More ELM Music

It occurred to me just a moment ago that even though I don't have anywhere near all of my loose ends tied up, that it might be fun to talk about some of the other ELM music I enjoy. It is a quarter 'til ten where I am, and I'm looking forward to a New Year. Today was kind of whonky, but I'm getting the excitement I get every year as I starting waiting for the ball to drop in New York City. I'm going to do a nice New Year's post once the time arrives, after I call Mom and Dad and wake them up like I do every year. I also want to do a thing on hard-rock, and then maybe metal. I know post-rock like the back of my hand, but metal is a catalogue that I'm still digging into. Still, we can hit some high-points.

Let us start by talking about Radiohead. First, Radiohead has a bad reputation, so let us get the critique out of the way, and then talk about some really great music they've made. The simple critique is that their albums are so incredibly morose. That would be the basic problem. The thing is, what Radiohead did with, "Kid A," and "Amnesiac," and then "Hail to the Thief," is one of the most incredible electronic productions ever done.

All three albums are fairly continuous. The controversial album title for, "Hail to the Thief," was drawn from a late 19th-century American election that is well-known to have been fixed. I was taught about the event in Advanced Prepartory Civics in High School. Of course, the implication of a relationship to modern day elections was intended, but was not meant to be confined to the Bush Administration.

Some pick tracks off of these records are, "Idioteque," which features a very strange mangling of a breakbeat that can't really be danced to, "Dollars and Cents," and "Pyramid Song," and "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box," and last but definitely not least, "Like Spinning Plates." The mastermind behind Radiohead is their lead guitarist, who has some kind of advanced music degree, and currently does some string arrangements for the BBC network, and these albums contain an intense sophistication, as well as a very striking commentary on the post-modern condition.

Just for those who haven't done much in the way of sociology or philosophy credits, the post-modern condition would be defined roughly as, "a world where all forms of modernism have been tried and have failed, and where modernism has not been left behind."

The new "In Rainbows," LP was not great, but - Radiohead was trying to go back to, or even really go in a new direction - with music played live on live instruments. Radiohead can play their instruments, and even the Kid A series includes quite a bit of live performance. "In Rainbows," didn't work as an album, but I think Radiohead is right in heading in a performance-oriented direction. We'll have to wait and see if they are able to try another LP on our ears.

In terms of the best of Radiohead, "The Bends," is the album to check out. Radiohead was using a lot of digital treatments on this LP, but they were really performing almost the whole album live with just a few overdubs. It was a landmark album, and sort of "invented," or at least "released," the "indie," genre.

Another two groups, are Eat Static and Ozric Tentacles. Eat Static was the Wynne brothers' electronic programming collective, and Ozric was programmed work with a sort of jam-band in the front of the programming. However, the Wynne brother who performed the guitar played what could not have been a more "hair-metal" sound for his solos, and Ozric is far more intelligent and ironic than the normal jam-band jive.

Some tracks to check out would be, "Arboresecence," and "Saucers," and "Sploosh!" and "Dance of the Loomi," and "Indian Tunnels," and "Afroclonk," (there are two mixes, one by Eat Static and one by Ozric) and "Meander," and "Spyroid," and "Half-Light in Thillai." Their recordings are very hard to come by, and the easiest way to grab tracks is to try those tracks on Gnutella, search both the Eat Static and Ozric Tentacles name on Gnutella. You may not wind up with the tracks I've mentioned, but you can at least try a few things out. Most of their work is out of publication, and most of Eat Static was never published at all. Eat Static is by far the real-er deal, but there are great OZ tracks.

So there are some things to give a shot, and trust me, both groups are very worth it. It is really ashame, because I'd be willing to spring for some STatic if I could find the discs, as the tracks are so ingenious and hard to come by. Perhaps there is hope for the future. I do believe that most of the time, and today is New Year's Eve, so it's a hope I'm trying to keep at the forefront of my mind. I think we're going to METAL, before we ROCK! So, a short-ish metal article next.

Personal Interlude 2: Whoa EMO 2

First, it upsets me thinking about superbook. Here is a kid born in this dirt-poor family, so poor he didn't have any permanent teeth left hardly at 18, gets a big scholarship for computer engineering, can't hack the University emotionally, manages to squeak into the army (he never used more than one or two cover stories, and that was not one of them) because of his insane computer skills, the army is giving him health-care and patching him up, he's running everyday with the grunts - I would die along with him just thinking about it.

So we're going to hit another issue. I am not going to point fingers or name names, even though I could madly get away with it, but I want to make a serious point. From when I started attempting to contact people on Internet communities 9 years ago, until now, I have been labeled a troll at every community I attended, and then psychologically abused by the staff at the community so they could keep up their illegal con-schemes. I would call that unethical.

Back when superbook was on the 'Net, the excuse for me being called a troll was that I ran with superbook. I will explain to you that I was and am labeled a troll for none of the reasons superbook was. Superbook was in fact a troll, and I am - and was - trying to helpfully participate in an Internet community. Further, when I'm not sure about a post, thread, or guideline, I make a polite request from a moderator or admin. You know what I get? - psychological torment from a pack of self-righteous brigands. That is what I get.

I'll tell you - when a person has a string of not getting along with anyone, I would generally tell them to look square in the mirror. Me - I believe today that I am an ethical and valuable man and that you, guys and gals, are a pack of diseased and abusive self-righteous brigands. For these reasons, the word "congregation," is not in my vocabulary, and "bread that is meat," is a funny joke, because a guy like me with no more than a widow's mite for a tithe and a radical and sincere attitude towards his beliefs has been abused by almost every genre and flavor of cult currently active in the glorious United States of America, and that is only off of the 'Net.

What I've figured out about life is pretty simple. I am compromising with a status of life that is nowhere near what I deserve because of what I've called "bid time," and that this gives me the freedom to say and write and compose and play what I want. Otherwise, no one remembers I exist or cares to hear that I'm a human being, and there is no exception to this rule in any area or person in my entire life. Period. I told my therapist that I would enter the dumpster along with my life's work when I died, and really already had, only to receive some ya-ya drooling, "indirect statements," in return. I do not feel any love people, and I do not want to be a man of hate.

You are people of hate, and people of lies. I will die in that dumpster with your pack of swindles thrown in tow behind me. WHOA EMO! You have mutilated me psychologically to a point where I find it difficult to even survive. I really don't care for your ya-ya drooling anymore, and will die knowing there was at least one good person who lived on the planet - because when I look square in the mirror, I see an imperfect, radical, but valuable and radically sincere man. Have a nice day if you are capable of having one, but if there isn't a proverbial place of torment, you belong there according to me. According to you - me and my work belong in the dumpster. Hello from your marginal dumpster, dear world, and I ask for nothing from your filthy palms.

Well to finish off, one line from a nu-skool version of an old-skool, and one more line:

1. "6 million ways to die, chose one."
2. "Sometimes a man gotta' do whatta' bullet do."

I've got nothing. Help yourself to your luxuries and plenty. You are no one to me, and it has been proven for at least 4 years that I am no one to you. I'll be back with some ya-ya that doesn't deal with this central problem in my life later.

A Tribute to Superbook, Kingpin of Discordians, and Kingpin of Trolls

I was kicking back a moment and was reminded of a joke between me and my old friends. If you've checked out the KLF tracks, you'll hear them giving the call-sign, "The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu." There are lots of "mu," jokes, and my friends would always tell me that they could never remember the long-winded explanations I used to give when I'd try to explain why these "mu," jokes might be funny. I'll tell you, I don't try to be this weird, I just am this weird. So let's go back to Detroit.

It's the late 70's and America now is a heavenly bliss compared to America at that time. These guys have gotten done with their bowling league game, just some old manual labor guys in Motor City on a Friday night, and they order two pitchers of beer and some scummy bowling alley pizza. All of the league is going to this new happening mega-church, and they are talking all of their Christian jive. Everybody leaves and two old, balding men in ugly smelly 70's polyester clothes heave a sigh over the last slices of bad beer and scummy pizza, "Do you remember when you used to actually believe in that stuff? You know - guys flying through the air - bread that was meat? - that kind of thing?"

So the two guys get a bowling counter - they still had those back then - and they make up their own satirical religion. They created several lengthy pamphlets that mocked dietary regulations, happy and not-so-happy holidays, public and not-so-private confession, people flying through the air, and a little reference to the Goddess Eris, a rather un-popular and un-worshipped Greek Goddess of scandal and discordance. The best titled of the original pamphlets was, "How I Found the Goddess, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."

The whole point of the pamphlets was to make a joke, and it was really not meant as too much more than that. They distributed them via a small printer, and it it wasn't for the 'Net, that would have been all she wrote. Oh, and I do have to mention that the principle "sage," of Discordianism was "Malaclypse the Younger," as opposed to, "Pliny the Elder." There were all of these funny mock-religious aphoristic quips by the great, "Malaclypse the Younger," and these two balding beer-drinking bowlers wrote some great material.

So, the original Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu were a satire on typical conspiracy theories. Usually some "Illuminati," or "Annunaki," or what have you is vying against the forces of the GREEN LANTERN for world domination. The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu were a mock secret anarchist society, and supposedly if you followed the mock-religion of these pamphlets right, you might one day get a chance to join forces with them (RAHR!) against, tyranny - sanity - whateva.

So now we talk about superbook. Superbook was amazing as a 'Netizen on every level. Part one, everyone knew that he was an acne ridden, chump-toothed, obese college drop-out of 19, and he didn't seem to mind. He did mind, but he didn't seem to mind. Part two, he took the name superbook, not just to mock people who worshipped Scripture, but because he noted with his very erudite irony that it wasn't just Christians, everyone had a "superbook."

You know - your pillow book - Anne Rice's Queen of the Durned, or Harry Potter's Goblet of Fire, or Ayn Rand's Anthem, or whatever it happened to be. Part three, he was the worst troll on the Internet by a thousand times a thousand, and he was a catastrophic irritant on every site on the Web during his 2 or 3 year dominion. Part four, superbook used one and only one handle all 3 years, and never played characters, which any other troll would have done to the nth degree. Part five, he was a troll that always spoke in proper english, and he was actually funny and annoying, instead of just merely annoying. Part six, there was nothing superbook could not do with a computer. You did not mention "lost page," or "g/cache," in his presence unless you wanted to be very - very - embarrassed.

