Music Blogs (1,258)

I got my guitar back and I heard a song on the radio that I have not heard in probably 25 years

In a span of 60+ years, I've had lots of speakers in my house. Starting off with speakers reclaimed from junk TV's or stereos left in someone's trash. Hey... you have to start somewhere.
My dad bought a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder with add-on stereo speaker. It was awesome as I could connect it to the TV speaker and record TV shows and it wouldn't pick up sounds in the room when we were all watching Thee Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show!

Learning guitar and my first amp had a tiny speaker, probably 6" but soon after I was able to get something bigger. The name was National and it had 2 10" speakers. I don't remember what happened to it (probably a trade for something bigger) but that vintage guitar amplifier would be worth a small fortune now!

One of my keyboards was financed and when making a payment, my dad saw a bigger amp at the finance office. It was repossessed, probably because it didn't work. He picked it up really cheap and the diagnosis was one wire from the power supply burned at the connector so it failed. Easy fix and I was the owner of an amp with a 15" speaker!

Years later and I had a specially designed cabinet with two 15" high-performance speakers.

Going from band to band and for outdoor concerts I often used 9 speaker cabinets, some fitted with 12" speakers and some with 15" speakers.

I ended up with a custom rig of four 15" speakers in 2 cabinets.

Somewhere along the way, I tried an ACOUSTIC 360 bass amp with one 18" speaker in a large cabinet that had special internal shape to maximize the sound. It's called a folded horn enclosure. It was always my desire to copy one (with the help of the woodshop I was working at) so, I bought two 18" bass speakers and downloaded the specifications of the enclosure.
John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin had 2, Jaco Pastorius had 2, the bassist in Santana had one. That project was put on hold.

In the 90's I bought a bass amp, 100 watts with one 15" speaker. Very nice, but I sold it looking for something larger and shelved that project.

Now, I own a guitar amp, 120 watts with two 12" speakers. My plan was to take guitar lessons, but that project was put on hold.

Since my 2 cousins want me to play music (professionally) with them I considered the guitar amp, but there's a possibility I'll ruin the speakers using bass at a loud volume.
I could buy bass speakers and put them in, but my thought is not modify the guitar amp and buy a real bass amp for practice and gigging.

I did a blog about speaker size and there are all thoughts from 10" to 18" but I'm seeing some manufacturers offering models with two 10" speakers and 300 hundred watts, they move a lot of air and be in a compact lightweight cabinet. The only drawback is the cost. I'm choking on $700 for a freaking combo amp.

Shopping online I see there is a special sale on a smaller model, 100 watts and a 12" speaker. I could buy THREE of these units for less than any of the others and have it easier to move things around, same watts, bigger speakers. Maybe 2 is enough for now.

The sale ends tomorrow, so I have to decide on which which speaker in my House, it's going to be!

I've increased my YouTube music obsession lately. The channel Drumeo came up on my suggested list. They offer drum lessons and do detailed videos on many famous drummers, breaking down equipment, background and a little documentary of the drummers they feature in each episode.

Stewart Copeland was one I enjoyed watching.

Best known as the drummer for the British rock band Police, I knew he had a unique style of syncopation and drumming rhythms that was key in the success of Police. Other than an American musician in England, I didn't know his background.
He's very open about family travels, his exposure to music from different cultures and very down-to-earth of his success as a drummer.

It's a 20 minute video and will probably watch it again a few times.

My blog today is about vinyl LP's. It's been 40 years since digital CD's hit the market. I remember they professed it would be the kiss of death to vinyl LP's. CD's are the best and the worst in the music industry all in the same breath. When first released around 1982, people were forced to switch gears and buy new players. People weren't happy. They went through upgrades in 8-track tapes, cassettes and digital cassettes.

The good thing about CD's is you could fit more music on a CD than an LP. I knew a DJ who used to carry boxes and boxes of LP's to his gigs. When he switched to CD's it was only 2 cases.
Play a CD a thousand times and have no loss of quality. No scratching, no skipping. Physically, taking less space for storage, easy to send in the mail. Yet some people hated them.

CD's were easy to rip and download to a hard disk or digital storage. Now, DJ's only need a portable drive... or an iPhone with extended memory for hundreds of songs in their library.
Oh, if you don't have that special request, you can easily down load it from an online library through your cellphone data plan!

All these great things about CD's, but the 2 major drawbacks (that I can think of) is all the visual media is now compressed from 12" to 5" so albums selling merely because they have a cool looking cover has diminished and that warm analog sound of vinyl was replaced by a cold sterile digital representation.
Some people can hear the difference between the same music on an LP compared to a CD. For the most part, it's not important to 95% of the music listeners, so it is what it is.

That said, some artists actually have a small number of vinyl albums pressed and available for the music purists.

I know rap DJ's have CD digital turntables and emulate the 'scratch' sounds they popularized using old turntables.

