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05/01/12
On December 9, 1980 I woke to the news of John Lennon’s death the night before and immediately turned on the news. All three networks covered the murder of my rock hero and I was devastated. When they interviewed one kid from Wisconsin, his quote was something to the effect, “Music is the soundtrack of our lives.” That got me to thinking about my own life and the soundtrack that would go with it. I’ll start my soundtrack with 1963, since that was the first I’d heard of the new English group, The Beatles.
08/28/11
Very early in The Beatles’ career, they were just beginning to spread their wings as songwriters but didn’t have enough material to cover a whole live show, let alone their first album. They relied on cover versions of songs that they’d honed in their stage act over many years. As their career progressed, cover tunes declined on their albums until there was nothing but original material on their recordings. This article covers only the American albums and only up until their Yesterday…And Today album. I realize that on their Let It Be album they covered “Maggie Mae,” an English folk standard, but that was more or less a studio jam or filler.
11/28/10
When I broke away from my duo act nine years ago I figured that since I had the backing of many fine MIDI files, that I could do the job myself. And for the most part, I did. However, MIDI files did not provide actual vocal backings for the harmony parts that some of my songs required so I turned to MP3 backing tracks. They served the purpose nicely for a long time until I realized that all I could do with them in the way of editing was to change the pitch up or down or alter their tempos. But even that proved difficult, since changing the key up or down more than 3 half steps would distort the final product.
01/19/10
No, this article has nothing to do with the Ben Stiller movie of the same name. Last Saturday our local museum held a nostalgic display event featuring the rock and roll bands that originated from my hometown and the surrounding areas between the fifties and the eighties. A few weeks prior to the event most of us musicians received emails asking us to submit photos, thoughts, memories, memorabilia and even some vintage gear that they could display for the public. We all got name tags, which was a good thing since NONE of us looked like the photos on the wall that had been blown up to giant poster size.
09/14/09
Since Cybermidi’s inception more than seven years ago, I’ve been contributing not only this column, but a lot of the song/artist facts you see when you click on the latest demo on the home page. I’ve been too busy lately with the column and my own musical career to contribute to demo descriptions of late, but perhaps this column will make up for my absence. Here are some more behind-the-scenes facts about some of Flash’s sequences.
08/22/09
A lot has been written about the music of The Beatles. Critics and fans alike have analyzed and interpreted and picked apart every note they ever recorded until there’s nothing left to say, nothing new to learn about the music that changed the rock world beginning in the early 60s. However, in order to make that incredible music, The Beatles relied on four instruments that became the voice of the their music. Let’s take a little look into the background of the four most famous guitars in the world, shall we?
07/01/09
As you may already know, The Beatles wrote a lot of their songs about real people who had come and gone from their lives over the years. Some I don’t need to explain, such as The Ballad of John and Yoko. It’s obviously about John and Yoko. But it also mentions Peter Brown, Brian Epstein’s personal assistant, who knew the whereabouts of all The Beatles at any time. There were many more people immortalized within the lyrics of their music. Let’s talk about some of the other names mentioned in Beatle tunes, such as:
05/01/09
When I play with my duo we do a song by The Righteous Brothers called “Unchained Melody.” Not particularly one of my favorites, but my partner can reach the notes, so we do it. It’s my job to create the lyrics sheets with additional information that we can share with the audience. When I researched this song I found that this version was considered the best, although not the first…or second…or even third or fourth. Nope, The Righteous Brothers release was the fifth version of this song. That got me to thinking about other such occurrences, such as:
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