Last week it was just a growing interest in Queen and electric guitars. But, through the wonders of Internet, I spent last night reading old interviews of Brian May in guitar magazines, pausing occasionally to pull up songs from Queen or Brian's solo albums, either off my computer or off YouTube, including those karaoke/instrumental tracks on YouTube that allow one to really hear the guitar parts, especially as I know the vocals well enough to keep from getting lost. I also pulled up the tracks Brian mentioned from other artists, especially Jeff Beck, and could listen to the bits Brian was talking about in all these songs, and could figure out what sounds go with the techniques mentioned in wikipedia for Brian's guitar parts. I learned more by far in those two hours or so last night than I learned in the few weeks of Music Appreciation 101 I waded through.
So tonight I am continuing my education. I am reading a book on important recording studios and the people who recorded with them, and at some point I realized I didn't really know what Otis Redding sounded like, or have much of a reference for Hank Williams, Sr., or really recall the sound of Roy Orbison's recordings. So I am back on YouTube, this time on a new playlist with no Queen, no Brian May. I really like Otis Redding, it turns out.
I really think this is how Music Appreciation should be taught. Give starting reference points, via required reading and in-class video/audio and then let students follow the music. A glass bead game of sorts, but with a focus mostly in music. Of course, the story of the producer at Stax Studio mixing Dock at the Bay after Otis died in a plane crash reminded me very strongly of Brian and Roger talking about making Made in Heaven off the material Freddie left behind, and Hank Williams is in there too, as he died very young. And Nat "King" Cole died at about the same age as Freddie, only of cancer. Brian's song, No One But You, is hovering in the back o my mind increasingly as I read this book. Sure, there are musicians, great and successful and talented, who did not die young, but it seems a lot of them did, maybe because they live their lives on a faster or bigger scale, and one way or another they wore out early. And of course the history of recorded music draws in the rest of the history of all of what else was going on at the time.
Really I wish now that I had more time for this. I am almost 30, and while I have a long time left before I am old, I feel old to be just getting into music as a serious pursuit. Yes, it seems silly, too. After all there are thousands of new musicians on the modern music scene every day, and I am just starting out. Maybe I have something valuable in me with respect to music, but maybe not, and I won't know except by trying. I have no band, and no friends currently who are making music, so for now I am just working on me. If the Universe wants me making music I will meet the right people and find the right situations to make it happen. I simply have to put in the effort to be ready for whatever the Universe throws my way. So, for now, it is my books- music industry, recording technology, physics- and the Internet, and my CD collection. And lots of writing and other creative pursuits. Making my own music was fairly easy back when I was a kid and used to using music as a form of my own self-expression, but I am not so used to it any longer. But as I seem to have reached a point where listening to other peoples' music i sno longer enough, I need to start making my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment