“I would not have picked up the guitar if not for Motley Crue. I would not have been interested in music at all if it was not for Michael Jackson.”-- Bryn Bennet (Bang Camaro)
They buried Michael Jackson today. No gotcha moment where he comes out and does the moonwalk it’s over and done with. There are some who would be content if the guy never got any peace. Some want to honor him for all the humanitarian work that he did. For all of the detractors I will say this and try to move on. I rarely ever hear about the stuff Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley were allegedly involved in throughout the course of their lives and careers.
I missed the Memorial Live because I got a call from Pop Dukes. He needed me to take his sleeping machine to him so that he could get it fixed. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to go back home considering I had two guitar lessons to teach so I grabbed some lunch and sat in the park for a while until it was time. I started working on some tunes, I have chord progressions and what not out the ying yang. Still no lyrics yet. But hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later
As I called my first appointment of the day she was telling me that she had been watching it balling her eyes out. So it was my job to sort of focus on the task at hand. We got through the lesson and two weeks off seem to have helped her a great deal, she seemed to have worked on her technique and it’s improved to the point where we can start shopping for song books.
My next Student is also progressing nicely, we have to see about getting her a guitar. She’s also pretty much ready for song books as well. She’s interested in being able to play songs on her guitar for her students in her pre-school class. So once she gets a guitar we’ll focus on developing a repertoire. I’d like her to also learn something that would be fun for her.
I’m excited about the prospects now because we’re getting to the point where the teaching is going to deviate into a more individual sphere. They’ll both be learning two different things. Which excites me.
After my lessons there was a quick trip home but only to grab gear. I had a recording session to run to in Wynfield. I had a couple of hours to watch the Michael Jackson memorial. I thought a lot of it was fitting. I like Al Sharpton’s speech that was followed by John Mayer’s perfect rendition of Human Nature. Perfect in the way that it was just so fitting. It showed that Michael Jackson’s music impacted everyone not just the R&B singing dancing set and how important melody was to his music. I got through most of it and went on to my recording session.
There’s so much about the hip-hop recording session that feels like prostitution at least at first. You travel to someone’s house, it’s usually a little dark and creepy upon entry, you sit your stuff down and for a predetermined amount of time you use your talents to satisfy a client. What you’re doing is enjoyable but you’d rather be doing it on your own terms.
The biggest problem with all these sessions is the communication barrier as most of these hip-hop producers are more like computer programmers that like music than actual musicians. So words like riff and bridge could in fact mean anything, delay could mean reverb, and you end up having to decipher what their definition of rock is or R&B in order to fix your settings accordingly. It’s sort of like I’m speaking English and the other guy is speaking mandarin.
The second biggest problem is most of these guys aren’t (or can’t afford) professional engineers and often don’t have a tight grasp of their equipment, so it can take 50 years to get a sound from your guitar into the computer. You often end up assisting the person that’s recording you.
Once we jumped those two hurdles we were pretty much off to the races. He had some interesting beats, he used a variety of sounds and styles and unlike a lot of hip hop producers there’s a “parking space” for my guitar. Since there are so many programs and Keyboards where you can get so many different sounds so many guys layer and layer and layer and there’s no real room for someone to play and when they do it just sounds like too much but with this guys stuff you could see the two yellow lines. He had good ideas about what he wanted and as he threw the beats up and I laid parts down he allowed me more freedom which I liked a lot. After about 3 hours we ended with me playing a little Human Nature instrumental that I guess he’s going to sample and then I got my ride home
I was beat and needed rest. I tried to stay up to watch Weeds but it was nothing doing. Got a big day tomorrow.
Human Nature
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