Musicians & Electricians —
Musicians are not unlike electricians: neither one necessarily “creates” the medium they work with – they only harness and form what is already there.
The trap door crashes shut, and you hear someone barring it.
Musicians are not unlike electricians: neither one necessarily “creates” the medium they work with – they only harness and form what is already there.
None of us know exactly how long we have on this Earth. Let your self expression be your legacy in life. Let your uniqueness, your one-of-a-kind nature be what people remember; what the cosmos record of you.
I had a rough day today. But coming home, and not just getting into other tasks and to-dos, both personal and business related, did me a lot of good. I looked at my bass guitars hanging on my wall, silently. That little voice in my head was whispering to pick one up and just play. […]
I have faith in the world music community because I’ve learned what makes one thrive. People that care about each other – a fellowship of sorts, with a strong passion for the music – the art, the movement, the microcosms that form within the whole. Virgin sounds are created and repeated for consumption by people, […]
Over the years I’ve written a few posts about what this band meant to me. It’s funny that even as I was writing about ToTD back then, that the band was putting a second, completely separate and just as powerful impression on me through my learning about Andrew Wood and the core of how things […]
The past 10+ years have really focused on the visual senses regarding culture. The age of smartphones seem to have steered our senses toward a visually dominant experience and interaction with others. Texting, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter, memes, blogs, all of these focus on what you can see, read and understand using your […]
“Headphones make their own rules of etiquette. We assume that people wearing them are busy or oblivious, so now people wear them to appear busy or oblivious — even without music. Wearing soundless headphones is now a common solution to productivity blocks. Baldwin’s invention for the Navy has become a social accessory with a explicit […]
I’m currently listening to this for the first time since the mid-90’s (my brother owned this tape along with other Van Halen albums, my gratitude goes out to him for introducing me to then “modern” rock music and not just the oldies that our father’s jukebox played and the cheezy light-pop music of the local […]
Music is an ART, not an INDUSTRY.
“A lot of the time people aren’t really talking about the music itself- they’re talking about the social scene which surrounded the music. You’ll never be able to experience 60s Swinging London, late 70s Hip Hop, 80s Hair Metal LA or 90s Seattle for yourself. You can listen to the music, but that time and […]
Where sound lacks, looks help.
Just discovered libre.fm and Jamendo. All I can say is that I feel very satisfied to have found couple of decent, curated collections of Creative Commons licensed music. I’ve been listening to Jamendo’s Rock radio for a few hours now and it’s all really good. I think I’ve found a couple of new members of […]
I had a dream last night about my grandmother (my mom’s mom). She was about the age she was when I was very little, very chipper and happy, very aware and conscious. I don’t recall what we talked about but I feel it was mostly small talk. I wasn’t aware in the dream that she […]
I was talking on the phone with my dad the other night about business, money and character. I was telling him a story about how I had worked for a public school district for a couple of years as an I.T. contractor long ago. I was making good money and had there was much opportunity […]
Sometimes (lately especially) I’ll wake up with a song stuck in my head. It isn’t necessarily a song I’ve listened to recently. Tonight I fell asleep briefly and woke up to a Deftones song stuck in my head. I don’t know how long it’s been (months at least) since I heard the song. But earlier […]
The other night I was bored and did a search on “grunge” on YouTube. I found this ~45m Grunge documentary that VH1 did and watched it. I was born in 1980 so my pre teen and teenage years were heavily influenced musically by grunge. While my first tapes purchased (apart from the oldies tapes […]
Rhythm is everything in music. It’s everything important about composing a song. It doesn’t matter if you’re a guitarist, drummer, pianist, anything. You build a foundation with rhythm. Melody comes after rhythm. Melody is color, it’s spice… it’s the salt + pepper to the meat + veg which is rhythm. If you find a unique […]
When I listen to music, I focus on the sound, the song. The strumming pattern of the guitar chords, the melody of the vocals, the bass, the solos, the drums. The structure of the song and its harmonies, its mode(s) (to the best of my still rough ability) and essentially how it makes me feel. […]
This is the original song I was referring to in my Shamus song post (originally called, “Creep of the Shadow”). They share few musical similarities but both have their inspirational roots in the old Commodore 64 version of the game, Shamus.