Sunday music - Nujabes

Jun Seba, aka Nujabes. Hip hop extraordinaire.

^with Shing02. I love this one!

sampled the jazz classic "Affirmation" for this track

What can I say? His music is inspiring. Eye opening. Ear opening?

I first heard his music in middle school. Nujabes wrote much of the music for a great anime series called Samurai Champloo. At the time, I just thought that it was really cool music that meshed well with the show's blend of Edo Japan and elements of modernity. 

My friend Sinjihn (www.youtube.com/kirbykidsmith) re-introduced me to Nujabes' music earlier this year, and I've been hooked. It's had such a deep influence on me. I don't know how else to put it. Go listen to his music, especially the Luv(sic) series with Shing02. Inspiring and meaningful. It's what hip-hop should be.

Nujabes passed away Feb 26, 2010 in a car accident. 

RIP Jun Seba

Q&A: Playing with Emotion

"any advice on playing with emotion? like the titanic arrangement, when i play it people say i sound like a robot. i want to make people cry?"

     This is one of those questions where any answer given will probably sound like complete BS.
First, get this into your head: music is inspired by and created with emotion, performed with emotion, and received with emotion. A piece played without emotion is just a series of notes. I don't think it can really be called music. That would be like stacking two pieces of bread and calling it a sandwich.
...that was terrible. I'm sorry.
     Each song you play has a story. It's your job to tell the story, to bring it to life. A good storyteller uses his voice to incite emotion. If it's a scary story, he'll use a dark, haunting voice. If it's comical, he changes his voice and intonation to draw the audience into the right mood. When we speak, in our emotions and in our intentions there are words that we pronounce quietly, others that we pronounce loudly. It's the same for music; this use of dynamics is how we tell our stories. It's how we keep the story's momentum, and how we keep people interested. Imagine a professor lecturing with a bored, monotone voice compared with a dynamic teacher who is passionate about the subject.

     You need to know what you're trying to convey. What I mean is, you need to express your interpretation of a song's message through the guitar. When I recorded the "My Heart Will Go On" video, for example, I wanted to show how beautiful love is. Yes, retch with me now. I actually said that. But honestly, that was the major impression I had from the movie, given that the last time I'd seen it was when I was 9 or something. I play it differently now than I did a year ago, now that I've re-watched the movie. My current rendition tends to be a bit deeper and sadder. Music is an expression of emotion. Again, the guitar is just a vehicle. Michael Hedges often discussed this in his interviews. An artist at work isn't playing the guitar, he/she is playing through the guitar.
   Speaking more directly to guitar playing, a good bit of the emotion is found in the little nuances - your vibrato, dynamics, the way you hold a bend, etc. It's more about how you play the notes, rather than the notes themselves. Listen to your playing and ask yourself, is this how I would sing the song? The guitar is your voice. If you watch Tommy Emmanuel or Adam Rafferty, you'll often see that they hum along with their playing and even add lyrics at points. The melody is extremely important; it is the storyteller's voice that your audience will listen for. The melody must be like someone singing. What happens if you hold a note a little longer than usual? What if you slide into a note instead of doing a hammer-on? These are things you should experiment with as you try to find a good way to express what you feel. This is what separates the artists from the guitar players. Listen to a lot of music, as that will help to improve your sensitivity and musicality.

On a side note, I got a copyright warning for my Silent Night video.  Entity: Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society Content Type: Musical Composition Whaaaat? If anyone can explain this to me, please do!

Q&A: Learning, exercises vs songs?

"One thing ive been thinking about Is if you have any good like, Exercises to do to get better in playing or if the best way is just to play songs?"

I kind of see them as one and the same. My guitar playing improved primarily through learning songs. Note that learning songs and playing songs are very, very different ideas. If you sit down and solely focus on exercises, you'll give up guitar within half a year. I'm willing to bet a sandwich on that. I would bet more, but I just started college, and college students are supposed to be desperate for money, right?  You're learning guitar so that you can play music, right?
     But here's the thing. As you learn a song, you'll be doing exercises too. If anything, songs are good vehicles for learning techniques! They also help you understand how to use the techniques musically. You should always pick a song that's just a little too challenging for you. When you run into a difficult spot, break it up into short loops and practice each loop slowly with a metronome. That's how you practice technique. Then try to work on some variations of the bit that you are practicing. For example, when I was learning Yankee Doodle Dixie by Chet Atkins, I could not play the run in the melody that used alternate picking (alternating between I and M). I practiced it slowly until I could play it smoothly, and then gradually sped it up. Then I practiced going up and down the neck with the alternate picking. At no point did this exercise become boring, because I was practicing part of the song that I wanted to learn. A song will inform you which exercise to practice, and you will be the one creating the exercise. That's the most effective and efficient way to learn, in my opinion.
     However, it definitely is worthwhile to spend some time on exercises to develop dexterity.  If you know that you have a problem with thumb independence, for example, sit down and practice playing up and down the fretboard with only your thumb, while keeping the rest of your fingers still.  Move on to playing some fun bass lines.  Scales are also very important!  Not so much for the technique as for the knowledge.  I'm spending most of my practice time right now learning a bunch of scales.
     The most important thing is repetition. Lock yourself in a room when you practice, because you need to play each measure over and over again to get it down. You, as a musician, need repetition; no one else does. Other people find it annoying :(
Here's Tommy Emmanuel on practicing:

Thanks for the question!  Feel free to post more questions in the comments on this blog, my facebook page, YouTube message, etc etc

COLLEGE!

I'm currently on the way to college.  That's right.  I'm blogging on the car.  So... hip.
No, I'm not driving.  I was up late thinking about college, so driving would not be a good idea :\

But yeah.  I'm about to start college.  This pretty much sums up how I feel about college:

Where did all the time go?  This summer just zoomed by.  Hell, the past four years have zoomed by.  I remember arriving at Lawrenceville as a scared little freshman.  Now I'm about to arrive at college as a bemused, slightly taller freshman. 
I'm really excited about moving on, but there are some people I want to take with me.  I already miss my high school friends!  I hope we don't slowly drift apart and forget about each other, which is what happened with my middle school friends.  I feel that won't happen, though.  We've all been through so much together, like... oh, surviving Lawrenceville and stuff. 
I hope I meet some cool musicians at college.  Solo guitar is a bit lonely!

Lack of sleep + panicking about college does not make for a coherent Jon.  Don't want to be a complete wreck when I meet my room mate, so I'm going to take a nap.
Adieu, adieu

Lost in the wilderness

Not quite guitar-related, but I can't not blog about this.  Last night, I got lost in a forest past sundown.  I almost don't want to post this, but for your entertainment...

The first thing you should know about me is that my life is pretty much a series of bad ideas and silly events.  I've thought about introducing myself to others that way, since those around me tend to get drawn into the goofiness as well.  It sounds like it might be fun, but it really isn't.
Anywho, I've been learning photography this summer.  My friend Ryan brought up the idea of going on a little hiking/photo adventure yesterday.

7:15PM
First mistake made.  We arrived at the state park a bit late and head onto the trail. 

8:00
We found some really cool logs with spiral patterns and stop for a few pictures.  I'm still a novice, so don't expect much of the photos on this blog!

failed to capture said spirals. apologies for increasing world suck

We went deeper.

8:05ish

I spotted a really freaking adorable white-tailed fawn.  Like one of these:

credit Chris Kayler Photography

It watched me for a few seconds, and then turned around and trotted off.  I followed it.

I mean, come on.  Put yourself in my shoes for a second.  One of the cutest animals you've ever seen stares you in the eye and then slowly walks away.  You have a camera strapped around your neck.  What would you have done? (probably stay on the trail, huh..)

The damn fawn was weaving in between trees, as if it were trying to screw with us.  I'm pretty sure it was having a jolly good time.  Neither of us had brought a compass, so I passed Ryan a bag of crackers and told him to mark our trail somehow.  Thinking that we were going in a relatively straight line, my friend decided to take photos of trees instead.  We were, after all, in an old-growth forest with some amazing trees. 

8:15

"Jon, screw it.  It's not going to stop."  

"Wait...do you hear water?"

"...OOH!"

In a supreme demonstration of ADD and stupidity, we promptly changed direction and headed for the sound of water.  A few minutes later, we found the source. 

A small waterfall!

We knew we should have started to head back while there was still daylight, but it was too beautiful a scene to pass up.

It was getting pretty dark.  This was all I could see of Ryan

.6 second exposure, f/5.6, ISO 3200. If that doesn't work, you know there's not enough light

We decided to pack up and head back to the trail. 

8:40

"Jon, where the hell are we?"

 We had nooo idea where we were.  At this point we were walking back in the general direction of where we came from in near total darkness.  There was no cell service, so I couldn't get a lock on GPS.  For some reason, my phone can't get GPS without a 3G signal.  Even if it could, I wouldn't have the data connection to get maps.  We decided to start leaving behind crackers to make sure we didn't go in circles.  Knowing my luck, that would probably happen!

9:10

I found a spot next to a fern that got me one bar of connection.  Still, my phone couldn't get GPS.  The connection kept disappearing.  I gave up and moved on. 

9:45

Ryan saw a cracker and sat down.  "Fuck it, I give up."  

"No, that was definitely one you put down when we were looking for the fawn."

It was getting pretty chilly.  Good thing we bought flashlights for night photography!

10:51

Something completely awesome happened.  My phone beeped!!

A friend texted me at 10:30, but it didn't get to my phone.  Her text went through at 10:51 when I got to a clearing with service.  I wouldn't have noticed the spot otherwise!  A whopping two bars of data!  Joy!  I finally got a lock on GPS, loaded up a map, and off we went. 

11:15

Half an hour of giddy running and tripping later, we finally got to the car and sped home. 

[12:31:34 AM] Kyle S: holy crap jon how can your life be so consistently like a movie
Kyle would know.  He's been my dorm mate for the past three years.

I don't know, Kyle.  I don't like it :(
 

Now that I've written this... my god, was I really that stupid?  This could be a manual detailing what not to do when going on a photo adventure in a forest. 

Thank god she texted me.  Just thinking about spending another hour in there makes me shiver.  It was definitely the chilliest night of the summer.  I owe her a lot.  Go follow Amelia's blog at nosheepsherlock.blogspot.com.  She's awesome. 

I've gotten some good questions on YouTube that I'll blog about in the future.  In the meantime, please try not to think less of me! Haha

sunday jam track

Affirmation played by George Benson, one of my favorite jazz guitarists

New blog!

Hello hello,

Welcome to my blog!  I figured that it's a good time to start blogging, since college starts in less than two weeks.  Damn.  College starts in less than two weeks.  It's getting scary how fast time passes.
My most productive use of this blog will probably be the answering of questions I get on YouTube that I either don't feel like typing in a tiny message box, or that I feel is good stuff for the public.  My Facebook page is okay for specific questions that I can answer in a few lines, but otherwise... :\
So feel free to comment with questions or things that you want to discuss.  I'm not sure how many of the YouTube folks will follow this blog, so it might end up being very bland and empty.

I'll also post about random musings and adventures and photos and whatnot.  That'll be pretty fun!
As for the blog title, I've been on a bit of a Beatles craze lately.  I'm ashamed to admit that I had never really listened to their music before this summer.  Sure, I knew the classics like "Yesterday" and "Yellow Submarine," but beyond that, not much.  Deprived childhood, right?  My first foray into the Beatles was last fall, when I arranged "Here Comes the Sun" for a performance with a few friends for my school's board of trustees.  And now I've bought their entire discography, and am watching the Anthology dvd set.  There's something magical about their music.  I don't think it's the lyrics.  The melodies are infectiously happy, and are so perfectly tied to the harmony that you really can't tell them apart at times.  Listen to "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and try to sing it without the harmony.  And their chord sequences are pretty incredible, like in "Penny Lane."  "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is amazing in this regard.  George Harrison was brilliant.
And so, I've been learning a bunch of Beatles fingerstyle arrangements, and working on some of my own.  If you haven't seen this video, by the way, please watch it now.

That's what happens when two string masters get together. 
And trust me, it is so much better live.

Aaand I'm rambling.  Wow.  I'd planned to only write, "I got the blog title from a great Beatles song that I'm currently learning."  See, this is why Tumblr shouldn't be considered "blogging."  Tumblr is about throwing up cool pictures or links, one at a time, for your followers to see and hopefully reblog.  "Tumbling" is, in essence, showing off bumper stickers.  It's not geared for writing long posts, and you can't embed more than one picture or video per post.  A good blogging platform should inspire rambling.  Hell, Tumbling isn't even a satisfying verb.  Coming up with a catchy name is a necessity for any successful internet venture.  That's why Skype is much more popular than Oovoo, right?  "I'm going to oovoo you tonight" just doesn't work.

I'm done.  Future posts will be more cohesive, I promise!