"You're influenced by who?" volume 2 - Yngwie Malmsteen

Yes campers, it is I, your elusive and seemingly eternally absent poster. I know it's been a while, and yes, I know you keep hearing me say that. I won't get into the gory details here, but since my last post we have bought our first house and moved in (we did all of this over the Christmas/New Year's holiday so to say that we were a little busy during the last couple of months is an understatement). But I digress, it is time that I add to my "You're influenced by who?" series, and volume 2 begins now:

During my early guitar playing years, I was obsessed with the idea of exposing myself to music that had good guitar music in it. This meant keeping an open mind and making an effort to listen to many different styles of music, even if it meant that I didn't "get it" at first. I also made a point of reading as much as I could about guitar and music theory in the hopes of improving myself. I'd buy all the gutar magazines of the time, which were primarily "Guitar for the Practicing Musician", "Guitar World" and "Guitar Player". Those of you younger members of the audience may not remember these magazines, as I think they're all defunct now and in fact I believe they were all "taken over" by Guitar One, but don't quote me (incidentally, those of you really young memebers of the audience should know, there used to be these things called Guitar Magazines that were printed paper pages bound together with sheet music and lessons inside as opposed to 8 million useless blogs of idiots talking about music theory (usually incorrectly)).

Anyway, one day, while reading my newest issue of one of the aforementioned "mags" I came across a full page advertisement for a new album by Yngwie J Malmsteen (by the way, the first name is pronounced "ing' vay" in case you're wondering....I did too when I first read it). The add had the cover of the album which consisted of this drawing of the mighty Yngwie shooting a dragon with fire from his guitar. In a word....awesome. Bear in mind, I was still this kid who was fascinated by Dio's imagery, so this was right in line. The album in particular was called "Yngwie J Malmsteen's Trilogy" and was apparently his third offering. I had never heard of him, but after reading several rather gushy reviews of the record, I decided it was time to head down to my local record store and buy the cassette (that's right, I said cassette, there were no CDs).

Now, Yngwie was pretty much the first person to introduce what came to be known as Neoclassical Fusion to modern rock/metal music. There is some debate as to whether or not he was the "originator" and I still say that Randy Rhoads (who I'll get to in another post) was probably ahead of him, and to a lesser degree Richie Blackmore . This style incorporated the experience, technique, theory and well history of classical music with modern rock music. It doesn't sound like it would work, but if you think about it, some of the more minor dominant movements in classical music are quite "heavy" in the same way that rock/metal can be heavy (think Brahms, or some of Beethoven's darker pieces). A piece of music in the Phrygian mode lends itself quite nicely to heavy guitar, for example. Combine this with the rigorous training and practice that a true classical guitarist must endure, and you get an inevitability like Yngwie. This guy blew all the rock guys of the time away with his sheer speed. The man played guitar so friggin' fast, you could not believe it was real. He made sweep picking and arpeggios an absolute staple of modern rock/metal (something that continues to this day). When I first heard "You don't remember, I'll never forget"  (which was the first track on Trilogy), and first, I thought it was all hype. The music was a little cliche and the keyboards were a little much, it was almost "hair metal". Around 1:07 in, Yngwie does a nice arpeggio that's just enough to make you say "did I hear that, or no?". I listened through the next verse and chorus, up to the unbelieveably predictable "guitar solo" that's always after the 2nd chorus in most rock songs (for some reason), and at its onset, I was underwhelmed. Well, after the first few legato lines, (at around 2;56) I started hearing things that I did not think could be played on guitar....no kidding. The dude could flat out smoke on guitar. It was the type of playing that made you want to break all your guitars. It made me think, "that's impossible". I could only imagine his fingers must have been an absolute blur, it was difficult to imagine. Suffice to say, each track on the record had some pretty awesome guitar work (especially Trilogy Suite OP 5 (an instrumental).

Needless to say, I went right out and bought the first 2 albums (yes also on cassette) and they were even better. If you're interested in purchasing any of his records, may I recommend his first (and best in my opinion) Yngwie J Malmsteen's Rising Force as it's mostly instrumental and absolutely full of some positively badass guitar playing. Take the listen with a few grains of salt as you have to remember, this was the last 80's and metal was king, so it's a little over the top in places, but if you can filter it out, there is some terrifying playing on that record. Now Yngwie himself is unfortunately a legendary, egocentric prick. He apparently read every piece of good press and thought it gave him a license to be a jerk. I've never met the man, perhaps thousands of people are wrong, but he certainly seems to carry himself in interviews and concert footage with an unnecessary air of arrogance. But I must admit, he turned my head and challenged me to be a better guitar player. I will not boast that I have his speed, I do not and never have. It frustrated me to not be able to "shred" like Yngwie for a few years early on, but I find speed to be but one of the satisfying elements of playing guitar, and a dynamic that (like most dynamics) is best used in a carefully measured manner and is most effective when contrasted with other elements. I must say, that if there are any beginning guitarists out there who want a real thrill, check out Yngwie's first record. It is the real deal and not this horse crap, phony baloney studio tricks/editing that some of the modern "shredder wannabe's" like Dragonforce are trying to be (yeah, I said it, they're not playing that stuff note for note at that speed, that's called digital editing, guys, increasing speed without pitch...sit them down in front of you with a guitar and try to get them to play it, it'll never happen). Yngwie, on the other hand, for all his egotism, can still tear it up. He's a little older, a little puffier than he used to be, but he's still scaring the hell out of guitar players everywhere, why not give him a whirl?

"You're influenced by who?" volume 1 - Vivian Campbell

Well, in an attempt to make an effort to be consistent and do as I promised in my last post, I submit this first episode of a personal account of interesting/talented/fascinating/generally great yet largely unknown musicians. Today I start with an Irish fellow by the name of Vivian Cambell . Why is Viv #1 in the series? Well, I considered long and hard about how to begin this, and I figured he'd be a good start because he (along with my dad) was one of the major influences in my deciding to begin playing guitar in the first place. Read on:

You see, growing up, my parents always had music playing in the house. It was mostly Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young , Judy Collins , Simon and Garfunkle , stuff like that. You know, good music, but not exactly "edgy". So, while in 6th grade at St. Gabriel's Catholic school, a classmate of mine turned me on to this band called Dio . The album covers had demons and fire on them, there were rumors that if you looked at the logo upside down it spelled out "devil", it was "heavy metal" music (which I had never heard), it had all the things that would make any 12-ish year old boy wanna check it out. So, I bought The Last in Line . I was almost a little bit scared to listen to this record at first, since being raised a good little Catholic boy, I wasn't 100% sure that I wouldn't immediately be sucked down to hell for listening to this "evil" music.

Well, it turns out, all these guys are very talented. Ronnie James Dio (the lead singer and founder of the band) has an amazingly powerful and emotive voice. I swear, the man might only be 5'4", but I'd say 5'1" of that is lungs and vocal cords. Vinny Appice is a scary, thunderous drummer, Claude Schnell was a visionary keyboardist (an anomoly in itself, a keyboard guy in a "heavy" band who later influenced me...I'll elaborate later), the understated bassist Jimmy Bain and then there was Vivian Campbell . Vivian's style is hard to pin down. He's bluesy, he's heavy, he can melt frets with some of his "flashier" stuff (see songs like "Rainbow in the Dark" from Holy Diver or "Another Lie" from Sacred Heart or "Don't Talk to Strangers" also on Holy Diver) but he also can lay into the pocket the way a good guitar player should at times (as in "Egypt (The Chains Are On) from The Last In Line or "Shame on the Night" from Holy Diver ) In short, there was no one thing about his playing that struck me, I just thought he was a badass. Now admittedly, it may have been that I was a little swept up in the taboo of listening to "evil" music, and hell, the albums had demons on the cover, the lyrics were about dragons and magic and wizards and all kinds of dark subject matter, what 12-ish year old boy wouldn't dig that? For crying out loud, when I FINALLY got to see Dio live in 1988 (sadly after Viv left the band) the stage show had a robotic spider that the current guitarist at the time, Craig Goldie , shot with a laser coming from his guitar during his big solo, how metal is that??

But, I digress, even now as a much more accomplished guitarist, when I listen to the 3 Dio albums with Viv on them, I gotta say, that sucker can still tear it up. I remember in 1990 when the Whitesnake album came out, I saw the video for "Still of the Night" and saw Vivian playing guitar. I flew to the tv, the song rocked, I bought the record thinking he'd finally resurfaced. But, it turns out a guy name John Sykes played all the guitar on the record and was then apparently fired (along with the rest of the "studio" band) so David Coverdale could form a new band for touring...I'd have been pissed. The guitar playing on that record was pretty friggin great, so I don't understand why you'd kick the dude out, but anyway....Viv was in the band, but they never came through my area. Then he joined Def Leppard, and I wasn't really ever a big fan of theirs (a little too wuss-rock for me) so I just didn't really follow. But I will say, the guy definitely helped light my inspirational fire and for that I'll always have a soft spot for him. I probably should check out his new stuff (I confess I haven't). I hear he's playing in a much bluesier style, which I generally like, but it's hard to imagine one of your heroes playing in a totally different style then when you were exposed to him/her. Imagine if Eric Clapton put out a bluegrass album....you'd think....huh?? So Vivian, thanks for the rocking, and I will still proudly bang my head whenever I hear "We Rock", "Gypsy", "Hungry for Heaven", any of the old stuff.

