Last Commented Music Blogs (1,259)

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

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.

Whenever I speak to a former band mate, my opening line is from the move The Blues Brothers as we are always joking about about putting the band back together.
It's getting harder to make that statement when so many of my musician friends are gone.

Phil... disappeared.
Chuck... hasn't been seen in years.
Harold... murdered.
Bill... died of a heart attack.
Larry... died of lung cancer.
Frank... died of pancreatic cancer.
Bob... died in his sleep.
Billy... drug overdose.
Danny... heart attack.
Paul... retired, not interested.
Jay... undergoing cancer treatments, would attend a jam if possible.
Carlos... full-time job, does studio work and weekend gigs.

Interestingly, I called a cousin who recently moved to South Florida to update him on my brothers kidney transplant and we got to talking about his retirement and that he and his younger brother still play music. I got the invite as they need a bass player because they are getting a band together!

Occasional parties and social events. They don't play Rock & Roll and chances are, I'll need to buy a tuxedo!

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...

The Beatles released their 11th album in 1968 (correction) 1969 (September in England and October in America) with the iconic cover of them walking across Abbey Road. I'm doing some YouTube videos and a little history about The Beatles and saw a reference to the famous crosswalk. Well.. it's called a crosswalk in America and 'Zebra Crossing' in England. My response to that was "Zebra crossing?... get the fuk outta here."
There are NO ZEBRAS to be seen anywhere... however if you consider it coming from the land of strange names and short cuts, zebra crossing makes sense... to them.
Yeah, I get it. The white stripes are the zebra part.

One big question is the stripes on a zebra. Are they white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
The underside is white, so I'm saying white with black stripes. Yes, that's my final answer.



Back to The Beatles and Abbey Road. You see, the studio/studios where they recorded at is named Abbey Road Studios. Pretty catchy name that didn't take much thought.



I read that a zebra crossing really exists outside the location of the studio. It's a historical landmark, but now I learned the actual album photo came from somewhere else. Please, I'd like to leave my childhood memories intact.

Google maps has the exact location. Amazing.

@51.5320966,-0.1777321,116m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48761aa33eb87a9b:0xe406bb492eaf555b!8m2!3d51.5321771!4d-0.1778452!16zL20vMDExazNt?entry=ttu

Abbey House, 1A Abbey Rd., London NW8 9BX, United Kingdom
GRJF+R3 London, United Kingdom

Producer Rick Beato was fortunate to get a tour of the Abbey Road Studios and went over some of the microphones and equipment The Beatles and many other famous groups used to create their albums.