The content of this blahg will of course mostly be music related, but I will from time to time share my opinion on whatever subject that might come up. Feel free to comment.
The Odd Side of the Groove
There are three things that smell like fish...
One of them is fish. And the other two... reside in my new compressor pedal, the Celmo Sardine Can. It sounds wonderful.
Sthlm Jazz
Nostalgia time again! This time it was Tower of Power at the Stockholm Jazz Festival. I have seen them in concert five or six times before, but yesterday it was over ten years since the last time.
Smokin' Hammond player, boring guitarist, Garibaldi completely off beat the first tune and the rest was pretty much like they always sound. Groovin!
Lukather
Yesterday evening Nostalgia came to town. Nostalgia in the shape of Steve Lukather, an artist whose guitar playing I have a love/hate relationship to. Why love/hate, you ask? Well, Luke was a major influence when I was in my teens and early 20's. I learned nearly all of his licks and solos, and as a consequence grew kind of tired of his style. Now I can enjoy his playing in small portions
So what about the show? Luke gets major kudos for playing Talk to You Later by The Tubes, a tune he wrote (together with David Foster if I remember correctly) and having the balls to play a Toto song so shortly after announcing the group's demise (for the record the song was Live for Today and not one of the big hits like Roseanna or Hold the Line - THAT would have been weird!). Pretty much all of the show was OK, until the last encore, which was Shine On You Crazy Diamond - a song I have loved since my early teens. It started out okayish, but soon deteriorated into a tasteless wank-fest with nothing but fast, boring soloing. Which is a totally inappropriate treatment of a classic such as this.
I ran screaming through the streets of Stockholm, wishing that I had been wise enough to leave before the encore.
Iron Maiden
Yesterday I went back 25 years in time. I was holding the LP cover of Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind in my hand for the very first time and the sound of Revelations was coming out of the speakers. Pure euphoria. That's how I felt anyway when Maiden entered the stage at Ullevi, Gothenburg. And it sure seemed like the other 57000 people in the audience felt the same way. Awesome!
Making Grooves in Odd Meters
Trummange Studios
Magnus is concentrated
13/16
Do not mess with 13/16 time or your screen might get dirty...
Today was fun! Drummerboy Magnus Brandell and I made a bunch of spanking non-danceable prog/fusion grooves for OddGrooves' upcoming MIDI library OddGrooves Crazy Drumming. We managed to cover 13/8, 15/8, 13/16, 15/16 and 19/16 time over the course of four hours. Now, if that's not crazy drumming then I don't know what the hell is.
Magnus played his ass off as usual and showcased a couple of Black Page Moments that gave me goosebumps, but he did struggle just a bit with 13/16 (see pics on the right) before getting it right. But after 13/16 it was all easy stuff like 15/16 and 19/16. Piece of cake :-)
I'm not sure what time sigs we will do next, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment below.
Later,
Per
OddGrooves.com is alive and kicking!
OddGrooves' new website, www.oddgrooves.com is finally online! If you are a composer/producer-type of person in the progressive rock/fusion genre and at times find yourself short of a good drummer, you owe it to yourself to head over there and purchase our excellent MIDI libraries Basic & Advanced Drumming. And if you don't match that specific profile, just go there anyway.
Per
Music Update and OddGrooves Preview
Warmoth telecaster
Black Korina hollowbody, rosewood/ebony neck.
Great sound for fusion!
I have uploaded an OddGrooves tune creatively named "OddGrooves Fusion" to the Music Page. This song features the soon-to-be-launched OddGrooves product line of odd meter MIDI grooves. The drumming is taken straight-out-of-the-box with nothing added, taken away or (god forbid) quantized. Toontrack EZ Drummer with the DFH expansion was used and I applied some EQ, compression and reverb during the mix.
The MIDI drums are played by Magnus Brandell and the rest is me, myself and I. I play the beautiful guitar to the right through a Lehnert Rambler as usual.
Stay tuned,
Per
Hello World & Magma Talk
Today's music related subject is on the topic of Magma, the french prog band that - besides inventing their own language - released a couple of excellent albums in the 70's. I first heard Magma in my mid-teens (some 20 years ago or so), a time when I was heavily into all sorts of progressive rock (starting with Marillion and going back in time from there to discover the REALLY good stuff). Well, Magma was not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. I hated what I heard. I didn't understand any of it and quickly went back to listening to Genesis and Rush. After that I didn't listen to Magma for 20 years, only to re-discover their 1973 album Mekanik Destruktiw Komandoh about a year ago. I still wasn't convinced, but something about the music intrigued me and I soon listened to it every day. The intricate vocal and horn arrangements, the mix of prog with jazz and contemporary classical music - all great stuff. The next step was getting Kohntarkosz and Magma Live and then I was hooked.
Check out this version of MDK, from a show in Paris in 2006:
Seriously powerful stuff indeed. Besides looking stark raving mad, Christian Vander is still an authority behind the drums. It's not extremely tight, but the groove and energy certainly makes up for it.
And speaking of mad-looking drummers, here's Magma 1977 - De Futura. Vander kind of reminds me of that guy in the Cronenburg film "Scanners" right before his head blows up.
Pretty scary stuff if you ask me:
Talk to you later,
Per