What genre of music is your bane?

[GRollins]

Rap--and variants thereon--do not work for me. I am willing, reluctantly, to allow that it qualifies as art, but I am not willing to go so far as to call it music. Why? For me, music has to have a melody, not just a beat. Seventh-grade level, banal poetry doesn't work for me, but I can understand that it might for others. But...please, people, can we not have a melody? No, a mindless, trivial, three note, oh-weee-oooo synth riff that never develops does not qualify. Led Zeppelin got away with one simple riff in Whole Lotta Love, but a) The riff was a damned good riff, b) They had Robert Plant on vocals, and c) They never tried it again; just the one time.

 

Anything with samples is a non-starter. I don't want to hear you steal from your betters, I want to hear what you can do. If you can't do, then sit down and shut up. Case in point, a concert I was dragged to by my stepdaughters where the lead-in band had a tune that sampled the main riff from Sugarloaf's Green-Eyed Lady. It was a blatant ripoff. Pissed me off. Incidentally, the headliners were NSYNC, as I recall. Although their music isn't to my taste, at least they didn't steal anything beyond dropping out of the rafters on ropes to the strains of the Mission Impossible theme. I'll go that far.

 

I'm also okay with Yes opening to Stravinsky's Firebird. They didn't incorporate it into their music, pretending that it was their own.

 

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini--Rachmaninoff--I'm okay with this; he gives attribution right there in the title and the melody develops. (Did the aforementioned band give credit to Sugarloaf? Noooooo, of course not!)

 

Opera and country, to the extent that the vocals use a lot of vibrato, are non-starters for me. I don't know why, but too much vibrato sets my teeth on edge. I've spent years trying to figure out why it annoys me so, but have never been able to rationally explain it.

 

Country, as it stands today, isn't so much a musical genre as a socio-political statement. I'm not there. Period.

 

I'm wild about Romantic era classical, particularly the Russian composers. Earlier music is hit or miss. Later music, meaning 20th Century, frequently strikes me as people bashing trash can lids together. Not my thing. For me, the best classical music written in the 20th Century was composed as movie soundtracks. Any number of famous works were originally conceived as music to accompany ballet, so there's plenty of precedent. But straight 20th Century classical? For the most part, no. Just don't. It's the aural equivalent of those painters who stand back and hurl buckets of paint at a piece of canvas. Or, more precisely, the ones who paint a red triangle, a blue circle, and a black line on a canvas, then stand back and sneer at you because you can't see that it depicts the existential angst of the modern man contemplating the stillness of a pool of water after a storm...as though it's your fault. Sorry, dude, not taking the hit for that one. You're just overrated.

 

Jazz--some works for me, some doesn't. Big bands, as a rule, don't work. Why, I do not know. You'd think that I'd hear it as something like a symphony orchestra. Nope. And, yes, some of it makes me want to run from the room, screaming. Smaller formats--trios, quartets, quintets--work. But the more people they add, the greater the odds that I'm leaving.

 

Blues--I kinda feel like I ought to either love or hate blues, as a genre, more than I do. I don't love it because I don't want that much sadness in my life. Got enough already, thank you very much. Torch--tragic love child of blues and jazz--oddly enough, there have been times in my life where that worked...just not right now.

 

"World music," a term I dislike, though I'm at a loss for a better term, is also a hit or miss proposition.

 

So...who wins the "Bane" award? I'd probably have to say that it would be a toss-up between rap and modern country.

 

Grey

[Floyd Tatum]

9 hours ago, RABid said:

Music that either defeats you or constantly fights back when you play it. Either something you have to practice 5 times longer to play or you struggle to fit into the grove.

Ok, I get it now.   Someone mentioned funky clav.  I remember wrestling with that.   Harder than it looks(sounds).  I rented a clav and a mini-moog for a funky-jazzy gig.    First time playing both.  Bit off way more than I could chew, obviously, but looking back, I have to give myself props for brazen self-confidence, even if it turned out to be delusional.   This was a long time ago - I had a lot to learn about synths and keyboards.   Still do.

[CEB]

"Funky Clav was running in and out pulling kids out the ground"

[Floyd Tatum]

1 hour ago, CEB said:

"Funky Clav was running in and out pulling kids out the ground"

I knew I recognized that from somewhere, so I had to google it - Smoke on the Water!  :L-)

 

( I think I just invented a new emoji but not sure what it is - kinda reminds me of the Canadian kids from South Park...)

[AnotherScott]

21 hours ago, timwat said:

On a serious note, true afro-cuban latin scares me to death.

 

Latin stuff can be tricky. I had to do that little piano riff in Conga (Gloria Estefan),  I always feel like I'm skating at the edge and not feeling it right. But if you grew up listening to that stuff, there's probably nothing to it. 😉

 

2 hours ago, Moonglow said:

I'll go with late-1970's disco. While I like some of the songs, many involve Rhodes/piano, strings, horns, clav, and synth, all in the same tune. Whenever one of my band leaders decides to do one of these songs, I feel the acid instantly pour into my stomach. Then he will often say, "doesn't sound too hard." I counter with, "You realize you are asking me to reproduce a string section, horn section, not to mention piano, and the parts often covered by TWO keyboard players on stage." It's not only the time needed to learn the music, but then the challenges to program and map the sounds across two keyboards. I wish there was an emoji for "nightmare" to add to this post.

 

On stuff like that, I pick what I think are the most important parts and leave the rest out. Everyone still dances to it and has a good time. If the want it to sound more like the original, they should have ponied up the bucks and hired us with the horn section. 

[Synthaholic]

Playing-wise: Ragtime. It's one of my favorite genres, and has always been my choice for 'stuck on a desert island' music (since it's 'happy' music), but I just can't play it. I can bastardize it, though! 

[Floyd Tatum]

3 hours ago, CEB said:

"Funky Clav was running in and out pulling kids out the ground"

When I was googling this, I found this news article:     WTF?

 

WTF? (Writing The Future...)

 

It's almost like, when you're playing Smoke On The Water, you're actually playing jazz... 🤪

 

Ok, now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

 

[El Lobo]

Kudos to all the wonderful players posting in this thread. You are experienced, skilled, yet you acknowledge the music that trips you up. I'm impressed. I'm a barely passable blues/rock keys player, good as rhythm but extremely limited. I'm mainly a sax player. I grew up on 50's and 60's and 70's rock and R&B (especially New Orleans) so that's what I like to play. My dad liked early jazz (what's now called trad jazz) so I like that. I didn't grow up on bop so I don't like or listen to it; can't play it even on sax - don't want to. But I like and can play some of what's called soul jazz. I like reggae and ska and other world beat stuff - I play sax in a world beat originals band. But real latin is damn tricky and I think you have to grow up on it to get the rhythms right. I love Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and other classical. The classical music station is always on in my car. Can't listen to most opera. I like traditional country, hate modern country. I love some disco because of the production (Disco Inferno) and even Bigfoot can dance to that 4-on-the-floor beat. I wish I could play Steely Dan music convincingly but I know I never will -- it's beyond my ability and musical comprehension. I like and can appreciate almost all music even if I can't play it. But not rap. As Randy Newman said, it's like playing tennis without a net. Maybe if the lyrics were really great poetry, like Shakespeare sonnets set to a beat or Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias. But alas, that will never be. Or will it? 

[CyberGene]

7 hours ago, GRollins said:

Country, as it stands today, isn't so much a musical genre as a socio-political statement.

Hmm, can you elaborate more? Of course, unless it's some touchy topic for you US folks? While traveling on a long road, my wife and daughter ask me to play the Country station on Apple Music and to be honest it's very nice and pleasant music, albeit a bit samey and I often have to ask the girls to change the station after an hour. But other than that it's kind of OK, my English is not perfect which is why I rarely listen too much to what they sing, I mostly listen to the arrangement, production, etc. But I think they mostly sing about love and stuff which I find pretty boring anyway, I'm more of a dark type of lyrics guy, but yeah, one boy vs two girls in the car is a lost battle 😀Mind you, we're Bulgarian, so we might be missing some context of that socio-political stuff, which is why I'd be interested in hearing more about it. But again, I think there's some tabu topics for you over there, so maybe not good for me to ask.

[GRollins]

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

Hmm, can you elaborate more? Of course, unless it's some touchy topic for you US folks? While traveling on a long road, my wife and daughter ask me to play the Country station on Apple Music and to be honest it's very nice and pleasant music, albeit a bit samey and I often have to ask the girls to change the station after an hour. But other than that it's kind of OK, my English is not perfect which is why I rarely listen too much to what they sing, I mostly listen to the arrangement, production, etc. But I think they mostly sing about love and stuff which I find pretty boring anyway, I'm more of a dark type of lyrics guy, but yeah, one boy vs two girls in the car is a lost battle 😀Mind you, we're Bulgarian, so we might be missing some context of that socio-political stuff, which is why I'd be interested in hearing more about it. But again, I think there's some tabu topics for you over there, so maybe not good for me to ask.

 

Yeah...this could get touchy.

 

I think it's safe to say that country music, as it stands today, is a style that predominately appeals to conservative, right-wing-leaning listeners. The subject matter of the songs (broken hearts, broken pickup trucks, broken lives), while tedious and repetitive, is a celebration of a mindset...a frame of mind...an attitude that is dear to conservatives. Some songs are overtly political. Some aren't--they just fit into the conservative lifestyle; a yearning for a simplistic life that fits neatly into a particular box and never strays or does anything unexpected, unless it's to order Coors rather than Budweiser at the bar. If, a century from today, bars look the same, smell the same, sell the same beers, and have the same dusty taxidermy hanging on the walls, that would be just fine. Change is anathema to conservatives and they tend to get hostile if things aren't the same as yesterday. In fact, a large percentage would be just fine with the idea of turning the clock back fifty or seventy-five years, then welding the hands in place. Better still, just smash the damned thing with a hammer and ignore the passage of time entirely.

 

This is why country music is so limited. To go beyond pickup trucks and broken hearts would change things, so the songs all remain the same. Forever. Locked to the same subject matter, because it's safe and predictable.

 

There. Did I manage to do that without raising too many hackles? I tip-toed past politics and didn't mention religion at all.

 

Grey

 

PS: Yes, I'm sure someone will pop in and list three songs, maybe as many as five, that break the mold...but then the pickin's will get slim because there simply aren't that many that dare go beyond the accepted boundaries of what country music is today. There will never be a Yes in country music. There will never be a Steely Dan. There will never be an Elton John. Not allowed. You have to leave the genre to get 11/8 tempos or eclectic, elliptical lyrics.

[Jose EB5AGV]

20 minutes ago, GRollins said:

 

Yeah...this could get touchy.

 

I think it's safe to say that country music, as it stands today, is a style that predominately appeals to conservative, right-wing-leaning listeners. The subject matter of the songs (broken hearts, broken pickup trucks, broken lives), while tedious and repetitive, is a celebration of a mindset...a frame of mind...an attitude that is dear to conservatives. Some songs are overtly political. Some aren't--they just fit into the conservative lifestyle; a yearning for a simplistic life that fits neatly into a particular box and never strays or does anything unexpected, unless it's to order Coors rather than Budweiser at the bar. If, a century from today, bars look the same, smell the same, sell the same beers, and have the same dusty taxidermy hanging on the walls, that would be just fine. Change is anathema to conservatives and they tend to get hostile if things aren't the same as yesterday. In fact, a large percentage would be just fine with the idea of turning the clock back fifty or seventy-five years, then welding the hands in place. Better still, just smash the damned thing with a hammer and ignore the passage of time entirely.

 

This is why country music is so limited. To go beyond pickup trucks and broken hearts would change things, so the songs all remain the same. Forever. Locked to the same subject matter, because it's safe and predictable.

 

There. Did I manage to do that without raising too many hackles? I tip-toed past politics and didn't mention religion at all.

 

Grey

 

PS: Yes, I'm sure someone will pop in and list three songs, maybe as many as five, that break the mold...but then the pickin's will get slim because there simply aren't that many that dare go beyond the accepted boundaries of what country music is today. There will never be a Yes in country music. There will never be a Steely Dan. There will never be an Elton John. Not allowed. You have to leave the genre to get 11/8 tempos or eclectic, elliptical lyrics.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I was on the same boat than @CyberGene, being Spanish. Now I understand it better 

[CyberGene]

@GRollins thanks, I think I get it now 🙂 BTW, not sure if "I'm Gonna Getcha Good" by Shania Twain counts as Country but my daughter (6-year old) asks me to play it in the car every frickin day on the way to the kindergarten... It's not a bad song, I like it but I really need her to switch to a new favorite song soon.

[stoken6]

1 hour ago, GRollins said:

There. Did I manage to do that without raising too many hackles? I tip-toed past politics and didn't mention religion at all.

Nicely done, I reckon.

 

1 hour ago, GRollins said:

There will never be a Steely Dan.

Steely Joe?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[RABid]

1 hour ago, GRollins said:

I think it's safe to say that country music, as it stands today, is a style that predominately appeals to conservative, right-wing-leaning listeners. The subject matter of the songs (broken hearts, broken pickup trucks, broken lives), while tedious and repetitive, is a celebration of a mindset...a frame of mind...an attitude that is dear to conservatives. Some songs are overtly political. Some aren't--they just fit into the conservative lifestyle; a yearning for a simplistic life that fits neatly into a particular box and never strays or does anything unexpected, unless it's to order Coors rather than Budweiser at the bar. If, a century from today, bars look the same, smell the same, sell the same beers, and have the same dusty taxidermy hanging on the walls, that would be just fine. Change is anathema to conservatives and they tend to get hostile if things aren't the same as yesterday. In fact, a large percentage would be just fine with the idea of turning the clock back fifty or seventy-five years, then welding the hands in place. Better still, just smash the damned thing with a hammer and ignore the passage of time entirely.

 

This is why country music is so limited. To go beyond pickup trucks and broken hearts would change things, so the songs all remain the same. Forever. Locked to the same subject matter, because it's safe and predictable.

Let me preface by saying I used to feel the same way about country music, until I got more exposure...

 

This is really no different than saying "All New Yorkers are the same, all Californians are the same, all white males are the same, all black people are the same, all gay people are the same, all teenagers are the same," etc... When encountering a group with a different center of focus one is easily blinded by that difference. You have to become accustomed to it, then you can start seeing the differences. I've been on both sides of this. When I moved to the city and joined one of the top bands playing the biggest bars I was not allowed to talk on stage because my hillbilly accent was not conducive to the bands new age pop reputation. The members all got a shock the day they came to my apartment to load up my rig and one of them looked over my bookshelf. I came out of the music room carrying a keyboard and the singer was standing there wide eyed looking at my "Experiments in the 4th Dimension" book. 600 pages of calculus proofs showing that our math does work in the 4th dimension. "Why do you have this?" she asked. I told her I found it interesting and she was welcome to borrow it. The entire band started looking through my bookshelf. Der Spiegel Magazine written in German, a couple of guitar fake books (they didn't know I could play guitar), a Doonsbury book, a selection of international cookbooks. For most of the band it was like they were seeing me for the first time. The singer could not accept it. She was so steadfast in her belief that I had to be a stupid hillbilly her mind would not accept that I could actually be smarter or more cultured than her. I don't think that she ever noticed that I had lost most of my accent over the past year. Funny thing, years later after failing to be a pop star, she moved to Nashville and tried to make it there. I'm sure she thought that someone of her talent would easily rule Nashville. Of course, she didn't. Last time I talked to her she was telling me how much she loves living in Nashville. What a change.

 

By the way, here is your obligatory country song that sounds just like all the rest...

 

 

[CyberGene]

@RABid that's a very interesting perspective, thank you. And I love that song!

[GRollins]

My mother went to her grave thinking that if she tried pushing vegetables on me just one more time "...just this once...try it, you never know, you might like it..." that I would suddenly start liking them. Never worked. Once you get past potatoes, I'm done. But make no mistake, if there's an afterlife of some sort she's waiting to pounce, "Grey, would you like some boiled okra?"

 

"No, Ma, the stuff looks like someone threw up on my plate and tastes like crap."

 

People who like country are like my mother. They feel that I--mysteriously--just haven't had enough exposure to the stuff and that if they play me "just one more song..." then somehow the heavens will open, a choir of angels will start singing, and I'll suddenly start liking the stuff. There's a variant on this mindset that thinks that I actually like country/rap/vegetables, but am too stubborn to admit it. In this alternate universe, they try to create a 'safe space' where I'm among people who like whatever it is and can 'come out of the closet.' That one's particularly difficult to deal with. And, frankly, more than a little annoying.

 

Trust me, having lived all my life in the Carolinas, it ain't for lack of exposure to country (or gospel, another genre I can do without). The music exists. There are scads of people who like it. I'm not one of them. Trust me, if that changes I'll let you know, but don't hold your breath.

 

And by the way, Mom, I still HATE lima beans. Don't go fixing any for me, ya hear?

 

Grey

 

PS: There was a hilarious video on YouTube a while back where some guy took--I think it was six consecutive years of the top country songs, according to some music award. He analyzed the chord changes, the beat, the lyrics...everything. They were, for all intents and purposes, identical. I-friggin'-dentical! Then to be really evil about it, he hammered home the point by editing the songs together to make one mashup wherein the verses were alternated from one song to another. And damned if the hybrid song didn't make perfect sense. I think he had to change the pitch of one or two of them (not by much), but they were so cut from the same cloth that they were indistinguishable. Now, before you start complaining that it was only six songs, remember that these were the top songs of their respective years, not some randomly chosen set where the guy set out to find songs that were coincidentally the same. These were the songs that were most popular. You can't look at that and tell me that there's not tremendous pressure to create music that "sounds the same," even if (heaven forbid) the artist might want to do something else. Conservatives (who by far make up the core of the country music audience) want the music to sound the same. It's not some freaky coincidence, it's baked into the warp and woof or their world view. It's comfortable to them.

[Moonglow]

12 hours ago, AnotherScott said:

On stuff like that, I pick what I think are the most important parts and leave the rest out. Everyone still dances to it and has a good time. If the want it to sound more like the original, they should have ponied up the bucks and hired us with the horn section. 

 

I certainly understand how one may prefer to take a more parsimonious approach on some of those classic disco songs. Slamming down a Rhodes or Clavinet part and locking into to a groove with the drummer and bass player is the essential core which should not be compromised. I also acknowledge there can be a point of diminishing returns when attempting to add the strings, horns, etc., but I also enjoy it when it all comes together (several Tums later, lol).

 

For example, on Disco Inferno:

 

Top Keyboard: Left split = Clavinet; Right split = strings

 

Bottom keyboard: Left split = Rhodes; Right split = brass

 

Verse: LH = Clavinet, RH = Rhodes

 

Chorus: LH = brass, RH = strings

 

Super fun to play the bass line on the Clavinet while comping with the Rhodes during the verses, and then “slide right” for the choruses to play the strings on top of the brass.

[ProfD]

Since over the course of my post count I've probably written the obvious, I won't stop now.🤣

 

Music is art.

 

Every culture produces some form of music.

 

Just like ice cream, there are many flavors of music.

 

Whether a style of music is a bane either as a 1) musician or 2) listener consider this:

 

IT's OK not liking certain styles of music. 

 

It's OK not being able to play certain styles of music.

 

The reality is that if you cannot dig and/or play particular style of music for whatever reason, consider that it wasn't produced for you anyway. 

 

Let folks who create and/or dig a particular style of music enjoy it and mind your own business, er, listen to and/or play the music you do like.

 

There's enough ice cream to go around for everybody.  Enjoy.😎

[BluMunk]

22 hours ago, Threadslayer said:

Anything written before 1066.

Ah, a true believer in the post-Hastings school of musical thought! 😛



For me, I'll say my "bane" is anything that incorporates greater than one octave stretches, particularly if things are filled out inside, and particularly if there are multiple such chords in sequence. (Of course, some reaches are much easier than others depending on where they fall on the keyboard).

I have much smaller hands than most composers seem to, and there's a lot of material that I avoid or "fake" because my hands do not comfortably or accurately do what the composer asks. There are plenty of folks who will say "practice, do stretching exercises, just keep manipulating your body until you can play those parts- that's what a serious musician would do!", but I just don't have any interest or the kind of focus required to put that work in to try to extend reach which might or might not actually result in an improvement. So I remain limited in that way and will likely remain so. 

 

[AnotherScott]

On the subject of trying to cover lots of parts, we do Born to Run, so of course I have to cover piano, organ, and glockenspiel. Recently, we did it on a trio gig (me, a drummer, and guitarist), where I was doing LH bass, so I had just one hand for piano, organ, and glock... picking the most important part at any moment, sometimes playing a layer of two of the sounds, it wasn't half bad. But then we get to the sax solo, and the guitarist says, "take it Scott!" Are you kidding me?? (And I've told him before not to toss me any extraneous solos when I'm playing LH bass. Odds are everything will get too empty when I drop my regular RH parts, and it may not be so easy to improv while playing a particular bass line so it may not be a lead to be proud of, or I might not even have a suitable sound set up for a lead.)

 

On techniques we wish we had but don't... I don't play stride. I wish I could, but I guess I don't wish hard enough to actually work at it.

 

On things I don't like to play, having nothing to do with playing styles I'm not fluent in, I don't like when I have to basically play the same thing from beginning to end. Think I Will Survive and the like.

 

On country... yeah there's a certain amount of sameness but there's also a decent amount of deviation from the sameness, especially among those artists who aim for "crossover" hits. I never listened to any of it until I had to learn it for gigs, but I ended up liking a bunch of it. Maybe I'll put together a spotify playlist to illustrate.

 

 

[RABid]

Funky Clav - I have an advantage here, being a drummer and loving funk music it sits in my natural groove. When doing electronic music I take flack for it. "No. No. Don't use a funk feel in electronic!" Well, you do your electronic the way you want, and I will do mine the way I want.

 

Reggae - I have to push myself into a Regqe state of mind to do this well. I like the feel of island swing but bouncing back and forth between that and straight on rock and roll is a bit jarring to my mental state. I'd rather play one or the other and not mix the two. In my world there is a lot more rock and roll, so that is where I sit.

[allan_evett]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:06 AM, Outkaster said:

I just think that you are born with certain abilities.  Also playing other styles requires you live in that world.  I tell guys all the time as far as playing Reggae is concerned it isn't all about the music but the history, food, and culture of Jamaica.  If you understand that it helps to get perspective.  I will never be a straight ahead jazz player because that isn't the instinct I was born with.  I can grasp some of it for my own playing but it would be forcing a fit at this age. 

 

I came into music with certain 'leanings' burned in. I remember that back in 4th grade - after a little over two years of lessons - I could improvise a bit in a flowing, romantic era style of playing. Nothing fancy, but it just seemed natural - like something I had done in a previous life, so to speak. Fast forward to college years: I created a somewhat convoluted path to finishing a degree that reflected a majority of hours in music (Thank you, Columbia College!). The idea of being a piano major (or even traditional music school major) scared the BeeGees out of me. Juries? Run like hell, and I did!

 

I've ended up covering, and occasionally faking my way through a lot of styles over the past 45 years; and likely going into some blind alleys I had no business being in .  Rock/Pop, Blues, R&B, folk/alternative acoustic are styles I've managed to assimilate, to a greater or lesser degree individually. And covering multi-keys parts has developed along with that. Reggae and world beat material I've somewhat manage to fake my way through, though I'd have to live within that world/groove to get a real clue... I do strongly connect with Moonglow's observation about being asked to cover all the recorded keys parts, live...  I ran into that absurdity when playing with a couple of country bands: "Uh, could you cover the piano and B3 part?". Okay, that can work. "Then there is that solo violin on the bridge.". Okay, think I can grab that short part. "Oh, but there's that banjo riff that happens throughout, and also a cool steel guitar line between the 2nd verse and bridge, and that full string orchestra on the final chorus.".  Let me work on growing third and fourth arms, and in the meantime you can buy a backing track.

 

Jason, I relate well to you about being a straight ahead jazz player.  I can reasonably play cocktail piano, and there have been years when I've covered bunches of 'wallpaper' gigs, but hardcore, angular jazz? Well... I've worked through some crazy charts and sort of survived, but there are a lot of jazz players for whom I'd quickly vacate the bench. During the pandemic I did several group and a couple private online lessons with Matt Rollings. His evaluations and guidance echoed much of what Peter Saltzman - a fellow Chicago-area piano/keys guy with whom I shared a dual-keys band gig - observed. I still need work on seeing 'blocks', vs. 'flowing' lines. Seeing advanced 'block' voicings (beyond basic shells) and moving them efficiently (especially chromatically) is my Achilles Heel in Jazz playing. And the last lesson material Matt left me with focused on bee-bop lines and chromatic approaches - another Achilles Heel. I just started checking out a YT video about advanced chord substitutions. Some fun sounding ideas there!

[JohnH]

Piano ballady stuff like Chicago and Bohemian Rhapsody are rough for me. Just got a last min Queen gig for Saturday. I could never pull off Love of My Life before, but I saw a video of their previous keyboard player simplifying the crazy piano stuff. So I will copy that. I am going to see if I can get it done this time.  I found a piano only version on You tube and I use those and slow it down. I did get way better last time out with this band and I nailed it. So I felt a lot more comfortable going over some of the stuff last night. Making clips and slowing them down in audacity has been a big help the past couple of years.  Freddie Mercury was a monster piano player and seems very overlooked on that part. I am getting way better and over the mental blocks. I can do this.

 

[ProfD]

12 minutes ago, RABid said:

I have an advantage here, being a drummer and loving funk music it sits in my natural grove.

Maybe there are drummers who enjoy playing within a small group of trees but I prefer to hear a drummer groove.  No lemons please.🤣😎

 

[RABid]

4 minutes ago, ProfD said:

Maybe there are drummers who enjoy playing within a small group of trees but I prefer to hear a drummer groove.  No lemons please.🤣😎

 

Note my signature.

 

I've never been able to spell, I type like a speed demon and notice mistakes later, and I am getting old. But, I do know how to edit a post.

[Ivan May]

I have always been a fan of jazz fusion--Gaucho by Steely Dan was the first record I ever purchased, and I was surprised as to how many jazz musicians played with them. I recently got into Weather Report--synthesizers I usually turn my nose up at, but I like how Joe Zawinul used the synthesizer as a lead instrument in the group.

[ProfD]

7 minutes ago, RABid said:

Note my signature.

 

I've never been able to spell, I type like a speed demon and notice mistakes later, and I am getting old. But, I do know how to edit a post.

I'm aware of your sig line.  Just rattling your drumsticks and cymbals.🤣😎

[Ed A.]

Country music, more specifically, contemporary country music. I can appreciate Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, but I can’t stand pretty much all modern country music.
 

An old story about drummer Buddy Rich:

 

Jazz and big band drummer Buddy Rich died after surgery in 1987. As he was being prepped for surgery, a nurse asked him, “Is there anything you can't take?” Rich replied, “Yeah, country music.”

[stoken6]

16 hours ago, GRollins said:

Anything with samples is a non-starter. I don't want to hear you steal from your betters, I want to hear what you can do. If you can't do, then sit down and shut up. Case in point, a concert I was dragged to by my stepdaughters where the lead-in band had a tune that sampled the main riff from Sugarloaf's Green-Eyed Lady. It was a blatant ripoff. Pissed me off. Incidentally, the headliners were NSYNC, as I recall. Although their music isn't to my taste, at least they didn't steal anything beyond dropping out of the rafters on ropes to the strains of the Mission Impossible theme. I'll go that far.

 

I'm also okay with Yes opening to Stravinsky's Firebird. They didn't incorporate it into their music, pretending that it was their own.

How do you feel about the opening of Queen's "It's A Hard Life" (using the overture to Pagliacci)? Or Billy Joel appropriating Beethoven on "This Night"?

 

Cheers, Mike

[Bill H.]

6 hours ago, GRollins said:

I think it's safe to say that country music, as it stands today, is a style that predominately appeals to conservative, right-wing-leaning listeners.

 

 

If you hung out with me when I'm doing a DJ club gig for young adults, I think you would be very surprised at the types of clubgoers who request things like Last Night and You Proof. Yeah Morgan Wallen... the country singer who got in trouble for using racial slurs a couple of years ago!

 

But his tracks incorporate elements of trap and hip-hop, which is why I think his appeal extends into hip-hop fans. That and the lyrics.... they don't resonate with me, but I'm far from being a young adult anymore. 

 

Last Night has the inside track for being Billboard's #1 single of the year. It topped both the pop and country charts for weeks.