Ravi Shankar – Monterey Pop Festival 1967

Posted on January 23, 2016 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

Today was a day to spend indoors. New York City is in the process of getting hit with about two feet of snow. I count my blessings that I am warm and conformable in my apartment looking out from my window as the snow falls outside. There are others who are not so lucky.
Strangely, as I watched the wind whip the snow into intricate swirling patterns, I was reminded of the music of Ravi Shankar and the tradition of North Indian classical music. Maybe it was the mandala like patterns I was seeing before me. Maybe it was my pain medication. I played the music from the clip below and it provided a wonderful soundtrack for the visual show Mother Nature put on today.

The film clip below, from the movie Monterey Pop which documents, shows only a brief excerpt from Shankar’s four hour performance.

For the better part of the first 6 minutes, the music is providing a background for surveying the “scene” at the festival. At the 6:30 mark, you can catch a glimpse of Jimi Hendrix and Mike Bloomfield listening intently to the music before the camera shows us the beaming face of Shankar’s tabla player, Alla Rakha and then finally Ravi Shankar himself (you can also catch glimpses of people like Michelle Phillips from the Mama & Papas and Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees).

Alla Rakha, in many ways, steals the show from Ravi. The way he nonchalantly looks at Ravi while his finger seem to effortlessly play these amazingly intricate rhythms that mirror the flurries of notes from the sitar. Then there’s the extended exchanges between the sitar and tabla that can only be described as blistering that begins at the 11:35 mark. They finally join together for the big rave up ending that brings the western audience (many of whom were hearing Indian music for the first time) to their feet. Also, if you are wondering what the third musician who appears to be randomly plucking strings is doing, she is playing the Tambura, the instrument that supports the other instruments by providing a continuous harmonic drone.

Ravi Shankar – Monterey Pop Festival 1967

Tagged with: Monterey Pop, Ravi Shankar
Posted in Music Appreciation and Analysis

“We Can Be Heroes” . . .: David Bowie (1947 – 21016)

Posted on January 14, 2016 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

When you turn on the morning news and you hear an old David Bowie song, you know it can’t be good.

There is no shortage of news articles talking about the life and career of David Bowie so I’ll just touch on some points on why he was so cool.

He was a constant experimenter.
As someone who was part of the pop music industry (whether he liked it or not), there is always the pressure to stay with the proven formula. He could have milked Ziggy Stardust but gave it up when he felt that it no longer offered a meaningful path of expression. The idea of Bowie as the “Reinventor” was a facet of his need to explore new ideas and new ways to present them. The very idea of reinventing one’s public persona was itself a new concept to what was rock music in the Seventies.

He went down swinging.
While battling cancer for the past 18 months, Bowie worked on what is his final album, Blackstar, while concurrently working on the Off-Broadway musical Lazarus, a “sequel” to the 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, that inspired the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film he starred in. The album Blackstar was made with the Donny McCaslin Quartet, a jazz rock group that I’ve seen play at the 55 Bar here in NYC. These are challenging works that deal with themes of mortality and loneliness. Not easy stuff. It’s a testament to Bowie’s uncompromising vision that he went out with a bang.

Great taste in guitarists.

Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Wow. Check out the link below for an article from Guitar Player magazine that discusses Bowie’s guitar collaborators.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/artists/1013/david-bowie-eight-guitar-greats-who-shaped-his-music/55898

And finally,

Five Words: “Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am!”

Suffragette City – David Bowie:

Tagged with: Classic Rock, David Bowie
Posted in Classic Rock, Music Appreciation and Analysis

Another Haiku For The Holidays

Posted on December 21, 2015 by ManRoy Music — 5 Comments

Another Haiku
As we seek a state of grace
Happy Holidays

Amazing Grace performed on the Chapman Stick Guitar (SG-12)

Tagged with: Chapman Stick, Chapman Stick Guitar
Posted in Chapman Stick

The Dreidel Song On Chapman Stick Guitar

Posted on December 13, 2015 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

Tonight’s the last night of Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday celebrating the re-dedication of the Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean revolt. I always felt that Christmas songs were generally better that the songs associated with Hanukkah. However there is one song from my childhood that always reminds me of the holiday: The Dreidel Song.

In honor of the holiday I made a video of me performing the Dreidel Song, New Orleans style on the Chapman Stick Guitar. This video is dedicated to my beloved Annie.

New Orleans Dreidel Song on the Chapman Stick Guitar (SG-12)

Tagged with: Chapman Stick, Chapman Stick Guitar
Posted in Chapman Stick, Improvisation

Cool Video Alert: 10 Things EVERY Bass Player Should Know

Posted on November 28, 2015 by ManRoy Music — 1 Comment

I recently came across an excellent YouTube channel called Scott’s Bass Lessons (https://www.youtube.com/user/devinebass/featured). The channel features a collection of free online bass lessons. There is something for bassists of every skill level, beginner to advanced. The range of topics covered is very impressive: technique, bass lines and grooves, theory, gear, etc. The videos are presented by Scott Devine who makes for a very entertaining teacher and explains the material in an articulate manner that really help one grasp the point he’s trying to make.

Below are two of his videos that touch on very important concepts not only for bassists but for all musicians. The first one, “10 Things EVERY Bass Player Should Know” stresses the importance of developing your time sense (your “groove”), focused practice sessions, ear training, technical command of your instrument, knowledge of music theory and having the right attitude. At the end of the video he invites us to add our own items to the list in the YouTube comments section. I am particularly impressed that he often replies to the comments offered. This level of interaction with his You Tube audience is truly commendable.

10 Things EVERY Bass Player Should Know /// Scott’s Bass Lessons –

The video below is interesting because it deals with the things that we should avoid as bassists. Things like not paying attention to the true duration of the note (a whole note should be played as a whole note,a eight note should be played as a eight note), poor muting technique and not using dynamics and accents in your playing. It should provide a wake up call to any bassist watching it (myself included).

6 Common Mistakes Made by Bass Players and How to Avoid Them /// Scott’s Bass Lessons –

I have only watched a small number of the videos available on Scott’s YouTube channel but the ones I have watched so far have all shown that Scott is committed to excellence and wants us to be as well. That how we all get to the next level.

Tagged with: Bass, Ear Trainning, Online Lessons, Practice, Techniques, Theory
Posted in Bass

“He’s a bad motha – SHUT YO MOUTH” . . .: Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World

Posted on November 14, 2015 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

The video below was brought to my attention in a recent post on OpenCulture.com. It a very cool documentary on the wah-wah pedal. Yes, the wah-wah pedal. The coolest guitar effect ever! Featuring a slew of guitarists (Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Kirt Hammett among others), the video does a good job of discussing technical aspects of the pedal, it’s history and it’s impact on contemporary music. It also point’s out what is to me the most appealing aspect of the effect: the way it allows the player to interact with it in a truly personal manner. Everyone who uses a wah pedal works with it in a way that is unique to that person.

Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World –

Is it strange that after watching the video, it made me nostalgic for 70’s porn? Don’t judge me.

Tagged with: Cry Baby, Guitar Effects, Vox, Wah-Wah-Pedal
Posted in Equipment

“Ooh . . Scary”: Phish Perform Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House

Posted on October 29, 2015 by ManRoy Music — 1 Comment

As an old Deadhead, the thought of discussing Phish can indeed be scary. I have tried to get into Phish in the past but I just could’nt do it. My main problem was the quality of the songwriting. I would listen to live tapes and like some of the improvisations but I found their original songs for the most part to be mediocre at best. The melodies were pedestrian and the lyrics were downright infantile. Compare “All I know is something like a bird within her sang” (The Grateful Dead – Bird Song) with “Won’t you step into the freezer, Seize her with a tweezer” (Phish – Tweezer) and you have the poetic vs. the puerile. But after reading glowing reviews of their tour this past summer, I decided to check them out again. While I still find their songwriting to be uninspiring, I was impressed with the improvisational spaces they would get into. So with that in mind, I want to let everyone know about a web site called Phish Just Jams. The site provides listeners with live recording of Phish with the lyric and composed sections of their songs removed, leaving only their improvised jams. You can filter the jams by year, tour, song and duration and location. What I found particular interesting was the variety of different sonic spaces the band would get into on different performances of the same song. For those people like me who love the jamming but hate the songs, this is the way to listen to Phish.