I know he is dead today, and the reason I know is that I could go to the front page of any site on the 'Net and find him using the same name, or at least doing the same exact thing that was driving everyone on the 'Net to homicidal and suicidal ideation. He most likely committed suicide, and it is no mystery that underneath all of that irony he hated being ugly, poor, fat, and a washout. He was the kingpin of trolls, and he also professed to be a Discordian. No one else did Discordianism like superbook, and rest-in-peace brother, it was not a good life from start to finish, but you could make even your worst enemies laugh.

I've got more stories about superbook - two really great ones actually - but we'll hang back from that for the moment. I think superbook was someone who considered me a true friend, because once or twice he did let all of the irony down and the thing was, superbook wanted romance, and he didn't have the personality or the looks for it. I did suggest that if he gave it some time he might find someone suitable - and that was real - but like I said, I'd spot the ol' troll from two MAC addresses away, and he is probably gone well over two years now.

More to come. I've got to hit the gas station for smokes! - I'll be calling Dad sometime around 7:30! LOL!

Personal Interlude: Whoa EMO, and A Musical Project That is In My Head

This isn't a livejournal, and I'm thirty. Further, it isn't very safe to talk personal issues on the 'Net, but I do want to talk very vague about a significant problem in my life. I'm going to mind my pints and quarts and proofread my post to make sure that I don't give anyone else or myself any unhappy surprises.

My big problem is that I ain't got a friend in the world, or at least one I can keep in contact with at the moment. My family is breaking down into bits, and even though my family can be a real wart-hog, I am not cheering and throwing a party about that. Some of my old friends hit either speed or crack, and I can no longer trust them as far as I can spit a 30 ought six shell.

They aren't even the same people. They look like old geezers at around my age, and pig grunts are their first language now. Then I've got some real friends - who I can still trust - but I've got some family problems that keep me from talking to them at all. Also, I'm clean, and I'm not trying to bring anybody down, but my friends do get high still, as far as I know. It is their life and not mine, but it strikes a pretty sharp wedge between me and just about anybody I could trust in my life.

So there you are. The 'Netizens dump my hiney quick, my family is more psychotic than me, my old buddies can't come around, and I've got nothing else except my work, this blog, and my doctor's appointments. I don't feel much love around these 'ere parts, and I don't expect any, which is why YOU still can't comment on my gosh-durned blog. Go abuse some teenagers emotionally at livejournal and stay away from me, because Gwyd takes no abuse from anyone without returning heavy artillery these days. Have a nice day if you are capable of having one.

The Musical Project on My Mind

I've got a book on jazz recordings that I received early on in my freshman year of college, and there are two groups that did some hybrid work of jazz and house music. One is called "The Art Ensemble of Chicago," which was originally an avant-garde free-jazz ensemble, and one is a UK group called, "Pinski Zoo." Get the funny bit: I've never heard even 30 seconds of either recording. However, as I was meandering around early one morning with my coffee and my choke, I recalled the cover of Pinksi Zoo from that book, and it COALESCES (RAHR!), a project I want to call, "Mutant Freaks of D10."

Part 1, is that I'm at least going to need 1 Tele and 1 SG to get the job done, plus most, but not all of that megabucks electronics setup. Part 2 is that I'm going to need a good-sized studio space to run the recording. Part 3 is that if I could actually contact some people, the rest would all fall into place. I want a fairly basic horn section, probably two alto saxes, and two tenor saxes, two trumpets, and then I know a guy who can really play a flugel, and I'd like to try the sound on a few takes and see how that works out.

I do need some bottom-end in the horn section, and I'm wondering if maybe a single, valve-trombone might do. I despise the slide trombone. It is a traditional jazz instrument, it is a traditonal instrument of the classical repertoire, and boy do I hate that sound. It might be possible to try a euphonium of some type, although I know of no-one from the past that owns one. They are very expensive instruments.

The next bit would be that I know a guy that can out-RDJ Aphex Twin when it comes to programming, and he is also a whiz with mic set-ups. So, I let him run some programs, fight a little over and massage the charts, and that would get us in a basic place with the arrangements. Also, I'll comandeer him to mic the instruments.

So I'd be on guitar, and I've got another guy on my mind who - it just is hilarious - same kind of number in some ways - great trained pitch (perfect, really), parents trained him classically but not too young, principal guitarist - but he does not even hear the same music coming out of the exact same speakers as the exact same time as I do. So, when my programmer buddy and I have gone over the charts, then we do Vee vs. Gwee on guitar and see what happens. The thing is, that you can almost personality type people by the instruments they play, and Vee and I are a lot more similar than either of us would like to think, but still - WTF mate? What music is that you're hearing? - on both sides of the fence with Vee vs. Gwee.

I've got a buddy that is a real good rudimental drummer, and I think what I'd like to do is try him on some takes against the programmed percussion, and then maybe move in my Baldwin Studio upright - a piano he loves - and try that upright sound versus the programming on the charts. That piano is a wonderful piano, although it is a real mule-workhorse kind of piano.

I've got a second buddy that can also play a good drum kit, but he generally plays technical metal styles. I would love to talk to him about the project though and see if he gets a glint in his eye. S. like me is someone who gets the mean-evil glint in his eye and then obsesses over his interest until he knows it from top to bottom. He and I bandied around doing a noise-metal production maybe 8 or 9 years back, and it just never came to a head.

Back to my Baldwin, which is definitely not bright and tinkly, and the key action and the pedal action are heavier than those old dot-matrix printers. There was also a guy who knew how to play an auxillary percussion set-up hanging around D10 somewhere, and I might like to try him on some takes, although that would definitely bump up microphone costs if we were going to record him well.

I know a guy who plays a 4-string fretted electric bass finger-style (which is not dumb like with a modern guitar, but is still a bit of an argument) with a nice round tone and good time feel, and then I'd like to see if I could find a guy who could run a 4-string fretless electric bass to play off against, although no one comes to mind right now. I know a few good enough jazz contrabass players in D10 - on call guys actually - but this would not be their project. The project title alone would really turn them away. They're good guys, this is just not their kind of material.

As far as the charts, my goal would be "controlled simultaneous improvisation." I don't want a banana cream pie jam, and I don't want utter noise. I also want to keep the charts fairly simple, and then feature certain instruments during certain sections. I do want to do a large number of takes, but I don't want to get ridiculous about it. I was thinking 8 charts and maybe 10, 10- minute takes when it all came to a total.

I want people to get paid fairly for their efforts, and then my hope would be to hit at least one show with the group at a venue where I don't have to be worried about being murdered. Pretty much the whole project, "Project Collective: Mutant Freaks of D10." I've got another idea I really wanted to lay on my hometown, and tried at Facebook, got ignored entirely, and considered posting some flyers and got worried I might get hurt. So I backed up off of it for the time being, and after a brief interlude, I am going to explain that bit of effort I'd like to make, in service of my community, and for the sake of shameless self-promo. LOL! BRB!

Personal Musical Topic: Robert Fripp and Bill Frisell

Let's just start with a brief bio of these two artists, and I'm going to explain then why I'm so involved in the music of these two men. However, the article is going to be pretty brief, because one of the major reasons that I'm attracted to the modern guitar has to do with the theory of sound acoustics. I guess I could post the basic material, understanding that probably 100% of any blog audience I might get would understand none of it. I might get a highly-trained musicologist who hits the site by making a bad click, but I've decided to continue to write for you guys and gals instead and just leave the whole business offline for now.

Fripp got started in a group called King Crimson, who had a #1 hit in the UK in 1969 with a track called, "The Court of the Crimson King." Progressive rock was in at the time, and the song also critiqued the royal family, and it made a big splash. After that Crim' went through a lot of different line-ups and concepts. There was a period when they had a horn section. There was a period when an excellent classically-trained rebel named Keith (Michael?) Tippet was a prominent member. However, after "The Court of the Crimson King," Crim' was no longer even a progressive-rock group, but instead an avant-garde music ensemble.

Sometime around Discipline in 1977 or so, Crim' gel'ed into a group that would have a drummer or some percussionist, a Chapman Stick player, and then generally Fripp on rhythm guitar (kinda) and Adrian Belew, a Nashville producer who played with Crim' on the side, on lead guitar and vocals. There have been many permutations of that basic idea since then, including the "double trio," which was two drummers, two touch-style players, and then Fripp and Belew on guitar. Crim' put out what will probably be their final album release in 2005, called "The Power to Believe."

One thing about Crim' was that Fripp was Crim'. More than once, Fripp offered to quit the Crimson group so that the other players could take the group in another direction, and the basic thing was that "Fripp was Crim'." Fripp had very high expectations for the group, and he was also very - "fussy," is close - about live performances and about the sounds recorded for the group, adhering to an internal vision of a sort of "Crim-ethos," for the group.

Life has not been kind to Fripp over the past several years. Fripp had catalogued all of Crim's work that he owned with E'G Records. He owned nearly all of the catalog, and he was hoping that staying on the small E'G label would allow him to retain most of the rights to his music. The entire E'G label was bought out by a hostile takeover, and Fripp is now in litigation to try to retain even just rights to a small part of his catalog - as far as I know at least - because this is an international legal dispute.

So Fripp has lost the better part of his entire 39 year career. Now, I don't want to be harsh, but there is a silver-lining here. Fripp had already started to take an interest in the acoustic guitar at the end of Crim's run, and had commissioned a very expensive custom-built acoustic guitar from a private luthier in Argentina to suit his special needs as a guitarist. He had been teaching master classes to different guitar musicians from all over the world, and that culminated for a few years in a symposium called "The League of Crafty Guitarists," in Argentina.

The thing is that I enjoy Crim's music, but the League's music and Fripp's current concepts about guitar are the best work he ever did over Crim by a real long shot-put. What Fripp is doing interests me so intensely because it uses the modern guitar and a plectrum in a set of musical concepts with a sophistication that approaches contemporary classical music. In many cases, it exceeds the standards of contemporary classical music, because so much contemporary classical is such a horrible sham.

Bill Frisell is a very different kind of artist. Frisell was a chip-puncher in Nashville who also had or has, some jazz chops. His jazz chops are not up to the correct par, but Frisell has gotten the chance to record some of his own music on some small labels, and he manages to integrate a Nashville sound with a jazz sound so seamlessly that you really can't hear the seams.

His best work is on the Paul Bley Quartet's "Interplay," recording for ECM Records, a recording I'll be springing for on the H&B catalog after Christmas. Frisell is also noteworthy for being a very sophisticated musician who almost always plays this beat-up vintage Telecaster, and nothing else. Another great thing about Frisell is his expressiveness as an artist.

