aaron c beals

the Smashing Pumpkins recently started their 20th anniversary tour. has it really been 20 years? yikes… i can remember hearing “Today” for the first time and just about losing my mind with excitement. their more recent albums have not been quite up to snuff, but the Gish / Pisces Iscariot / Siamese Dream trifecta could be one of the best back-to-back-to-back set of releases by any rock band ever. my own musical tastes have been forever flavored by their dense yet nuanced layers of distortion and unmatched ability to alternate quickly mid-song between delicate melodies and crushing rock.

but 20 years? wow, i’m old…

tonight, i’m going to see these three guys at the Paradise Lounge (YouTube links to follow for those of you reading from Facebook–check out my blog for the videos):

i’ll try to post a review of the show sometime tomorrow, assuming that i’m not too busy setting my guitars on fire in desperation and defeat.

thanks go out to my buddy Brent Watson, who found out about this show last week and scored us tickets.

i’ve always thought that the link between us nerds and rock & roll was more than just a coincidence. first, there was Greg Graffin, who has his PhD in evolutionary paleontology from Cornell. and now, Brian May from Queen is going back to complete his doctorate.

so the other day, i saw jeff beck playing on … *shudder* … american idol playing with kelly clarkson, and it got me doing some research. it turns out that mr beck used to play for a little band, which put out a seminal album that i need to hunt down and buy. during this same period of time, this band was transitioning guitarists from beck to some dude named jimmy page, who happened to play with beck on his first album, which i also need to buy.

if i had the financial freedom to spend ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week, practicing and playing my acoustic guitar and banjo, i would… and even then, it would take me about twenty years to sound half as good as Andy McKee. he combines the classic fingerpicking and “harp” styles into something that can only be understood by listening and viewing. in order to show you what i’m talking about, i’ve included two videos of Andy in the studio recording his latest album, Art of Motion.

props to my brother for introducing me to Andy’s music.

“Drifting” by Andy McKee

“Rylynn” by Andy McKee

just discovered some new music today via the Dream Theater weekly newsletter:

Neal Morse (Portnoy plays on his latest album, “Sola Scriptura”)
Spock’s Beard (Morse’s former band)

unfortuantely, most of the song samples on Morse’s site seem to be non-functional, but all of the stuff is up on iTunes, so you can get the samples there. it’s certainly not as heavy as the latest offerings from DT, but it’s good in another way, bringing prog rock back to the days of Yes and Genesis. apparently, there’s another band out there that’s leaning more toward the rock&roll aspect of progressive rock:

The Flower Kings

ah… and now i see they’re from Sweden. a prog rock band from Scandanavia? shocking!

i know there are many other bands out there in this space, but unfortunately, like any musical genre, there’s a high level of junk. it’s always good to find new, solid artists. it’s just too bad i won’t be able to buy any CD’s for the next 30 years.

Back in the day, when I was in high school, I was one of the first of my friends to have Internet access, due to my involvement at Haystack Observatory. These were not the early days of the Internet, but they were certainly the early days of the World Wide Web. Before there were Google and Yahoo, there was Archie, which we used to search FTP archives.

Given that I was a budding guitarist, one of my favorites targets was “guitar tablature” (or “guitar tab”), which is basically homebrewed sheet music. It’s not a copy of real sheet music, but rather one person’s interpretation of what they hear — a transcription of their attempts to imitate the musical stylings of another. As you might expect, there is a healthy mix of good an bad interpretations; some are flat-out wrong while others are surprisingly accurate. But regardless of the quality of the tab, it provided a great starting point for your own intepretation of a song, especially if you were stuck on a particular solo or chord progression. Guitar tab was one of the primary tools in my arsenal during my formative years as a guitar player.

Eventually, guitar tab moved from FTP sites and newsgroups to collections on the web, the largest and most famous of which was the On-Line Guitar Archive (or OLGA). OLGA collected all the guitar tab and provided easy methods of browsing and searching the archive. A community grew up around the archive that cared for it and made sure the tab was of high quality. In general, OLGA did great things for armchair axe warriors everwhere.

Unfortunately, I speak of OLGA in the past tense, because for the forseeable future (as you might have noticed if you clicked on the link) OLGA is dead. The MPA (Music Publishers’ Association) deemed OLGA a threat to their intellectual property and requested the site be shut down. Clearly, they are concerned that I will release my version of “How to Save a Life” and put the much less talented members of The Fray out of a job. This must be the explanation.

From an IP (Intellectual Property) standpoint, this could be an issue of fair use, but the people writing the tabs are not copying sheet music. They are listening to a recording and trying to play what they hear. If anything, it’s reverse engineering. Which, of course, is illegal thanks to the abomination known as the DMCA.

Frankly, I think this is just another instance of the music industry shooting itself in the foot. Rather than getting young musicians excited about playing music (these are your next moneymakers, geniuses!), the MPA and NMPA are trying to squeeze every last penny out of them by making them pay for “official” transcriptions. Oh, and most smaller bands don’t have official sheet music because it’s too costly for the music industry to publish every song out there. Too bad for you.

Discuss.