Posted by Andrew Wasson
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Welcome to... "Micro-Lesson 076" This Micro Lesson covers the style of Country-Rock with a eighth country swing feel.
The riff is in the key of "D Major" and operates between 7th and 11th positions. Slides are applied to double-stops as a way to highlight the riff. The pattern of double-stops (2-note chords) continues along the neck into seventh position.
The best technique (playing approach) for this riff is to use hybrid picking for a majority of the parts. The "string-snap" associated to the hybrid finger-attack will fit the overall style this riff perfectly.
Where the "D5" chord is noted on the chart, a rhythm guitarist could also perform a typical country boogie guitar part to fit nicely with this line. Enjoy! Micro Lesson 076: "D Major" Country-Rock Riff
The launch of iTunes in 2001 would change the music industry indelibly, allowing consumers to download music legally, easily and affordably, paying less than a dollar per song rather than splashing out on a whole album.
Seven years later, the release of Spotify ushered in the next phase of digital music, enabling listeners to stream music for free or pay a subscription fee for a premium, advertising-free experience.
Now, after another seven years, a company called Qtrax is heralding the third wave of the digital music revolution.
Qtrax is an advert-supported music player that for the first time allows the users to download, stream and create a personalized radio channel all from one place - and, crucially, all for free - that is relaunching at the end of the quarter with the twin aims of cracking down on music piracy and ensuring artists get paid for their work.
“We are aiming for two paradigm shifts,” Allan Klepfisz, chairman and chief executive of Qtrax, told the Telegraph. “One is to give consumers what they want and are taking illegally, and to give it to them in the form that they want it... And two, [to address] that artists and writers are being horribly compensated.”
Qtrax has created an initiative called the Artist Manifesto that allocates 30% of the company’s equity to the artists whose music it plays, making them co-owners of that stake and lining them up to benefit from the business’ success. The Artist Trust, which will be governed by an independent board of directors including managers, lawyers, artists and publishers from the industry, will compensate artists according to their popularity on the site.
Singers and writers will also be paid an additional 10% in streaming royalties over what they currently receive from their existing contracts, while new artists will retain 100% of the profits from their Qtrax presence from their first year on the site.
“There is something very wrong with the current model,” Mr Klepfisz said. “The current economic structure is not likely to ever compensate the artist… But it’s not that difficult for a paradigm shift to occur. Traditionally the record companies get equity in digital services, but no one has asked on behalf of the artists. This could become a de facto way of doing business.”
While iTunes charges users for the music they download, Spotify’s free-to-listen service has drawn attention to reservations within the industry about how artists get paid for their work. Most notably, in November, Taylor Swift removed her catalogue from Spotify after writing in a July op-ed for the Wall Street Journal: “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free.”
Last year, Bette Midler tweeted that “Spotify and Pandora have made it impossible for songwriters to earn a living”, adding that Pandora had paid her $114.11 for more than 4m plays over three months." Ed Sheeran has admitted that he once got a royalty cheque from Spotify “that was about $2.00”. And a recent memo from Sony/ATV chief executive Martin Bandier revealed that Pandora only paid John Legend $3,400 in royalties for 55m streams of All Of Me and Pharrell Williams $2,700 for 43m plays of Happy, calling it “a totally unacceptable situation and one that cannot be allowed to continue”.
But Lance Ford, president of Qtrax and a former musician himself, told the Telegraph that the industry will have no choice but to catch up with how digital media is changing the consumer landscape if it wants to survive the invasion of piracy and the ease of access -- even through mainstream legal sites such as YouTube -- to free music.
“There’s a certain amount of nervousness in the industry about providing free music,” he said. “But if you look at traditional media, it has always been supported by advertising: newspapers, radio, television… and it’s the same with new media. It’s not a radical notion - it just may be radical in the concept of music.”
Mr Klepfisz added: “Facebook is a free service supported totally by advertising. We believe you can do that globally for music... To revolutionize the industry, all it takes is one digital music company to be the size of Facebook. Music is a much bigger platform for advertising if you look at the amount of time people spend on music” compared to how much time they spend on social media.
Indeed, the “free now and free forever” pledge emblazoned on Qtrax’s website has a strong echo of Facebook’s boldly displayed promise that “it’s free and always will be”.