With Frisell's work, the emotion is crystal-clear, even in the New Age genre the music hovers within. Further, as an artist his work is incredibly understated. No flashy runs or wild sweep-picking. Usually his music is very mellow and slack feeling, with that Nashville twang and a jazz feel to the harmony.

Anyway, those are my two guitar heroes. Understand, Fripp is known for being a pain in the hiney, very persnickety and a bit obtuse, but Fripp is an ethical guy who stuck to his guns musically for nearly 40 years. Frisell I would say struggles with deep depression, but the guy punched his chip for at least 25 years to get the chance to do a few small-label recordings of the music he loved.

To my way of thinking, it is possible for a musician to be a high-talent and a miserable maggot of a human being, but in general I think you hear a person's virtue in their art music, and I count Fripp, even fussy, and Frisell, slack-key, New Age, and all, as not just musical talents but men with beautiful souls, and they are true heroes to me. The kind of people I would emulate, not just music I would like to emulate.

Anyway, I've left more bits hanging, and there are partial articles needing completion all over the place now, but I'm turning in for a long winter's nap. Have fun with the site, or go to the proverbial place of torment if you like. I'll be back tomorrow (tonight's evening, more accurately) most likely, as I'm warming to getting verbose at this blog. We shall see.

Guitar Heroes, Part 2: Midway Through Skool

Now we're going to hit the guitarists who come after Chuck Berry, and these are the people that people "yawn," sort of idolize like some molten idol of the Ba'al of Peor. If you ask, "Who was the best guitarist ever?" you'll likely get one of the guitarists off of this list. The era we are in here is maybe mid to late 60's to the late 70's. The thing is that this was a great era for the guitar. It really was. The problem is that there are other ways of looking at guitar than your standard "Jimi Hendrix," or "Eric Clapton," or "Robbie Robertson," type of formulaic answers.

All three of those guitarists were killer guitarists by the way, and I mean no disrespect to any of them. In fact, even though two of them died young, these were not evil men. They were men with real big hearts and real big drug problems, and that is not necessarily an evil man. Clapton managed to get some recovery, and was alive at least a few years ago, and he had recovered enough to be a respectable adult male.

We'll also list some people that few people have heard of, and we're going to list some people that might not even make much sense, even if you've heard of them. We'll talk it over after the list, and we'll have to branch out eventually, because not all of these guitarists are rockers. Eventually we'll get a 'round tuit'.

1. Wes Montgomery
2. Jimi Hendrix
3. Charlie Christian (Early jazz guitarist, more like the early 50's, we'll skip that for now.)
4. B.B. King
5. John Lee Hooker
6. Eric Clapton
7. George Harrison
8. Robert Fripp (Later, later.)
9. Steve Hackett (Also, most likely, later.)
10. Robbie Robertson
11. John McLaughlin
12. Jimmy Page
13. Jeff Beck
14. Brian May
15. Pete Townshend
16. Frank Zappa
17. Stevie Ray Vaughn
18. Duane Allman

We're not going to go into Wes Montgomery much, but Wes Montgomery was, and remains, the best jazz guitarist who ever lived. He studied personally with Charlie Christian, and he mostly recorded with B-3 organist Jimmy Smith in order to put money in the bank. He played most of his own music live at small nightclubs in NYC and recorded next to none of that music.

He was really a re-bop player, and there are one or two recordings, one on the Verve catalog, where he really shows off his stuff. He is the unbeatable jazz guitarist, and all you can do and listen and emulate. What he pulls off is history, and that is often the way with a seminal artist like that. You might be better at playing your own music, but you won't ever re-bop on guitar like Wes Montgomery.

John Lee Hooker is an interesting one. He is very much in the gut-blues tradition. With his music, you get a loose semblance of 4/4, and no more than that, and as you might guess from his stage moniker, the guy had been around more than one block more than a few times. He is also an unreal guitarist and blues artist. There is a recording done when he was well into his 80's of one of his signature tracks, "Boom, Boom, Boom," a track about seducing a stripper, and you can get it off of Gnutella and you should get it off of Gnutella - if you dig guitar.

However, there is one middling reference in the first verse to something far less than humorous, and you'll have to use your own discretion about the tune. No cuss words, no direct nastiness, but it is a nasty tune. Otherwise, how many millions of songs are there about strippers? - and this is not by far the worst version of that one.

Jimi Hendrix. First, forget Foxey Lady and all of your other idols and go to Gnutella and download the LIVE Monterey-Pop version of a song named "Machine Gun," that Jimi never put on an official record during his lifetime. Here is the thing. Jimi works this guitar over in a way at that show that cannot be real, because he is not compressing his sound hardly at all. You can tell because there are all of these incredibly fine variations of volume and tone, and a normal compression setup, even back then, would have annihilated all of those little subtleties. UNREAL GUITARIST.

Second, every track Jimi did is some re-working of a blues form. From his most esoteric stuff to the more obvious blues relatives, Jimi played blues, even if it was psychedelic blues. Machine Gun is no exception. Third, Jimi was trying to get clean off of speed - really - at the end of his life, and he was talking about how he didn't want to lose his entire style, but that he was aging out of exploding amplifiers and all of the sham and glam. Not that Jimi was entirely a sham, but he got done a lot of what he got done by sheer muscle and glamor.

That Machine Gun is a sign of what could have been. It is fun showing muscle - remember - I like to play hard rock - but mature artistry has a great deal of subtlety to it rather than pure muscle. Jimi killed himself by accident with a mixture of the sedatives they were using to ramp him off the speed and a great big bottle of liquor. Jimi was a guy who was known for being "all heart," which means that he was just that gentle, loving kind of man.

Apparently he was even that way on the speed, and the music he could have made. To be blunt, there is not a guitarist I can think of that would be willing to go onstage today with a setup like Jimi used in that live Machine Gun recording, simply because compression is what covers your hiney. There has to be a little compression on Jimi's guitar because of some of the effects he is getting, but he is using next to zero compression. That is guitar, and Jimi was trying to build some jazz chops, and the music he could have made.

We're going to have to split this one, but let us talk about two of the others on the list because of their relationship to Jimi. One was B.B. King. Jimi and King were friends, and King was always a very conservative type of man, and shepherded Jimi as much as he could, in a very sincere way, without trying to take advantage of Jimi. Jimi did not have too many such people in his life. King is a blues player of the very smooth variety. I believe he passed away last year, and he was just an elder.

A very subtle, smooth blues player that never tried for jazz sophistication or more than doing theater shows and playing some blues right up until he died. I guess he must have been well into his 70's when he died. His late recordings are amazing. With King you just have to realize how understated the talent and the personality was, and also, like any great musician, he just got better and better right until he passed away. A wonderful man by all accounts. Struggled with obesity and not with too much else. Ordinary, and entirely amazing.

The other is Stevie Ray Vaughn. SRV was not known as a guy who was all heart. He was known as a psychopath. SRV idolized Jimi, and he met Jimi once. Jimi had an autistic flair from the start, and the drugs accentuated that problem. Jimi was well-known - if he really didn't like someone - he wouldn't bother with a courtesy, he'd just say nothing and meander off. That is what he did to SRV and it broke SRV's heart.

SRV did get clean, but he lost a lot of his virtuousity at playing when he did, got right back on and OD'ed and died, which is unfortunately - kind of a normal addiction process. The big thing is that SRV recorded an instrumental version of Little Wing that is unforgettable, and you figure that the guy had a soul that might have showed up if he had stayed clean and stuck with all the problems that does inevitably bring to someone in recovery. Again, SRV's "Little Wing," it's on Gnutella, and it is a wonder what that man could do with a guitar.

So we'll stop with this part of this part, and hey! - we are going to get further down the wire. I'm going to do a few more of these and then I'll probably talk about my two big guitar heroes, who are Robert Fripp and Bill Frisell. I would like to cover a little more of our late 60's and 70's material, but it will be at least 3 more articles, and I'll do one more and talk about Fripp and Frisell. You'll see. While I'm kicking back for a moment, I'm going to do Jimi's Machine Gun and SRV's Little Wing, and I suggest you do that as well.

Guitar Heroes Who Didn't Use a Joystik, Part 1: The Oldest Skool

Let me mention just a few guitar players who go way back into history. The latest two were early 60's or late 50's, and the others go back quite a bit farther than that. I'll talk about how to get some of their work and what exactly it sounds like, and then you can kind of figure things out yourself - and that is most often the best way to figure anything out.

1. Leadbelly
2. Robert Johnson
3. Bo Diddley
4. Chuck Berry

Leadbelly and Robert Johnson were both "gut-blues," players, meaning they played on homespun gut-string guitars, and played a very old form of African American folk music that is usually called the blues. Leadbelly played a twelve string, 6 strings tuned in pairs of octaves, and as I remember Johnson played an 8-string, 4 strings tuned in pairs of octaves. Most people's first impression on turning on Leadbelly or Johnson is that they are just wanking nonsense, and there is a bit of a point to that, but trying to emulate the sounds they got is so difficult that "a bit of a point," is all you get.

The thing was that Leadbelly and Johnson both came from terrible backgrounds. In fact, it is pretty likely that in both cases, both of their mothers made their living through prostitution. They had no musical education at all, and they pretty much sat down with this homespun guitar and made it all up based on all of the diverse sounds they were hearing around them. That is the "bit of a point," with this "wanking nonsense," phrase.

The lyrics were drawn from traditional folk-songs, and in many cases they are racier than hip-hop lyrics. Johnson in particular had a wife who had burned him real bad, and half of his catalogue of recordings is of songs about killing an adulterous wife. "16 shells from a 30 ought six," is the name of one of his signature recordings.

Both Leadbelly and Johnson are available on those Smithsonian compilations I mentioned, and it is not a bad idea as a guitar player to sit down with these roots recordings and at least let the sounds hit your ears some. What they are doing is deceptively like "wanking," and in actuality is quite complex. You can also get other compilations specifically directed at people interested in roots-blues, but you need to do your homework, because all of these recordings were done as field recordings. In many cases, you could wind up with an unlistenable recording.

Digital remastering can only save a field recording this old (1910 or 1920 something) to a certain degree, but a good remaster is the only way you are going to be able to hear what these players are playing at all. With roots-blues guitar, you almost never hear someone who is playing a proper instrument. The people were just too poor to be able to afford that kind of instrument.

The thing is also - yeah - Johnson was not an admirable man, but you have to imagine being raised starving most of the time by a prostitute and then having some woman running off with just about everything you owned to top it off. It's not an excuse, but it might put things into a bit of perspective for some people. I've been burned real bad by some women, but I've never been burned in that way. And I like some racy stuff, but I don't think I'll be covering the 30 ought six. That is a bit much, to understate the problem more than just a little.

Bo Diddley is another piece of work, but we'll just talk about his instrument and his music. Diddley hand-built one of the first true electric guitars. This is hilarious, although it isn't hilarious that he was so poor. So what he does, he steals a cello neck from some cello factory in the city, cuts it down and sands it off, applies some scrap metal for frets, and then builds a bridge to a plywood slat. He then takes a set of steel wires, and puts a rusty nail (no joke!) with a copper wire wrapped around it and some kind of battery attachment to make an active pickup underneath the mess, and voila! - the first true electric guitar!

You can grab one or two Diddley tracks off of Gnutella, and it is something else to allow to hit the ears a bit. The thing was, that Diddley wasn't recording traditional rock and roll. He forced his bands to play these jagged polyrhythms, and then he'd chop on his homespun electric and then use a lot of dirty lingo. "Underground," would be a pretty good term. Not many people knew about Diddley.

Chuck Berry was the big hero that sparked off the white version of rock and roll, and Berry liked to jive, but he also had manners when he wanted. Berry was able to have a lucrative career because he would play ball that way - at least in the public eye. The best Berry track on recording is called "Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll." It's a song about sock-stomping at the corn shacks. It's racy, but it's fun-racy, and it is true Nawlin's-style Rock and Roll, which is pretty durned hard to find in recording.

The funny thing about Berry to me is that it's a form of rock and roll where you never lose the blues feel, but I'm always inclined to think "Mr. Berry, that ain't a chord!" - whenever I hear Chuck Berry playing rock and roll. I don't know how he tuned his puppy, but he mostly just jams tone clusters seemingly at random. Still, you never lose the blues feel. Berry also liked to play mostly in Bb because he said it was his best key, which makes other guitar players in your band - far less than happy.

Berry also admitted later in his life that if a night - or even a tune - wasn't going all so well, that he'd glam and show off to keep the show from falling through. Another great thing about Berry was that when it would be his time to feature, he didn't play individual lines, which would have been normal for rock and roll at that time, or even squeal on blue notes very often. Those would be the two normal blues-rock options, but Berry would show off during his feature instead with some kind of tone-cluster arrangement. I don't think anyone will ever figure out even one of his guitar features.

He was a real mischief-maker. However, I get the impression that he might have been a racy guy, but that he was also a pretty good man. That can happen, and I think that is the truth with good ol' Mr. Berry.

I'll be back with more - MORE - MORE! Who needs sleep? LOL!

The Wishlist of Expensive Guitar Gear I May Never Be Able to Afford

We are going to start the wishlist with the list of guitars I want in my "fleet," although I don't need any more than 5 guitars if I'm remembering right, if I want to get the job done. I am way more interested in playing rhythm guitar, and the only thing I have to temper is a problem I have with not being able to hide when I'm in an ensemble. A rhythm guitarist does get his time to shine, but he needs to be able to be invisible most of the time, and unfortunately, when I'm on stage, I do like to glam.

Glam should be left for the lead-singer and the lead-guitarist in a basic rock band setup. Also, if you are looking for a lead-singer, I suggest you have a dedicated frontman. Look for the craziest possible guy who can sing and act strange when on stage who won't have you sent to a maxi-pen for a maxi-bid, and you'll make a ton of money even without any production value.

So the list:

1. A Fender American Standard Telecaster, with updated pickups and tuned in Nashville Standard Tuning.
2. The same type of Telecaster tuned to a Sawmill Tuning.
3. A Gibson SG Standard tuned to a Sawmill Tuning.
4. A Gibson SG Standard tuned to a C Hardcore Tuning.
5. A Gibson Les Paul Standard tuned to a variation of the Open C Tuning I mentioned.
6. An Adamas-Ovation custom tuned in my own standard tuning.

So that makes six.

Another basic thing that we haven't hit yet is that if you're going to play pro-quality, then when you switch between two very different tunings, a guitar needs a very good bridge and truss adjustment. Learning to adjust a bridge and a truss is not easy. I recommend picking up an old Mexican Strat that will at least play, so that you can monkey with the instrument while you figure out what the words "good bridge and truss adjustment," mean.

The result of this is that you should look at a guitar as, "one guitar, one tuning," if you're going to play at pro-quality levels. What tunings you decide to use exactly would depend on what kinds of sounds you'd like to make, and also what kind of gigs you plan to run. One of the things is that a sound that appeals to one person may not appeal to another. Even people who love underground or serious music don't all purchase the same recordings or go to the same shows, and musicians who are serious about music feel exactly the same about the work they are doing, even if they are punching a chip at a gig they do only because the gig puts some money in the bank.

There are endless variations to the basic tunings I mentioned, and sitting with your instrument and lolly-gagging with it can really get you to some new places. The first hint though is that you have to have some standard places to work from, or you are going to have absolute confusion on your hands. Which shape did what in what tuning? You can get yourself in big trouble.

Another hint is that it is never a good idea to tune strings up - even by a half-step - on a guitar that isn't custom made for those strings to be tuned higher on. Even that half-step raise puts a lot of wear and tear on the bridge, nut and truss of a standardized guitar, and it isn't a good thing to fool around with. You can experiment with trying wires in the wrong places on a guitar, but you should still watch and feel what is going on with your guitar when you do that.

Even a Standard Tele costs 1200 dollars. That is not a great cost for a professional quality instrument, and that Tele is a pro-instrument. However, if you have 1200 dollars to ruin, then I will provide a PO Box number and you can send me a standard Tele. I won't pass up the offer if you have money to waste.

I've been chatting with people who play and love Tele's, and apparently the best place to run with those is the real high-class DiMarzio single-coil pickups. They're a standard active pickup, they aren't cheap, and they get great sound. Apparently they are also a great match with the Tele.

The SG Standard is a bit of a compromise. It gets a better bass and mid response than a Strat, and that is important for a rhythm guitarist, and it is also about the same weight as a Strat. It doesn't even compare to a Strat in the high range. Further, I love playing hard-rock styles, and I know with the amount of pain I experience that I can't wear a Les Paul Standard all night. Further yet, the SG is a bit edgier than the Les Paul.

The Les Paul often gets a Skynyrd kind of sound, and that is not the kind of hard-rock I am going to most often play. And by the way, I wouldn't have said it two years ago, but I'm not much into playing Skynyrd, but Skynyrd does rock. I enjoy their music now.

The Les Paul in the open C would be the least wanted guitar on the list, but it would be good for blues-riffing and some other sort of work-horse situations. I would probably use it very, very little, but it would be a nice thing to keep around just in case. Plus, nothing squeals the blues like a Les Paul Standard in open C, and it is kind of nice to hit a couple of blue notes and squeal them around some. It's glam and showy, and it makes the ladies squeal too. That stuff never does really get old.

The Adamas-Ovation is the guitar I really, really want. Part one is that I'm not a good enough guitar player to justify purchasing that kind of instrument at this juncture. Part two is that I want the bridge, nut and truss set for a pretty strange standard tuning, and I also want the sound hole construction done in a certain way. Most people who play an Adamas order it custom. An Adamas guitar is a bank-breaker in the first place, but what I want is very specific and unusual, and it is going to even more break the bank. 10 or 11 thousand dollars, skinny, that is what I'm figuring, if the Adamas company finds what I want done somewhat easy to do.

An Adamas guitar unprocessed has a sound that is quite a bit like a harpsichord, and you can move things around to get a lot of different sounds, if you have the right electronics in your setup. It is really an electronic instrument, and not an electric or even an electric-acoustic guitar. I want that thing real bad, but when I get geeking I think to myself - "You are really a feeble guitar player still. You don't need a megabucks instrument!" Still, we all have our outsized desires, and I try not to be overly hard on myself today. I'll just go to the Adamas website and drool at the guitar pron and maybe get the old Yamaha out of the case later.

Alright, so now the electronics I want for the setup, although electronics moves so fast that by the time I'm this kind of megabucks player, there will be better stuff being made. Still, if we just take a trip down oversized-imagination lane.

1. The Marshall broad-range small cab.
2. A broad-range pre-amplifier.
3. A limiting head.
4. A two-rack digital limiting logic gate. (There is a UK company that makes a fabulous one.)
5. A Kurzweil Rumor and a Kurzweil Mangler.
6. A switch-pedal setup to change filter-programs with.
7. Two continuous foot-pedals, one for volume, and one for wah-effects.
8. A good quality two-rack voltage equalizer.
9. A standing flight-case style rack-module setup.
10. A hognose-style practice amplifier.

Starting with the Marshall cab. First, Marshall makes the best electric cabinets in the world. Second, I always tune a guitar (except for Nashville tuning) with the bass string at C2, and in that case your show just runs better with a broad-range amplifier. Third, you don't need a large Marshall stack, because you'll be mic'ing through the PA, and that small cab will provide plenty of sound to give you a good mic over the PA.

On the other hand, in a studio, you want the sound fairly quiet, and then the sound will be mic'ed into the board room. After that, you let your sound engineers handle the rest. Well, that is what you want to do unless you want to work in a studio for only 30 seconds, and only one time.

The limiting head I've talked about. You lose some tone, but it prevents overloads of sound. A good one ain't cheap. The limiting gate is really expensive, and I mention "two-rack," because the really sophisticated gates are quite large and used only in a studio environment. That doesn't mean that the piece of equipment is cheap.

Also, a programmable gate is hard to figure out, and there are good presets on the good ones, but you still have to learn the thing well-enough to fit your own shows and work, and it is trial and error, probably for a few weeks a few hours a day to get the thing in order. Running a Tele or an Adamas, I would not want to go without one. The Adamas in particular is very bright and uses piezo pickups and could get you sent to prison for eardrum mutilation if you don't limit the sounds right. There is a further reason I need a really good limiting gate, and the explanation is coming.

The next thing to talk about is a voltage equalizer. Most good venues and studios are wired pretty well, but there can be problems with either power surges or power deficits while you're playing that can bust every piece of your equipment, including your instrument, with a blink of your eyelids. A very good voltage equalizer is not massively expensive, and is going to be a really good buy for you. It is also a very good idea for a deejay to run a voltage equalizer with their kitbag, as a deejay can have just the same unhappy day with his or her entire kitbag for the exact same reasons.

The switch pedals are kind of obvious, but they need to be generalized ones, as my principal filters are going to be rack-modules instead of a footboard. The Rumor and the Mangler are an interesting little tidbit I turned up. The best digital effects processor made in the world today is hands-down the Kurzweil studio DEP, which is really large, really amazing, and really expensive. It is used only in a studio setting, and has been known to make the engineers breakfast while killing their mix.

Kurzweil's point-of-sale largely relies on that kind of amazing, top-of-the-line, cutting edge kind of equipment. However, the Rumor and the Mangler are just around 1000 dollars a piece, and they are single rack a piece, and they are probably the best portable digital processors on the market, for any other price you can name. The Rumor is a programmable digital reverb/echo unit, and the Mangler is a programmable digital fuzz/compression filter unit.

The amazing part about the Mangler is that it includes digital emulations of Ring Modulator effects that are not only programmable, they are also actually usable. ROM effects produce some of the best compression and distortion effects possible, and did even in analog. However, ROM effects also used to produce a lot of broken eardrums and equipment, which holds true even today in digital. The ROM's on the Mangler are usable, but I would rest much more assured about using them if I had a very strong, portable programmable limiting gate.

The hognose is something I can realistically afford when I can afford my first electric guitar. You plug your guitar and a pair of headphones into it, and then you can practice your electric guitar in your rent-controlled apartment at all hours of the morning or the night without getting murdered by your neighbors or getting arrested. It is a really nice buy for anyone who has an electric guitar.

So I'm not a megabucks player than can justify this kind of megabucks equipment, but this is kind of what I'm thinking about in terms of sounds and models and so on. I'm going to take a break to eat a little, and then I'll probably post once or twice more this 26th in the morning before putting myself to bed. We'll do guitar heroes and star guitar tracks next. That will be fun.

Working Over a Guitar, Part 2: More Standard-er Tunings

I figured out a solution to our first problem. Let me show you some very standard type of professional guitar tunings, and also make some explanations about some concepts professional's use when stringing a guitar, and then we can talk gear. I still can't figure out a way to explain my argument about guitar tuning without beating the bandwagon to pieces, and it is very complex material, so we'll leave that bit be for the moment, and we'll get down to the way you'd see a typical rock-guitar, country-guitar or metal-guitar tuned and strung.

The first thing you need to understand is that no matter what type of guitar you are playing, no matter what kind of pickups it has, and no matter how you are amplifying your puppy, you need to use at least medium-wind strings. It takes a bit more work when you're starting out because you have to build more hand strength, but they play better, they last longer, and they have more tone. It might be better to say, "they produce a tone at all," because even medium-light strings don't sound like much, even if they're turned up to eleven.

The problem is amplified if you're using a light-construction guitar like a Fender, and that is the most commonly used form of guitar, even by professionals, excepting in the case of jazz music. A solid Fender in the mid-price range does not cost like a professional instrument, plays just fine, and is very light and easy on your spinal tap. They are not garbage instruments, but they have their limitations. We'll discuss the point more at a later juncture, maybe even at a later juncture in this article.

Now, an exception to the "medium-wind," rule might be for a guitarist who is doing all lead-work on the guitar. In that case a medium-light or light on your highest strings, string 1 and 2, the ones with wires strung on them, can be a nice thing to put good bends in and get the right kind of squealing effects. On a Fender, you are going to have very little tone in this case on those strings, but Fender electric guitars also respond - across the board - really well in the high range, particularly with some expensive single-coil pickups dumped in them.

So, you won't sound like a loser with medium wounds on 6, 5, 4 and 3, and even lights on 2 and 1, if you are sticking to lead parts. You might even be able to get away with extra-lights on the top two strings, and you'd just have to run the experiment. I have never tried the experiment, and I don't know anyone who has tried it.

Another thing is that most guitarists tune their 6 string to a C2 these days, and one option is to string that 6 with a heavy or medium-heavy string to get the mud out of that 6 string. Some players, particularly in metal when a "big-crunch," is needed, string a heavy on the six and a medium-heavy on the 5. Dimebag Darrell from Pantera used to do this as a lead player, with fabulous effect.

Now, let us disambiguate about Pantera and Dimebag Darrell. Part one, I don't find hardly any of Pantera's lyrics offensive to even the degree of some of the other music I have already mentioned. Part two, Dimebag Darrell was an incredible metal guitarist, one out of a handful of the best metal guitarists ever. Part three, Pantera rocked. Part four - yes - Darrell was shot at a show by some crazy schizophrenic and that is fouled up. Part five, Pantera incited some of that "stuffin'" and there were people who were permanently maimed at Pantera shows other than Dimebag Darell - frequently.

I didn't even want to mention Pantera or Darrell, but he was really the big proponent of heavy strings on the bottom of a guitar and mediums the rest of the way up. Further, you may have figured something out from our disambiguation: That crazy schizophrenic murdered a guy, and that is dead wrong. That crazy schizophrenic does not receive NGRI-status from Gwyd. However, people who wind up getting fouled up that way generally have some of their own rubbish to look through more insightfully, and this case is no exception.

When it comes to rock styles, there are 3 basic tunings you would look at in terms of pro-material. The first is called, "Sawmill Tuning." Sawmill tuning is butt-easy to play rock in, and it creates a very nice sound for both lead and rhythm players. STP used the sound on a solid Fender Tele (Interstate Love Song is an example) and your only problem there is that the combination of the tuning and the very bright Tele sound requires a limiting head and a good digital limiting gate when a fuzz-filter is applied, or you will bust a lot of DAT tapes or people's ear drums if you are using it at live shows. Not a suggested form of entertainment.

So the tuning would generally be: C2 F2 C3 F3 Bb3 (A#3) C4. There are fifteen million variations of the Sawmill tuning, but even though that particular one looks very irregular, playing rock in that tuning is as easy as sleeping in the studio closet. Very, very easy, and what is wrong with a short cut occasionally? - and also a very nice kind of sound.

The next version is a common variation of the Sawmill tuning that has a very interesting character of its own. Led Zeppelin as a group really started hard-rock as hard-rock, although you could point to earlier groups like Cream or the Animals. Many people know this tuning as "Dad-gad," but you will more often see this used today in what most people call, "C-gad." It is an open modal tuning, and there are some real advantages in hard-rock, the principle one being an open root-five-octave on the 6, 5 and 4 strings, which makes it a lot easier to play your standard rockin' "power chords.

C-gad looks like this: C2 G2 C3 F3 G3 C4. This is also a pretty good metal tuning, as power chords get used very often in metal, but in both the hard-rock and metal venue you are going to get a very Dorian-sounding minor-key tonality if you're working the fretboard in an ordinary way. Jimmy Page has repeatedly told people that he used the Dad-gad tuning only a few times in his recording career because of that quality of this tuning. That sound can be fun, but it isn't fun for 3 hours, and even people who don't know what Dorian means might kill you and your security if you play this way for 3 hours. Don't do it. It's annoying.

When it comes to country, most country players play in an Open G Tuning, meaning the intervals are tuned to an Open G-Major Chord. The problem is that if you set it up like so: D2 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4, you get a very weak form of a G major chord because of the bass note being on the fifth of the chord. There is no good tone in Open G Tuning for a guitar in a good range for a normal bass string on a guitar. The solution is to string a wire string to a G3 on the bass string, and that is Nashville Standard tuning. So: G3 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4. I'm going to have to buy a triple-beam and watch out for red lights to avoid the Nashville Ninjas. I'm giving away trade secrets here. LOL!

Actually, I love good Nashville music, the adjective "good," being an unfortunate necessity in front of the "Nashville music"-term. Nashville is the least seedy music epi-center on the planet, and some of the best chip-punchers on the planet do most of their work in Nashville for that exact reason. Further, ethical music production in Nashville takes a ton of talent, and if you are making bread there then you know music real - real well. They do not take nonsense for peanuts in Nashville either, although that is true anywhere among great musicians.

So we move on to metal styles. Most real good metal players actually don't use a typical dropped-C tuning, but there is a common workable variation that produces a good sound, and that is: C2 G2 C3 F3 G3 D4. However, there are better ways of working this out, and it has to do with fuzz-filters.

Usually what a rhythm guitarist in a metal band is going for is a power chord where you can't hear any of the individual notes, just a highly compressed fuzzy power chord sound. A group like Meshuggah took this to the point on their landmark Chaosphere album to where what you hear of the rhythm guitar is a fuzzy, matte sort of scraping. Since you don't need or even want to hear much in terms of tonality, and what you need is crunch, the real way to pull off a metal rhythm guitar is with what is called a "hardcore tuning."

The basic idea would look something like this, although there are schools of thought and many variations: C2 G2 C3 Db3 (C#3) G3 D4. So now you include the 4th string in your power chord, and you get a crunch that is mean-evil because of that half-step and tritone in your power chord. If you use a fuzz-filter in the typical metal fashion, you don't get an avant-garde chord structure, you get a mean-evil crunch.

Another suggestion I just have to make with metal guitar has to do with "low-rider," tunings. The Ibanez seven-string guitar is an awful piece of equipment. Ibanez makes some amazing guitars, but any of their seven-strings are more than underwhelming. The best solution is to find a used Fender Jaguar Baritone Guitar. Fender plans to re-release the baritone make - I think - but it is out of production right now. That Jaguar is light for its tone range, wasn't expensive new, and plays great for the price.

Gibson also makes a Les Paul Baritone Standard, and again, I think there are plans to re-release the make. However, in the industry the joke about the Les Paul Baritone is "5 feet four inches and 140 pounds." It does sound better than the Jaguar Baritone, but it is a real heavy son of a gun. Also, the neck-scale is longer and the neck is wider, and that makes it sound real good, but it is not easy on the hands.

My recommendation is that if you choose to play Baritone guitar, then you need to stick to playing Baritone guitars. That isn't happy, but the strings on the Baritone guitar are far denser, and the neck-scale is completely different. Switching back and forth will be at least confusing, and could at worst lead to you damaging your hands very badly. Still, for metal, a Baritone guitar is the roxxors. Killer crunch, particularly with a hardcore tuning, and that might look something like this: A2 E2 A3 Bb3 (A#3) E3 B4. (My octave notation is getting fouled up somewhere, but I'm close, and I can't figure out where I'm calculating wrong. Sorry 'bout that.) (Author's Edit: I figured out where my octave calculations were wrong. The bottom notes will be one octave lower than originally notated, and the top note also an octave lower, like so: A1 E1 A2 Bb2 (A#2) E3 B3. That is mean-evil, brutal metal crunch.)

