Cranky-D

Here is an article on how much pianos have changed over the last few hundred years. There are sound clips so you can compare the sound of a piano that the composers might have used to write the music with a modern piano sound. The difference is quite striking.

I was thinking that it might be possible to do something to duplicate the sound using sampling or other digital technology, and the feel by manufacturing special controller keyboards. It’s not the same as the real thing, of course, but antique pianos are not that common either.

Anyway, if you’re a music fan, I think it’s worth a read, and a listen.

If you’re at least familiar with Metallica click here for an interesting cover of one of their songs. Worth it.

found on teh twitter

There is an interesting article here that states that some people cannot distinguish between a major and minor triad when they are played in succession. That just boggles my mind because the difference is so blindingly (or deafeningly) obvious to me. It was a little harder to pick out the difference when it was done in the midst of a chord progression, but I can hear it. I can also usually tell whether the key of a song is major or minor as well, though I can’t explain how I know it.

I wonder how people who can’t tell the difference manage to enjoy music. I guess they don’t hear it the way I do.

Man, I’m on a tear tonight. I’m up late and not UTI, and for some reason I feel like writing. Plus, I’m way behind on my writing for the dead pool. We’re required to write something about our picks once per quarter or lose them.

Another one of my music-related picks is Whitney Houston. I’m sure she’ll be the subject of a “Your Pick Sucks” writeup sooner or later. I can live with that.

I think the fact that she’s a major cokehead is common knowledge. I didn’t realize how bad she was, though, until I was clicking around the idiot box and landed on “Being Bobby Brown.” Whitney looked like she was high in every scene, though obviously she may have just been “tired,” or even better, “exhausted.” Every other time I’ve returned to the show, she looked wired. That’s not the kind of behavior that leads to a long life.

Among other things, coke will cause heart attacks, even in young, otherwise healthy people. It sure as hell will distort your sense of reality. In any case, I don’t see her quitting any time soon. Once a junkie, always a junkie. Escaping your addictions is usually difficult, and if you’re in a position such that your addictions don’t ruin your ability to live or generate an income, I can imagine that it would be even harder.

I think this situation is doubly sad because she has, probably, one of the finest singing voices of all time. I have no idea what her singing range is, but very few people on the planet can match it. Most of us amateurs are luck to have an octave and a half range. I have no idea how far she can go, but it’s a lot more than that.

I don’t own any of her albums or anything like that, but I recognize her talent anyway.

The latest news is that Whitney’s marriage to Bobby is on the rocks(scroll down about a page and a half). In the least, it appears Bobby is trying to play around a bit. Either way, Whitney will run to her comfort stuff to ease the pain.

I was at a drag show in Minneapolis, and one of the performers did a medley of Whitney Houston songs, which culminated in “I will always love you” (yes, I know she didn’t write it, but she did have a big hit from it). As the performer lip-synched the song, (s)he pointed at a container in her hand which contained some white powder (most likely powdered sugar). She then pretended to snort it. It was a big hit with the audience.

I think that performance is more true-to-life than life. Whitney will alway love her coke.

This was crossposted to the deadpool

One thing I meant to cover in my previous post, and didn’t, is to say something about BB’s music.

Both on record and in live performances, BB performs with at least one other guitar player, a bass player, a drummer, and a horn section. BB is known both for his singing and his playing. He has said in interviews that he plays his guitar as if he were singing the lines, and if you watch his face when he’s playing live, you can see him singing along to himself as he plays.

For any guitar players out there who are unfamiliar with his work (shame on you!), he tends to stick to box positions in his lead playing. The thing he is probably most known for is his “hummingbird” vibrato. You will often see his vibrato technique discussed in the lessons in guitar magazines. I know I’ve seen it there a few times, but it was all in pre-internet publications, so I can’t give you a link. I’m fairly sure you can find lessons teaching his style as well.

He’s one of the last of the old-school bluesmen.

I was trying to think of a few albums to recommend, but there are so many. The one I’ve seen mentioned the most is “Live at the Regal.” I’m pretty sure it made Guitar Player Magazines “100 essential albums” list, but I don’t have the magazine at my current place of residence. I think it was the first album of his that I bought. If you don’t like “Live at the Regal” you probably wouldn’t care for any of his other stuff, nor would you want to see him live.

