It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
The funny thing about that cover is that I know a chap who looked almost exactly like he did on it - although he's also cut his hair in the last few years so he doesn't as much any more... and you wouldn't mistake him for the 'now' Oldfield.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Def worth listening to the new one tho. You might think it’s “average” but it’s definitely not “Man on the Rocks”
For me, Mike O is the king of a good hook. Some say he’s only got one. It started with Tubular Bells and gets trotted out in everything he does.
I see it it a bit differently. For me, it feels like he had a musical idea way back when and it first came out in Tubular Bells. But rather than rehashing it, he’s took that musical idea and explored looking at it from different angles - stylistically, tonally, rhythmically, and ultimately he’s orchestrated it (Music of the Spheres).
You’ve not missed my point at all in your post - I agree with you. If you look at some of his more accomplished works, he takes a musical idea and plays with it - shapes and moulds it, and has a go at presenting it in a number of ways.
I wonder often, as guitarists and musicians generally if we would benefit from this approach. When noodling, and hearing something that sounds good - it’s worth recording it quickly on your phone or something, then taking that idea and trying to present it in a number of ways, styles, formats etc. It’s hard at first but it really opens up the brain to thinking about why something sounds good to us, rather than just tying to copy a style or a specific phrase.
I think that’s my issue with the blues-y technical thing - apart from the fact it sounds very same-y to me, it doesn’t unleash the creative approach as much and ultimately it just feels like a load of players trying to pay homage to something.
Music moves on. It develops and changes - that’s what keeps it fresh and challenging - it’s what makes us stop in our tracks and go “oh, that’s different!”
There’s not enough of that about for me. Mike O tries to do this time after time. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all and sounds like tosh. Sometimes I think he’s a genius. On balance, the latter happens more often than the former when I listen to his stuff
1) Haircut and chin scrape
2) Gibson L6
3) Incantations
4) Public support for the Conservative & Unionist party
A bit outside the mainstream with their own style, but if you can't be arsed to really get into it it all sounds the same and vaguely unsatisfying.
It's all a bit "English" if you know what I mean?
I know it's only personal taste, but I find music I 'almost' like more annoying than music I really don't like.
'The Hornpipe Challenge'
I, like probably many others, can play this song however I can only get through the first one or two "rounds" before the sheer speed of it loses me and I start dropping notes.
How far through the song can you get?
I don't think we ever really took it further than the planning stage although it's not terribly difficult to actually put in place but in the name of pushing yourself to do something different and learn a song that will eventually annoy the tits off you and everyone around you, here it is.
Can you play right through to the end of 'The Sailors Hornpipe' at speed, without dropping any significant amount of notes so that you'd be happy with it as a live performance.
If not, how far though the track can you get?
It's a useful thing to use the time stamp because any progress you make over time is measured easily and goals can bet set using the time stamp of the next "round" or look at it as "levels" as you would in a video game if that spins your wheels.
There may well be a backing track out there already or maybe one of our resident studio gurus can make one but even just playing along with the record, you'll know if you've got it right just as much as you'll really know it if you get it wrong.
Try it.
I remember us sniggering and saying it wasn’t that much of a challenge until you actually sit down and listen to the piece and what MO plays.. at which point you then realise it’s a game of accuracy, endurance, and sheer bloodymindedness
(formerly customkits)
Nope, he really wasn't. At least not in the circles I mixed in and I used to read Sounds, NME, and Melody Maker at the time too and they didn't mention him as a player. It must have been about the time of "Wish You Were Here" or just before perhaps. The people considered players were Hendrix (who was very much in people's memories), Page, Beck, Blackmore, and over the pond the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" was accepted as what good players did. So Gilmour was "too slow" to be good. That was why I'm pretty sure he didn't get a look in till the zeitgeist changed and playing didn't have to be showy peacock-playing to get noticed as good. Once that happened Gilmour was noticed.
I’ve just tried to play it and realised how long it’s been since I last tried.
Got some work to do now !