Another tuning that works well for blues-style players, or people who play hard-rock with a heavy blues edge is an open C tuning, like so: C2 G2 C3 G3 C4 E4. I know how tempting it is going to be to tune that top string down a half step to an Eb to get a "cross-note tuning," as blues is sort of temporally minor-key - sorta - but try working the fretboard with the major third at the top. Trust me on it. A few weeks of knackering with that and your blues squealing will be making the ladies squeal.

More to come. I'm going to do my gear wishlist, and then maybe we'll talk jazz or - I don't know - we shall see.

Working Over a Guitar, Part 1

It is really funny, because I had been talking about guitars all last year, looking at different models and that kind of thing, and my mother - bless her heart - took what was probably her tax refund, and we spent 346 dollars or so on a great acoustic guitar for me to learn guitar on. I wound up at Hauer Music.

I started at the Guitar Center at the Mall. A lot of people go ballistic at the mention of guitar center, but it is actually a good store. Their big problem is that their management does not kick meatroid's out when they come in to goof around on the instruments. Otherwise, the sales staff is ethical, even though they work on commission, and they have a large selection of good products.

So I had looked around, and headed downtown to Hauer heaving a disgruntled sigh. Hauer has downright taken advantage of me in the past, but as it turned out, they had the guitar I needed, they didn't fool around, and I got the small amount of accessories I needed. My mother and I wound up 46 dollars over-budget. My mother - bless her heart - did not mind the 46 dollars over. Hauer is probably under new management, judging from the difference in experience, so if you're in Dayton, you can at least give them a shot without heaving a disgruntled sigh.

So, this is the first clue. I had played a FG700S Yamaha Acoustic at the Guitar Center, and it just did not feel right. The same guitar at the Hauer was a perfect fit. That FG700S is a standard dreadnought acoustic guitar without a pickup, is reasonably priced, and plays really sweet. It is a really good beginner's guitar to pick up.

The clue is that no matter what guitar you pick out, play the guitar you are actually going to bring home before you buy the instrument. My guess is that some meatroid damaged that FG700S at the Guitar Center, and I could have saved 50 bucks and a drive downtown if the meatroid hadn't damaged the guitar. Again, there is no use railing against Guitar Center, but the difference between a low-priced, standard dreadnought acoustic with no pickup that has been damaged, and the same guitar that hasn't been damaged was well worth 50 more dollars and a drive downtown. Maybe someone can hire some managers with some sense into the Guitar Center, because every one of the staff members at the Guitar Center is ready to garotte those meatroid's with their guitar strings and wants the problems to stop.

There are a couple of other things that you need for this practice setup. You need a shami cloth of some kind, and you should remember to rub down the fretboard and most of the guitar when you get the guitar out and especially when you put the guitar away. A typical guitar store has those cloths, and will be surprised to be selling one.

The reason you need to do this is that the oils on your hands can quickly rot the strings, the fretboard, and even the surfaces of the gourd of the guitar. I've been very careful with my Yamaha Dreadnought, but I've played it so much that the stain is already coming off of the fretboard after about 5 months of ownership. It will be way worse than that for you if you don't consistently rub the guitar down.

Your next problem is picks. Picks cost a few quarters a piece, and when you first buy the guitar, pick out a small handful, and then you can just drop a few dollars buying another handful or two every once in a while. I prefer a dense, jazz-style pick. The picks are quite small in size, but very hard and very dense, which makes for a very punchy picking action. Those picks also don't clatter in between the strings because of their small size. The only problem with these types of picks is that they have a tendency of shifting around in your grip or outright flying across the room.

I have a rock-style pick made of brushed graphite that is invincibly sturdy in the grip, but it is way too large. If I could find a brushed graphite jazz-style pick, and I haven't yet, then I would be one happy-camper. You can also try playing finger-style. For some reason, classical guitarists insist that finger-style is better, but in my mind this insistence is total hog-slop. Picking is more efficient, it is easier on the hands, you can play faster lines, and you can also get better multiple lines if you do your homework.

I'm at a feeble, "sounds great but is really mostly nonsense," skill level with guitar. However, I get the puppy out and work over the fretboard very consistently. I'm also thinking about looking for a good guitar pedagogue in the area, and we'll just have to see how that might pan out.

This article is plenty long, and what I may do is talk about "gear," next, and then hit the tuning issues. Theory is tedious, even for me, and also, I want to keept it as simple as I can while not losing the meat of an argument I have about guitar tunings. It may be better to leave out my opinion altogether and just show you a few standard things that are often used by the pro's, because my argument has to do with the theory of sound acoustics, and that is a bit much for most people. We shall see.

Last thing, you must buy a copy of "The Guitar Handbook." There are very few good guitar books on the market, and I will notify you when I find other ones, but that book is a must have for someone getting started on guitar. My buddy from High School owned one of the older editions, and I was at the local bookstore right after I bought my guitar and it was like - hey! - I remember that book - it was great! Do yourself a favor on that one.

Interlude: Christmas, and Touch-Style Instruments

Merry Christmas everyone. Today and yesterday were a trial, and both days started out very rough, but both Christmas Eve with my father and Christmas Day with my mother and grandfather turned out to be enjoyable days. It is the tenth anniversary of my entry and exit from the psych ward, 10 years and 3 days exactly, and my depression is - real bad, but I survived another Christmas and I did get to spend some quality time with my family. That is important to me, however tough it can be to deal with my family.

I want to talk about touch-style instruments, because I've done quite a bit of research on them, and most people haven't gotten any real information on them. The original touch-style instrument is the Chapman Stick, and the Chapman Stick company is still owned by the instrument's inventor, John Emmet Chapman. A Chapman Stick runs about 1800 dollars skinny, which is quite cheap for a professional instrument, and Chapman still builds quite a few of the instruments he sells, particularly if the instrument has been custom-ordered.

Your first big problem when you receive a working Chapman Stick is tuning and stringing the beast. Most people never get that far. The amount of time and effort it takes to tune a Stick has led to it being called "the ba*****," or the "witch with a b," in the studio industry. You need a good chromatic digital tuner (not cheap), and you need to buy the specialty strings required to even try to get as far as tuning and stringing the beast if you are set on playing a Stick. You can go over to stick.com and look at what Chapman is saying, and then you can decide if you're enough of a melon-head to give the instrument a try, and if the instrument is a good fit for you, then the instrument is worth trying.

Your second problem is going to be that you need a pretty specific electronic set-up if you are going to get the most out of a Chapman Stick. You need an amplifier with a good bass-response, but the Stick can be used to do other things, so a Roland Keyboard Amp is often not a bad idea, since it gets a good response over a very broad range. If you want or are able to spend more money, Marshall makes a broad-response cabinet, and then you buy some kind of broad-response head for the cabinet.

Further, it explains at the site that you need what would be called a "broad-response pre-amplifier," in order to make the beast work right, and there are cheaper or more expensive versions of those. So, even if you make a pretty skinny-Stick order from Chapman's site, say 2200 dollars, you're are looking at maybe 3000 dollars in electronics if you want to really get that Stick to play.

The Stick has normally been used to play bass parts, because it gets a very round, solid tone at a very low register. It can be tuned to just a bit above the contrabass A on a piano without any muddiness at all. The Stick gets a very punchy attack, which is not a good bass sound for certain types of music, but is great for the studio industry, as punchy basslines have been the in-thing since Bo Diddley. The first reason it gets that attack is that you play a stick by clipping the frets of the Stick at the string, and the sound results from the string hitting the fret. Chapman uses a diamond shaped fret-barre, which makes the instrument a little hardier, and also accentuates that punchy attack.

However, the goal with the Stick was not to make a bass instrument, but to make an instrument that could play multiple parts across a broad range. It is not a hard instrument to play, once you get the beast strung and tuned, but to get the most out of a Chapman Stick requires a great deal of thought, time and effort. There aren't more than maybe 5 professional quality Stick players in the world today, at my last count, and there is a good reason for that.

One of the first people to really man-handle a Stick was Tony Levin, and his Stick playing on Peter Gabriel's "So," album, or on King Crimson's "Discipline," is amazing stuff. Check out "Red Rain," or "We Do What We're Told," or "Mercy Street," or "Big Time," or "Sledgehammer" off of that PG "So," record. It's amazing stuff. As far as Discipline goes, the pick tracks are, "Sheltering Sky," or "Discipline," or "Indiscipline."

Just as a funny note, a Middle Eastern terrorist group once tortured some hostages by playing, "Thela Hun Ginjeet," off of that Discipline album over and over until they went bonkers. That is one terrifyingly ugly piece of music. We will do a Fripp-azoid and a King Crimson spot here at the blog someday, as Fripp is one of my favorite guitarists, and King Crimson is one of my favorite groups. However, even I pass on "Thela Hun Ginjeet."

As far as the best of the best, there is a Stick player named Guillermo Cides, who I believe hails from Argentina and he is the real guy to check out. As soon as you hear Cides touch the Stick, you know that everything is totally different. He does rely on some loops and things to get the job done, but he plays Bach Cantatas and works simultaneous counterpoint lines and all sorts of amazing stuff. The way the notes sound, you instantly know how much better this guy is than any other Stick player you've ever heard in your life. That isn't to insult Levin, who is just a family-guy, and an industry standard player who just punches his chip and doesn't expect any tabloid press. Levin is a good man and a good player, but Cides is the guy when it comes to the Stick.

As long as there are the electronics to build this kind of sophisticated electronic instrument, people will need and people will play the Stick or something similar to it. Chapman himself would like to improve the instrument, but has yet to come up with a way to improve the instrument that matches his vision for his invention. There is one other version of the touch-instrument worth mentioning, and it is called the Warr Guitar.

The Warr Guitar does have some advantages, and the two big ones are "sturdier construction," and "better electronics." However, those two advantages do not go without some explanation, because Chapman doesn't build his Sticks that way for some good reasons, and Chapman is no fool. There are also two big disadvantages to the Warr Guitar, the first one being, "price tag," and the second one being, "a heavy loader."

Anyone who has performed with a true Gibson Les Paul Standard Guitar knows that the 6 or 7 pounds that guitar packs over a Fender Strat makes a huge difference in your spinal tap. That guitar is one of the best hard-rock guitars in production in the world, but it is simply too heavy to play night-after-night without intense discomfort. A Warr guitar is probably double the weight of a Gibson Les Paul Standard, and the Stick comes in at maybe the same weight as the Les Paul Standard - if not just a titch lighter. That makes a big difference when you are doing frequent playing.

The price tag is also a rather disconcerting feature, and "5000 dollars skinny," would be somewhere about right. For a professional quality instrument, that is a pretty average kind of price, but still, saving a couple of thousand dollars for the Stick - which is in most ways better - is not chump change to anyone on a budget, and even a rich man needs to be on a budget. You can run a Warr guitar on pretty much the same 3000 dollars skinny setup as the Chapman Stick, although at some point we do need to do some gear talk, and if you are going for pro-quality, 3000 dollars is a little too skinny for a setup. Takes money to make money, honey!

As far as sturdier construction, it does make a difference, as a Warr guitar will be found by aliens in 3000 years, and the Stick does have a tendency of wearing out in maybe 10 or 12, and that is if the instrument is cared for well. Also, the Warr Guitar instrument has a denser body and therefore gets a bigger tone. That is one reason the Gibson Les Paul "rocks the Casbah," so well, is that it has a very dense body, and that leads to a very dense tone, which is what you want in a hard-rock style.

The electronics piece is interesting. The top-of-the-line Warr Guitars come with two piezo-electric pickups installed, and piezo's get wonderful sound. They are in fact the best pickups made in the world today, and Warr Guitar does not skimp on it's piezo pickups. The Stick uses a passive "acoustic-electric pickup," and this is not a very expensive pickup. However, the upside to those AE pickups is that they don't overload at hardly any volume, and they wear like an old dot-matrix printer. Some of you probably don't remember those.

Piezo's are very easy to damage, and they overload all over the place because of the pickups' high-response range. If you're running a Warr Guitar, you are definitely going to need a good programmable digital gate (BIG MONEY!) and you should probably also turn down from eleven and use a limiting head for your cabinet. You will lose some tone, but with the dense body and the piezo pickups, Warr Guitars really have too much tone.

There is another instrument that Warr Guitar sells, and I am not really a "bass-head," but I've considered buying one someday. They run 22 or 2400 dollars skinny, and it is a touch-style bass setup just about exactly like any standard four-string barre-fret electric bass, plus two piezo pickups. That is a killer instrument. I've thought of some funny tricks to play with the puppy as well, like tuning and stringing everything to one note or to fifths or octaves only to get all overlap on the fretboard. Boy I would like to give it a go if I had 3000 dollars or so to knacker around with. When the cash-flow barge comes in, look for an order from me, Warr Guitar!

Okay, I think we're going to do guitar next, and then we'll hit GEAR! I love talking gear. What we're going to do in the upcoming guitar article is start with some pointers for people getting started on guitar. I'm just gettings started, but I did my homework and I'm willing to let you copy my homework. Then we'll probably talk about guitar tuning issues, as long as the article is not already overly long.

I will try not to really bust the bandwagon with theory when we talk about tuning. However, tuning a guitar is problematic, and the major reason is that the standard guitar tuning is awful. Almost no-one who plays guitar professionally EVER uses standard tuning. We'll have to hit some theory, but I'm working out in my head how we can leave the bandwagon intact as we do. Back in a moment.

Electronic Music 5: For Want of More Comedy, Let Us Hit the ELM

We mentioned glitch, which is a pretty significant ELM style already. There are different forms of glitch. Evol Intent sticks more to a basic DNB pattern, and uses a lot of horror themes. Some other forms turn the crank up on the bpm until you get this frenetic modulating percussion pattern, and that style originates with Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album. There is only one track on the RDJ album that is too sick to listen to, and it's called "Milkman," in case you test the waters, but the problem is, I get so mad about that tweaker-freaker and that "Come to Daddy," track that I generally ban Aphex Twin from my hard-drive entirely.

Even if you do choose to listen to some of the better stuff on the RDJ album, and that is not all of AT's good work, remember, "BAD FOR THE MIND!" Even the ambient works by AT are of a style that most people call, "ill-bient," and it's like watching "Amityville Horror," or "The Ring," two horror movies that are actually REALLY FREAKING SCARY! Not funny-scary like Freddy Kreuger or some of the Dawn of the Dead movies, I mean way - way too scary - except for special occasions.

Any true glitch is ill enough that it is a stay-away type of style unless you just really want to hit "The Ring," if you catch what I'm trying to say, and Evol Intent is included. However, there is one particular Evol Intent track called "Dieing Time," that quotes from some crazy UK horror-movie, and I've been off my gourd so bad a few times this year that I've been laughing my hiney off at the track. Not a good place to be, but also, "Dieing Time," is also a very understated anti-war protest, so at least the track has some kind of solid ground.

Ambient is another flavor of ELM. That style starts with Brian Eno and Ambient 1: Music for Airports, (1978?) which remains an incredible ambient album, even after all these years. That album uses some analog synth modulations, and a piano-roll style programmed piano part, and that is all, and it is well-worth a listen. It is incredibly melancholy music, but it is also very bitter-sweet. Eno got started in the first incarnation of Bryan Ferry's Roxy Music, and still produces music today.

Eno's music, including Ambient 1, has a mathematical flavor, but Eno was more concerned with the psychological effect of his music than pure serialism. All of his work is really a form of programmed minimalist composition and some people with true conservatory educations have some reason to be very embarrassed. Music for Airports was conceived as, "There isn't much worse than sitting in an airport, and what kind of music might you pipe into such a place?" As far as I know it has never been played in an airport, but that was the concept that Eno started with.

Eno also did a great track called "The Heavenly Music Corporation," with King Crimson's Robert Fripp. The concept was that Fripp would improvise on guitar in the sound-room, and then Eno would use the mixing board like an instrument and improvise with the material Fripp was playing into the board-room. The title track is the one to listen to, and the sounds coming out of the speakers when the track is playing are something else. The music is a form of ambient, but it is also incredibly lush and intense. Very interesting hypnotic type music.

Another group worth mentioning is the French group, Autechre. Most Autechre is experimental and serial, but they did an "ambient-groove," album, probably just to put money in the bank, and I like it pretty well. "Ambient-groove," takes ambient style music, and puts a very slow House groove underneath it, usually at half-time or maybe 76 or 86 bpm.

Finally, there is a performance artist named Laurie Anderson, a true Soho NYC bohemian, who is really a performance artist, but makes spectacular use of programming in her performance art. "Excellent Birds," (the Mister Heartbreak version is the best one) and "Gravity's Angel," are incredible. Again, some people with conservatory educations are producing worthless garbage and deserve a special place in the proverbial special place of torment.

That about covers ELM. There are plenty of artists to dig through, but that is some of the best of the basic field. My eyelids are now getting heavy, so I'm going to take my first Christmas Eve nap, and likely won't be back until this weekend, or at least not until the 26th sometime. More to come at around those dates.

Music Slangin': Let's Have a Good Time

My inclination as far as EDM goes is that I'd like to do maybe a once or twice a month DJ gig. Problem one is that I would have to DJ a club where I am not going to get hurt, and one of the nicknames for Dayton is "Dodge City." Dayton is not pleasant, but I'll still reprazent Dayton. I've got some Dayton material that will be real funny to hit, but let me just talk about the DJ business for starters.

First off, if I had my druthers I'd run my style, geeza-style electro and fast breaks, and I'd probably go by the handle DJ Invid. There are a couple of problems. People dig geeza - they do - but the intensity and the "queerness," is going to have a club filled with about 5 hardcore fans, and I wouldn't get a single durned gig. I'm not sure what I'd do as far as a "light handle," but I've started putting some records together, and I've got a general plan.

Another thing to keep in mind if you decide to try to DJ is that even the queens don't dig all-sausage parties except on special occasions. (Like Night at the Roxie!) You need to play some music that will keep the ladies in the room, and then the ladies will also hang around because it isn't that they don't dig the masculine stuff - women are not fools by and large - it's just that they want to hear some sweet songs. The other thing is that the guys won't say much, but they like sweet songs too, especially since it keeps the ladies in the room, but also because it's nice to feel sweet sometimes, even for straight guys more macho than I am.

For people looking around, Alicia Keyes, Aaliyah, Destiny's Child, Whitney Houston, these are ladies' types of artists. Good luck getting the LP's of any of those artists, but even though running tables is always better, even now that the best turntables are digital, practical issues will probably force you to run a CD outfit or an mp3 player outfit because of the lack of access to the right LP's.

Anyone who doesn't understand that practicality is an issue with anything can walk out of my show. Go to the proverbial special place of torment. I'll have an audience left, and you'll need 50 extra cents to call someone who cares because the price of a pay-phone has gone up considerably over the past few years in the states.

The thing is that if you can get gigs like that, which are great fun, where you spin just a little serious material and spin the rest as a party, you can get a specialty gig once in a while where people will come to hear your own material. Thing is, you better at least pass the show, because if you blow a specialty gig like that, then you've blown the reputation of your best material. You may not have a great night, but it better at least go off with some accuracy.

The other thing is that I've got a short stack of records at the moment, but if I'm even going to run a party type of gig, I'll need - let's say - 4000 dollars of equipment. If I want to run my own material, I'll need double that - at least - especially if I'm going to produce and mix my own DNB music. That kind of money is not in the cards right now, but I get to thinking - one of these days - and that might be real, who knows? Life ain't fair, and I just put a foot in front of the other one every day. That "one day at a time"-stuff from the 12-steppers has some reality to it.

The other thing is, even disregarding the real material I want to run, you have got to practice. I've got a few records I can run, and that alone means that I have to run cues back and forth between an mp3 player and the records, and it takes a bit to figure out how to cut cues right. Also, if I could get a good kitbag together, it is a real nice touch to run segues between your cues, even at a party type show. It just shows you've put a bit more effort into the show, and also, the show flows a bit smoother.

So that is the basics with that. Alright, so let us discuss geography. When it comes to folk type musics, and EDM is a sort of folk music in a way, geography has always been hugely important. The Motown sound was not Philly R&B, and West Coast Hip-Hop is not Brooklyn Hip-Hop. Taking Detroit as an example for contrast, I was up in Detroit visiting some guys that were doing a Detroit-sound of electro, and I really was stunned. They were not in the worst area of Detroit, but I was hoping the car had armored shielding on it as we worked our way through going to a Thai restaurant, hitting the Dunkin' for a coffee, and hitting an AA meeting.

Detroit as a city would be summed up with the phrase, "survival of the fittest," in my opinion. You have just got to be nails to live through that place for even a few years, and these guys were running Detroit clean, at least at the time. Drugs aren't wholly evil, but I would like to think a few of those guys are still managing to run Detroit clean. They were really good guys.

