Links And Something New!
Heard this one before?
For today’s Thursday “Links” post, I’ve got links! And something else as well - this week involved a lot of Brit pop punk band correspondence from friends - bands I was only slightly aware of (and at least in one case, badly mistaken about who they were even if I was somewhat aware of them), but I learned a lot. Since I don’t do the Bonus Round thing on Thursdays now, it’s probably a good time to add a little something interesting to the mix. And some of the “little somethings” (hmmm, not bad), maybe most even, won’t particularly be acoustic guitar based, and that’s not a bad thing, either. So on Thursdays from now on I’ll be adding a section on bands or musicians or genres or something else that I (and maybe you!) hadn’t particularly paid much attention to in the past. If you have an obscure or out of the mainstream band or artist of whatever genre that you’re particularly interested in, send me a link in the comments and I’ll put you on the waiting list (Yes! I already have this week and 2 more weeks of topics lined up, and I’ll take them in the order that they showed up in my emails or on other social media). I have yet to decide what to call this, I was thinking of “Little Gems” or maybe just “Gems” and putting them under this photo:
…which is of a crystal called a zircon, and this one happens to be 4.4 billion (with a “B”) years old, found in Australia some years ago. One of a kind so far, but I understand the search continues for more in Australia. Maybe I will, but I’m open to suggestions…
So the “Little Gem” (but now I’m kinda leaning toward “Little Somethings”) section for today follows the links below, and the band may or may not be as obscure to you as it was to me…
Which reminded me of this, for some reason:
Today’s links (Lawyer words: From sources I have no affiliation with and receive no compensation from!):
"No Excuses" songwriting! From Songtown, and good advice
A couple from Carvin Audio (I always appreciate informative stuff along with the sales pitch, and Carvin’s pretty good at that!):
Home Studio In A Tight Space "How-To"
A couple from Disc Makers:
Improving Home Recording Studio Acoustics
This seemed interesting:
Surviving Beatles and Rolling Stones Collab Album?
And there’s this (these guys get so much grief, but I like the song and they’re not that bad - plus a lot of the hate is just bandwagon, IMHO):
Nickelback - "Photograph" - background of the song from American Songwriter
This is good:
Excerpt from Griff Hamlin, Blues Guitar Unleashed email: Can You Get Out of Your Own Way?
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you'd spent more time playing guitar as a kid? Or maybe you played as a youngster, but you didn't stick with it (life does tend to get in the way.)Well I was asked about the difference between learning guitar as kid versus learning it as a more "seasoned" adult...And the funny thing is that we as adults have a lot of advantages over kids - we have a better ability to reason and systematize how we learn and what we learn.But the disadvantage is our preconceived notion of how we think things are going to go.Well I hate to tell you, no matter how you think it's going to go... that's not how it's going to go!You obviously want to play (or why would you be reading this?)And you've obviously invested some time and energy into making it happen (or, again, why would you be reading this?)So clearly it can be done and you can do it... but you will have to get out of your own way once in a while (or maybe more often than that...) Sure it's great to have a purpose and a direction when you practice... and for 10-20 minutes each day you should focus and have that focused attention.(and you should practice on the stuff you learn in Blues Guitar Unleashed of course!) But you should also just have some fun and play what you want and just see what comes out. And don't think about what you expect to hear, just listen to see what actually comes out...It just may surprise you :)” Credit: Griff Hamlin, Blues Guitar Unleashed
And now for:
SOMETHING NEW…or…LITTLE GEMS...or.…LITTLE SOMETHINGS…or…SOMETHING ELSE…or just… “SOMETHING”…?? (I dunno yet):
I have a good friend who is, as he says “in the deep end of the pool” for these guys:
This is good - and I’m not a fan of “docuvideos”, but I was captivated! Gotta admit, I had only a very peripheral knowledge (and even that was completely wrong!) of XTC. At the same time, I don’t think they were that obscure, but there is a LOT of great music out there, and “my” British band (yeah, Beatles, Rolling Stones, yeah, yeah, yeah - whatever) was always, and always will be, Dire Straits, from the moment I first heard Mark Knopfler’s guitar solo at the end of “Sultans Of Swing”. But the value of listening widely is to find something new and interesting and maybe a little out of the mainstream - and unfortunately, “mainstream” is usually just a euphemism for “commercially successful”. I missed a lot of great music listening to mainstream that I’m now making up for by listening more widely and this band is a good example. Here’s a sample, and they’re worth listening to!
Regular post tomorrow!
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
It’s on the list!!
How about a little indie Christian band called The Prayer Chain for one of your Little Gems?