I have no idea how many albums he has recorded, but I own a few of them. “Riding with the King,” which he recorded with Eric Clapton, is good as well. I was pretty happy with, “There is Always One More Time.” I’d single out a few more for mention, but my CDs are so out of order that I had to list these titles from memory.

If you like blues at all, try listening to “Live at the Regal.” If you like that, go see him before it’s too late.

This was crossposted to the deadpool.

It looks like Courtney Love got her kid back. She has lost custody due to her drug problems. Still, she is so broke she is considering selling the rights to Kurt Cobain’s back catalog, and one of her homes is (or was) up for auction. Those last two links are getting a bit stale, but it’s probably news to someone.

I knew Courtney was in trouble again when I saw her performance on the Pam*la And*rson (missing “e”s) roast on comedy central a few months ago. She kept claiming she had been clean for a year, but she was obviously either drunk or stoned. Also, a picture appeared at the deadpool which may have assisted in her getting on many rosters this year. To say she looked like death warmed over may be an insult to death.

She was on my roster last year, and I could see no reason not to include her again.

According to the proprietor of the deadpool, this pick sucks. I beg to differ. Courtney is a full-on junkie. Junkies don’t care about anything except getting their next fix. They don’t even care about dying. They only care about money as a means to score. I’m not sure how much they care about their kids. Maybe she does care about her daughter, or maybe she’s worried about how she looks to the public.

In truth, I happen to like Courtney’s music, and as one human being to another, I hope she does care about her daughter and she cleans up and stays that way. Liking her music puts me in a minority position, I suppose, since she tends to have strong negatives associated with her. However, she makes my list because junkies, even rich ones, usually end up dead way before their time.

If you are interested in hearing what I think is her best work, I suggest you hit the used CD store and pick up Hole’s “Live Through This” which has a picture of a beauty contestant on the cover. If you pirate your music, download the mp3 of “Doll Parts” which is the best song from this album. I also recommend the album “Celebrity Skin.” I used to listen to “Celebrity Skin” just about every day while I was interning in California in the summer of 2000. The songs I recommend are “Celebrity Skin,” “Malibu,” and “Boys on the Radio,” though many others on this album are good as well. “Live Through This” is probably truer to Hole’s sound, while “Celebrity Skin” is very slickly produced.

I think there’s a better than even chance that she’ll head to the big concert hall in the sky some time before Christmas 2006. I’m not sure how G-d and the angels will take to her tendency to flash people.

This was crossposted to the deadpool

I only took one private guitar lesson in my life. At the time, it cost as much for one hour of instruction as I made in 3 hours of minimum-wage work, so I stopped. I’ve bought some instructional stuff over the years, but again, not a whole lot of stuff.

Oh, wait, I did take a one-day group lesson with an instructor named Vic Trigger. There were about 8 of us in a room. Most of it was him teaching us how to do stuff, with us playing as little as possible (thank G-d), though we all had our guitars there. I also bought the additional materials he supplied. I think they’re around here somewhere. The tapes (yes, this was in the era of cassette tapes, kids) may be here or they may be back home.

Since I’ve started playing again, I decided that I needed some new material. I had seen the ads for something called “Fretboard Logic” and the testimonials as well as the reviews at Amazon seemed to make it look like the holy grail of guitardom. So I ordered the box set (which includes all the books plus a DVD) a few days ago. What the heck, I needed to order a calendar anyway.

I get the Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell collaborative fantasy art calendar, or as I call it, the softcore pron calendar, since it usually consists of partially naked women. Just another pron reference for everyone.

I’m hoping the new approach he advertises will get me going again. Well, it’s not really new, just new to me (I assume). Most things are just “Here are some chords, here are some licks, now go and be fantastic!” I’d like something that would help point me in some kind of direction. Maybe this stuff will help.

One of my older deadpool picks is B.B. King. He was born Riley B. King “…on September 16, 1925, on a cotton plantation in Itta Bene, Mississippi, just outside the Mississippi delta town of Indianola.” I picked him because he’s getting old and he’s diabetic. Also, I had such bad luck last year with my picks, I’m hoping that picking him will keep him alive for another year.

If you have not seen him perform, and you like blues music, you have made a serious mistake that you should rectify as soon as possible. I saw him the first time in a small club some time in the 90s, I think. I was in the front row, at most about 10 feet away since the stage was pretty small. He was still standing up to play then, and he was amazing. His playing on his albums is usually understated, while live he often has a tendency to really let it rip.

The second time I saw him was in 2000, on the borders of the Bay Area in CA. He was sitting down when he performed by then. However, by that time he was popular again and was playing a larger venue. He also had numerous supporting acts, including another blues legend, Buddy Guy, who I also recommend seeing if you can.

The last time I saw BB was in 2004, I believe. He was touring with Jeff Beck. That might sound like a strange combination, but if you’re a fan of the guitar, it isn’t. Both BB and Jeff rocked the venue, which in this case was just about perfect since it was outside and held about 1000 people or so.

It looks like he plans to keep touring until he drops.

There’s a nice little relatively current writeup about him here, and you could always click around his website to get more information. If he survives, as I hope he does, I will probably spice up the next posts by providing excerpts from his autobiography, which I bought about five years ago in a used bookstore in Livermore, CA. It has been reprinted a few times, and is available from several sources (but apparently not Amazon, or I would’ve provided a link to them).

This has been crossposted to the the deadpool.

It’s been a long time since I’ve picked up my guitar. Whatever callouses I had are long since gone.

I’m not sure why I stopped playing. I guess I was too busy with school stuff and a few non-music hobbies.

I was fairly serious about playing at one time, or at least serious about having a proper instrument. I went through a few store-bought guitars before I decided that I would have to build my own to get what I wanted. I bought a neck and body from Warmoth. The neck was one of their compound-radious models and was 1 3/4″ wide at the nut and had the tallest frets they offered. The body was one they had already manufactured for someone else who I guess didn’t buy it, so it was cheap. It was made of swamp ash, and was strat-shaped and cut for top-loading single-coil pickups and no pick guard. I had them route it out for a Wilkinson tremelo.

I finished the body in a cherry stain and then covered that with clear urethane. It isn’t perfect by any means, but I like it. I made my own nut from a graphite blank. The tools to cut the nut cost a fair amount of money (files and a razor saw) but I can always use them again for another project. I used sperzel locking tuners. The pickups are Seymour Duncan antiquity pickups, made as much like the originals as possible and artificially aged.

I have no idea how much I spent on the guitar, but I imagine it was quite a bit of money. Maybe it’s time to start playing again. I talk a good music game, but lately I haven’t lived it very much.

I covered Courtney Love many moons ago. She was one of my junkie ringer picks for the dead pool. The other is Scott Weiland.

While we have heard some noise recently about Courtney backsliding into drug use again (you go girl!), Scott is prominent by his absense from the tabloids. I haven’t heard much about him in a while, the last being a VH1 Inside the Music Episode (or whatever it was) on his latest band, Velvet Revolver. While he apparently isn’t shooting up any more, he is still just as narcisistic as ever. He was apparenlty late to many meetings and recording sessions. You gotta love the prima donna rock star attitude, the same one that probably caused the problems that resulted in him leaving Stone Temple Pilots.

As with Courtney, I happen to like a lot of the music Scott has written. STP was a great band, even though Scott is obviously thoroughly full of himself. I like the sound of Velvet Revolver, though I haven’t heard more than a few of their songs. The behavior of musicians has very little effect on whether I like their music or not. Very few musicians are particularly bright or insightful. They do not channel the words of the gods or anything like that, and if you manage to convince yourself that they do, you will always be disappointed later. Instead, I think what happens is that they push some words around for a while and get lucky enough to find a good combination of words that go with the music. And if they’re really lucky, a lot of people will agree that what they wrote was pretty good, and they’ll make a lot of money. I will laugh at anyone who labels any pop musician as a “genius.” None of them are genuises.

Yes, I have written songs of my own. I know how the process works. Sometimes the words come to you from the ether (probably the origin of the myth that there are muses sent by the gods). Sometimes you have to search for them. Songwriting is like any other kind of writing. Lots of practice and study of other’s work is required. There is nothing magical about it.

Aside from that, many musicians are self-destructive. Scott sure seemed like he was headed for a Lane Staley exit this year. I wouldn’t be happy about it, really, but if they’re going to die anyway, why not profit in points from it?

No such luck. I have one winner this year, the same one most people picked. There is no way I have a chance in heck of even approaching the leader unless a lot of old politicians are on a flight together and get shot down. Instead, I’m rooting for a few of my picks (e.g. Carter and Helen Thomas) to die just because I think the world would be a better place without them. The points are secondary.

This entry also appears at the Dead Pool.

You know, I should make UTI my default for posting. If I knew how. I’m way too lazy to hack into wordpress to change the default from “General” to “Under the Influence.” Even though I could easily do that. I mean, come on, I’m a programming god. I’ve met my match, but have yet to meet my superior in the languages I use. Maybe I will one day. But I doubt it.

It sounds like arrogance unless you know me. In which case, it’s just situation normal. Which does not preclude that it’s still arrogant.

Kelly Clarkson does, “Since You’ve Been Gone.” Just an FYI for one person. It just came on VH-1. Roxy Marquee performs this song. Enough said, really.

Buddy Guy just got inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame this year. It’s bloody well about time. I own two of his albums, with my favorite song being, “Damn right I got the blues.” If you like blues at all you must hear this song. If you are anything like a rock and roll historian, or at least a self-styled historian, you will either already know who Buddy Guy is or you will immediately find out who he is before you get called out for the idiot you are.

From memory:
Damn right I got the blues,
from my head down to my shoes,
Damn right I got the blues,
from my head down to my shoes.,
You know I just can’t win,
cuz I ain’t got nothin’ to lose.

I dropped by my daughter’s house,
I just wanted to use the phone,
I dropped by my daughter’s house,
I just wanted to use the phone,
My grandbaby said (*paraphrased, not correct by a long shot)
Grandpappy there’s no one at home.

Oh, look out…
(followed by a very cool solo)

Buddy is a blues guy. Eric Clapton stated that Buddy is the player he feels closest to. Buddy plays guitar. He bends notes into the stratosphere. Pun intended, though only guitar geeks will get it. Buddy is definitely one of the roots players, but he came after T-bone and BB. He still gets the statesman status.

I saw Buddy perform only once. He was traveling with B.B. King in the summer of 2000 when I saw him. I will admit his performance wasn’t as good as I would’ve hoped, but he felt constrained by the amount of time he was allowed and made it known to all of us. He was still great.

I’ll write about B.B. King in another post some time. However, if you like the blues at all and you haven’t seen B.B. King perform, you are stupid and are wasting an opportunity. B.B. is not going to be around for too much longer (I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it). You must see him play as soon as possible. In fact, if you’re not sure if you like blues, go see B.B. anyway. Also, see Buddy Guy while you can.

Either way, you won’t be sorry.

When I was deciding who to pick for the dead pool, there was one person I knew would definitely make my list. That person is Courtney Love.

Now, unlike many who picked her, I don’t want her to die. I just think she has lived a very reckless life, and reckless people tend to die young. Nor do I agree with many, perhaps the majority, that consider her to be a talentless hack. I think many people, including me, call a musician talentless when they really mean that they think said musician sucks ass. For instance, ask me about M&M, the plain or peanut rapper, and I’ll give you an earful of what I think of his dubious talent.

I have two Hole albums, “Live Through This” and “Celebrity Skin.” I made a compilation CD with all the songs from “Celebrity Skin” and a few choice cuts, including “Doll Parts,” from “Live Through This.” Part of the reason for the compilation is that I bought them used, and “Celebrity Skin” was pretty scratched up. Not so scratched that I couldn’t get a good rip, but almost. I used to listen to that compilation every day when I was interning at a government lab over a period of two summers. I like her writing and her voice. Or, if someone is ghosting for her, I like the ghost’s writing. I believe Kurt Cobain wrote “Doll Parts,” or at least influenced it, but he couldn’t have done much influencing on “Celebrity Skin” since he was long dead before that album appeared.

Yeah, she’s a major mess. Last year was her peak, when she assulted some people, showed Letterman her breasts, etc. I figured with all that drug use, her kid was going to end up an orphan very soon. However, she apparently has hired someone to keep her away from the drugs, so her demise is less assured. She decided her kid was more important than getting ripped all the time. I’m not really sure how I should respond to that. She was getting pretty close to a sure thing, and now she doesn’t even make the dead pool roundups.

The way things are shaping up, I’m going to get a goose egg for a score this year.

This has been cross-posted to the dead pool.