If we were to sum up our dear Dodge City, it would be, "the craziest krewes on the planet." No one is crazier than any Daytonite, and if someone is from Dayton and won't admit to being crazy, then don't trust them for a minute. We are crazy like foxes, but we are nuts. No one can touch Dodge City when it comes to being ill and being hard at being ill. That is the frame for Dodge City. It is a source of pride, and that may not seem to make sense, but Dayton is my trash-heap and my lunatic asylum, and I'll probably never walk out of here.

So D10 REPRAZENT! Another funny story. I used to go to Suicide Girls. I'm not tattooed and pierced, but I liked a few of the models at the site, and at the time, you could go back and forth with the girls if they'd put up with you. You weren't supposed to "hooks-up," with a girl, that was an unwritten rule of the site that some people couldn't seem to make out, but if a girl liked you she would repeatedly castrate you via your blog or pm and let you mock her back, and also, the galleries were softcore stuff, instead of the usual rapine that drives me near to vomit every time I make a bad click.

The site is ruined, but it was a shining moment in 'Net history. Part of the site was that you would meet and greet with local members, and other than one or two scumbags, we used to have a real heck of a time. I always had to leave early to avoid unintended inebriation, but it was so much fun. The thing was, SG Dayton wasn't big, and so we usually hung with SG Cincinnati or SG Columbus. Cincinnati and Columbus have their own ethos.

However, SGCincy' and SGColumbo' were stunned at how gosh-durned crazy the Dayton members were. They all said it, "Other than the one or two scum they're some of the best people ever, but how can anybody be so crazy! - every durned one of them!" Also, I was going by my foxgemini handle at the time, and they all said, even though I was not doing close to as well as I am now, "We love us some foxy," but also, "foxy is the craziest person we know from Dayton."

Also, there are other Geeza styles in other geographies, but you don't just walk off with the Geeza in D10. Think of it this way, Geeza styles are known all over the states as either the most ill or close to the most ill proper-styles, and we in D10 are the illest on the globe. Remember, when ill is a compliment, it means you're smart, it means you're hard, but it still means that you're a good candidate for a loony-bin. Ill is ill, even when it's a good thang! And dat' is dat'!

There are other D10 jokes. One of the things about D10 is that if D10 is a fit, you can never leave the place. I know person after person who was a true Daytonian who went and made big g's in NYC or loved the weather and the mountains in Colorado, only to show back up in the garbage heap for no apparent reason a few short years later. The maximum leave I've ever seen is about 4 years outside of what I sometimes call "the Maelstrom."

Almost no one converts to D10, and the rare person that does is stuck in this heap forever just like the rest of us. That is Dodge City. I don't want to be overly mystical, but I've seen these patterns over and over with D10'ians.

So that is the home town. The craziest, illest n's on the planet. I'm not a fan of the BIG N word, but I'm using it in a proper place I think. You be the judge.

Another joke about D10. D10 at one time had a real happening funk music scene. Actually, funk groups are still pretty popular in D10, especially considering you'd hardly ever hear a funk band anywhere else in the country today. One of the best groups in Dayton was the Ohio Players. I've met their original drummer, and he was an amazing guy. A gold record, a great hand on the snare, and one suggestion, "don't go near a pen without paying an entertainment lawyer."

So there was a book that came out about the D10 funk scene - guess the name? - "There Was Something in the Water." There still is! LOL! Trust me, it isn't all doom and gloom, but you need a certain mentality not to get crushed in the Maelstrom. Most people show up in D10 on the run from something, take a look down the first street and decide to go run somewhere else. D10 is just not most people's kind of town. Even when people are on the run, one look at the real D10 and most people take off like a mad jack-rabbit.

Okay, I'm hitting the Orange Wedge right now, not the tablet form, the mp3 form, and I'm going to kick back a minute and see if there might be anything fun to say next. Look, I have severe depression, and I get down and I get enraged, but I am not a sour-face or a bitter-face as a general rule. Think of this though, when I was hanging with the SG-krewe, people enjoyed me, even though I wasn't getting tanked, (actually it's better if I don't, trust me, Gwyd Dahmer is the right descriptor) and even as crazy and ill as I am, and no one loves a sour-face or a bitter-face. And, I was fatter than a house at the time and some of the best models on SG used to downright flirt with me - repeatedly - but only if they made sure and castrated me first. I guess it is a safer bet to flirt with foxy if he has no nuts. Ah, the good ole days.

I'll be back. Let me think of something else funny I might add to the blog next, and then we might hit the ELM.

Electronic Music 4, The Faster Break

Other than the Chemical Brothers and Crystal Method style of fast breaks, which you can tell by the beats per minute, generally around 140 or 130, there is drum and bass. (Check out "Orange Wedge," or "F*** Up Beats," by the Chemical Brothers, and "High Roller," by the Crystal Method.) Now, we need to do another disambiguation. There were some African UK DNB collectives, the real hot ones being London Elektricity, Goldie and Roni Size with DJ Krush. Check out "Bite the Bullet," or "Temper, Temper," or "Dirty Beats," and I'm looking for the London Elektricity mix I like at the moment. If you grab these tracks, keep in mind that even a mixed-up whitey like me can get a good mad on from these tracks. This is real "kill-whitey," material.

That type of DNB is generally called "Jungle," and I love the stuff I've heard, but that is really not my material. I've never actually met a tribe or clique that works straight from Jungle, and if I do I'd like to hear some news, even if I can't get the actual deal. Another thing to keep in mind about DNB is that it actually started with Ragga and Gabba material in Jamaica, and if you're a real DNB artist, then you are generally a UK native. DNB is UK, with just a couple of exceptions.

The stuff that most people dig in terms of DNB is called "liquid." It runs at right around 220 bpm, or even a titch slower, 210, 202, somewhere in that range. Liquid sounds to my ear - and I am not a liquid-triber - but to my ear a great deal like smooth jazz layered over your basic drop-kick rhythm. I do know that part of the reason they called it liquid is that if you hit a liquid show and you were high, the mix sounded to you like you had water on your eardrums. Anyone I know that really knows the DNB has been into liquid, and just like with trance, I do not get liquid. I've heard some good liquid, and it is great, but again - not my material.

The other kind of DNB after those two is mostly called by people who know it - and I do - tech. If you're trying to disambiguate between say "tech-metal," and tech DNB, most people would say, "techstep," if they knew their stuff, because it's a tech style that uses a two-step rhythm. There is one really big problem with tech, and it is called, "way too busy!!!" Generally you want to run the drum-machine at 240 bpm, or you can program at 120 in half of the usual note values, which generally pleases your drum machine a bit better.

If you are a real virtuouso with tech, you scale your bpm back to just about 230 or so, and you better have some megabucks, because technology is feeble when you are trying to pull that kind of run. The best tech artist is actually not a UK artist, and that is Dieselboy. Dieselboy is really a compiler/producer, and Dieselboy can kick the stuff, but still, TOO BUSY!!!

The best track in terms of tech in my mind is called "Accelerate," originally produced by a collective called Break and then compiled and re-worked by Dieselboy on a compilation called "The Dungeonmaster's Guide." However, "Soldier's Story," by Dieselboy is really more the classic, and there isn't a bad track on that compilation. "Soldier's Story," is pretty warped, and definitely for a special occassion. Gnutella has a couple of the tracks, but they are hard to grab, and it is even hard to special-order the full compilation over the 'Net, although I think the recording is still in limited distribution.

If I had the money to get an expensive drum-machine and some kind of pro-tools setup, I could eat any of the tech out there right now for breakfast, simply by being more minimalist about what got served up in the mix. The other funny thing about tech is that there is almost nothing to it. You set up the drop-kick, and with a good machine you can leave it as a preset, and then you fill a cymbal sound, and then you add some sound effects or some pads as filler. You're done. Except for one part, and this is why tech is not as simple-minded as people want to say, and that is - the Reese-bassline.

We head back to Detroit. There was a guy who used to pull "techno," shows in Detroit, and what that meant was an 808 module, and then another Roland module or two. He would program the machines before the show, the audience would all show up on morphine or quaaludes, and then he would let the program run and tweak the pots all night. That is "techno." It isn't good to be a snob, but that is the true definition of "techno."

Reese came up with a way of using a Roland bass-module and a compressor to create the Reese- bassline. What you hear is a bass patch compressed to the point of near ring-modulation, and then the patch is extended as long as you can and you tweak the pots - but not the compression - to get the bassline to modulate all over the place. Getting a true Reese-bassline is the key to tech, and almost all attempts at doing tech don't even come close to emulating the right sound.

Tech' is part of my material because one of the significant forms of tech is called "E-Sassin," which is a DNB form of Shinobi. Look, I am nuts, and I don't care if you believe a word I say, but this is the reality. I can dance E-Sassin, but with all the smoking and the fatigue I experience I can't go a whole E-Sassin tune at this stage in my life. Even at halftime, doing Shinobi to DNB is not easy, and I work myself up to trying occasionally and end up having to back up off of it.

So we finish up the DNB section by explaining that there is a form of ELM called, "glitch," that is sometimes dance-able, and is sometimes pure ELM. Glitch started because the beats would get off-set when people tried good ideas, and someone said - hey! - leave some of the mistakes in! The style is generally a warp-head style, and the Aphex Twin that is actually good is some of the best glitch material, although there are other good groups like Evol Intent. I won't listen to any Aphex Twin as a rule, but Aphex could hit the glitch better than anyone.

Finally, we are finished with breakbeat music, and we are going to explain a hard fast rule. Period. If you have the breaks, you must know at least one style, and at least some breakdancing. If you cannot breakdance at all, then you don't have the breaks. You can't even make electro. Period. There are people that specialize in breakdancing, and that requires incredible athleticism and dedication, but a DJ or an MC has to be able to at least do a little breakdancing without looking like a total fool. You can't know the breaks unless you can dance the breaks at least some, because you know the breaks in your body.

Well, it is Christmas Eve morning, and I have all sorts of family stuff to do today, but I'll be able to get some good naps in during the day, so I'm planning on staying up for quite a while. I prefer Thanksgiving because of the whole "gratitude," idea, and "New Year's," because of the idea of starting a new year all over again, but Christmas is important because of family, even if my family has me reaching for the best prescription hemmorhoid cream I can get a scrip' for. Alright, I'll be back momentarily, and we'll try to have some more fun.