Link – Phish Just Jams
http://www.phishjustjams.com/

In keeping with the Halloween season, the clip below is the second set from Phish’s 2014 Halloween show. In past Halloween shows, Phish would perform a classic album in it’s entirety. Past tributes included The Beatles’ White Album, The Who’s Quadrophenia, Exile On Main Street by the Rolling Stones, Remain In Light by The Talking Heads and The Velvet Underground’s Loaded (big props for the last choice, one of the great underrated rock albums of all times IMHO). For 2014’s show they did something different. They paid tribute to an album from the past but instead of some iconic classic rock album they chose Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. Released in 1964, Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House was a collection of narrated stories and sound effects. Phish took 10 of these selections and built instrumentals around them. The songs tend to follow a similar structure: a spoken intro from the original Disney record followed by Phish’s original music that spaned prog rock, jazz funk, dreamy Pink Floyd like soundscapes and hard rock. On some songs, the sampled sound effects are incorporated into the music, notably in Your Pet Cat, The Birds and Martian Monster. Accompanying all this was a stage production featuring a haunted house, dancers channeling their Thriller video moves, laser lights and the band dressed in white tuxedos and zombie makeup. Ooh, scary!!

The set list and times are as follows:
0:01 The Haunted House
8:48 The Very Long Fuse
13:10 The Dogs
17:55 Timber
23:23 Your Pet Cat
28:44 Shipwreck
35:25 The Unsafe Bridge
39:03 The Chinese Water Torture
45:57 The Birds
55:20 Martian Monster

Phish 2014-10-31 HALLOWEEN SET 2 – Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House

Happy Halloween.

Tagged with: Halloween, Jamband, Phish
Posted in Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

Cool Website Alert: Jazz Advice.com

Posted on October 13, 2015 by ManRoy Music — 2 Comments

For a musician with a thirst for knowledge and a desire to get better, the internet can be a wonderful thing. I am always checking out YouTube videos, websites and blogs that deal with topics that are near and dear to a music geek’s heart: music theory, improvisation techniques, transcribed licks. You know, the usual stuff. And as someone who has been playing music a very long time, I have my opinions on what stuff works better than other stuff. And a lot of that stuff is wrong! OK, maybe “wrong” is too strong a word but I get annoyed when I read tutorials that say the same basic thing about learning jazz improvisation: see this chord, play that scale. If improvisation was just a matter of knowing your scales than there would be many more Parkers, Coltranes and Monks around and there aren’t. Knowing scales is the beginning of the process but it’s often taught as The Answer.

This brings me to a cool website alert. I strongly recommend that you check out Jazz Advice.com. Two young jazz musicians, Forrest Wernick and Eric O’Donnell, have put together an ongoing series of articles that talk about the jazz advice they’ve received in their quest to become better musicians. They stress the importance of leaning the jazz language, developing that language for your own expression and applying it to tunes. While they have articles discussing such things as ear training, improvisation concepts and rhythm, they recently posted a fascinating slide show that I think really sums up their philosophy on how to develop as a jazz musician. Titled “What Should I Practice? The 3 Essential Pieces to Practicing Jazz Improvisation”, it offers great advice on how to go about becoming a better musician. I admit that I don’t follow their advice religiously (they provide the advice, you have to supply the discipline) but it has given me a some insights on how I approach practicing and how to better develop myself as a musician. Check it out below:

What Should I Practice? The 3 Essential Pieces to Practicing Jazz Improvisation: A Free Presentation

Here is the link to their blog with lots of interesting articles that should appeal to the jazz musician geek in us all.
Jazz Advice.com

Home

Tagged with: Advice, Improvisation, Jazz, Music Theory
Posted in Improvisation, Jazz, Music Theory

“Who By Fire. .” : Leonard Cohen Meets Sonny Rollins

Posted on September 23, 2015 by ManRoy Music — 2 Comments

I have been meaning to talk about this clip for a while now and it seems appropriate to do so on Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement and the holiest days in the Jewish calendar.

For two seasons (1989 – 1990), the t.v. show Sunday Night (later called Michelob Presents Night Music) presented some of the coolest music ever on television. The show was put together by Hal Wilner and featured an eclectic group of artists who would often perform together, making for some unique and interesting collaborations. To me, one of the highlights was when singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen, backed up by the band Was (Not Was) with jazz great Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, performed the Cohen song, Who By Fire.

The melody for “Who By Fire” is based on the Hebrew for the prayer “Unetanneh Tokef” which is sung at Yom Kippur services. To quote Leonard Cohen himself:
“That song derives very directly from a Hebrew prayer that is sung on the Day of Atonement, or the evening of the Day of the Atonement:(? Hebrew) Who by fire, who by sword, who by water? According to the tradition, the Book of Life is opened and in it is inscribed all those who will live and all those who will die for the following year. And in that prayer is catalogued all the various ways in which you can quit this veil of tears. The melody is if not actually stolen, is certainly derived from the melody that I heard in the synagogue as a boy.But of course, the conclusion of the song, as I write it, is somewhat different: “Who shall I say is calling?” Well, that is what makes the song into a prayer for me in my terms, which is who is it or what is it that determine who will live and who will die ? What is the source of this great furnace of creation ? Who lights it ? Who extinguishes it ?” – from the Harry Rasky’s film “The Song of Leonard Cohen” (later fully reported in his book “The Song Of L. Cohen, Portrait Of A Poet, A Friendship And A Film”)

The performance opens with a tenor sax solo cadenza by Sonny before the full band enters and starts the song proper. The backup is tastefully understated except during the refrain where the backup singers add an interesting gospel touch. However, the song reaches transcendence with Sonny Rollins’ two chorus long sax solo. I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up when I first saw it that Sunday night many years ago and it still amazes me when I listen to it today. It reminds me of the blowing of the shofar (an instrument made from a rams’s horn) at the end of the Yom Kippur services. It all ties into the spiritual nature of music, connecting a Jewish prayer, a Canadian singer/songwriter, a rock band from Detroit and an American jazz legend.

Leonard Cohen, Sonny Rollins and Was (Not Was) – Who By Fire

It was one of those moments when you have seen/heard something that just totally blows you away. When you witness something that you know will stay with you forever.

Tagged with: Leonard Cohen, Night Music, Sonny Rollins, Was (Not Was), Who By Fire
Posted in Music Appreciation and Analysis

“Layla, you’ve got me on my knees. . . : Isolated Guitar & Backing Tracks

Posted on September 10, 2015 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

If you’re a music geek like me (and I assume you are if you are reading this) then you are fascinated by the the process of creating music. You want to see how it’s put together. If that’s the case then I think I have something with your mind in mind. Below are two clips that feature isolated tracks from the Derek & The Dominoes classic Layla.

The first clip has the isolated tracks for Clapton’s lead vocal, his lead guitar in the verses and choruses, a rhythm guitar on the chorus, and Duane Allman’s slide solos, plus acoustic guitar on the song’s piano coda and another guitar played through a Leslie rotary speaker. Listening to the clip made me appreciate once again how cool Clapton’s lead guitar is during the verses but the highlight has to be Duane Allman’s slide guitar part. Hearing it isolated from the rest of the song, Allman’s slide guitar (starting at 2:24) demonstrates his control and spot on intonation, something especially difficult when playing in the guitar’s higher range. At around 3:04, he’s actually going beyond the guitar fretboard but is still playing in tune. At the 3:33 mark, the famous coda begins and to hear Duane’s slide guitar part all by itself is breathtaking. Extra bonus: I never noticed before the acoustic guitar part that begins at 4:49. Nifty!

Layla – Lead Vocal & Lead Guitar

The second clip is the other side of the coin from the first clip. This clip has the backing tracks for Layla. This includes the drums, bass, keyboards (piano and organ), rhythm guitars, some harmonized guitar riffs and the backing vocals. Listening to this clip reminds me of how great a band The Dominoes were. Jim Gordon’s drums are high in the mix and pack a wallop but now you can also appreciate little things that were buried like the organ during the verses and the cool little triplet figures that bassist Carl Radle (one of the most underrated bassists ever) plays in the second half of the verse.

Layla – Backing Track (Drums, Organ, Piano, Bass, Rhythm Guitar, Backing Vocals)

This next clip ties it all together. It’s from an excellent documentary, Tom Dowd and Language of Music. Dowd was a long time engineer and producer for Atlantic Records and was involved in the creation of some of the most important jazz, rock and R&B records ever made, including Layla. In the clip below, he recounts how Clapton and Allman met and the immediate musical telepathy between them. Then, sitting at a mixing board, he plays some of the isolated parts of the song. As Dowd says in the clip, they’re playing notes that aren’t on the instruments.

Tom Dowd on producing “Layla”

Getting this look into how it was put together makes me appreciate this song all the more.

Tagged with: Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, Derek and The Dominos, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, Jim Gordon, Layla, Tom Dowd
Posted in Classic Rock, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis