Disarm

Sometimes, when I feel any sort of sadness, or uncomforted with whatever might be going on in my life, I either listen to some particular music, or play some. This music is usually something like Gov't Mule, or Philip Sayce, something to take my mind beyond the limits of this world and let me break free from reality for a little while so I can feel good again. The other night, I can't explain why but I just felt sad and sort of empty. Which is absurd and ridiculous because I'm anything but lonely, but it happened anyways. I was listening to The Civil Wars and on my mix, their cover of 'Disarm' by The Smashing Pumpkins came up. This is seriously a must listen. It's one of the most emotional songs I've ever heard, and the way The Civil Wars plays it is so extremely beautiful. So I was listening to this song and felt as if every negative emotion I was having was pulled out of my being and replaced by a feeling of oneness with my life and myself. It was an unexplainable moment and difficult to do it justice. But I cry every time I hear or play this song and it simply makes me feel great. My quest in my musical life is to make at least one song, if not more, that will reach at least one person the way this song reaches out to me. If I can find a way to dig beneath the outer shell of one person and make him/her feel moved and pull emotions from them in such a way that they discover something about themselves, I will feel that I have succeeded.

In other news, I started recording my song 'Trouble' today with the new music for it. I will be as diligent as I can in finishing the recording.

Funky Monkey

Yesterday was a wonderful day. Spent the better part of it and some of the night at the beach. I even got a little color which is almost unheard of for me! YAY! But before that, I had a really great guitar lesson. My teacher had me work on some more funk rhythms, like some Earth Wind & Fire and some Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'll definitely be working on those rhythms and funk improv this week. Still looking at interesting songs to cover; so far I'm wanting to cover 'Where Is The Love' by the Black Eyed Peas, and I might also do 'Forget You' by Cee Lo Green. What has me waiting is that I want to do an upbeat song before 'Where is The Love', which isn't completely mellow, but I have a mellow song idea for it. Was thinking about covering 'Crazy' by Gnarles Barkley, but Ray LaMontagne beat me to it! Check out his version! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mEfDSP4g_U

I also had my first successful go at writing a 'love' song yesterday! I've been inspired. You might be hearing that one soon :) And Brittney Rothal came over today and we wrote a song together...the video is down below. Enjoy!

A Different Kind of Tune

I've been playing around a bit with open tunings for guitar. This is when the guitar is tuned so that when all the strings are played together, it's a chord. A very deep, thick chord... :D Makes me happeh. So as I was messing around with the DADGAD tuning (Low E tuned to D, A, A, G, B string tuned to A, high E tuned to D) today, a thought popped into my head about who might have started this. So I consulted the supreme powers of GOOGLE! A man named Davy Graham invented the DADGAD tuning, and he became a big inspiration to players like Jimmy Page, Bert Jansch, and Paul Simon. At age 19, he wrote his most well known piece, called Anji. It's been covered many times over and is truly a beautiful song. Davy traveled the world and each place he stopped he learned different styles of playing, especially enjoying Indian melodies and fusing them into his folkish music. A very creative man and a true artist. I'm writing a song now that I'm calling 'Trouble'. I posted the lyrics for it a few posts back and I had music for it, but I'm trying a new idea I got in the car tonight. Instead of doing a guitar backing for vocals, I'm going to do a vocal backing with some slide guitar touches. I recorded the scratch idea for it tonight and I'll get to work on doing a proper recording tomorrow. Also taught my little cousins tonight. They're improving nicely! Finally been practicing. I'm teaching my cousin Kyle, the guitar student, a John Mayer song now...'Not Myself'. And I'm teaching his brother, the piano student, 'Bliss' by Muse. They both got inspired by seeing my classic rock band play, which is a pretty cool feeling :D I'm off to bed though, was up way to late last night. Need to rejuvenate.

Das Zeigen!

AHHHH!!! I really wanted to make an entry right after the show last night, but I totally crashed. The show was AWESOME!! We kicked it off with 'Prelude/Angry Young Man' by Billy Joel, which the crowd loved, and played through the set list ending with 'Gravity' by John Mayer. For Gravity, I got the big ending solo that he does live and I get very, very into what I'm playing. Especially on that song. So my eyes were squeezed shut and I was making all these spectacular faces that come completely unintentionally, and my makeup must have gotten into my eyes while this happened because in my solo they just started burning. And this, for added dramatic effect, made my eyes start watering and made me appear like I was crying for my solo. Great. Haha, but the crowd really loved it and we all had such a great energy going throughout the whole show, it was really amazing. I get to play with such talented musicians who all absolutely love what we do. I'm going to put up a video of my Gravity solo soon on youtube, so I will post it on here too :)

Also over the weekend, I took a dance lesson with Brittany. Dance of course goes hand in hand with music and it's a way to feel music more. Even though I don't hip-hop music for the most part, I do have respect for some of the artists and their work. So we helped out with a class full of little kids at the YMCA who were learning how to dance to hip-hop music, and we got to dance a bit too and just have a good time. It was very cute to see the kids dance and how fast the child's mind wanders on to something else. But after that class, Britt taught me some belly dancing moves as well as some more hip-hop oriented stuff. Definitely got me a good work out! Loads of fun though, dancing is a blast and something I'd like to do a little more of.

New song:

I hear banjos...

I'm in a bluegrass fascinated phase of my life right now. It's really fun, but sometimes depressing music to listen to, but it's extreme musicianship leaves me wanting more. If you can look past the twang that this genre is known for, you may find yourself lost in the stories and the skill of the great raconteurs that have created before us.

Tennessee Rocky Top is a very well known bluegrass tune. In this video, you can see classic bluegrass instrumentation; acoustic guitars, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, bass, and multiple vocalists. Bluegrass styled vocal harmonies definitely have their own characteristics that make it easy to differentiate between say rock styled harmonies or blue harmonies. This is a really great video to hear the vocal harmonies we're accustomed to hearing with bluegrass. There's always the "high lonesome tenor" with other accompanied singers. And of course, this aspect of the music has influenced SO much, such as Simon & Garfunkle, The Doobie Brothers, The Civil Wars, etc.

Last night, my band decided to do an open mic appearance at Mr. Laffs in Davie. We saw two other bands there that went on before us, and just wanted to say that they were really quite good. Didn't catch the names of the bands, but there was a rock cover band and a blues band. Had a really good time, even though we had a large number of technical difficulties, one being a drummer missing in action.

Tomorrow! MY BAND'S SHOW AT DEKKA! 7:30! WHOOT!!! I'm very excited for this! Gonna go get some much needed rest.

One of the new songs

Gonna be on my concept album

Men in Tights Part 2: The Art of Bardic Song

Yesterday at the Renaissance Festival, Brittney Rothal and I decided to go hear some story telling by Lady Merilee Effingham of England. She sang us the story of The Witch of The Westmoreland, and exciting tale about a wounded knight who seeks the Witch of the Westmoreland so he may be healed. She heals him with a goldenrod and three kisses, and the song ends with "There's none can harm the knight who's lain with the Witch of the Westmoreland." After this, I decided to do some research on the music of the renaissance.


The renaissance was a very exciting time for music and musicians alike because music printingbecame available in Europe, as opposed to music being copied by hand or learned by ear. Thebooks that were available before printing were very expensive due to time it took to copy the
music by hand, meaning that they were exclusive to religious establishments and the rich. But
Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501, published the first big collection of polyphonic music (music with 
mulitple tones or voices such as a chorale like this, Abasalon, fili mi) that was inexpensive, so 
more people could learn to read music and have it in their households.


At around 1550 in northern Italy, a brand new four stringed bowed instrument was developed 
and many, many people started to take up the instrument. It was originally called the viola de gamba, looking much like a modern cello. Other instruments around this time period included the 
lute, recorder, harpsichord (similar to piano, prominent in Baroque music), and the organ.

Men in Tights...a title for the ladies

Yay! First day of the Renaissance Festival was today! Got me a season pass, call me a dork all you want...it's fun :) My classic rock cover band (ROKAFONIK PHILHARMONIK)'s show is next saturday! Just a week away, I'm so excited! I'm going to try and keep this entry a bit shorter than the rest, I just feel like I'm writing a ridiculous amount. I wrote yet another song today. Actually, just now. I had written the lyrics a few months ago, inspired by the painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, The Philosopher. I had part of the music written years ago, just never had anything to put it to. But, as I was digging through some old recordings, I found it and started playing with it a bit and turned out to really like it. Added a chorus and it was ready to go! It's definitely still in it's rough state, needs some cleaning up and I'll probably add more fancy guitar things :) 

My band (Qualified For Response)'s show last night at the Talent Farm went really well! We were all completely "in the zone" and just having a ton of fun. There was a band that was getting ready to come on after us, called The Wholetones, from Naples, FL. Truth be told, I was very tired, so I really only stayed because they had a cello. So they set up after us, the instrumentation goes as follows: cello, acoustic guitars, banjo, upright bass, and drums. What came from the stage threw me for a loop! I was expecting kind of mellow music, jazzy and "chill". That's definitely not what happened. What I heard was some kind of incredible fusion of american folk, bluegrass, irish folk, pirate metal, and the power of the GODS! THE GODS I TELL YOU! I've never seen anyone's fingers move so fast. The guy who was playing the cello, banjo, and later, the acoustic guitar (Alex), made Yngwie Malmsteen seem slow. And not only that, it was completely incredible that he could be so amazing on all three instruments AND SING! After their show, I gave them a 20, they gave me 3 CD's, two stickers, and a shirt. Really great band, nice guys, definitely give them a listen. 

Also, I've been really wanting to write a bit about the band Elbow. Haha, short blog entry. Right. This band is from the UK and I recently heard about them. Another band that five minutes after hearing, I bought an album. The first song I heard was 'Grounds for Divorce'. This, however, is pretty different than the rest of their songs. What really got me interested was the sound of the guitars along with the overall style of this song. What the guitar player and bassist did was pan their sounds right and left. This means that the guitar player, in this case, mixed his sound so that his guitar sound will be prominent in the left speaker. And the bassist mixed his sound so that it's prominent in the right speaker. The bassist for this song made his sound very distorted and downright dirty. The guitar player mimicked that dirtiness to the sound, but since it's an octave higher than bass guitar, it adds a very interesting texture for the listener. The Civil Wars did something like this in their song, 'Barton Hollow'. Except, since they have no bassist, John Paul White (guitar) made two guitar tracks and panned them to both sides of the speakers. His acoustic guitar sound is prominent in the left speaker, and he either plugged his acoustic into an amp and dirtied the sound, or plugged in an electric hollow body and kicked the distortion. But I think, since he's always got his acoustic, that it's the former. What makes me think it's either an acoustic or hollow body he's using is the tone of the sound. Typically while using a solid body electric, like a Fender Stratocaster that many people are familiar with, the sound gets through very clear. And while you can certainly dirty up a Fender's sound, it's difficult to get anything but a clear cut, maybe crunchy, tone. Whereas, if you were to use an acoustic or hollow body guitar through an amplifier, the tone would become muddy and dirty with enough distortion because of the resonance provided by the acoustics of these guitars. A hollow body will resonate more than a solid body. In 'Grounds for Divorce', the guitar player is using an acoustic guitar plugged into an amplification system with a distortion pedal. In the video, you can see when the guitar player hits the distortion pedal and the sound becomes huge, and dirty. 

Butt kickin', finger lickin' good

So, Dream Theater is still difficult to play, but it's getting there. On a quick side note, just want to post a video of my guitar teacher, AJ Niilo, playing in Brazil with Joss Stone because it's one of the best performances I've seen. All the musicians on that stage are ridiculously great! And Joss just has a huge presence and really gets the crowd going. It's a long video, and I'd really recomend watching and listening to the whole song, so set aside 11 minutes if you can. If not, at least watch my teacher's solo at about 5:05, I really like his playing :)

Other good news, I discovered this band that I have deemed amazing. And I do not use that term lightly. They're called The Civil Wars. A duet made up of John Paul White, from Alabama, and Joy Williams from California. If I had to classify the duet to a genre, I'd say folky but with their own twist. The vocal harmonies soar, John's acoustic guitar playing is tight and ever melodic, as is with Joy's piano playing. I discovered the band because they were iTune's last week free single with 'Barton Hollow'. This song has more of a country feel to it than most of their other music. Normally, I don't pay much mind to the free singles, but this is truly a gem. Right after listening to the song, I bought the album and downloaded their live album free off of their myspace. Then, I heard them cover Leonard Cohen's song 'Dance Me to the End of Love', which was beautiful in every way, then I heard them do a folk cover 'Billie Jean' by Michael Jackson. I learned this version, love it so much. John and Joy's chemistry on stage is very intense. After watching their music video for their song 'Poison & Wine', I actually thought they were married, but as it turns out, they're both married to other people. But they are very, very good story tellers. By the way, all of that discovery happened on monday alone. Needless to say, my world religions homework did not get done that day at all. 

After hearing, and learning, the acoustic version of 'Billie Jean', I decided to pick a known song that's far from being acoustic, and make an acoustic arrangement of it. I chose 'Stockholm Syndrome' by Muse. I ended up playing it in almost a flamenco fashion. And this band makes a ton of noise, especially for being only three people, so an acoustic arrangement is pretty interesting. I'll practice it a bit more and then hopefully post a video of me playing that, and acoustic Billie Jean by the end of the week. 

Also on monday (a busy day for just staying in pajamas the entire time), I wrote two songs. I'm so happy that this spout of writing song after song is happening during my Wise project, because I never write this much. Makes me happy :D The songs are two parts of a whole. The story behind them is a couple in love, but the man has become an alcoholic, getting completely lost inside of the disease. Part one is the woman's perspective, which is very somber and soulful, and is played on piano. The second part, the man's perspective, I wrote for guitar. Since they were written on the day I found The Civil Wars, they have some folk feeling to them in the songwriting and in the guitar playing. I'm going to work on part 1 with my voice teacher, Beth, tomorrow. It's funny how I started writing these too; was tired of staring at my homework trying to make it write itself, so I went for a walk, came back and sat down at the piano. I started playing random chords then started playing a progression I wrote a long time ago. I was in the mood to sing, so I sang the first thing that came to my head which was "You're swimming through my veins like any drunk sailor would", and the song wrote itself. Lyrics....

Part 1:

You're swimming through my veins like any drunk sailor would
The only things left to lead you are the memories in your head
Well you're right in the place where you need to be
But you're riding the spaces of the in between

Come on my sailor, come on home X2
Just a little more time and you'll be completely gone
So come sweet sailor, come on home

Well you've had enough to drink
And I've surely had all I need to think
You always gotta jump, but sometimes I think I've just plain fallen down
Fallen just as far down as anyone could ever go

Oh im beggin you darling, time to leave the seas alone

Come on my sailor, come on home X2
Just a little more time and you'll be completely gone
So come sweet sailor, come on home
Oh im beggin you darling, time to leave the seas alone

The only things left leading you are the memories in your head
But the only thing you'll be comin back to is an empty bed, that's right
The only thing thats left now is an empty bed

So sail on my love, your horizon is far down the bend

Part 2:

Trouble

oh, that's what I am

I'd love to shake your hand for awhile

but it'd cause you more grief than it's worth

It's a problem I'd love to face,

oh but it wants me dead

and when your eyes meet the beast up above

a true coward before it kneels

there's three places I could go

but not one of them keeps you

two institutions or a sea of blackness through and through

oh believe me darlin'

I know I never gave you what I could

but the trouble's troubling me and I gotta do everything I should 

to keep it down now

that look in your eyes is telling me I'd never been so far away

might as well keep going, my horizon is long, long gone

Yay, sad stories! I should have recordings of those soon since they're fairly simple musically. 

Roll With the Changes

Title song by Philip Sayce by the way. Check him out :)

Some changes have popped up into my outline plan for this week. That's probably going to happen a lot since life likes to throw twists, turns, and all kinds of new tricks at ya. Oooo triple T's. Saturday, at my Rokafonik practice, the drummer Mikey and I jammed a little on 'Crazy On You' by Heart...at least we tried to :P He'd never actually played the song before, but it was fun nevertheless, and I got to play a Guild acoustic. But out of that, he brought up doing some recording together, which would be a ton of fun. So now, I get to try and learn a Dream Theater song called 'Pull Me Under' . John Petrucci's guitar part is definitely going to be tricky for me, he's an incredible player. The whole band is truly made up of VERY skilled players. But once Mikey and I get the song together, it'll be such a great feeling. We're also going to work on 'Nightmare' by Avenged Sevenfold (A7X). Sadly, their drummer (Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan) died before the recording of the album (Nightmare) at age 29. Jimmy's favorite drummer was Mike Portnoy, the drummer of Dream Theater, now ex-drummer. So the band brought in Portnoy to record all of the drum parts on the record that Jimmy had written. In September of last year, I saw A7X perform and it was one of the most intense concerts I've ever seen. Mikey and I are going to get together on Wednesday and work on these songs and maybe jam on some of our own material. These songs to learn by ear, maybe with a little tablature help, are going to be a handful for this week.

However, I did keep one of my plans intact, and that was to get 'Over the Hills and Far Away' by Led Zeppelin as best as it could possibly be. Saturday at practice, we played the song as best as we ever had and the intro was flawless! YES!!! And we played 'Joining You' by Alanis Morissette instrumentally with a violin playing the vocal melody line, and it was hypnotically beautiful; I'd never felt that song so deeply. It was seriously amazing. I cannot WAIT to play that for an audience!! That entire show (FEBRUARY 19th 7:30 PM AT DEKKA IN HALLANDALE!! IT'S FREE!!!) is going to be a buzz.

This weekend for me was pretty simple...Band practice, voice lesson, some artwork, brewed, and caught up on homework. I'm not sure what else will be in store for me musically this week. For now, I'm just really looking forward to Wednesday.

PS, my microphone makes my heart jump with the invigorating, intoxicating power of love. It makes me go all girly excited on the inside :)

How all began...

Since the interview with my guitar teacher, A.J. Niilo, I have been thinking about how had spoken to me about his opinion on modern music and how unsure he would be about pursuing music again if he were my age now. So I decided to see how some of my favorite more modern bands got their big breaks.

Avenged Sevenfold -- According to Wikipedia, the band had just finished a second tour on the Vans Warper Tour and made a music video for their song "Unholy Confessions". This video, because they had made some connections via the Warped Tour, had made its way onto MTV's Headbanger's Ball. After that had made its debut, word of mouth got going and the band got popular enough to get Warner Bros. Records' attention. The band was offered a deal and they left Hopeless Records shortly after their second album was finished and signed with Warner Bros. Their 3rd studio album debuted at #30 on the Billboard 200 Chart, selling over 30,000 copies in the first week. The record went platinum in August 2009. 


Halestorm -- Frontwoman Lzzy Hale and her little brother, drummer Arejay Hale, began writing music since she was 13 and he was 10 years old. They started forming a bit of a gathering playing local shows in Pennsylvania, and eventually brought Joe (guitar) and Josh (bass) into the band. In 2005, after working on their sound and more material, Halestorm started showcasing for labels and one snowy night in NYC, a rep from Atlantic Records saw them play and loved the complete sound and attitude. The band was offered a four year recording contract for their first studio album, and they took it. The band kept touring like mad and it's gotten them a good sized following. They're about to head back to the studio and work on a second album. 


Muse -- They originally called themselves Gothic Plague, then Fixed Penalty, then the Rocket Baby Dolls. In 1994, as the Rocket Baby Dolls, the band entered into a Battle of The Bands Contest around Teignmouth, England where they lived. They ended up smashing their instruments on stage and just went all out punk. It came as a surprise to them that they won. Afterward, they took the band more seriously, quitting school and their jobs to do music. They played their first few gigs in Manchester and London, and eventually had a meeting with the owner of Sawmills Studio, Dennis Smith. That meeting led to the band's first studio recordings and their first record deal, recording their first three albums with Sawmills. 

Apocalyptica -- This band got LUCKY. A band of four cellos from Finland that decided to go against the norm and cover Metallica songs on cello without vocals. They were signed after their first show.

My Chemical Romance -- The band formed in NJ as a two piece (Gerard Way on vocals and drummer Matt Pelissier) one week after the September 11th attack. The band began writing immediately, and recruited Ray Toro on guitar. Gerard's younger brother, Mikey, dropped out of college and started playing with the band. 3 months later, the band adopted Frank Iero on guitar and shortly after recorded their first record with Eyeball Records. The band put free downloads on Purevolume.com and Myspace.com, getting them a large enough following to get a good booking at venue Big Daddy's. In 2003, the band signed with Reprise Records and got on a tour with Avenged Sevenfold. They recorded their 2nd studio album and it went platinum quickly.



I think this research gives me a bit more hope because I know that I can get in people's face when I'm on stage, and as far as off stage goes, I want my music to be heard enough that I will get it in the ears of not only the right people, but as many people as my amplifiers can reach.

Jammin'

Monday, my big accomplishment was that I wrote a song in full, lyrics and all! Which is wild because normally in a day I'll just get a spark, if anything at all, for a new song. The song is titled "The Three of Us" and it's out of my writing norm in that I usually write around a guitar part, but this is vocals with some strumming. I might add in some fancier parts for the guitar, but nothing much. I wrote it about two of my best friends who both live in South Carolina. I've known both of them since I was in 7th grade, one is my age (Colby) and one is a year older (Landon). We are all big Harry Potter nuts, so we call ourselves Moony (me), Padfoot (Landon), and Prongs (Colby). What is weird is, we've all sort of adapted traits of these characters along our lives. So there's a reference to that in the song..."We got two paw prints and some big strong antlers...". I'll post the rest of the lyrics at the bottom of the post, along with a vid. A lot has happened to us since we've become our own little family. I moved back down to FL halfway through 9th grade, which was so difficult, I loved it there. And Colby, who has anxiety, constantly worried about me losing touch and what not. It's been 3 years now and we've only gotten closer :) But late last year, Landon started talking about joining the Navy because it had such great benefits, and he'd be able to travel which is exactly what he wants to be doing. That made both Colby and I very worried, especially Colb. The past month, Colb has been so frightened that we're all going to lose touch due to college and Lando joining the navy. And it scares me too, but not half as bad. So all this is referenced in the song, looking on the bright side of things and putting trust in love. I played the song live monday night at Churchill's pub and got a great reaction from the crowd, even though I completely went blank on the lyrics and had to improvise a bit.

Today had it's ups and a down. After the Wise meeting at school, I went to MAE Music Store to pick up a mic cable I needed to make my microphone work through my computer since the power supply finally came in! When I walked in the store, I decided to have a bit of fun before I got to buying, and I went straight to the Acoustic room to check out some 12 string guitars. I picked up a Martin 12 string and started playing a tune I recently wrote and it sounded 100 times better. I got a bit excited :) While I was playing, the other guy in the room who had a Taylor 12 string in his hand started jamming a bit with my tune. Well that sounded good, so we talked a bit (his name is Mike) and kept jamming on some different stuff. Everything sounded so great! A guy I had walked by on my way in apparently heard us and walked in the room and picked up another guitar and started playing and talking with us (his name is Joseph). Another guy came in for a short while and played one song with us too. So we all sat there talking a playing, even drawing a crowd, and I got to play and sing Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin while Joseph busted out a harmonica. Two and a half hours passed and Mike shot up and exclaimed, "Damn! I have to be on stage in 45 minutes! I gotta go!". He invited us to his gig, unfortunately I couldn't make it, but I had a blast with the guys! It was so cool to just be able to hear what someone was playing and go along with it, making great music to listen to. When someone would start a song, I'd make up a second guitar part and we'd go from there, adding solos and vocals. Way fun. Then I came home and had a guitar lesson with A.J. Niilo, and interviewed him as well. The most difficult part of the lesson was when he showed me how to play La Grange by ZZ Top. The song requires an intensely strong pinkie. My pinkie is currently lacking in its strength, but I now have some good workouts for the little guy and I'll be able to play La Grange soon, yay! After that, tried getting my mic setup to work, and yet again I'm left in frustrated tears as it's not working. Another quest I have for this week is to get that thing working so I can record with some better quality!! Soon...soon.

The Three of Us

The sky was leopard printed and Lucy was there in all her finest jewels, 

we were spending the evening all wrapped up in the afternoon. 

Time mocks us cuz it moves too fast and 

we're left in the envy over what would never last, 

but you and I were built far too strong. 

We rise and we fall

Like bridges in the war but the bricks don't 

matter 'cuz we become the dust before the winds of change 

But before ya know it we'll be right back here, 

making good times like we never left eachothers arms, 

laughing at time Like we knew all along

We got two paw prints and big strong antlers

We fit together like the birds of a feather

You may sail the seas boy but I know you're comin home

Anxiety ridden and always full of fear

But you're the bravest lion with the tug of an ear

You might not be at my side but you're always near