Piktor

I try to save most of my “seething anger” for provincial and federal politics. 😊 I cannot think of any music that actually evokes that kind of response in me. I don’t spend the day looking for an argument. Here, I actually think that the night sky and and the feelings that a sky full of stars evokes is a pretty good idea for a lyric. While I am certainly not an expert in such matters, I just think that this poetry feels lumpy and underdeveloped. Admittedly, like many people, I have spent too many years happily ignoring lyrics. (Not any more.) If this was my video, I would not have presented the lyrics in written form. I might have enjoyed the song more if I could ignore them.

I find the lyrics to be odd. Is this song supposed to part of a promo for a park?

As I discovered, if you sit, don’t let the horn section stand in front of you. In fact, if you can, get someone more interesting to watch to stand right behind you. In the old days, you could literally rock the Hammond.

Steve Knight? 😁

Nice. Check out the pitch bend at 1:57. There is video on YouTube where this player explains how he does that. I could not manage to execute the technique. Personally, if I am going to go through all the work of bearing that much weight and pumping bellows, THAT is the sound that I want to make. Reeds and fluctuations of air. For all the other midi stuff, I will just use a controller on a keyboard stand.

Got it. Thanks Jerry.

That Raitt song was written by some Canadian guys. I hear some worthwhile music coming from the Brothers Landreth and offshoot projects by Joey Landreth and Ariel Posen. It’s mostly guitar based, but the writing, singing and playing (lots of slide, great tones, etc) make for some great modern roots based music. As a point of reference, they aren’t so far off from Chris Stapleton. It was nice to hear Bonnie give them a shout out.

Many artists' biographies seem to spend many pages on their downward spirals (Art Pepper, Jaco Pastorius, Keith Moon, etc.) and over time I have become disinterested in those stories. Life can suck. Addictions suck. Selfish decisions suck. Okay, okay, I get it. In this regard, Bill Bruford's biography stands apart. If I recall correctly, his autobiography presents less of a chronological sequence of life events and more a reflection on events and some cool thoughts about music (and Robert Fripp!). I think that I'm going to read the book a second time. I can usually tell how much I love a book by the number of pages I dog ear. BB was able to express some feelings about music that I could not put into words myself. (OT - My favorite recent music biography is Beautiful Scars by Tom Wilson, a Canadian songwriter. He wrote on his quest to develop his song writing and discover his Indigenous roots. I was not too familiar with Wilson's music, but I loved the book. There is some downward spiral, but also redemption. Reading many parts of it gives me the sense of reading poetry.) I haven't read the Inner Game of Tennis, but I did read some of The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green. I don't think that I finished it, probably because it did not resonate with me at the time. Effortless Mastery DID resonate with me at the time that I read it (twice). While I did not apply all of the book's concepts and practices, I do think that there were some ideas around centering and practices for shutting out thoughts of audience expectations and personal expectations that can get in the way of performing and creating music. While I do not suffer from stage anxiety, I found those teachings quite useful. Still working on - Metaphors for the Musician: Perspectives from a Jazz Pianist by Randy Halberstadt - Songwriters on Song Writing by Paul Zollo. - Maybe most impactful: various books of poetry - As part of my aspiration to become a better song writer, I took the advice of a teacher who recommended the practice of absorbing a poem by a recognized artist everyday. He suggested reading the piece multiple times and reading the work aloud at least once. The goal is to soak in a sense of how writers set off fireworks and images in your brain. Imagery, rhythm, verbs, etcetera. Just think of the best lines in great songs. While I am a not daily reader, I do make the effort. We are all beginners at something. I can't pretend to be much good at fully comprehending guys like T.S. Eliot, let alone write like Joni Mitchell, but there are times when a single line from a poem that i read can set off a small explosion in my mind and inspire some progress in my own attempts.

I agree. The parts don’t have to sound poorly played. When I record guitar parts, I often do them a bit at a time. Edit and comp to build the parts. I am curious to see how that might work out with trumpet. If you don’t have enough fluency to improvise parts, then you can write the parts out and practice them first. Depending on what the music is, even a bit of actual (non-keys) playing can make a track more compelling.

I once used a guitar string on some note. I don’t remember which one and could not hear a difference. That’s not a recommendation, but in a pinch….

Some past (2008) thoughts on this topic: https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/122319-ever-think-of-covering-the-brand-name-on-your-gear/#comments

“Minor 4-th” ‘Nuff said. Not wasting my time when the intention is to annoy/goof on us. I’m sure that you felt it too. Just for fun, I’m just going to speculate about who might want to return here to take revenge over some kind past grievance. 😄

I find it interesting that there seems to be no sample works on the web site for us to hear.

Thanks for the additional info. I was wondering.

“A couple sax players came by & sat in.” …and I see Bill Evans and Mark Egan standing right behind him. You win the award for modest post of the year. Sounds great, btw.

Current full time job: Maintaining my sense of gratitude and purpose. I retired from teaching a few years ago, because I could and because I wanted to have time to take care of some people that I love (my folks are in their 80s and 90s), as well as to pursue some musical goals that I could not fulfill while I was so busy working. I am fortunate.

I am going to cheat and wish that my skill would be in composition or song writing.

Here in Canada we have some broadcast stations that depart from the heavily scripted/assigned playlist norm. Alberta has a radio station (CKUA) that started broadcasting in 1927. it once was a government entity and played educational broadcasts. By the time I discovered it in 1970, the grown up hippies started taking over. I thought that I had found "underground radio". The station has some fiercely loyal followers and more than fifty years since I first came across it, it is still my default channel. About 25 years ago, the government closed it down, but through the efforts of volunteers, donors and fairly gentle corporate sponsorship, we got it back on the air relatively quickly. You can find the station online if you live outside of Alberta (http://listen.streamon.fm/ckua). It is very eclectic, but has a bit of a song writer/roots/soul/folk/jazz/blues, etc bent to it, depending on when you tune in and which program you hear. (Good jazz show on Thursday nights.) To this day, CKUA has a legendary eclectic recordings library. Program hosts still make all of their own programming choices. I always wished that they played a bit more aggressive material now and then. Programming is most varied on weekdays. If you tune in and don't like what you hear, come back in ten minutes and you will hear something of a different flavor.

Eric, your post made me laugh. I have a Virus, but I never make that sound.

Before her medical issues, Joni Mitchell

I actually like the way that Holdsworth played synthesizer with the Synthaxe and some of his patches. Maybe not some of the dated fm stuff so much. For example, Distance vs. Desire form the Sand album is gorgeous. I believe that he used a breath controller too. When I first saw the thread, I must have misunderstood the question. I thought that the op was asking what we considered to be the ideal characteristics of a guitar player that we would want to play with. I love and admire many guitar players for different genres and different reasons, but that does not mean that I would necessarily want to play with all of them. I’ll leave that for some other thread, I guess. Just to add some of my favourite slide players to our list: Derek Trucks, Sonny Landreth, Joey Landreth, Ariel Posen, Rye Cooder, Jerry Douglas (dobro)…. To the degree that I play guitar, I seem to be drawn to the beauty of the expression of slide on string, especially when the player makes it sound like singing to me.

Thank you Jerry. 👍

I agree Dave. It was on my desert island list for a long time. Long ago I managed to find a used copy of Sancious’s pre debut sort of demo album (1974?). I think that he did not expect it to be released. For some reason in the early 1980s I also bought spare vinyl copies of Forest of Feelings, Transformation, and True Stories. I think that I thought that I might wear the first copies out. I still have those UNOPENED vinyl albums in storage. Am I now old enough to crack the shrink wrap? I wonder if anyone here did manage to acquire Dance of the Age of Enlightenment (the album that was pulled from shelves immediately after it was released. I think that in this performance DS did a good job of capitalizing on whatever the Yamaha has to offer in the way of Hammond-ness. I have too often heard piano players play a non-clone wheel instrument without consideration of the fact that the high note is C something. Artists can do whatever they want, but notes sounded higher than that usually make me cringe.

Eric Barker, I sent you a p.m.

Thanks Jim.