Music Branches and Day 22

In my post titled "Regression" I talked about being able to back up in time to find the influences of your favorite bands that would in turn be able to influence you in your playing with the same genre.  Sometimes though, you do not have to go back, but you can branch sideways in time.  For this I gave the example of "Grunge" in the 90's.

The person I was talking to likes some Nirvana.  I told this person that this was only natural, as their favorite genre was Punk.  I said that if you take the top Grunge acts of the early 90's, you can basically split them with Grunge and a more classic style and see EXACTLY how they formed their music.

If you take the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, and Black Flag, and you add the typical Grunge characteristics to that style of music, you're going to get Nirvana.  Kurt Cobain wrote in his own personal journals that the Sex Pistols were thousands of times more important to him than The Clash.  He was also a huge fan of the pre-punk band The Stooges, and of their lead singer Iggy Pop.

If you look at the "world music" influenced heavy rock of The Who and Led Zeppelin, and then listen to Pearl Jam, you're going to see similarities there too.  Heavy 70's rock mixed with Grunge fits with classic Pearl Jam perfectly.  If you take heavy metal, like Black Sabbath and Motorhead, and mix that with grunge, you're going to get Soundgarden.

Being a fan of Grunge might lead you to being a fan of playing more genres than you ever thought you would.  Nirvana can lead you to Soundgarden which then leads you to heavy metal, or it can lead you to Pearl Jam which will lead you to classic rock.  All the while you can be going back and finding those influences and before you know it, you are a very very diverse musician.

Day 22

Holy crap did I play a lot in day 22.

Started out before lunch doing my warm ups in Rocksmith.  I have pretty much stopped doing Gone Wailin' every day, and I only play it when I'm in the mood for it.  It has helped me with my chord strumming, and I very much appreciated it, but I have lots to do now and I feel like I can drop it.  I still find Ducks Re-dux good for getting my mind thinking about the fretts, I kind of need it to get past the 12th fret faster, as I'm getting into some songs that use a lot of stuff up there but that marker skip to 15 is F'ing me up.

After lunch I checked out the Everlong that is in the game.  I had pretty much stopped playing this version because its a version of the song I never see myself playing.  I know the parts that I don't play, but I don't really practice them.  As I've said before, Everlong is done live with 3 guitars and a bass.  The "Lead" version on Rocksmith has stuff in it that sounds HORRIBLE unless you have a rhythm guitarist backing it up at the very least.  Anyway, I was doing a few things wrong, and I needed to know if I wanted to do the reverse lead up on the last uptake of the chorus.  I also went to youtube to see more versions of how people play it online.  I fixed a couple of things I was doing WAY wrong, and it has made my version sound much better.

I then decided to record my little bits of songs I use to practice the Pentatonic minor/major scales, and a few other little phrases I play a lot.  I named each one and recorded them on my phone in case I ever go a long time w/o playing them and want to remember them.

I then practiced several songs in Rocksmith that I had already done.  Blitzkrieg Bop I have learned and played to 95% completion.  I just mess up a little going through the whole song, but I know the parts.  That is by far my most done song, and its also rated the "easiest".  Though, Everlong has several songs rated below it on the easiness meter, and I disagree with it.  I tried Thunderkiss '66 and did quite well.  I was right to wait till I had done a ton of palm muting.  I am very surprised to do that it is tuned in Standard E also.  I did 16 Saltines and I am fairly confident that I could get all of it, except the solo, with an evening of really focusing on it.  I tried one of the random "I don't know this band" songs because it was listed as easy, and it was, but omg, I think i'd rather mute the TV.  There were a couple of more that I can't think of right now, I'm typing this the next morning instead of after the practicing like usual.

I watched a movie and playing in the pentatonics while watching the movie.  They are easy enough to do without looking at the fingerboard, so I was fine even though it was a sub-titled Japanese samurai movie.  So all in all, it was a real productive day.

Legendary: Brian's Guitar and day 18

Brian May is the guitarist for Queen, and one of the greatest rock legends.

In 1963 though, he was just a kid with almost no money.  What he did have, though, was a father that was willing to help his son achieve his dreams.  Brian and his father scoured the neighborhood for materials.  Someone that lived near them was throwing away an old 18th century fireplace mantle, made of mahogany.  It was worm ridden in some places, but they were able to shape a neck out of it.  Next they planed some oak to be a fret board.  The inlays are mother of pearl buttons they collected.  The body is semi-hollow, being made of oak with a thin sheet of mahogany for the top.  Next he made a tremolo with a knife and some motorcycle springs.  He then found some old shelving plastic and used it to "binding" material, the outline around the body that is popular on Les Pauls.

He bought some pickups, but rewound them himself.  He also sealed their pots to protect the pickups from microphonic feedback.  This was important because he wanted to include a way to cause feedback on purpose.  His dad had enough electrical engineering know-how to help him achieve this.  He could then induce it at a whim, instead of walking in front of the speaker hand hoping it worked like Clapton and Hendrix did.  I personally did not know his guitar could do this, but now it makes so much sense.  There's this part in the solo of "We Will Rock You" that I used to characterize as "the guitar coming back and eating itself", but now that I am older, I realize its the self induced feedback that he designed to be in the guitar.  Its genius.

It took him and his father  two years to make the guitar, and now its given the world 40+ years of pure, epic, awesome rock.  The guitar now is a legend, and has been named "The Red Special".

I referenced BrianMayGuitars.co.uk to make sure I got the details right, and claim no ownership of the story.

Day 18

Today was a Sunday, so that means I had an audience while practicing.  I still have a lot of work to do on making Everlong sound really nice, and it is very hard to do an arrangement all by yourself without having a way of switching from clean to distortion.  Which, I can do do with my real amp, but the game amp not so much.  During "Learn-a-song" it will change automatically for you, as if you have a road crew.  No such luck in real life.

My girlfriend played some more of her favorite games and then shocked me with playing Smoke on the Water :)  I thought she had learned that in school band, but she said she once had an acoustic.  She had never gotten to play around on a electric with some nice distortion to it, so she had a lot of fun.  I have several times thought about buying an extra guitar to keep at her place so I could practice over there.  When I have the money, I think I'll need to get a practice amp so she can play the guitar whenever she wants to as well.  She has no PS3, so I can't loan her Rocksmith.

I loaded up a metal band in session mode, the "classic" one, I can't remember what its called right now as I type.  Just a week ago I had listened to it, and just could not achieve any type of mellowness with the band they presented.  Now, though, with palm muting, I feel like I can at least jam with a metal band.  Speaking of Palm Muting, I have heard of people using palm muting on acoustic before, but my mind just could not wrap around what or why people would do it.  I decided, since Sundays are kinda crazy anyway, to load up an acoustic simulator and see how it sounded.  I then played bayou, cajun sounding music for about 20 minutes.  That's the sound palm muting on an acoustic does.  Cajun blues.  My repertoire of genres is increasing 

Almost 1/3rd through the 60 day challenge, and I am very happy with my Rocksmith experience, I've learned things that even if I stopped using Rocksmith today, would be skills for playing guitar that I'd use the rest of my life.