Movin' on up..

Well, things are getting ready to change (isn't it the I Ching that says "the only thing constant is change"?). It looks like we're moving to an apartment as we have sold our home. It's a rather happy occasion, though not one that's devoid of complications. It looks like we're going to have to change internet providers since our current ISP doesn't service the area we're moving to. Hopefully, the transition will be smooth, and the interruptions will be brief. My email provider is thankfully not tied to my ISP, so you'll still be able to reach me here if you need anything.

Also, while we're starting the moving process, I've had to pack up most of my music gear. I have 1 lonely 6 string acoustic guitar which I haven't gotten much of a chance to play lately. This has been a little frustrating, artistically, but it's got me thinking. I don't seem to get much chance to write in this lovely blog page, so why don't I channel a little energy to it? So, here's my thought: I'm hoping to write a series (I've no idea how long) on "Unnoticed or Underappreciated Artists". I'm not sure of the tite of the series, I'll hopefully come up with sometihng a little catchier than that. The idea of this series will be, I'll write about a different artist(s) in each column that I feel was overlooked by a vast majority of people. These will be totally my opinions, and I make no claim to be any type of expert on any of these people, but suffice to say, they all had a part in shaping me as a musician, as a music listener, and as a person altogether (in some cases).

Now, a LOT of these will be guitarists, as I'm primarily a guitarist myself. Also, a lot of my early influences will be from the Metal genre (think 1980's and 1990's Metal mostly). Knowing me, I'll likely be all over the place on this, but I've been delving into old CDs and mp3's lately and listening to pieces of music that just blew me away the first time I heard them, and I'm finding that a lot of them still hold up quite well. So, I figured I'd share some of my favorite artists and pieces in the hopes that you find them interesting and maybe inspiring as well. I love when someone turns me on to an artist I'd never heard of before and I then can just immerse myself in that new stuff, so hopefully I'll be able to do that for you. Hopefully, I'll be a little more dilligent about posting and this will turn out to be an interesting venture into the first "serialized" version of my blog. Hey, if I end up writing for Rolling Stone , you'll be able to say you used to read me when....

How much more can I pack in?

Well, I'm having pretty major separation anxiety. I've had to pack up my studio/music gear and send it to storage. No, I'm not hiding from the repo man. We're selling our house. Actually, we've sold our house, we're just waiting for the appraisal, home inspection, and closing to happen. Sooooo, we're going to be moving soon. We're going to be moving to an apartment temporarily while we look for a house (we sold our house in 36 hours, a little quicker than we expected). Anyway, I'm hoping to get at least a "bare bones" setup going at the apartment so I can get ideas down before I lose them. I can already feel the artistic tension building up inside me. It's probably been about 3 or 4 weeks since I've been without my gear, and I'm itching badly. I didn't really get a lot of time to write/record in the last few months, but when I did manage the time, I was able to get some stuff down pretty quickly. I'd be able to somewhat scratch the itch if I could just edit some of the rough tracks I have down now, but my Tascam US-122  and my monitors are in storage, and to be honest, my computer speakers and soundcard just won't cut it (in fact, I hear clicks and pops when I even try to play a track in Cakewalk). So, I'm trying to just write on guitar, as I used to do in the old days before I'd gotten some more equipment, but it's hard to go back. It's kind of like using dial-up once you've been on DSL, you can do it, but you really know what you're missing.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll make it, and who knows, maybe this creative challenge will be a good thing. Maybe I'll be more focused when I do write/record. Maybe I'll spend a little more time with this blog as I've been saying I will for years. I guess we'll see. Oh, one more thing, if you haven't yet, please feel free (ok feel more than free) to visit my sponsors page . These are people willing to pay me to have their ads on my site. I'm happy to oblige, as any starving artist would. I've got the ads targeted to someone who finds this blog/site interesting, so you should find some stuff you'll like/need. Please feel free to check them out. Hopefully, I'll be talking to you all soon.

I know, I know, I suck for not posting...

Don't take that condescending tone with me. You know, it's not like I don't feel badly about it, so you don't have to rub it in. Don't you realize that every time I update ANYTHING on the Mikeiscool Site , that I don't see the blog page nagging at me? I feel its pain. I know it feels neglected. But it's not as if I'm neglecting it on purpose. I mean, it's been a pretty busy couple of months. First of all, Lily had her first birthday (and a fabulous time was had by all). Also, I took (and passed) another class in BOMI (Building Owner's and Manager's Institute....work stuff). I also managed to get a Mikeiscool MySpace Page up and going (granted it needs some serious polish, and I'm using it primarily to refer people to this site.

