Friday, September 19, 2008

Drop D: what is up with that shit?

I consider myself a capable guitarist - capable of playing what I want to play to good effect in the works that I have produced and the performances to which I have subjected audiences. For me guitar tuning is: fat string first EADGBE. That's how I learned and it works for me. Self taught, obstinate, persistent. Yet I can't help noticing more and more (over the space of recent years) references to 'alternate tunings' and how the process of retuning your axe (man) can reveal new and great (and freakin' awesome) possibilities. Being a vaguely sentient guitarist, I filed all this away in my grey mush and generally just went about my guitar playing the old fashioned way, which suited me fine during this time.

Well! have I got news for myself! And anyone reading. If certain guitarists want to tune their guitars xyzabc that is fine with me but my experience with drop D today was horrible. I mean, like, talk about gnarly (in a bad way) - bad in a bad way - nu uh. No Drop D for me mutha fuckas.

Just play the fucking thing...

And, seriously, if you want to take music beyond what has been done before; away with melody, always march on with dischord and new harmonies the brain has yet to comprehend...well then fuck off.

I like a bit of melody. Don't mess with what people like.
Though admittedly, a lot of people like the original music computer Mozart and I find his stuff impossible to listen to. Give me Haydn. Or anything else. The delicate filagrees of a Lemmy bass solo might work at this moment.
Any dub recording too.

"So, Gustave, why don'tcha tune down your bass viol so it sounds like a dive bomber?"
"Sir, Maestro, I'm already kicking out as much bass shit as I can. But what you are referring to is anomolous in our time - they might discover us... "
"Yes, a lapse on my part. Ah...VU. The noise. Alas alack the retarded EQ. All I have is this twittering matrix of Mantiovani replays played by an army of robots who can barely wipe their noses never mind understand the feeling I want to bring to the music. But I'm such a twerp and a twit, I can barely sit still long enough to...who's she?...."

So, this all goes to illustrate something: Good writing is rare and this blog will defiantly do nothing to correct that - but while conservative in my guitar tuning views, I am otherwise very much in favour of new things being done in music, with music, for music, forever. But the caveat is that it needs to sound good - not to me necessarily - but whatever it is needs to have a receptive audience - not created by a marketing company.

Rambling again and unashamed.

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