Powerage by ACDC

I started this journey through ACDC with a few preconceptions.  Many of them were true.  I thought the Bon Scott era was a dirty era with songs about wild rock and roll life; this was true.  Some preconceptions were not true.  I thought Bon Scott had only done 3 or so albums.  I now know that Scott was there for many more hits and albums than I had previously thought.

I knew that early on ACDC took lots of inspiration from the 1950's rockers, like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.  I had figured that the "middle" era of classic hits and THE "ACDC" sound came about largely as the influence of Mutt Lange producing Highway to Hell.  The first couple of albums only reinforced this, as these albums are very much rock and roll, and not yet "hard rock".

Boy was I surprised when I listened to Powerage.

Powerage is the album BEFORE Mutt Lange met up with the guys.  Powerage was produced and mixed by the same guys that had always did the ACDC albums before; Angus and Malcom's brother George, and his friend Harry Vanda.  From track 1 to the last, the sound is much more what I hear as "ACDC" than what came before.  Instead of quick power chords, the guitar tones are allowed to breath.  Instead of a bluesy sort of solo, there were some fast play, and unless I"m mistaken there was some tapping.  Instead of a Chuck Berry ripoff(that everyone from Jimmy Paige to Keith Richards have admitted to doing, its not a black spot to get lent a song by Chuck), there were ACDC riffs.  Its like Malcom and Angus finally let go of their hero's inspiration and started paving their own road.

This has surprised me and given me MORE respect that I already had for the band.  They have admitted that they are a band that need direction from a producer.  Famously they disliked Rick Rubin's approach.  Rubin made a career of getting put in charge of bands that have been dicked around by record companies, and using his clout to give them freedom.  Brian Johnson complained, "we hardly ever saw the guy".  This wasn't neglect, he was doing what he does, he was letting the band do whatever they want.  Anyway, I had assumed that the big transition from an early blues rock band to the biggest hard rock band of all time was because Mutt Lange had taught them a thing or two about recording, and the success of Highway and Back in Black lead to them keeping that voice.

Now I know they came up with the sound themselves as a natural evolution of their touring, writing, and chemistry as a band.

Regression and Day 20

I posted before how my decision to play what is fun to me helped me become a better bassist(and eventually a better guitarist).  The other way that broadened my horizons and improved my playing was finding my influences and looking at their influences.

Some of the players over at Talkbass have some amazing talent, and they show it in youtube videos.  As I began watching them I noticed that there were probably 2 real camps of play style that I liked.  There were the slappers, which I already knew their influences.  I really don't have a knack for it.  Another was the jazz bassists.  They idolized Jaco Pastorious and the artists influenced by him.  I had tried to listen to Jaco several times, and I just never "got" it.  Later I learned more theory, and I learned about more technique, and one day I listened... and it hit me.  It was one of the most game changing days of my musical creative hobby.  I understood what his fingers were doing, and I understood his techniques and I understood what was amazing about him.  There was still a lot of "elevator" music I could not stand to listen to, but I eventually found songs of his I liked.

I listened for more music that featured this sort of fast play "busy" bass playing.  Yes, finally, I heard John Paul Jones, frequently down mixed in songs so that Page got the spotlight, but I could hear him back there, going nuts, making great music.  From John Paul Jones I looked at those that he influenced and found Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.  I had their first 4 albums, so I go back and listen and holy crap does it sound like John Paul Jones' style.  Stuart Zender of Jamiroquai was kind of doing funk slap with this "busy" bass style too, Virtual Insanity has some great bass.  Many of the artists I found playing like this never cited John Paul Jones as a inspiration though, so I dug around and found that JPJ and many others idolized Motown.  I learned of James Jamerson, who played on more #1 songs than the Beatles and Elvis combined.  Songs like Bernedette by The Four Tops, What's Goin' On and Let's Get it On by Marvin Gay.  My Girl!  Heard it Through the Grapevine, I was Made To Love Her, Aint Nothin' like the Real Thing.  ALL JAMES JAMERSON.  I listened to these songs over and over, and learned the parts that I was good enough at the time to play. 

Guitar is like that too though.

Like ACDC or The Rolling Stones?  Angus Young and Keith Richards love Chuck Berry.  Even their tone is similar to the stuff Chuck was doing long before either were in a band.  If you look up Chuck Berry playing on TV you might see something familiar.  Angus Young's antics on stage.  The way he walks when he plays and the way he struts when he does solos, it is all an homage to Chuck.  Well if you want to play like Keith and Angus, Chuck Berry is a great way to start.  If you can play Back in Black or Highway to Hell, chances are you could play anything Chuck Berry has put out.

"aliens have found our voyager spacecraft and have sent a message, I will read it as it comes in... it looks like it is only 4 words long... the words are; Send More Chuck Berry"

Watch his solo in that video.  There's a lot of famous guitarists that got their start seeing this on TV and thinking it was the coolest thing they had seen when they were kids.

Rocksmith actually has this built into the game

I was talking to someone about punk.  They really like Greenday.  Well, Greenday has their influences as well.  I told them to listen to bands like The Clash and The Ramones.  Rocksmith has a Ramones song, and learning that would help with learning Punk in general, Ramones is a great lesson in punk rock's basic music origin.  I told this person that they could look outside of punk as well.  The Kinks is where a lot of the punk sounds came from, particularly the punk leading up to Greenday anyway.  Dave Davies pioneered the whole fuzz type of distortion, and if you can play several of the easier Green Day songs, then you have all the tools you need to play The Kinks' earlier stuff.  The Kinks is on Rocksmith 2014 as well.  So you have 3 good generations of "punk" music each separated by about 20 years, but each close enough that you could tell the influence.

This kind of lead to talking about genre mixing bands that are still taken together as a whole, but that's another post for another day.

Day 20

Today I figured I would do the Power Chord lesson.  Green Day's "Brain Stew" was a simple song I learned early on.  It was easy to play and it was recognizable by people I knew.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was the perfect introduction to Power Chords.  I practice Brain Stew even today, to keep my finger's memorizing that shape.  Power Chords keep their same shape all over the board, so unbeknowst to me, I was learning skills that would help me on about a billion songs.

The lesson was pretty well explained.  The problem I have with the lesson is that they do not going into the finger positions very well.  You start telling new players to use their pinky on something as simple as Power Chords and they are going to get sore, tired, and stop doing it.  I use the old blues man's left hand techniques.  I rarely use my pinky finger because I gotta be ready to bend strings at any situtation, so I learn to stretch my ring finger for that.

There is perfectly good ways to learn to use your pinky finger, I just don't think power chords is a way of doing it.  I have never seen anyone use their pinky finger on Power Chords in a real life applicable way.  I built my strength of my pinky playing My Girl on bass.  The version I played was based on the minor pentatonic scale and it turns out I was learning that shape without knowing it... so bonus.  But the point is, on bass the frets were so wide I had to use my pinky in that song.  I see people use their pinky while doing minor pent stuff all the time.  If you're going to give someone an exercise to build up physical conditioning, make sure it is going to be useful.

Anyways.  I feel like I have taken the lessons that have really interested me and stayed doing session mode stuff and improv way too much.  So for the next couple of days, I am going to focus on perfecting the lesson tracks of the last few lessons and even getting academic about the minor scale positions.