But, there is one other thing I must confess. I've been cheating on my blog with another, newer blog . I know....I feel terrible about it. I totally didn't plan it. I discovered it on this site . It started with me making my own On The Lot Page , and one thing led to another, and well, you know the rest. I didn't intend on it happening, and I was thinking of my blog page here the whole time. I know that doesn't make it any better, I made a mistake. I mean, I'm just trying to find a way to drive some more, serious attention to this site, and I guess I got carried away. I'll try not to do it again, but, well, now I've opened pandora's box. I'm fighting the urge to blog on the Mikeiscool MySpace page and hope that I can be strong. We'll see.

Good for the Dixie Chicks

How can you not say "hat's off" to the Dixie Chicks after this story?  Let me interject that I am not a HUGE Dixie Chicks fan, though I must admit, of most "comtemporary" country artists, I probably have the most respect for them. I'm generally not a country music fan. I like Southern Rock (see Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc), and I like some of the older "standard" country artists (like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson). I'm generally not that into modern country. I'm not into it in the same way that I'm not into modern pop music. It just lacks substance and feel to my ear. And some of the popular country (and pop) artists are just so damn formulaic, that I just can't take it.

But The Dixie Chicks just have a more organic, natural, honest sound to them that reminds me of the older country artists. I admit a BIG part of my respect for them is that they can actually play their own instruments (and do). I don't want to make any vocalists angry, as I fully appreciate the human voice as an instrument in its own right, but being able to sing AND play is great, especially when you can do both very well. Top all of that off with the ability to write songs well, and you've got a heck of a combination.

Which is why I say congratulations to the Dixie Chicks. Not cause they need my approval. But because they spoke their minds, and they kept their wits about them when the majority of their audience turned on them. And now, they can thumb their nose at everyone, and good for them. I defninitely lean to the "left" of center, though I'm probably somewhere between a moderate Democrat and a Libertarian. Thus, I don't side with any singular political mindset. That said, it was painfully obvious which political organization was behind the "boycott the Dixie Chicks" thing. I admit, I just love that it blew up in their closed-minded, simplistic, elitist little faces. And the Dixie Chicks handled it with class, proving why they're on top, and the trailer trash ain't.

If you have a differing political view, fine. I respect that, but you don't make death threats because someone happened to speak an opinion different from your own. That's insane and dogmatic and extremist and about 100000 other things. I just love that all those die-hard, bible thumpin' fools who were going to "teach those girls a lesson" got spanked. You said it, Natalie, "ha ha".

Why does Uncle Sam hate music?

It's that magical time of year known in the US as Income Tax time. I've just completed our taxes using Turbo Tax , which I highly recommend, by the way. It's not terribly expensive and I've found it to be very easy to use and quite reliable. Anyway, one of the features of this software is something called "Audit Alert". This basically combs through the minutiae of your tax return and lets you know what item(s) might cause your return to be flagged for an audit.

Well, this year (like previous years), the Audit Alert flagged the fact that I reported income as a Songwriter. It's always just kind of rolled off my back as one of those societal stigmas that for some reason seems to get attached to musicians, but I've been mulling it over. Apparently, the government is suspicious of someone like me who reports his royalties earned from ASCAP . The more I think about it, the more it bugs me, the same way it used to bug me years ago when I was still playing in a band and wore my hair long, and some comb-over in a suit would let me know (usually in no uncertain terms) that wearing my hair long was a "bad thing" and "gave the wrong impression". Basically, it's that age old stereotype that someone who plays music and *gasp* has long hair must be a screw-up, degenerate, drug addicted, lazy, unintelligent person. I don't know if any of you have experienced this, but I assure you it's a stereotype that's out there.

Well, is this Audit Flag any different? I mean, really, what should it matter that I dervied some of my income from writing and producing music? I'm contributing to society in a positive fashion, and (helooooo) I'm actually REPORTING IT!!! Geez, Uncle Sam, if I was the embodiment of the stereotype, believe me, I don't think I'd be telling you about my music related income. I'm sure this attitude has Plato spinning in his grave. I recall a quote (unforunately not precisely nor can I recall the source) from Plato basically saying that without music, society would crumble and cease to exist. Now while this may sound melodramatic, I think people often underestimate the importance of and the presence of music in their everyday lives. Think about it. Tomorrow, try (just try) to make a concious decision to notice how frequently music touches you in a day. Music floats in the background of our world as subtle as the air we breath, but we rarely notice it. Either it's playing in your car, or in an elevator, or from your clock radio, your IPod, from music boxes, in the background of EVERYTHING on television or in the movies, heck, it's even in your head. Think about how often you find yourself just spontaneously singing something. It happens more than you probably realize, and I propose that it is exactly this ubiquitous nature of music which makes life liveable. I think that without it, life would lose an important (if often unnoticed) dimension.

There, I'll get off my soapbox about it, I just wish people would quit lumping musicians into this group of low-lifes. I'm not saying there aren't people who happen to be musicians that fit into the stereotype, on the contrary, there are TONS of them. But, there are also those of us who retain a strong sense of self and ambition, and we hate it when you assume we're the former. So please, Uncle Sam, lighten up, huh?

Part Composer, Part Computer Geek

I tell you, times are hard these days. It's a shame that I can't spend more time tweaking and experimenting with my site. All I really want to do is get some decent, relevant traffic to my site so that I can (a) hook up with a few more people to license music to and (b) generate a little income via AdSense and such. I guess I feel a little frustrated that I can't figure it out, but I"m not letting it get me down. If I'm one thing, I'm persistent. I prefer the word tenacious since it refers to a couple of other genius musicians [hope you're reading this Kage and Jables ;-) ].

I do honestly love writing music. I'm proud to be a member of ASCAP . I love being able to create music. I just am frustrated at my current inability to do it more, and the difficulty I'm having trying to figure ways to make a little money at it. Oh sure, I could do the whole gigging thing, but I did that for YEARS and YEARS, and to be honest, it's not worth the heaadache for me. Plus, I don't care who you talk to, there is n't as much money in playing live as people would have you believe. Oh sure, if you have Clear Channel and Sony  backing you, I bet you can get asses in seats. But for those just playing around town, well, let's just say I don't know 1 who has bought a house/car/boat with just the earnings off of playing live. Moreover, I don't know 1 that's totally supporting him/herself (let alone a family) off of income derived solely from playing live.

I'd love to start selling a few ringtones, perhaps to Cingular or Verizon or T-Mobile or Alltel , but I'm finding the whole ringtone industry is a pretty complicated mess too. I guess I'm attracted to the ringtone thing because I'm always writing chunks and pieces of music that don't always develop into entire songs, but that are nonetheless still quite catchy and cool so I think they'd make good ringtones. Plus, if I can sell something really cheaply (like $0.25) I'd probably stand a better chance of someone giving me a shot and buying one of my ringtones. If they don't like it after a while, who cares, it was only a quarter. But, at that price point, I'd stand a better chance of selling a lot of them, and maybe making a little money. I dunno, I'm gonna keep exploring and "marinating" on new ideas. Somewhere along the way, I'm gonna figure something out. If I do, it will be fun to come back and read this stuff and remember my thought processes that eventually led up to whaetever it is that I end up doing. Until later...

Is composer a high demand keyword?

I've been continuing my saga of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) lately, and am trying to figure out why Google still has trouble seeing my site when searched for "North Carolina Composer" or "composers in North Carolina". If you search for "Charlotte, NC Composer" I'm usually in the top 10. If you search for "mikeiscool", I'm #1. But, I'm wondering how much that'll help. I'm reading up on things, and am realizing that despite my having added this blog page, I might need to make an effort to start updating in more frequently, so that the search engines crawl my site more often, and so that I eventually end up with more pages linking to me.

In addition to wanting to increase my site traffic so that I might make some more contacts through which to licence my music , I'd like a little more traffic so that maybe I can benefit from some "Click Through" income. Any of you familiar with Google's Adsense program can probably appreciate this. I'm not expecting to make this guy's type of money (I wouldn't mind it), but it would be nice to supplement the old income. Anyway, you're probably going to see more frequent and possibly less lengthy posts here at Mikeiscool Productions so that I can experiment with how it does/doesn't affect my search engine placement. I'll probably go out of my way to mention Composer, and Songwriter in overly descriptive terms every once in a while as I try to figure out this maze of SEO. Hopefully, it'll still make for reasonably interesting reading.

Hmmmm....I wonder

You know, I've been thinking, I wonder if I can use Thingamablog to create/maintain my whole website. I've been screwing around with Dreamweaver, and then I have to access my Linux box's Samba shares so that I can get the new/updated files to the server, and well, it's a pain in the ass. I wonder if I include a link, all the files, etc in a "post" for a page, if I can just update my site however I want? I'm going to use this post to test a few things. First off, can I post a picture so I can use it as a link? Let's see: