I thought I'd attempt to tickle your funny bone this week so here's a list of some good music related jokes. Most of the musicians or instruments in the jokes are interchangeable, so you can change them to rib whichever bandmate shows up late for practice. "Whats the difference between a large pizza and a drummer?" "A large pizza can feed a family of 4" "What did the banjo player get on his exam?" "Drool" "How many bass players does it take to change a lightbulb?" "One Five One Five One Five" "How can you tell if the stage is level?" "The banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth" - A man walks into a music store and says to the clerk, "I'd like to play that big red saxophone". The clerk replies, "You must be a banjo player". The man says " I sure am, how'd you know?" Clerk scoffs, "Because that's a fire extinguisher." "Whats black and blue and lying in a ditch?" "A guitar player that told too many drummer jokes" "How does a lead guitarist change a light bulb?" "He holds it and the world revolves around him" "What is a gentleman?" "Someone who knows how to play mandolin but doesn't" "What does a mandolin player use for birth control?" "His personality" "How can you tell there's a mandolin player at your front door?" "They can't find the key, the knocking speeds up, and he doesn't know when to come in" "Whats the difference between a ukulele and a trampoline?" "You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline" "Whats the difference between and ukulele and an onion" "Nobody cries when you cut up a ukulele"
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I love music and I love movies, so naturally I love movies about music. In recent cinema history we have been blessed with a bevy of great music documentary's and I thought I'd share some of my favorite's. My number one has got to be The Band's 'Last Waltz.' I know it's almost 40 years old but it is absolutely timeless. Aside from the song they do with Neil Diamond, all the music is spectacular. From the song choices to the stellar list of musicians that join them and even down to the killer velvet suit that Van Morrison wears, the whole thing is just a masterpiece. Next is a more recent one: Rush's 'Beyond The Lighted Stage.' Now, I like a lot of Rush tunes but I am in no way a die hard Rush fan. That being said, this documentary is so engaging from start to finish that it made me appreciate the band in a whole new way. There are great stories from the band members and from other musicians who toured with them and who were influenced by them. there are hilarious moments and heart breaking ones and the director does a great job of always keeping it interesting. My next two picks are both very informative and very, very long. George Harrison's 'Living in the Material World' and Tom Petty's 'Runnin' Down A Dream' are each nearly 4 hours long, but cover every single facet of their respective lives and careers, both musical and personal. I know it's hard to set aside 4 hours to watch a dang movie, but if you split it up over a few nights it'll be well worth it. Or just wait until you get mono and can't leave your room. I'll leave you with a short list of some of my other favorite's: - Rolling Stones 'Crossfire Hurricane' - Bob Marley 'Marley' - 'Buena Vista Social Club' - 'Festival Express' - with the Grateful Dead, The Band, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy & more! - Metallica 'Some Kind of Monster' - so funny to see what tools these guys are! -Mikey Mike Sparber has been roaming the hallowed halls of Sylvan since 2004 and is an admirer of all stringed instruments. He moved here from the DC suburbs in 1999 and can usually be found with his wife at concerts around the Bay Area or with his dog, Ernie, at the beach. Life without music would be intolerable.
Wanna make great music??? Listen very, very carefully and remove the silence where it doesn't belong. -david Have you ever thought, "I'd love to play guitar but I'm afraid of steel strings touching my delicate, soft skin?" Well, good ol' Mikey's got the answer for ya': Use a slide! It's easy, accessible, fun, and it's sure to broaden you're ability and approach to playing guitar. Though often used as an additional tool in a guitarists arsenal, most folks don't know that playing with a slide was actually born out of necessity. Back in the 1920's Tennessee, a man named Cletus Earnest Henry McCracken was playing around with his guitar while maintaining his daily ritual of draining as many bottles of wine as he could muster. Sure enough, about halfway through the day he wound up getting his left ring finger stuck inside the mouth of a wine bottle. After, he and his drinking buddies tried desperately to pull it off to no avail, he figured he'd just break the bottle. So he whacked the bottle on the rail of the nearby train tracks and it broke. Well, most of it broke. He looked down to find that the neck of the wine bottle was still stuck on his dang finger! "Aw, to hell with it," he said. "Let's keep pickin." And with that he picked up his guitar and commenced to sliding his bottlenecked finger up and down the strings and, wouldn't you know it, it produced a not altogether unpleasant sound. Cletus' eyebrows arched upwards! "I reckon I like this here sound!" As he continued to slide his finger along the strings he exclaimed "By golly, I've invented a new kind of playing! I think I'll call it 'broken-bottle-stuck-on-yer-finger style!'" Before long, word spread of Cletus' 'broken-bottle-stuck-on-yer-finger' style and soon people just took to calling it slide. Now you can follow in Cletus' footsteps, but it's much easier to just go to your local shop and buy a pre-made glass or brass slide. So go on and get yer' slide on! -Mikey Disclaimer - This story may not be true In the wake of the recent loss of another music legend, B.B. King, I wanted to talk about the legacy musicians leave behind when they depart this tiny blue marble. When I was younger I used to be confused by the reactions of people to the deaths of famous musicians or actors, not understanding how someone could be so affected by losing someone they didn't know personally, never met in real life. It's always sad when anyone dies, but the reasons we loved them are still around. When a musician dies, his/her music is still around, and an actor still has their movies. We can always revisit and re-live the music that made us fall in love with the musician. In this way the artist never dies, but lives on through the fans that they've moved. Now that I've got a few more years under my belt I realize that we get upset when musicians we like pass on because whether or not we knew them personally, the impact of their music on our lives is very real, and losing them can sometimes be a crushing blow. So go home and put on your favorite album, crack open a cold beverage, and remind yourself why you love music.
Way, way back in the late 1960’s I was rehearsing with a small avant garde multi-media ensemble in Chicago. This group was lead by William ‘Bill’ Russo, former head arranger for Stan Kenton. Russo was also founder of Columbia College’s music department and director of its Center for New Music. During one rehearsal, Russo said we were going to have a special visitor drop by. Later that evening the special visitor arrived. It was Duke Ellington. We were all, of course, completely star struck; it was as if a god had walked in. Ellington listened for a while and during a break spent a few minutes with each of us individually, encouraging us to ask him questions. When my turn came I asked Ellington how can I become the best musician I possibly can. His response was “Always seek opportunities to play with musicians that are better than you.” And as he did with everyone he spoke with, he smiled and kissed me on both cheeks. Playing with musicians better than yourself is the best advice I ever received - and it’s the advice I have told countless players over the decades - ever since hearing it from the Master. -David David Robin got his start in the 1960's Chicago rock n' roll scene and has built up an impressive, lengthy musical resume in the years since. After all these years, his love of the guitar is as strong as ever. As a performing musician, I sometimes get asked a difficult question -- how did you become proficient on your instrument? The obvious answer would be: practice, lots of practice. And of course that is suitable advice to give to anybody who is looking to learn something that is as technically demanding as playing the guitar. I am aware that we each have a unique capacity for learning new things, however simply telling a prospective guitar player to practice scales, always use a metronome, and always play for at least an hour may not always be the best advise. My point is this: establishing rigid practice habits is fine, but if I had a nickel for every hour I spent just holding a guitar and "noodling" I would have at least a month's worth of rent (and that's saying something in Santa Cruz!!!). Allow yourself the time to become familiar with your instrument on a more subconscious level (open-tunings lend themselves well to this approach) and "practice" using your intuition and judgment as well as your metronome and chord charts. For me, music is something that exists in the head AND the heart, and I would urge anyone who is looking to pick up the guitar or ukulele or banjo or tuba to simply exercise the habit of being with or near your instrument...always. Have it around and accessible, and remember this cheesy adage: practice makes perfect, but playing makes you happy--just ask Allen Iverson! Until next time! -McCoy
Well, it being Mother's Day, and since I blog now, and this is "Blog," I can think of nothing better to 'blogabout' than my mom. Her name is Kathryn and she is fierce and brave. There was this one time she aggressively swore at a group of teenagers because they laughed when some ice cream I was eating fell to the ground. They looked like total jerks, and I understood then what it was to be guarded by a lioness.
This ferocity is but one facet of a greater vigilance in my mom; her staunch support for social justice and the strength and grace with which she carries herself lend me the courage to keep my own proverbial fire burning. Also, being a snotty 27 year old, I find myself pompous and overtly proud when I realize my mom is a Generation X-er whose social politics and taste in music are still relevant and evolving. Mom, you are really cool and I love you for that. She also happens to be one of the few members of my family who can carry a damn tune and while this may or may not be attributable to genetics, in the case that it is, I have her to thank for my predilection toward the noisier art. Thanks also for the garage mom, if I didn't have the escape of that room, if I wasn't afforded the space to blast my ears with amps while lying on the floor feeling depressed, I don't know how I would've turned out. God, she even still comes to my shows. At a DIY punk space in the middle of La Puente, I'm playing music with friends that is generally, too loud, angry, and misanthropic, but there she is, just to my left, bobbin her head with several punk kids at least half her age. Did I mention how cool my mom is? I could espouse cool-mom anecdotes all day, but really the point I'm trying to make is love. Mom, I'm very thankful to have had someone like you growing up, you've never not been there, and even if we now live in different cities 8 hours apart, you're never far from my thoughts. I love you so much. -Alex I've been asked countless times by prospective customers whether or not a instrument is easy to learn. I know it may seem like a simple straight forward question, but its more difficult to answer than you think. The short answer is no, it isn't easy, otherwise everyone would know how to do it. Regardless of what instrument you decide to play, there is a certain level of commitment that comes with it. Some instruments, like bass guitar and ukulele, have a shallower learning curve to begin with, while guitar requires a little more effort up front. In the end, however, it takes just as much fortitude to be proficient in any instrument, as long as you still have the passion. As much as we would love to have them, no guitar we sell comes with talent. We try our hardest to match you with the right instrument, as to increase the likelihood that you will continue to play it. We also offer lessons from skilled teachers to help you on your journey, but ultimately, whether or not something is easy depends on you.
Man, you know what really grinds my gears? Merriam Webster's definition for harmony: "the combination of different musical notes played or sung at the same time to produce a pleasing sound" First half we're doin' alright, different notes, same time. Yes, I am on board. However, I take issue with the concept of "pleasure" being included in this definition. I very specifically enjoy harmony others (of perhaps less refined palettes) might find displeasing. Maybe it makes them cringe in their seat a little, maybe there isn't that safe cadential figure leading back to "one." Guess what friends, there is no "one." Western music theory and harmony, and everything we listen to in this tradition, while a very neat and impressive collection of rules and ideas concerning organization of sound, is totally arbitrary. One may contend that the overtones in the harmonic series (those perfect 5ths and 3rds) are why we hear certain combinations of notes and sounds and we be like, "oh hey that sounds nice, what sweet pleasing sound." But naw dawg! The early Christian church (from which pretty much all contemporary music theory is derived) just had to control everything and codify things into rules, because God loves rules. So that really "dissonant" harmony, the one where there's two notes separated by six semitones, we're gonna call that "diabolus in musica," and you are NOT allowed to play it because it is so ugly and gross. Well, fortunately musicians quickly determined that the church was a goofball, and the "tension" present in this harmony (commonly referred to as the tritone) was resolvable, and as such could reflect the ebb and flow of life, like an exhale after holding your breath for too long, it could become something expressive. And it's true, to the Western ear, hearing an F against a B resolve into a C and E, sounds pretty satisfying, but also... saccharine. Why does that tritone have to resolve? Why can't it just hang out there and sound nice, be fine on its own, I think it sounds nice. Here are some of my favorite pieces of music that dare to subvert these Western traditions, as well as some resources if you're curious about some of the subjects mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality Schoenberg was a German composer from the Late Romantic period and began composing in that tradition before switching gears entirely, and inventing his own serialized approach to harmony organization. This piece predates his more organized 12-tone serialism, but it does a pretty beautiful job of ignoring a tonal center while remaining particularly Romantic in its expressivity and dynamics. Portal is a death metal band hailing from Australia. While this piece of music has trace elements of tonality, particularly around a minute and a half in, there is a very purveying sense of dissonance and atonality. The deliberateness in which they do not pander to Western tonality I find both hauntingly beautiful and terrifying. Also the video. Honestly I should've put this first. Ornette Coleman, and all pioneering Jazz musicians, were immediately pushing harmonic boundaries (all boundaries for that matter). This is an example of "free jazz," a musical movement with which Coleman was strongly associated. I will not begin to try to explain "free jazz" beyond mentioning that it is rooted far more in independent improvisatory melodic lines, but the resulting harmonies as we can hear in this piece are supreme. That poor lonely woman tho :( |