While digital music services such as iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and Deezer have amassed millions of devotees - downloads and streaming accounted for 37% of global music revenues in 2013, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), up from 16pc five years earlier - Mr Klepfisz believe the “huge opportunity” staring the music industry in the face is in targeting the 95% of music listeners who are still using piracy to access songs. These users have no brand loyalty to a certain service - Mr Klepfisz called them “a pretty promiscuous audience” - and are more interested in getting free music than using illegal sites. A high quality alternative to free songs “can render pirate sites irrelevant”, Mr Klepfisz said.
In its most recent Recording Industry in Numbers report, the IFPI said that “the scale of the digital piracy globally remains vast”, with 26% of fixed-line internet users worldwide regularly accessing unlicensed services.
While it’s hard to monitor exactly how many songs are illegally downloaded, or to place the full blame on piracy for the severe drop in music revenues over the past 15 years, the Recording Industry Association of America estimates that some 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded on file-sharing networks between 2004 and 2009.
“We still see huge numbers of people going on to pirate services,” Alex Jacobs of the IFPI told the Telegraph. “There’s obviously a market to fish in there. Qtrax is tapping at an open door.”
It’s something that the biggest players in music have been trying to tackle for years. The industry has attempted to clamp down on piracy by urging payment providers including Visa and MasterCard not to process transactions made via illegal businesses, by working with Google to lower the search rankings of pirate sites so they don’t appear on the first page of results, by blocking peer-to-peer websites via court orders in certain markets, and by taking legal action against the major unauthorised BitTorrent sites such as isoHunt.
This is not the first time Qtrax has tried its hand at the free music market. After failing to win licensing deals with all the major record labels, the company suffered a humiliating implosion amid a handful of lawsuits in 2008 due to what Mr Klepfisz has called the company’s naivety. The service relaunched in 2011 and is currently operating in beta, attracting just over a million users.
And now Qtrax’s executives believe the music industry is ready for its radical ideas.
“Everyone has a right to be skeptical about the outcome,” Mr Ford said. “But the current regime has no chance of success... We don’t expect it to happen overnight, but we are revving the engines.”
Qtrax will be a success if their plan could attract a fraction of the number of people who use the major social networking sites, which “should not be difficult given the passion of the global consumption of music,” Mr Klepfisz said. If that happens, “then you have completely revolutionized the industry.”
In a sign that the music industry is cracking down on illegal usage, PPL, the music licensing company, increased the number of cases it brought to court last year by more than a tenth.
The UK-based firm formerly known as the Phonographic Performance Limited launched 230 cases in the High Court in 2014, up from 209 the previous year, in an attempt to clampdown on pubs and clubs that play music on their premises without obtaining the licenses.
Paul Joseph, copyright partner at RPC, called these leisure venues “a far easier target for the music licensing organization to pursue for potential copyright infringement than an illegal online file sharing website that might be based thousands of miles away.”
The Football Association Premier League launched seven times more cases last year than in 2013 in a similar attempt to tackle the wave of pubs broadcasting football matches without a license.
PPL accounted for 6pc of all claims heard in the High Court, according to the law firm RPC, three times higher than the next most frequent initiator of cases, Capital Home Loans.
In one of his recent videos, YouTube funny guy and Dissimulator vocalist Jared Dines did another one of his famous impersonations, this time around focusing on beginner guitarists.
You might know Jared from some of his comedy clips about things bass players say in the studio, alternative band names, different types of fans at metal shows etc.
In related news, Mr. Dines has reached 100,000 subscribers on his channel. If you're interested in hearing some original music from the man, check out Dissimulator's Bandcamp page here. VIDEO:
Welcome to... "Micro-Lesson 075" This Micro Lesson takes a look at a fast-paced Sixteenth-Note Lick in the key of "F# Minor."
The lick starts out from the arpeggio built upon the sixth degree of the, "F# Minor" harmony. This sixth degree produces a, "D Major 7th" arpeggio.
From there, the lick takes on a linear run across several fingerboard positions. The linear idea moves diatonic through "F# Minor," tracking the ninth to sixth position on the 3rd and 2nd strings.
The end of the lick runs across the scale vertically in position (at 6th position) covering the scale across the 2nd through to 5th strings.
The lick finally resolves into the "C#" (the fifth scale tone within "F# Minor"). This fifth degree is a strong chord tone, as well as, being one of the foundational tones of the key center.
This weeks GuitarBlog runs through how to develop a "Harp-Like" guitar sound technique.
Creating this effect involves the process of combining a series of fretted notes with open-string notes. Once these notes are combined, they'll sustain out over each other creating an effect similar to a piano sustain pedal. The result is a very open sound from the combination of the fretted notes ringing out over the open strings.. Enjoy this week's Guitar Blog, and be sure to check out the related videos listed below!
Posted by Andrew Wasson
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Heavy Metal Open String Riffs...
Pretty much every Metal band will use the open position to create those classic heavy riffs we all know and hear so often.
From Megadeth to Anthrax open position riffs work perfectly for developing really heavy sounding ideas in both the keys of "E Minor" and "A Minor."
When building riffs in open position, the phrases will almost always involve the open strings of 6th and 5th, (E and A). If we decide to use other strings alongside of the common open bass notes, we need to plan for how the extra open strings will be included. However, even more important than planning, is testing to find out if we're happy with the sound.
Luckily, the keys of both, "E Minor," and "A Minor," both have minimal accidentals. This means all of those; open 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st strings should fit perfectly into the, "E & A Minor," key signatures. And, any riffs we create using those open strings should easily operate within the key we select. However, once again, we'll never know for sure how notes interact until we start to test each phrase. Since many of the examples that we can create in the key of "E" can be quite easily transferred to the key of "A," I'll be sticking to the key of "E" for our riffs.
In the first open string example riff, I'm starting out from an open "E" string and moving through some scale tones mixed with chromatic ideas. I've decided to maintain both a similar rhythm pattern, as well as, a similar upper open string repeating phrase. Check out the idea below... Listen to the audio for example one and then study the riff until you can play the idea smoothly in time along with the audio example track. EXAMPLE ONE:
In the next example I'm focusing on the drone of an open "E" bass note. This bass drone promotes a big sound out of the interaction of scale tones used around the bass note and it's all held together with unique perfect 5th intervals. The geometry of the 5th intervals (power chords) applied in measures one and two are unlike the typical power chord pattern widely applied on the neck across two adjacent strings. These 'perfect 5th' shapes are wider and skip over a string. Their neck pattern remains the same in each measure. At the end of the phrase we hone in on the strength of another larger voiced, "E power-chord."
In measure three of our second riff, we are bringing in more open strings. Strings 4 and 3 (D and G) are included against the "E Drone" and the "C" note off of the third fret of 5th string. It all comes together to create an interesting "Cadd2" chord under the drone "E." Listen to the audio for example two and then study the riff until you can play the idea smoothly in time along with the audio example track. EXAMPLE TWO:
My final example of applying open strings within Metal riffs is a really heavy one with lots of emphasis upon traditional power chord patterns. The riff once again plays off of the open "E" power chord. It however moves quickly through "B and C" power chords (in measures one and two) ascending along the neck into the seventh fret 5th string "E." Once this octave of "E" is reached at the seventh fret, two more open strings (open G and B), are used to add a higher register sound effect to the riff.
More power chord ideas are applied in measure three with an open "G" 3rd string coming in to wrap everything up through two 5th string "D and B" power chords. It all adds up to offer a nice chugging heavy sound similar to what we might find in a Metallica or Megadeth number. Listen to the audio for example three and then study the riff until you can play the idea smoothly in time along with the audio example track. EXAMPLE THREE:
Heavy Metal riffs are dynamic guitar parts that generally require a good deal of technique to both control and play smoothly in time. One thing to keep in mind is that this style requires a deliberate execution of the parts. So, pay a lot of attention to how the picking hand strikes at each string. Make sure that both hands are very close to the strings and any unwanted noise is taken care of with either left or right hand muting technique.
Metal riffs need to sound big and tight, so listen closely to how the parts are coming across when you perform them. And, try them with both distortion and without. Remember that a big part of this style is to play the guitar parts with confidence. If the parts are performed weak, without focus to fretting and picking detail, they'll very likely come across and not having enough dynamics.
Thanks for checking out this week's Blogger Lesson.
- Andrew Wasson
Posted by Andrew Wasson
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Welcome to... "Micro-Lesson 074" This Micro Lesson showcases a riff that applies several open string modal concepts off of a root note of "E."
The phrase is modal in how the root of "E" is applied against surrounding harmonies from the key of "A Major." The open guitar strings of 6th, 2nd and 1st employ a mix of intervals rooted out primarily of the mode of "E Mixolydian."
The concept of this riff features the low "E" 6th string bass note playing against an open 1st string "E."
The chord harmonies float through "E" major triad, and "E" dominant seventh chords in the first measure. This sound is backed up by movements through the "Ab" and "C" major 7th chords in the second and fourth measures.
