Friday Influences Thread 07.09.10

[Stackabones]

What has influenced you as a songwriter in the past ... or since the last FIT?

 

*

 

A choir director once told me that we sing vowels, not consonants. I often think of that comment when singing and writing songs, especially when rhyming. It opened me up to the idea that perfect rhyme in spoken word is perhaps not as desirable as imperfect rhyme, such as assonance, in the sung word.

[Oswlek]

 

What has influenced you as a songwriter in the past ... or since the last FIT? * A choir director once told me that we sing vowels, not consonants. I often think of that comment when singing and writing songs, especially when rhyming. It opened me up to the idea that perfect rhyme in spoken word is perhaps not as desirable as imperfect rhyme, such as assonance, in the sung word.

 

 

I've heard that too, but I actually had to go the other way. Unless I pay attention to consonants, it is hard to understand what I am even saying.

 

I've been listening to this band a lot. They use some terrific arrangements to add little bits of flavor throughout. I've learned a lot about transitions and layering.

 

[YOUTUBE]1FC0Vrr_Oqo&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]jhvC3NCitq8&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]IhKgnCQxrrw[/YOUTUBE]

[Elias Graves]

My new Godin has been most inspirational the last two weeks. It feels like an old friend already and I'm doing stuff with I've never done before.

Seems silly, I know, but it's true.

 

EG

[Lee Knight]

I've been on a Bach kick for months. Years, actually. Best money I ever spend is toward Bach. I never tire of it. Lately this Concerto for violin and oboe is killing me. The key for to listening to Bach is to identify the main motif, then dig on how he plays with that simple melody in a multitude of ways... not unlike Miles, or God. With Bach, repeated listening pays off!

 

[YOUTUBE]tUf5pEUmBew[/YOUTUBE]

 

Bach listening tip. Don't hear the trapping of classical music. Don't think white powder in wigs and churches and chambers and {censored}. Think music. Then, you hear Bach.

[Stackabones]

I'm with you on Bach, Lee. I've been on a kick with him lately, too. A bit of the Cello Suites (just read Siblin's book), but mainly the vocal music. I've got the Bach Edition Box Set (155 CDs for around $100), and it's crazy how much vocal music he wrote -- something like a 100 CDs worth of vocal music, almost all of it for religious reasons. He could have written opera (which was the ticket to fame in his day and partly why he wasn't as well known during his lifetime, though he was known as a virtuoso but not so much for composing), but he wrote religious oratorio instead.

 

Bach's also a great example of recycling your own good stuff. He puts parts of this into parts of that all the time.

[rhino55]

 

My new Godin has been most inspirational the last two weeks. It feels like an old friend already and I'm doing stuff with I've never done before. Seems silly, I know, but it's true. EG

 

 

not silly at all

 

speaking of silly, this video from the early 90s is pretty silly or maybe just weird. Either way its awesome

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

 

here is Ben Folds Five doing the same song

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

 

I got asked to play in another country/folksy project and this is one of the songs they do. Fun one to learn. I like the jazzier approach to the chords from the Ben Folds Five version. Chicken pickin on a Maj7 FTW!

[Chicken Monkey]

I learned this one for the band:

 

 

If any of you chuckleheads posted this lyric (below), I'd have torn it apart. The central metaphor (a horse race) barely gets a mention in either verse. The G.D. chorus doesn't even make sense unless the listener can see that True Love, Heartache, and so on are capitalized, implying that those are the names of horses. And why does the winner lose all? The narrator didn't win, did he? Did he put his money on Heartache? What the H is going on here, exactly.

 

But it works. Go figure.

 

I feel tears wellin' up

Cold and deep inside

Like my heart's sprung a big break

And a stab of lonliness sharp and painful

That I may never shake

You might say that I was takin' it hard

Oh, she wrote me off with a call

But don't you wager that I'll hide the sorrow

When I break right down and bawl

 

Chorus:

Well, the race is on

And here comes pride up the backstretch

Heartaches are goin' to the inside

My tears are holdin' back

They're tryin' not to fall

My heart's out of the runnin'

True love's scratched for another's sake

The race is on and it looks like heartache

And the winner loses all

 

One day I ventured in love

Never once suspectin'

What the final result would be

How I lived in fear of wakin' up each mornin'

And thinkin' that you're gone from me

There's ache and pain in my heart

For today was the one I hated to face

Somebody new came up to win her

I came out in second place

[Stackabones]

Your youtube box is white.

