved a body from an old Rockson (though Adrian made it about a googleplex times better: fixing up screwy bits, putting in beautiful bevels in the cutaways, staining it up …) and an Ibanez neck (also modified, with the locking nut gone, and replaced by a graphtech nut – and little paua buttons in the back where the screws for the locking nut used to come through). Starting points/limitations notwithstanding, it’s a fantastic guitar, and attracts a lot of comments and questions on my YouTube videos.

When we had our son then, my mind was full of plans for the fully-custom guitar that I would get for him. (N.B. by “for him” I mean that if he wants it when he’s old enough, he can have it … and I haven’t yet decided how old that is. ;) Same deal goes for my daughter and the guitar I got for her.) Anyway … looking at what I had already, what was most obviously missing was a 2 humbucker fixed-bridge set neck sort of affair. Kind of like a Les Paul, only not – since I don’t like Les Pauls (except for Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates; Pearly is awesome, but all other LPs seem to have a weird fizzy, honky, quack thing going on – even with replacement pickups). Read more [+]

Music Monday: Life’s Soundtrack

As I type this I’m sitting on a train going through the countryside. It’s my usual train, and my usual trip to work. Nothing different about it – except the iPod strted playing ‘Field Trip’ by Kik Tracee. I suddenly noticed as I looked out the window that it felt totally different from most mornings: it felt as though I was heading off on a … Field trip ;)

It really did feel as though I was going on a big journey, wandering into the country somewhere … rather than heading into town, where I’ll be at work in a little over 1/2 an hour.

It was a nice demonstration of the power of music to alter thinking, perception, and experience. Read more [+]

Music Monday: Comfort Zone – Stay or Stray?

Falling Over

I’ve been thinking lately about what I can and can’t play on the guitar, and about the frequency with which I make mistakes when playing. I’ve thought about why that is, after over quarter a century of playing the damn instrument. I ended up thinking about my comfort zone.

In a couple of the videos I recently recorded for Ultimate Blues Backing Tracks I found myself playing more like I used to years ago. – And I think I made fewer mistakes on those videos. It dawned on me that I was further in my comfort zone while playing in those videos; because I was playing stuff I was comfortable with, and not stretching myself technically, melodically, or theoretically, I didn’t stumble (as much). Read more [+]

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