I had forgotten about vinyl records for a while. Moving storage boxes last weekend I found my collection and oddly while walking through Walmart today, I found a rack of vinyl LP's as proof... vinyl ain't dead!

In the news today, jazz fusion guitarist, Al Di Meola, suffered a heart attack while performing a show in Bucharest Wednesday evening.
The hospital released a statement that Di Meola was sent to the cardiology ward and treated for a segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).

Al stated he is postponing live performances until next year.

Oddly, I was talking with a coworker yesterday about music and how Miami is a mecca and great place for touring musicians. This guy is Brazilian and told me Al is booked to play at the Rio Montreux Jazz Festival in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil next month.
Make that Al 'was' booked to play in Brazil.


Link:

Tag. } Fresno Bob zeros the instrument.
Liner note. ) Target audience: Amerikans : haters.

Know n0 better. ) Major Lazer.
N O . ) Trainor
No guidance. ) .) . Brown
. synTax. ) N0 brainer. ) D J Khaled
.KS ) kitchen Sync. ) N0 Nations } jets Overhead
.. rider. } NO flag. ) Costello
2nd rider. } N0 more parties. ) C Leary.
T A P S. | . NO more Color. ) Coroner.

Part 2 . Another UN sweet proverb from fresNO.

4484. Number [ d.
0676...grasp / grip [ Fresno grip store.
3808. [ 0 ] .null set. ) Zero.
....liner note per Amerika ; tell her, NO ! ) . Zombies.

I was going through some YouTube bookmarks and came across a video of guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen doing a tune called Arpeggios from Hell. He has another video describing his signature guitar and how the fretboard features scalloped cuts between the frets that allow for less resistance and much faster play.
It's not a new concept as some Asian stringed instruments dating back a few hundred years have scalloped fretboards, but in the rock music world some of the best (or flashiest) players have them.





The average music listener probably doesn't know or have heard about scalloped fretboards but it's an example of how some guitarists can attain those blistering fast solos!

Canadian songbird

Music of The Beatles changed my life. Sure other artists influenced me too, but it's said The Beatles were inspired from many of the American musical artists.
Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bob Dylan to name a few.
Oddly, I never really followed the music of the musicians who influenced The Beatles. What a concept!
Early Beatles trivia I learned was from the album covers and 'teen' magazines that were filled with stupid things unrelated to their music. Like, Ringo's birthday or John's favorite color and had little or nothing to do with the music.

Usually on the weekends, I immerse myself in YouTube videos. Sometimes they are instructional, or science related... but there is always room for music and a few documentaries about musicians.
It seems the more I research things about The Beatles, the more I realize what little I really knew along the way.
55+ years later I found out that Abby Road Studios was really EMI studios. I knew that the recording equipment in America was far superior to what was in use in England at the time and I'm not sure why they didn't import those tape recording machines.

EMI studio was setup to have full musical scores used in movie soundtracks. One large room where a symphony of 40 musicians, lots of microphones and a control panel would record as though the listener were present in a live performance. Sound was recorded to 4-track machines. That means while recording, 4 discreet channels could be filled. Let's say drums, bass and rhythm guitar could be on the first track, piano and lead guitar on the second track, main vocal on the third track and backing vocals on the fourth track. That's it. If something wasn't right, either a mistake or a wrong recording level, the entire track had to be done again... including all the instruments or voices on that track. That would take days to perfect one song.
What happened then is, after each take was right, the recording engineer would 'mix down' the good parts to another 4-track machine so they have room for more parts. Maybe sound effects or orchestra arrangements added to the original recording. Often I would read about the original tapes used to create other versions of a song that would be decided later which version would make it to a record. Remastered is a word to describe when they make a new version (mix) using the original tapes.
I know all of this 'technology' existed, I didn't know exactly how it was applied to each song of every album. It originally came as a surprise, but it's been documented and there are lots of recording engineers who have all that information.

Many recording studios in the United States used 8-track recording machines giving a track for each voice or instrument. An example, if the piano track had a mistake, they only had to rerecord that one part and not an entire section where drums, guitar and piano shared a single track.

Paul McCartney made famous a bass guitar manufactured by the German company Höfner. It had a unique hollow body violin appearance, 30" long scale and he was seen in all live performances with that bass guitar. He also used a British VOX amplifier by Jennings Musical Instruments.

The song 'Come Together' was recorded in 1969 and to my ear, the bass guitar didn't sound like a Höfner. I later learned McCartney had switched to an American made Rickenbacker with a solid body, 34" long scale and an American made Fender bass amplifier. Much of his later recordings and performances with Wings had his Rickenbacker bass with Mesa-Boogie amplification.

The Beatles music changed with a few short years. It evolved from the live band sound to a more complex studio band, probably due to many factors... that included their experiments with psychedelic drugs, study of Eastern philosophy and the use of recording machines that could vary speed/pitch, double track for added voices, playback in reverse.

That brings me to the 1966 album REVOLVER...