I’m posting this for those interested in any form of drumming, whether kit or hand percussion. The points they make are for anyone who makes music, and some who don’t. I’ll be teaching lots of music stuff every day for as long as I can maintain it. Meanwhile, take the time to watch and listen to these guys — they really do know what they’re talkin’ about, and you would do well to take heed.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Solid Silver Open-hole Gemeinhardt flute has produced amazing results for CDs, but Native American flutes are very different in timbre and fluctuation.
Starting this very morning, we have a new music program. Monday afternoons will always be FAXL’s band practice. Here’s the plan for the remainder of the week, to make every day into a music day, if time, energy and schedules permit… We’ll be setting up the stage with the F# didgeridoo as the basic. On this, we’ll build percussion, to wit: everything we can lay our hands on that makes a sound when agressed upon percussively. That will include djembe, congas, rekinto, thumb-piano and a host of ibo and ube drums. Featured in the center will be (with your help — $1225 for the whole package including special shipping — is needed right now for this project) an array of chromium IBO stands and special Pro-35 microphones in five incredible HAPI drums. We haven’t yet found a stand for the big UFO angel drum. Here’s the reason we can do this now — I have found THE PERFECT (not too expensive, but not at all cheap) F# Native American flute that will allow me to make recordings for you that at last can include my HAWKAA Eagle and Hawk Calls. I will be doing workshops explaining how to draw your TOTEM out with the Native American flute, but it can’t be a cheap imitation. They just don’t work the same, although they can sound pretty good. The animal spirit has to be actually living inside the wooden heart of the flute, and must be invoked with a special breath. This is well known to all shaman everywhere. I made sure of that back in good old 50,000 B.C. (Truthfully, it was more like 48055 B.C., but 50,000 sounds soooo much better.) So, please somebody dig into the pocket, purse or wallet and make this exciting HAWKAA project possible. My bird friends are waiting to sky-walk you to Heaven.
Here’s a little fun thing just for reading the page…
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Here I am at Leslie-Ann’s Star-Lite Lounge, rehearsing for daily live performances. I’ll be telling jokes and stories, singing, maybe play DJ for a couple of hours, we’ll see what transpires as we go from day to day. The chairs are a new discovery, comfort and great poses abound, and I’m using them almost everywhere except the Hell-Racer … hmm….there’s a thought. Comfort in Hell. You might be wondering where the Star-Lite Lounge is located. Hehe…there are enough clues in the screenshot, but if you’re stumped, try the forum or go to the Ashram and start looking around.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Keep in mind that none of these instruments are sculpted prims or mesh…it’s all done with prims, straight and simple, and GODD textures that we’ve had and used for decades in our GODD video games.
If there are any Official Secrets to Music, these are they:
1. Tell a Story — this simply means any story about the simple nursery song that you’ve selected for this exercise (such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, or “Jack & Jill” or “Sing a Song of Sixpence” — any story will do, including that there isn’t one, ie; a rambling exploration of random notes and measures. Usually it means a story, pure & simple, describing the song’s major points, such as the fact that the farmer lived in a dell, had a wife, many chicks, ducks, geese, horses, cattle, swine, and a couple of wild and crazy dogs with a penchant for handouts. A story like that generally begins with a beginning, goes on a while in the middle, and stops at the end. The MIDDLE part is generally about the obstruction, the pain, the misery or the angst of it all. A typical song story is “my baby done left me”, whether you hear it in blues, folk, pop, ballad, country-western, jazz or classical, it’s always about relationships of one kind or another. That’d be human/human (read as: “human over human”) and bottle/human and a whole chain of seductions that read more or less the same. The story is told verbally before the instrument is sounded. The STORY should NOT take more than 1 minute to tell, especially the “Boy Meets Girl, Girl Gets Drownded, Boy Gets Hanged sort of murder-ballad you’ll find commonly in folk music.
I know what you’re wondering … what has overstuffed boobs to do with cross-harp harmonica? Beats me, but it does get the hits. Cross-Harp is easy to understand, if you know what happens when you blow or draw on a harmonica. Drawing produces opportunities for note-bending and other expressive and dynamic tricks that just won’t happen or won’t happen as well on the outbreath. Yes, we’re talking inbreath and outbreath here, and it’s all very esoteric, but that’s not enough to get us over the Sinister Barrier of incompetence…make that “rank incompetence”. Okay, so what IS cross-harping, anyway? Simply put, it’s playing the opposite side of the main guys. For instance, if the song is in the Key of A, let’s say, a 12-bar blues in A, then the harp player would want to play in D, to take the most advantage of the outbreath. Of course, one could hold onto an A and a D, one over the other, and take both sides, the straight key, and the cross-key; this can be very effective, but tends to create havoc in the new player. Look for my Cross-Harp Breakdown for more exact info on what harp to play across what, but here’s the gist of it:
G/C, A/D, Bb/Eb, B/E, C/F, D/G, Eb/Ab, E/A, F/Bb, F#/B, Db or C#/F# — and don’t hoc me in chaynekh that I included the F# — it’s a guitarist favorite, and you will eventually have to deal with it. I have a whole package in process for very, very advanced blues harp practice at home with my special “Lookin’ Good” Backing Tracks so stay tuned for most recent announcements…it’s happening hourly! I invented the backing track concept, and it makes you sound 1000 times better than you actually are!!! You will not believe how good you will sound on blues harp, the very first minute you play it, against my special backing tracks. Lookin’ Good ain’t the half of it. Pwn the Holidays with Gorby’s Lookin’ Good Backing Tracks for flute, harmonica, guitar, zen flute, recorder, horns and more!!!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
ej at red house 1971 — photo by T. Jones
I’ve developed a method for playing guitar that allows you to play very sophisticated and difficult scales without having to learn new chords or retrain your fingers. You’ll use the following chords: E, Em, E7, A, Am, A7, B7, to play in almost all the keys. You will instantly be able to fake solo leads using my simple lead chart. You can’t make a mistake, there’s nothing to go wrong. Total simplicity is the key to this easy to learn guitar cheat. In addition, I’ve developed backing tracks that allow you to remain at your present undeveloped skill level while still sounding absolutely pro. You can use this for holiday gatherings, and blow the minds of friends and family with your apparent skills at blues, jazz, hip-hop, ballad, pop, dance, rock, r&b, latin, reggae, folk, bluegrass, fusion, country and more!!! Each backing track CD has an entire show of about a dozen tunes, and you’ll sound incredible on ALL of them, I guarantee it! You can order the CDs now — see the titles above to order. The CDs will be available in a few days. Download options are being explored even as we speak. Oh, I almost forgot to mention it, but I have a set of backing tracks that will make you sound like the greatest jazz and blues flute player on the planet. Coming soon, a set of backing tracks that will make you sound like the greatest blues harp player in the Western Rim of the Galaxy Milky Way (strictly a local name — we Outer Limits Folks (OLFs) refer to your galaxy as “Shnarg”. I won’t translate, for fear of reprisals.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
This you hafta see. I was thinkin’ of some way to do this song — our band is nowhere near the skill level needed to even sing the thing in public, but this 2 million hit single in palm-farts takes the cake. I mean, how can you top this???
http://youtu.be/IOyEw9bT8yQ
See You At The Top!!!
gorby
Government Meltdown Blues
( Bm – Em – Am7 – Bb7 )
I thought I’d weigh in on the subject of the most recent government shutdown as a result of a few nasty people in the well-publicized “Caucus Suicide Pact”, a power-hungry political conspiracy which is currently holding the rest of the country hostage.
(guitar lead short solo here)
http://youtu.be/155S86jPam8
Couldn’t resist posting this; not only is it a terrific method for taking it easy on the guitar, but the instructions contain the most basic secret of guitar I know — don’t bust yer chops where you don’t have to! Uncle Raggy expresses perfectly the most fundamental guitar principles I hold dear — where we differ is in the area of regret. He says he made a mistake in not mastering the guitar correctly. I always had a clear choice and carefully and consciously selected the path of “what sounds good to me” and what doesn’t bust my chops to make happen. Like Uncle Raggy, I never play the same song twice, even though I know it well enough to do so, because I follow the Navajo Rule of Music: “Listen to the whole, and adjust yourself accordingly.”. You would do well to watch Uncle Raggy’s videos — there’s more wisdom there than meets the eye directly. Somebody asked Uncle Raggy if he was familiar with a 60s song, and his reply echoes mine: “Does it look as if I missed the sixties???” Join us at the ICW, where we’ll explore some of the ideas behind the song. You can catch me at Club Leger from time to time the next few days — breaking in a new routine.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby