Hooray For Hair Metal

Remember "Round and Round?" Ratt still makes music that sounds exactly like that, and it gives me hope for the world.



Okay, so the first 30 seconds feature a lot of old men making out with young groupies, and Steven Pearcy looks like the Crypt Keeper - only with more hair. How ridiculously awesome is it, though, that at least one band from that era isn't afraid to sound exactly the same way they did back then?

This Guy

He's as cool in real life as he is on TV. Apparently.

Aw, Shucks

Over the last year and a half or so, in the course of my never ending quest to advance as a musician, I taught myself how to read music. So now I spend my lunch breaks playing scales and doing classical exercises and occasionally learning a rock n' roll song (or more often, just the solo) in the hopes that I'll develop decent chops at some point. Then I stay up too late and see something like this, and I think "f&@% it, I should just be bashing out power chords and having fun." I'm way to cerebral to try and put together songs or arrangements like this myself, but balls out, straight a head rock frickin' kills.



That's an Elvis Costello song (I really wanted to post the cover of Bowie's "Queen Bitch" that they did on Fallon's show, but YouTube's pulled it down). These two guys are from Supergrass - another band that I like very much - in their cover's based side project, The Hot Rats. Check 'em out.

Axiom 25 - Using The Keys And Pads At The Same Time On An M-Audio Axiom 25

My apologies to the friends and family that normally read my blog. But. I just got an Axiom 25 (for putting drums and keys and things into stuff like the song in my last post) and I've found just getting started with the thing frustrating as all hell, mostly due to the lack of quality tech support from the manufacturer. I'm making this post in the hope that some other poor sap like me that's just trying to figure out how to get started using MIDI stuff might find it in a google search and avoid some frustration.

If you look at the M-Audio forums, several people have asked how to have the keys and drum pads on the unit at the same time, and the @$$hole tech support people never give any answers other than something like "you should be able to do this in the Enigma software" without ever bothering to explain how you do it. Frustrating. After several hours of being really pissed off and annoyed, I finally figured out how to do this and thought I'd share it with the world.

This is in Ableton Live Lite, because it comes with the Axiom unit (I know, I know, I'm a "noob," but I ain't plunking down a bunch of money for DAW software without being 100% sure I know what I'm getting is what I need, first!). Anyhow. Connect your Axiom to the computer and turn it on (Duh). Set the Axiom to program 18 (supposedly you can use programs 17-20, but 18 worked for me, so stick with that for now - and if you don't know how to recall a program they *Do* actually cover this in the shitty manual, and on the M-Audio forums - I don't have my Axiom in front of me right now, so I'd probably give the wrong directions if I attempted to explain this). Open up Ableton. Open up the preferences/options menu (maybe I have that backward, it could be options/preferences) and set it up to recognize your device (you'll have two axiom slot, arm all these, and then click the "on" buttons for "track" and "remote." Close this window. Make two MIDI tracks and arm both of them (you have to right click on the red "Arm" button to be able to arm two track simultaneously). Open up the midi instruments folder and set one of these to something you would control with the keyboard - keys, organ, strings, whatever. Set the other midi track with whatever you would want the pads to control - probably drums or techno-y stuff. Now, click the button in the upper right hand corner that changes the view of the tracks from horizontal to vertical. You can now see a little thing that says something like "Midi all channels" or somesuch nonsense. You want to change this to "1" for your keyboard controlled part, and "10" for the drum controlled part. Now you *should* be able to have them trigger independently. The other thing to do now is set the drum pads to play the notes/drums you want them to play, which is explained pretty well somewhere in here (look at response #13 - that's how I did it).

If that helps one person, I'll feel like I've done my good deed for the day. This whole thing seemed like an awful big debacle just to be able to program some drums and keys into some roots-rocky type stuff that I cook up in my living room, but hopefully I'll be glad I bought a (slightly) more professional piece of equipment in the long run, even if the learning curve is steep!

Two Minutes and 40 Seconds of Happy

Let's hope I did this correctly - it was a big pain in the ass to figure out.



That's Connor singing and I played all of the instruments - I didn't spend as much time as I could have (if I HAD time, that is), so it needs some adjusting done to the sound levels and effects, and probably an edit or twenty, but there you go - I'll try to do stuff like this more often if this works!

Damn.

I was doing so well at blogging two or three times a week there for a while, and now what's it been, a month more? Anyhow, music lovers out there might appreciate this. Beck's put together top-notch musicians (except Devendra Banhart - that guy once wrote a song about green beans, so he can die in a fire) to record a cover of a seminal record by another artist, all within a day. Good stuff. I especially like the cover of "Marianne."

The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins

If this song isn't played while the credit's roll whenever Peter Jackson gets around to finally filming The Hobbit, I swear to God I'll cut somebody.

This Guy Has A Tiger's Face On His Bass Drum

How is it that this musician didn't become a household name after releasing this video? It boggles the mind.

My New Favorite Thing Ever

BTW, Y'all. We're going to be in the greater Warshington area from the 11th throught the 20th of this month, or somewhere thereabouts, if anyone wants to meet up. I'm sure I'll send out an e-mail to everyone I think might be interested with some more details, but you might ping me if you're interested and you read this blog. I may even try to send out some details via *gasp* Facebook, but dont' count on it!

Maybe I should try to post some pictures sometime soon.

Bass In Yo Face

One of my buddies here at work hooked me up with a bass guitar, so I went to the internet - the source of all things wholesome and factual™ - for some guidance on how to get started. I just wanted a few beginner tips (although I have to admit I'm enjoying taking what I know about guitar, combining it with what I *think* I know from bass players - which is basically how to move your shoulders and head rhythmically - and coming up with bass lines in complete naivete), so I checked out YouTube, and after viewing a few lessons, I found Superfly here blowing my f%$&*@# mind with down-low funky saintliness. Enjoy.

Drama

As in "Drama Club." The boy was a prince. Here is the video. If we figure out how to get video off of the video camera, I'll throw some higher quality stuff up here.

Respect.

Metallica have taken a lot of flack over the last ten years or so for their uneven musical direction, inability to adapt to the digital age and really, really, drama queenish infighting, and probably some other things that I'm forgetting. But. A bunch of guys in their fifties that can still bring it like this deserve your respect:



I also saw a pretty great video of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page performing "Beck's Bolero" and Immigrant Song" that's worth looking up.

You Got The Touch!

You got the power!


Fun Fact: Last year Connor would sing this to me all the time. It was awesome. I miss it. I also miss his humming of the Imperial March whenever he'd get sleepy.

Supposedly this is going to be in the new Transformers movie, so that things can come full circle. Too bad they can't bring Orson Wells back from the dead to voice Unicron as well.
Fun Fact: I recently found an old school assignment of Ethan's where he stated something like "Unicron comes along and eats the planet" and his damn teacher marked him down for misspelling "Unicorn." When's the last time you heard of a unicorn eating a damn planet, lady.

Transformers. You were about my third favorite toy growing up, yet you've managed to stay a more prevalent part of my life than the first and second favorite toys.

And Now, From The Northern European Heavy Metal Forefront

I can't decide if I think these are two of the best metal songs/videos ever, or two of the worst metal songs/videos either. Either way, they just might rock your damn face off, so watch out.


A surrealist masterpiece if ever there was one.


It is of the utmost importance that you pay special attention to the lyrics in this folk/metal hybrid.

Rock & Roll Party

To commemorate my turning 30 (last week on the 11th - apparently, the Ayatollahs first came to power in Iran on the day I was born. Huh.), myself and some of the other hacks (not all them are hacks like me, though) that I know are meeting up tomorrow at Captain Cook's in Saranac Lake from 4 to 8 pm to knock the foam off of a couple of pints and play some rock music. If you're reading this and you're in the area (or feel like traveling, in which case, get your ass to an airport right now), you should stop in.

This is what I hope things will sound like:


And this is what things probably really will sound like:

Only not as tight.

Music That You Don't Listen To (But Probably Should)

Mahavishnu Orchestra. Led by John Mclaughlin (who was in Miles Davis' band for a while, so you know he's solid) was an international group of jazz cats turned rockers - what those in the know call "fusion." Some people complain about the over-the-top musicianship on display here, and at times it does get a bit too technical to be all that enjoyable, but most of the time they throw in enough hooks to keep it catchy while they show off their chops. Here's a video of the whole band:

"One Word"
I'm so glad that we have YouTube now to fill in where date of birth (by the way, for anyone who cares, I turned 30 today! Boo!) has prevented me from seeing some great musicians performing in their heydays.

Here's a video of John Mclaughlin (with Al Di Meola and Paco DeLucia aka The Guitar Trio, who are also awesome in there own right. If I do this again maybe I'll find a video of something from Friday Night In San Francisco to prattle on about) playing a Mahavishnu Orchestra piece (and also one of my favorite songs, this son of a bitch plays in my head a good portion of the time, along with another Mahavishnu tune "Birds Of Fire, which I can't find a decent video of):

"Meeting of the Spirits"

Here's the same thing, electrified:

Inspiring. In. Spiring.

A great video. Compelling and rich.

The Funny

I love these guys:


If I get IO, Digital Cable...

Yup, that's the same company that put out the awesome reggaeton commercial I mentioned quite a while ago...


...Like Cindy keeps telling me I can, I'll be able to watch Flight Of The Conchords somewhere other than YouTube while I'm watching cells fall into tubes©.



The only real reason I'm posting this is because they had those guys on NPR this morning so I awoke to the sweet strains of "It's Business Time." North Country NPR is on a roll. Yesterday I woke up to them using Rodrigo y Gabriela's "Tamacun" between segments.

Eff You, Meth-Heads

I've got a head-cold/sinus infection right now that feels like someone filled my sinus cavities up with Elmer's glue and it's slowly setting up, making some pressure, destroying my manly speaking voice, and causing me to wake up several times over the course of the night so that I can swish water around in my mouth and hope that my tongue hasn't really dried out and fallen off. Remember the good old days when you could walk into a pharmacy and pick up some Nyquil or those little red pills, both of which were chalk-full of pseudoephedrine, and because of that they actually freaking worked? Not so anymore. Now the only thing Nyquil has going for it is that nice slow burn on the way down that does temporarily relieve the suffering but doesn't do the stuff that it used to. All thanks to the toothless wonders in search of a cheap and (apparently) shitty buzz. Great. I wish I could go sit in a hotspring like these guys.
Here's some Buckethead.

Too Much Awesome...

...For one song to contain by itself.

GuyzNite - "Die Hard"