what a horribly bleak world i live in

[zepp_rules]

I had to help with my senior class carwash today. there was a boombox so i tried to get some good music on. i tried dream theater and iron maiden, but someone turned it of right in the middle of the solo, then put on some rap and everyone cheered. aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I had to listen to rap for the next 4 hours. Christ a guy can only take so much.

[educatedfilm]

i know how you feel (despite loving rap, and hating shreders, LOL)... cos some bastard turned off my "my bloody valentine" cd when I was moving my stuff into my room, and they put on goddam green day "warning" (dont get me wrong, i liked "insomniac" and "dookie" but the rest of their stuff is pretty weak)..

[Josh Redstone]

I hate rap. I dont know how it passes for music. I like some of the stuff Zepp_Rules wrote. I mean, how could you not. I guess its because people arent exposed to good music. A lot of stuff on the market these days is either all rhythm, some poppy wuss of a sell out or some guy shouting about how great he is in front of a drum machine.

[SLY]

I know how does it feel.. I had a similar experience, or even worse ! I was playing some rock/metal stuff with my band in a club, we had some nice reaction from the audience, but righ after we finished, the DJ came in , played some techno & rap... I was amazed by the reaction he had, every body was dancing on his music... that lucky drum machine bastard !
I was wondering how much time did it took him to learn every thing about the buttons on his machine... a couple of hours?

RAP IS CRAP !

[Benoit]

Different situation but it kinda relates.

Did you guys get that from "musically impaired" people :), you are talking to someone and a music is playing in the background, then you stop the guy and say "wait, this lick is really good, listen to this" and the guy just looks at you with that what-kind-of-cheap-a%$-drug-are-you-on look?

Happens to me a lot. You basically can't ask someone who doesn't understand what it takes to play an instrument to know the difference between Ice-Cube and Steve Vai.

Maybe we just don't get what it takes to master rapping, but still... One rap song is ok, two gets kind of old, and I never get to three since I get out of the room in the middle of the second rap song :)

Zepp_rules, we feel your pain

[educatedfilm]

erm... I actaully like Ice Cube (his work with body count anyway) more than Via...
I STILL dont get shredders, I've been listening to Via for about 8 months now, and I dont get all the myandering.. yes, he certainly has some excellent riffs, but god, you have to sift through some real OTT crap to get to it.. but that's just me... The same with satch... It just feels so empty to me.. I do like the Zappa stuff though, it's more adventerous...

Dj's are cool i think... Admitidly the commercail stuff makes you want to slit your wrists, but the more indie stuff is cool (eg Dj shadow)... I think guitarists simply have to accept the mixing desk... the same way trumpeters had to accept the on comming dominance of the guitar... DJing isn't as actually as easy as it looks.. just watch grandmaster flash (that's not to say, that all djs are grandmasters)...
It makes you cringe to see bands like Linkin Park using the mixing desks, and getting a lot of attention... but there are still great groups who used desks for a long while, and have had some sucess like Massive Attack (Unfinshed Sympathy has one of the best intros i've ever heard)..

[Azrael]

Skyclad said it all:


Forgive me if I'm 'out of order' -
This new music has no soul.
It may be good for making money,
Sadly that is not my goal.

Integrity and honesty are words that you don't understand.
But you're the best - it says so in
the penny dreadful in your hand.

Chorus :
I saw you in a magazine - they're calling you Mesiah.
They must be living in a dream -
they couldn't be more wrong.

Oh, if we'd play this riff more punk
then maybe we'd have had a million seller.
But this piper's tune is not for sale -
I'm glad to say I'm not that kind of fella.


D.J.'s , V.J.'s - pimps and trollops,
Never mind music - this is bollocks.

Chorus ;

Turn on, tune up, cash in, sell out.

Stand your ground behind the times -
And refuse to follow fashion.
Write your poetry with anger,
And then sing it with a passion.

Painted faces in a circus - images that spring to mind.
When I read my penny dreadful
filled with pictures of your kind.


Commercial suicide's appealing
after ten years on this losing streak.
'Cause I'd rather be called sour and bitter
than be deemed the flavour of the weak.


Chorus

[Josh Redstone]

I think Azrael is on to something there.
Plus I happen to think bands that use the turntables and stuff in thy're music suck anyway. They are around cause people like turntables, andif you took them away, they'de just he a bunch of people playing one finger guitar chords and yelling.

[Benoit]

I'm not 100% sure but I think it's Ice-T that was in bodycount not Ice-Cube.

Well at least bodycount had SOME guitar in it.

I do listen to some band that as rap in their songs but most of them aren't really commercial (Biohazard, crowmag).

I only listen to these band when i'm pissed at something, helps me come down in a weird kinda way. Their music are mostly filled with anger. I never really got that. Maybe it's the start for a new forum thread??

[PonyOne]

Body Count=Ice T. But both the Ice's are very good rappers. randmaster Flash, Melle Mel and the Furious Five, Sugarhill Gang, Public Enemy, and Run DMC, all the early guys were very good. A lot of their music, after they started cashing in, began using real bass, drums & guitar. I posted this in another thread somewhere, but in an interview, when asked what he thought about the current crop of rappers, Grandmaster Flash said something to the effect that "back in the ghetto we didn't have money for real instruments, so we'd take records and spin the basslines over and over to rap over, and then by the time we did White Lines, we had a real bass." He also said something to the effect that most of the rappers out nowadays are worthless.

I'd have to agree, rap has gone from songs like "The Message" and "Give It Up" to that damn Nelly song ("it's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes") and sh!t like that.

To do anything well in music, it takes talent, skill and insight. There are a lot of guys out there who play guitar whose talent pales in comparison to a lot of guys who rap or DJ, and vice versa. Pesonally, I prefer rock, but I do have some rap CD's, and I won't automatically discount rap. One of the things that tuns me of the most is the flashiness and absurd excess that is so big in rap nowadays. The guys from Linkin Park, who I hate, all live like kings and have more money than most of us could imagine ever having. But at least in their videos, they don't prance aound wearing a $6500 outfit and then drive through a ghetto, which of course is also filled with people who look like they ae buddy-buddy with Versace, rolling down the street in a long line of Bentley's, Cadillac's, Ferrari's and other exotic vehicles.

I use synths, and when I don't use the pre programmed sounds, all the samples are things I do on my own. I won't sample Vai and act like it's my sound.

I think that Linkin Park went to Mars Music and got one of those "First Mix" DJ sets that have the instructional video from that DJ on MTV. They really, really, really suck; most DJ's wouldn't show their face until they were a thousand times better than Linkin Park. I've heard the mixed versions of a few of their songs on the radio; they took a bunch of crappy, weak songs, and then butchered them to make a bunch of crappier, weaker songs.

I like shredding, but I do it when it fits the song. I don't like the guys who just manically shred because they've got good chops and want to show off. I've seen bands live that were like that; their drums are simplistic, their bassist is doing a 12-bar blues, and the lead singer is just mumbling some crap about bringing it on back, and the guitaist is flying up & down the fretboard at Mach 6. Then they stop, and the lead singer goes "thanks," and the pain starts for another five minutes.

I like adding some tear-assing in songs when you get to the bridge or chorus, or thow in the obligitory solo, and sometimes, I'll shred in the verse, but it's not really overdone. I prefer to blend it with the song itself. I won't, say, go against the bass and shred up in the 3-5 fret area, and then shriek down the fretboard to shred in the 17-21 fret range just because I can. I may throw in a quick, manic little squeal, again, if it fits the mood off the song, but I know when I should just be hitting chords.

To me, Tom Sawyer is a good example of a song that uses some light shredding and some simple triads & chords to present a certain mood.

[Christoph]

Originally posted by Josh Redstone
. . . or some guy shouting about how great he is in front of a drum machine.

LOL . . . totally agree, man. But like it or not, that's today's music. What a sad world we live in . . . where people who push a few buttons on a drum or synth machine get more recognition than people who actually know how to compose and to play their instruments.

Oh well, more mass produced pop and rap garbage for the music-illiterate masses!

[PonyOne]

I love my drum machine... of course, I don't just make a simplistic beat, I have at least five things going at once.

[SLY]

I can't take the comparison between guitar music and the 'cut & paste' music, they are totaly different, it's not bec I'm a guitarist, I respect all other real musical instruments and love most of them, specialy stringed (violin,cello,sitar,oud,etc.) bec you get real music out of that.. but when it comes to having some computer softwares & mixing machines to MAKE your music, this is something else..

Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but I can never accept calling a DJ as a musician, may be a sound engineer, music editor, or anything else ... but NEVER A MUSICIAN !

[PonyOne]

With beatboxes, it's actually quite different. The same with synths. It's like a guitar; the sound is in the instrument, but it's waiting for you to trigger it. You can do it half assed or you can do it artistically.

My beatbox, the Yamaha RM1X, comes with a lot of pre programmed beats, and I've never touched them. I never use them with my music, I go into the sounds and modify them to suit my needs, then lay them down as I see fit; I can't afford a drumset or synths, and don't have anyone to use them for me live, so the sequencer is great. it's still my creativity.

[Polera]

The true of the matter is that the primary concerns of those who produce the music is to get new music out there. By that they have steered away from Rock and thus were left with rock. They also control the exposure to such music and continue plaster rap everywhere. Unfortunitly most people will follow what others give them, instead of what they believe themselves. When i listen to music it is to relate, and of course listen to the god given talents that play the guitar and such. How many people are shallow enough to listen the thong song over and over?...enough are. Said thing is that they might find meaning in all that fables... However not too rule out that all rap is bad, there are a few that are ok....but i cant think of some right now.

[stratman42]

We had this argument at skool once...my m8 killed the argument with one line.

"Rap? You might as well listen to a story tape speeded up."

[Raskolnikov]

Most rap and techno makes me want to kick a puppy. That said, judging all rap and techno by what's easy to hear (either on the radio or in general "pop" culture) is like judging Metal by Nelson.

No matter what the genre or subgenre of music, there are always people who inovate and push the envelope in one way or another and there are always people who produce incredibly lame work. Usually one will find that the least threatening music always makes it onto the radio; that's because most people just want to hear something that sounds good; they've got bigger prioretys than music. It's the natural way of things.

Finally, to me someone who calls themself a DJ and plays other people's music in the midst of a light show is not a musician. However, someone who calls themself a DJ, can mix two records together or set a needle down in the middle of a specific song on a specific record and work the controls/record to produce a specific sound, and can do it live is a musician. Big difference folks.

[Bardsley]

I love it how PonyOne can sit here and talk about how he uses electronic stuff for his music, and how it helps him get the sounds he likes, etc. but everyone completely ignores it and goes on with the same old lame "but it's not music" bull****. I mean, can people get over themselvse for one second and actually think tha tmaybe the reaosn why people become DJs or rappers or whatever is because they are passionate about music and they want to create music too, just like everyone here (or at least, I hope that's something to do with what everyone here is on about).
You listen to good DJs talk about the music they listen to and it's stuff like Miles Davis, Coltrane, the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, a whole lot of different stuff. When I read an interview with someone who talks passionately about a whole lot of the music that I love too, I get thinking that there's got to be something worthwhile in listening to that guy do his stuff. Of course, I may end up thinking that despite their influences I don't like their music, but I respect them for trying, and for doing something that they feel is important.
I see a helluva lot more integrity and respect for musical tradition in a guy like DJ Shadow than I do in a lot of rock bands.

[skee1]

My 2 cents for what its worth!
If you all were playing in a working band you would
know that DJ'S and 1 piece bands are now killing 4 and
5 piece bands in clubs and all over the usa.
Its because they can do the jobs cheaper than a 4 or 5
piece human band.(Also the one piece band is useing alot
of programmed stuff .(Which i call plastic music)
a Dj can do the gig for $300 where the 4 piece band needs
$800 for a 1 nite gig.(figure)
Mark
P:S Electronics, programing in a 1 piece band is killing
the 4 and 5 piece band.
And about RAP its story telling and it dos suck.
Its a rip off for mindless listers.(My opinion)

[Edited by skee1 on 10-03-2002 at 11:17 AM]

[PonyOne]

Holy crap, somebody's out there??? Thank you, Bardsley...

Even if rap is just telling a storyline over a simple beat, there are some poets whose poems are musical without singing. Alan Gisberg's "Howl" comes to mind. Even if not musical, listen to the feeling envoked from hearing a holocaust survivor speak of the facets of the human soul, and then compare that to Blink 182's "What's My Age Again?"

In a literal, technical sense, music is a group of sounds chained together deliberately to present itself as a group of sounds chained together. To this end rap is music. Few will argue that ethnic drumming with someone going "mahubaaaaamuuuuum, mahubaaaaamuuuuum" over it isn't music, no matter how simple it is. Rap is music. Whether it's good or bad, that's another issue, that's up to your perception.

Synthesizers can generate sounds that are alternately beautiful a fleeting, or distorted and gutteral. Like the difference between playing a solo with lots of reverb and not going below the 12th fret, or playing a distorted, brooding measure on the 2, 3rd and 5th frets on the low E. If you sit down at a drumset and try to play the guitar solo from Kashmir, see how far you get.

I can't get a wide range of sounds out of my guitars... like, basslines in the same key as a bass, or heavily distorted thump noises and static. But, if I sit down at my Yamaha and select "Pick Bass," lower the pitch as far as possible, select my reverb as White Room @ lvl. 10, select tube amp and put the LFO Cutoff at 5khz, up the drive to 42, velocity at 127 for the quarters and 45 at the eighths, and then go into the sequencer and up the bpm to 350 and then lay down my bassline, then repeat the process with a Sonar sound on top and use the Analog Kit at the bottom, I come up with a sound that would not exist outside my box (whoa, I made a statement that works on two levels....)

Nature didn't provide us with a cure for cancer, so should we not try and find one? And if music being generated by a little black box being activated by a musician is not music by your definition, you should probably take your amps, effects, microphones and stereo and trade them in for a really nice Takamine.

[Edited by PonyOne on 10-03-2002 at 04:25 PM]

[educatedfilm]

*slaps forehead*... ooops, I was thinkning of ice-T... sTill Ice cube isn't bad...

I agree very much with ponyone here...
My veiw on music has always been: if you WANT to do it, do it.

I like rap as a genre, because it ventures beyond melody... it's kinda like depictions and rythems all in one... It's difficult to explain... kinda like trying to get a Via fan to understand dylan, or a metalica fan to understand REM... basically, what i'm trying to say, is that there is a world of expression beyond chord progressions/ leads/ vocals/ drums... It's a world of concepts, muses, and anything intresting really..

What's sad is that a lot of guitarists are GUITAR minded (obvious statement, ok)... so i find a lot miss the SUBSTANCE of a song..

[Edited by educatedfilm on 10-04-2002 at 03:48 PM]

[Bardsley]

By the way, though I am taking the "pro rap side" ere (how do i get myself into these things?), i do to agree with you to a degree Skee. DJs to a large extent are killing the live band scene, and that is not good at all. Even worse are the pokie machines though, they're really destroying the pub scene in Australia. However, the kind of DJ that does that is not a good musician, he is a guy who picks top 40 radio records and manages to put the singles together just well enough so they don't quite gell propery when the tracks change, while occaisionally saying"yo, it's goin' off in da house!" while trying to pick up the underage girls who used fake ids to get in there in there first place. That's not the kind of electronic music I'm trying to defend. The guys who I am trying to defend generally cost more to hire than half of the rock bands (which isn't a good thing, it just is). I think the point is, if you can create a sound that apppeals to you, and fits what you are trying to express or whatever, it doesn't matter how you get the sound, the point is that it sounds right. Because that's what music is about: sound and silence. Music should be inclusive, and innovative, and accepting, not constantly being aobut people saying "that's not music". I mean, people used to say that the #4 was killing jazz. Gues what. That's right. It didn't.

[metalisbest]

I know what you are talking about man. Everyone morning I have to ride the bus to school(don't have license yet) and all they play is rap because majority. Me and like 4 of my friends are sick of it.

[Josh Redstone]

I go through that all the time. I'll be in class and someone will want to put the radio on, so they turn on this stupid top 40 station which plays cheesy pop punk and Britney Spears, instead of the good station. Just rock, hard rock, classic rock, all the good stuff.

[rockinfreak09]

haha Im in grade 7 right now.....last year these stupid assholes were on patrol to do the stupid cd player for a party I handed over some Red Hot Chili Pepper music and they rejected it calling gay and stuff. They all remained listening to boy-bands...the only rock they played was Linkin Park :(

[Edited by rockinfreak09 on 10-05-2002 at 10:35 PM]

[PonyOne]

don't worry, little bro... as you advance through the grades, you'll find mor epeople with an appreciation for real good music.

if not, move to LA, Seattle or London.

[stratman42]

London?? Sorry, i'm from near manchester (the UK one) an theres loads of good music fans up here, but i've been down souh an its full of trendies...

[Josh Redstone]

We should all make more guitar, bass or drum playin' friends. They seem to know what good music is.

[metalisbest]

Ponyone, you are wrong man. I'm in grade 10 now and rap still rules over rock at my "Catholic" private school that I go to. Although there are a few rock lovers, most of them are death metal goths, which I can't get into.

[PonyOne]

wait another two years, or get outta catholic school...

hmm, i've always heard London had a good rock scene. I know manchester does. when I went to London there were a lot of techno kids hanging around but there was also a pretty big group of people who were into rock.

[metalisbest]

It doesn't matter what school I go to man. I know people from every school and its all about rap and techno. I can take some techno like the Chemical Brothers, but that is about it. I'm thinking about doing a gig at my school to make people realize what good music is.

[iamthe_eggman]

Originally posted by PonyOne
Even if rap is just telling a storyline over a simple beat, there are some poets whose poems are musical without singing. Alan Gisberg's "Howl" comes to mind. Even if not musical, listen to the feeling envoked from hearing a holocaust survivor speak of the facets of the human soul, and then compare that to Blink 182's "What's My Age Again?"


LOL!!!!

[Dejan Sajinovic]

Today at the gym, a guy came and took out Metallicas Black Album and put in 2Pac. I thought my self damn, but then California Love came and I was like O.K. But than came a guy and put in Korn and I was like, oh-no I gotta get out of here.

Now I´m just a begginer at the gym whos lifting about 5 kg our so and I ain´t got the guts to tell a guy who like 2 times bigger than me, back of dud it´s time for my music but as soon i get big I´ll play Dream Theater all day long. But than again I´ll never get big ´cause I don´t think that too much muscels is cool.

There´s now doubt that raps lyrics are amazing but most of them based on same thing-Rough Street Life wich gets boring in the length. But still they are OK.

PS. Body Counts lyrics by Ice T are very very fun. Just listen to songs like KKK Bitch. So fun but still so true and real.

[Edited by Dejan Sajinovic on 10-07-2002 at 12:18 PM]

[Josh Redstone]

I make people relize what good music is. What little guitar people do hear in music is all rhythm, so I just go back to the lost art of lead guitar and blow there minds. There like, "Wow, what song is that?" I'm like "I just made it up."
I used to think there was a whole lot to fancy playing, but they're really isn't. I'm surpised most guitarist dont play more lead anyway. It impresses people more, doesn't it?

[PonyOne]

It's very true... I don't get why so many today relinquish themselves to strumming three or four chord shapes under someone's vocals when they could be singing right along with their guitars... don't get me wrong, I know that there's a time for shreddin gand a time for strumming, but, I went electric for a reason.

This is a great site, http://home.swipnet.se/freakguitar/, Mattias Eklundh's page. For those don't know, he's a crazy shredder from Sweden (aren't they all? :)) who has hundreds of scales, licks and ideas up. Personally, I love taking the lead and flying up & down the fretboard a little...

[Dejan Sajinovic]

Mattias is not only shredder. He has hell of more music in himself than any guitarplayer out there incl. Vai. But you should see him live. He´s so good that it hurts. I saw him at Sweden Rock Festival (amazing festival wich is evry summer. I have seen it now 3 years in row and it´s only like 1 hour driving from my town) a he sang while he played some amazing stuff and that was very impressive. Evrything sounded so damn perfect. Than once he had this 12 year old kid Johan Randen who was almost as good as he was and it was really sick.

Buy his CD Freak Guitar. Lots of crazy stuff including his jazz verision of Kiss´ Detroit Rock City.

[lalimacefolle]

Here are my two pennies worth.
I jam pretty much every night in my hometown of marseille, France. I'm a respected blues guitarist/ music teacher, and I'm usually able to sit with the local bands and jam with them because at some point, I have taught the guitarist that's in the band.
There are at least 5/6 bassist in my town that have the chops of the late great Jaco Pastorius, a good dozen guitarists that have enough taste and touch to play blues like some of the greats, around 5/6 guitarists that would make Yngwie (or Ia, or Ron Thal) blush etc...
But while all of those guys wait for is their solo spot, I usually sit in and make the groove work. I play the solo if the singer or the guy who's in charge of the song/jam points at me and asks me to play one. I can play the bass (I usually do that since those damn guitarists won't play a "sub-6 strings" instrument) and I can pretty much play any James Brown song, any Jimi's song, most of the blues standards etc... And guess what, while other guitarists keep switching during the jam, I'm the one that sits the whole time, finally becoming the "official guitarist" of some of the jams I go to. And this, without ever having the spotlight on me.
While us, guitarists, worry about chops, the audience wants a groove to dance to, and if you can't deliver that, you can have as much chops as you want, you're not an accomplished musician... That's my opinion.

[Josh Redstone]

I once had to lay down the groove, not worry about chops and fancy licks, but the thing was, I couldn't play them!

[lalimacefolle]

You could'nt play the groove or the licks?

[Josh Redstone]

I could play the groove, but not the licks. Not to worry, now I'm lickin' like crazy. (Sorry if that sounds funny)