Anthony Flack wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 3:44 pm

GuyLaCroix wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2024 10:04 am Better than that guy that does bass tone shorts where he pronounces it "behs"

I had to block that guy.

I have zero psychic hitpoints for videos of people chasing/explaining "guitar/bass tones."

Kniferide wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2024 11:31 am

Anthony Flack wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 3:44 pm

GuyLaCroix wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2024 10:04 am Better than that guy that does bass tone shorts where he pronounces it "behs"

I had to block that guy.

I have zero psychic hitpoints for videos of people chasing/explaining "guitar/bass tones."

I think some of that stuff is fun, if it's closer to my wheelhouse of doom/thrash/wipers/country/surf tones.

But the stuff like exact replication of tone with thousands of dollars worth of gear, what is the point? I'm never gonna afford that shit.

GuyLaCroix wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2024 11:29 pm
But the stuff like exact replication of tone with thousands of dollars worth of gear, what is the point? I'm never gonna afford that shit.

Especially for "Classic" tones like "We're gonna get that Jimi Tone!!!" but all he uses was a cable and an amp and sometimes a fuzzface or something. basically I think the idea that any tone is something special is kinda hoopla

This guy seems nice enough but he cannot play "Waiting Room." He did not get it right once.

I know a few music school type people who can play weird rock music but not very many.

There really is something about most of the "underground" music we all know and love that is not normal and not easy to replicate.

Which is why your curious music-school people are sometimes fascinated by it.

Someone wrote a really long, detailed, and scholarly breakdown of a Shellac song, I think it was Wingwalker.

Steve showed it to me once when we were sitting around at EA, and I started reading thru it.

I got to this one part that was like "then Albini plays an E-flat dim chord with a 9th and 11th on top of it into a C# min 9" or whatever. Spelled out the chords complete with notation as i recall.

I held out the text, pointed at the notation, and raised my eyebrows. He shrugged broadly and gestured wildly as if handling a snake instead of a guitar neck, like his hands had made all the decisions for him.

Your hands aren't making the decisions for you at Berklee, probably.

losthighway wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 10:40 pm

Nate Dort wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 7:18 pm
I think I like the nerdy bearded piano guy who does similar analysis videos more because he gets way more into musical theory and chord structure and genuinely seems more excited about it.

There's a guy (non bearded), young Brit named David Bennett, he does deep dives on pop songs on his keyboard and finds examples of music theory curiosities. Lots of Beatles and Radiohead stuff that you'd expect, but I've learned a good amount of alternate chord choices and rhythm ideas from him. He occasionally does the entertaining "Here's 5 quick examples of songs that use the minor iv chord" and it'll go from Billie Eilish to Led Zep with notation on screen.

David: "here's an unreleased bob dylan bootleg along with 50 clips crammed into a 15 minute video narrated with encyclopedic authority."

also David: "I had no idea rascal flatts didn't write life is a highway!"

edit: i swear he had bob dylan, nirvana, leadbelly, and rascall flatts on there 2 days ago. must have been striked...

If you had chops like Beethoven, you could go directly from the music in your head onto paper, and could visualise ("auralise"?) the music by looking at the page. I don't have that skill, but if I could read and write music as effortlessly as I could use the alphabet, I'm sure that would be pretty great. I just can't be bothered getting there at my age.

For everyone else, you should let your ears make the decisions, not your hands. Your hands have all the chord shapes, but are also probably full of cheesy licks and other songs you've played before, so best not to give them free reign. We all know what it sounds like when dudes switch off their ears and start playing with their hands. All the old Hendrix licks and other bullshit starts spilling out. Bad hands! Listen to what the ears are saying.

Just play something at random and then correct it by ear, I think that's how it usually works?

You could roll your eyes at a scholarly breakdown of a Shellac song but it's just a description of what it is, and how it differentiates itself from other music. I know Steve was contemptuous of jazz but Shellac songs do have some interesting harmonic construction that you could talk about. Not by accident, but possibly because Steve and Bob both made a living from listening and could hear these complex harmonies and understand them as sound, even if they couldn't or didn't see the need to fully articulate them in words or symbols or the context which it relates to other music.

They could hear and fully appreciate the E-flat dim chord with a 9th and 11th on top of it into a C# min 9, and all of the tensions going on in those note relationships even if they wouldn't choose to describe it that way. In a way I think Steve was being modest because he KNOWS he's not just going from Am to G to D.

^^^^Yep.

Anthony Flack wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2024 7:48 pm We all know what it sounds like when dudes switch off their ears and start playing with their hands.

One of my all-time biggest pet peeves. 20 years ago I coined the phrase (or at least I'd never heard anyone else say it prior) "play with your ears, not your hands".

Sounds like DUH but I quickly learned from listening to playbacks that my ears almost always wanted to hear less than what my hands want to do. My hands want to keep moving, they wanna be doing stuff. My ears like space between notes.

eephus wrote: I know a few music school type people who can play weird rock music but not very many.

There really is something about most of the "underground" music we all know and love that is not normal and not easy to replicate.

My experience as well. Even just regular old indie rock strumming, I bet none of the shredder dudes on youtube could play along to Daydream Nation.

"Play with your ears, not your hands" harkens back to some other, even broader issues related to art itself or even existence. There can be a discrepancy between what we intend something to be, and what it is, yeah. Sometimes what's fun to play is a lot less fun to listen to. Might come off as basic stuff, but a certain responsiveness that occurs within real time, or not long after starting to hash something out, can make for much better results. Taste can be more important than technical ability, where art's concerned. In some contexts the latter is a lot easier to cultivate than the former.

DaveA wrote: Sat Sep 07, 2024 5:15 pm "Play with your ears, not your hands" harkens back to some other, even broader issues related to art itself or even existence. There can be a discrepancy between what we intend something to be, and what it is, yeah. Sometimes what's fun to play is a lot less fun to listen to. Might come off as basic stuff, but a certain responsiveness that occurs within real time, or not long after starting to hash something out, can make for much better results. Taste can be more important than technical ability, where art's concerned. In some contexts the latter is a lot easier to cultivate than the former.

One of my favorite things is when recording demos and the part I thought was smartest is kind of dull and something that was spontaneous, or a filler part is actually the most exciting thing and demands to be a bigger part of the song.

On the broader subject of academia in music:
There's a big difference to me between shredders and people who are harmonically literate. As someone who's more of the latter and could never pass for the former I've learned a lot that has helped me stay excited about writing music and avoid repeating myself. I've lost little of my zeal for playing overdriven power chords.

There's a reason certain Fugazi songs sound uniquely bittersweet, Soundgarden does some crazy shit. It's like if someone is a chef and they go "mmmm cumin would make this perfect" and someone else goes "fuck that shit, I just grab stuff and put it in". Fantastic music has been made by illiterate musicians but even they know some interesting shapes and changes they've found, they just don't know the names.

Came across this today, dude seems completely taken a back by Lou's playing: