Tag: Music

Earworms

Music

You know those snatches of songs that get stuck in your brain and you can’t stop singing them under your breath, or hearing them for hours on end?  That’s  what they’re called, and needless to say, some killjoy doctor has a remedy for them.

I actually enjoy mine, because the ones that could irritate me (e.g. anything by Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift) won’t be recalled for the simple reason that I haven’t heard them — I don’t listen to any modern music.

This morning’s earworm, for instance, was Burning Rope  by Genesis — specifically, the lead solo just after the 4-minute mark.

I’ll post more of them — mostly, they put in an appearance in the mornings during my wake-up time — and while a lot of them will be quality, there will be times when it’s all Yes We Have No Bananas.

You have been warned.

Disturbing Juxtapositions

Entertainment, Music

Sometimes I wonder if I’m going crazy or if I just see things that aren’t there.

Here’s one example.  I woke up the other day with a song glued into my brain — you know what I mean, right?  Anyway, the song was Pink Floyd at their most wonderfully obscure, i.e.  See Emily Play.

So of course I went onto Ewwwtchoob and watched the thing.  All the way through, though, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the video was reminiscent of another piece of surreal moviemaking — and then I remembered the final scene  from Antonioni’s Blow Up.

The two scenes are in no way alike, cinematically speaking — one is in black & white and is essentially a music video, while the other is deathly silence played in color.  But both are mimes, and wonderfully executed.  Was it the mimes, or the similar locations in a park which triggered the association?

Or maybe it was just Syd Barrett and Michelangelo Antonionini who were crazy.

Afterthought:  I think Blow-Up was created (1965-66) before See Emily Play was filmed (1967).

And just to drive everybody else crazy (why should I be the only one), Blow Up featured the Yardbirds in the famous (and disturbing) night club scene.  Which is why I sometimes associate Jimmy Page with Antonionini.

Test Beds Part IV

Music

Finally, the acoustic guitars.

I’m going to exclude the “classical” / nylon-stringed types, because quite frankly I know nothing about the type, never having played classical guitar nor even been a fan of the genre.  (Yeah, John Williams, Andres Segovia, Julian Bream… I have a few of their albums but mostly for background listening.)

Let’s talk about the others.

I’ve always been a fan of “big box” a.k.a. “dreadnought”-style guitars such as the Martin D45 (D for dreadnought):

…which are the Rolls-Royce, if you will, of box guitars.  The Gibson J200 (J for jumbo, geddit?) is the Bentley of the same:

Myself, I prefer the Gibson Jumbo shape (those curves remind me of a recumbent Sophia Loren hubba hubba).   For those who care not for the shape, Gibson’s squared-off dreadnought style should do, e.g. the Hummingbird:

I should point out that Gibson acoustic guitars are not made in the “regular” Gibson plants in Tennessee etc., but at their custom shop in Wyoming.  As far as price goes, they are only marginally less expensive than Martin.

Changing gears a bit, I have to confess that while the booming sound of the dreadnoughts and jumbos are a personal liking, I also enjoy the compact, compressed sound of the Ovation round-backed acoustics:

As a rule, they’re also a little less fragile than your regular-built acoustics because their back shell is shaped plastic and not flat wood.  Also, they’re a generally lot cheaper than the Gibsons and Martins.

.I’ve never been able to play 12-stringed guitars.  Even when my left-hand fingertips were calloused from 6-night-per-week professional bassplaying, 12-string guitars always beat up my fingers.  I like the sound of a 12-string, though;  and I have to admit, if I played acoustic guitars more often, I could be tempted into an Ovation double-neck:

…even though this particular model is a little too Hank Williams Shirt for my liking.

Next, we come to Taylor, but I must confess I don’t know a great deal about them other than that the ones I’ve heard have sounded wonderful.  (Taylor guitars were a rarity in my South African yoof.)  The ones which did catch my fancy were the Grand Auditorium line, whose sound and resonance blew me away:

Finally, we come to Yamaha LL guitars, and I really like the sound of the 16:

As with all guitars, once you’ve got a baseline sound — the kind of sound that appeals to you — it all comes down to feel:  how the neck feels to your hand and how the box “sits” against your body.

And you don’t have to spend a ton of money on your box guitar, especially if all you’re doing is strumming away on your own, or at most playing it for a family & friends singalong.  Hell, I taught myself to play on a 3/4-scale Hofner nylon-stringed guitar, and it served me well in the above functions for over a decade.  And even when I “graduated” to the big time and played little solo gigs in bars and such, an Ibanez Artwood model worked just fine:

Nowadays, they run about $300, and they still sound fantastic.  (The “ordinary” Ibanez acoustics are about half that price.)

One last thing:  I preferred a “dark” sound on my box guitars, so I played using really heavy strings (D’Addario Medium Baritone 0.16), which also didn’t lose their tuning as quickly as the lighter ones.  If you are of the same mind, make sure to get a guitar with a well-constructed neck, or else you’re just going to bow or warp the thing.  Don’t ask me how I know this.

That’s the end of the Test Bed series.  Sadly, I can’t do keyboards or drums, because technology has improved so much in recent years that I’m now hopelessly out of touch.

Story of my life…