thoughts
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What Dweezil Zappa is doing with guitar signal processing & sound design is astonishing. He’s using guitar technology to replicate FZ’s in-studio orchestration/overdub strategies live on stage. He splits the guitar signal to multiple paths, each with their own location in the stereo field then applies effects to each signal to create layers of guitars…
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Who knows if this is a theory, but I’ll give it a shot. Whenever I’m feeling that my creativity isn’t flowing properly, I rearrange stuff. Having issues playing your guitar? Change something. Play standing up. Swap out a pedal. Change picks. Change gauge of guitar strings. Play with a slide. Play with your eyes closed.…
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I’ve been entranced by Public Enemy’s 1990 masterpiece “Fear of A Black Planet” since it came out. I’ve worn out a number of cassettes, gave away multiple CDs and recently added a vinyl copy to my collection. What struck me about the vinyl version was how the “inner voices” leapt out of the speakers. Buried…
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I spent a few days up in the mountains of northern Arizona with my dog Marty recently. Sitting there at camp, staring out into the forest got me thinking about the album cover for Styx’ “The Grand Illusion.” This led me down the rabbit hole of re-listening to the four pack of middle era Styx…
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Here’s some of the things I’ve been listening to lately (in no particular order.) Opeth “Damnation” (2023) One of my favorite albums of all time. Finally snagged an original vinyl pressing of it. So good. Styx I’ve gone down a Styx rabbit hole recently. Dennis DeYoung is an amazing musician/singer/composer and a fascinating character. Being…
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As happens from time time with inquisitive artists, I’ve fallen into a deep dark beautiful abyss. The abyss I find myself is the post- “A Love Supreme” music of John Coltrane. My guide through this is Ben Ratliff‘s gorgeous and highly musical book Coltrane The Story of A Sound from Faber press. I’ve read a…