 

CM, I used to play that song all time in a Grateful Dead cover band. Fun stuff.

 

Oh, and I guess it's a good thing George Jones never posted here.

[Chicken Monkey]

Fixed. I never really dug the Dead's version, but I did learn it to get the Deadheads off my back. We're going all in this week and learning "Dire Wolf", though.

[Stackabones]

Please, don't murder me. Cool song with some interesting changes.

[Chicken Monkey]

 

Please, don't murder me. Cool song with some interesting changes.

 

F'real. I think it's catchy enough to engage the singalong-inclined drunkards, the lyrics is a true pleasure to sing, the jacked-up chord progression and structure ensure it's not overdone, and the Deadheads would soil their undershorts if they weren't in the dirty laundry duffel back in the van. I'm basing that last predicion on the reaction my last band got to Jackaroe, which is a plodding, minor-key dirge with 16 verses and no chorus, but pulled some filthy dancers every time.

[Stackabones]

It's a been a while since I've played Jackaroe -- you could also get in El Paso and make 'em happy. Good times. If you really want the dancers, two-chord Fire On The Mountain will do it, and Franklin's Tower will crowd the floor. Estimated Prophet will get them groovin' in 7/4. And could you play other covers Good Lovin', Not Fade Away, Iko Iko. GD had some pretty good covers in their sets. You could probably build a whole GD set with just covers they did.

 

Some of the best & most appreciative & responsive crowds I've ever played in front of are Dead Heads.

[Chicken Monkey]

We're a two-piece, so the extended jams are pretty much off the table. We're doing a lot of Tin Pan Alley stuff, classic country, and some of our own tunes.

[Stackabones]

I don't get how you can't do extended jams as a two-piece? Of course, I do so many one-man solo shows that having someone else play with me would open up so many options.

 

What Great American Songbook tunes are you doing? I love that stuff and do a bunch in my sets. One of my favorites, though it's not as well-known by some, is September Song. Kurt Weill represent! I do plenty of Duke Ellington: Don't Get Around Much Anymore, Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me, It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), A Train (haven't done this in a while). My first chord-melody solo was Satin Doll. I'm thinking that I need to add Mood Indigo. Such a lovely tune.

[Chicken Monkey]

We're going a bit more broad--All of Me, Ain't Misbehavin' (lifted off a recent set list of yours), Sin to Tell a Lie, Fly Me to the Moon, and a few others.

[Stackabones]

Another good Fats Waller is Honeysuckle Rose -- and you can play it for the Willie Nelson fans. Makin' Whoopee covers a lot of bases, too -- and the chords are real straight ahead.

 

Do y'all do any Disney? I'm doing "I Wanna Be Just Like You" from Jungle Book in a version that borrows from the film and from Los Lobos with Django's Minor Swing as an intro. Wondering if I should do some others? Classic Disney, not the Lion King stuff.

 

I can't recall if you also play uke or mando. If so, do you use them in your duo. What's your duo set up instrumentation-wise?

 

Just looked at Mood Indigo. Man, it's got a lot going on.

[Chicken Monkey]

Another good Fats Waller is Honeysuckle Rose -- and you can play it for the Willie Nelson fans. Makin' Whoopee covers a lot of bases, too -- and the chords are real straight ahead. Do y'all do any Disney? I'm doing "I Wanna Be Just Like You" from Jungle Book in a version that borrows from the film and from Los Lobos with Django's Minor Swing as an intro. Wondering if I should do some others? Classic Disney, not the Lion King stuff. I can't recall if you also play uke or mando. If so, do you use them in your duo. What's your duo set up instrumentation-wise? Just looked at Mood Indigo. Man, it's got a lot going on.

 

I'm pushing for relatively simple songs, at least until we're done learning a half-dozen a week to get 4 sets together. IRT Disney, the other guy just heard someone do "Wanna Be Like You" at an open mic last week, and I know a few other folks who are doing it, so I'm trying to avoid it. I've been meaning to learn "When I See an Elephant Fly" for the past 6 months, but haven't sat down with it. It's easily my favorite classic Disney song, not counting the Robin Hood soundtrack.

 

I do play uke and mando. I just put a home-rigged piezo on the mandolin, and am working out the kinks there, but I do play the uke with the band, which is me and an upright bassist/singer/songwriter/whistler.

[Stackabones]

Upright bassist! You lucky dog, you.

 

I hear ya about simplicity. About a year or two ago, I reharmonized a bunch of the standards in my sets. So many jazzbreaux think that you have to "jazz up" reharmonizations by adding 13ths, alt doms, and tritone subs and other aspects of Chinese algebra, but reharmonization can go the other way, too. I got sick of the Real Book changes -- they just sounded like changes for noodling, not for singing -- so I said WTF it's not like I'm a real jazz musician anyway.

 

For example, you can play I Got Rhythm without using the Rhythm Changes in the A section. I often just use the I and V chords during the verses, and then when I take a solo I play the crazy changes from teh Realz Book.

 

I sing it in G ...

 

(G7) I got (D7) rhythm

(G7) I got (D7) music

(G7) I got (D7) my gal

Who could (G7) ask for (D7) anything (G7) more (D7+)

 

Give it a little Django goose pump and it'll swing.

 

Like I said, I went through a bunch of tunes and did this. Some worked, some didn't.

[Marshal]

OK. Somebody that I found on the net (Popped up on a Pandora Channel I have) is Dan Reeder. I just love is 'Havana Burning" song. He made his own guitar. It's funky cross between a real guitar and an amoeba. Sounds sort of like Stella.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTMR_jRWG_Y

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTMR_jRWG_Y[/YOUTUBE]

[junkyard bennie]

just my imagination

[rockinrobby]

What has influenced my music? Love and tragedy which are two sides of the same coin...

[Lee Knight]

I love the Race is On. George Jones is the one for me too. His rapid fire - hell bent reading rocks just right. I always told myself I'd learn that to bust out at parties. Thanks for the reminder CM!

[rhino55]

Another good Fats Waller is Honeysuckle Rose -- and you can play it for the Willie Nelson fans. Makin' Whoopee covers a lot of bases, too -- and the chords are real straight ahead. Do y'all do any Disney? I'm doing "I Wanna Be Just Like You" from Jungle Book in a version that borrows from the film and from Los Lobos with Django's Minor Swing as an intro. Wondering if I should do some others? Classic Disney, not the Lion King stuff. I can't recall if you also play uke or mando. If so, do you use them in your duo. What's your duo set up instrumentation-wise? Just looked at Mood Indigo. Man, it's got a lot going on.

 

This one always kills

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

[rhino55]

 

I love the Race is On. George Jones is the one for me too. His rapid fire - hell bent reading rocks just right. I always told myself I'd learn that to bust out at parties. Thanks for the reminder CM!

 

 

Sadly, George Jones is one of those guys I just havent spent a whole lot of time with. Interestingly enough, we had a gig last night in Laffayette, Sunday night gigs are always fun, and on the way back, one of the guys insisted on listening to George Jones.

 

I worked in my yard for ~4 hours (even took down a tree that I've been needing to bring down for a while), played a good 2 hour set an hour and half from home, and didnt have to drive so was able to drink a little comped whiskey at the club. I have to say George Jones made for a good ride home.

[Chicken Monkey]

 

Sadly, George Jones is one of those guys I just havent spent a whole lot of time with. Interestingly enough, we had a gig last night in Laffayette, Sunday night gigs are always fun, and on the way back, one of the guys insisted on listening to George Jones. I worked in my yard for ~4 hours (even took down a tree that I've been needing to bring down for a while), played a good 2 hour set an hour and half from home, and didnt have to drive so was able to drink a little comped whiskey at the club. I have to say George Jones made for a good ride home.

 

 

He's got a nearly Beatlesque range in his material from the early rockabilly stuff to the later countrypolitan stuff. There's gems throughout, though.