On Musical Education
Today's educational topic is music.
To summarize: Music is good.
Now, I like music. I played instruments in elementary and high school. I sang with choirs. I enjoyed musicals. I even just got myself one of them iPod doohickies and used it to get music off of some tubes somewhere.
Now, to clarify: I like classical music.
This, of course, is not a bad thing. Not in any way, shape, or form. Many people enjoy a healthy dose of Mozart or Bach or Beethoven. Lots of folks enjoy a Messiah performance, or a Nutcracker ballet, or some pipe organ action (huh huh, organ). Hardly a soul around can't recognize "da da da DUUUMMMMMMM" as Beethoven's 5th, and pretty much everyone knows "Ride of the Valkyries" thanks to the animated stylings of Bugs Bunny and Elmer J. Fudd.
My challenge is that my knowledge of modern music (which is pretty much anything composed after 1900) is very much limited. Debilitatingly so, even, as I can barely have a pop culture music discussion without confusing The Beatles with The Rolling Stones, or Phil Collins with Peter Gabriel, or Ice-T with Ice Cube with Vanilla Ice, or any other combination imaginable. I'm like your grampa, chastising you younguns for listenin' to all that devil music! Git off my lawn!
Ahem. Sorry. The point is, very minimally knowledgeable in the field of 20th/21st century pop music.
Up until a curious event: the creation of a video game.
That's right, games are the way to providing education for me. If Halo's Master Chief had been teaching physics principles while blasting the shit out of Covenant forces, you can bet I'd have had a PhD in physics by now. But again, I'm off topic.
The video game in question was Guitar Hero. For those of you who might be out of the loop right now (which, on this friends list, might be about three of you), Guitar Hero allowed you to simulate a guitar playing experience, complete with a guitar-shaped controller, and as it played songs on the screen, you matched "keystrokes" with "strums" to make "notes". Whatever. The point is, the game is deceptively addictive, and in this fashion, I began to actually notice songs and artists. Sometimes even pairing them together correctly. (For the record, perkyczarlet, I still think The Safety Dance was done by Men In Hats. But some things just can't be fixed.)
Thanks to Guitar Hero and its two sequels, my appreciation for music has expanded in a bold new direction. Classic rock, pop, metal, and more, now sharing space with my library of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi. (Ok, also for the record, if any of the GH games offered a "Classical Music" set of tracks where they converted some classical pieces to a guitar-able format, I'd be all over that like Oprah on a baked ham.)
And then, when I thought my education could go no further, a new player arrived on the scene: Rock Band. Here, now, not only could you get your guitar on, but you could beat the drums to your heart's content, and even dare to be a vocalist. Did I dare rise to a new challenge? Yes. Yes I did. And wonder of wonders, I've found songs that I like, and have even gone so far as to find them online and acquire them. It's an amazing new development, and it's ok.
Now, don't overestimate my prowess. I'm still unlikely to be fully versed in modern musical culture. Many may still sniff disdainfully at my still incomplete arsenal of information. But I have definitely upgraded my status from "n00b" to "rank amateur". Also, I can play bass and sing simultaneously, which makes me equivalent to Sting. Sting is the man. Judge him not, for all he sees is an Atreides he wants to kill.
Finally, a paragraph for all you Rock Band fans out there. My friend CA and I finished the Endless Setlist the other day. It was a gruelling 4.5 hour ordeal, and we made it even more challenging for ourselves: he took drums, I took bass, and we alternated being the vocalist from song to song. At medium setting for all three instruments, we only failed one song. The price in muscle failure the next morning, of course, was much much higher. Damn you, musical rhythm game!
You know, really, there's no picture more appropriate to this post than this:
Rock on!
To summarize: Music is good.
Now, I like music. I played instruments in elementary and high school. I sang with choirs. I enjoyed musicals. I even just got myself one of them iPod doohickies and used it to get music off of some tubes somewhere.
Now, to clarify: I like classical music.
This, of course, is not a bad thing. Not in any way, shape, or form. Many people enjoy a healthy dose of Mozart or Bach or Beethoven. Lots of folks enjoy a Messiah performance, or a Nutcracker ballet, or some pipe organ action (huh huh, organ). Hardly a soul around can't recognize "da da da DUUUMMMMMMM" as Beethoven's 5th, and pretty much everyone knows "Ride of the Valkyries" thanks to the animated stylings of Bugs Bunny and Elmer J. Fudd.
My challenge is that my knowledge of modern music (which is pretty much anything composed after 1900) is very much limited. Debilitatingly so, even, as I can barely have a pop culture music discussion without confusing The Beatles with The Rolling Stones, or Phil Collins with Peter Gabriel, or Ice-T with Ice Cube with Vanilla Ice, or any other combination imaginable. I'm like your grampa, chastising you younguns for listenin' to all that devil music! Git off my lawn!
Ahem. Sorry. The point is, very minimally knowledgeable in the field of 20th/21st century pop music.
Up until a curious event: the creation of a video game.
That's right, games are the way to providing education for me. If Halo's Master Chief had been teaching physics principles while blasting the shit out of Covenant forces, you can bet I'd have had a PhD in physics by now. But again, I'm off topic.
The video game in question was Guitar Hero. For those of you who might be out of the loop right now (which, on this friends list, might be about three of you), Guitar Hero allowed you to simulate a guitar playing experience, complete with a guitar-shaped controller, and as it played songs on the screen, you matched "keystrokes" with "strums" to make "notes". Whatever. The point is, the game is deceptively addictive, and in this fashion, I began to actually notice songs and artists. Sometimes even pairing them together correctly. (For the record, perkyczarlet, I still think The Safety Dance was done by Men In Hats. But some things just can't be fixed.)
Thanks to Guitar Hero and its two sequels, my appreciation for music has expanded in a bold new direction. Classic rock, pop, metal, and more, now sharing space with my library of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi. (Ok, also for the record, if any of the GH games offered a "Classical Music" set of tracks where they converted some classical pieces to a guitar-able format, I'd be all over that like Oprah on a baked ham.)
And then, when I thought my education could go no further, a new player arrived on the scene: Rock Band. Here, now, not only could you get your guitar on, but you could beat the drums to your heart's content, and even dare to be a vocalist. Did I dare rise to a new challenge? Yes. Yes I did. And wonder of wonders, I've found songs that I like, and have even gone so far as to find them online and acquire them. It's an amazing new development, and it's ok.
Now, don't overestimate my prowess. I'm still unlikely to be fully versed in modern musical culture. Many may still sniff disdainfully at my still incomplete arsenal of information. But I have definitely upgraded my status from "n00b" to "rank amateur". Also, I can play bass and sing simultaneously, which makes me equivalent to Sting. Sting is the man. Judge him not, for all he sees is an Atreides he wants to kill.
Finally, a paragraph for all you Rock Band fans out there. My friend CA and I finished the Endless Setlist the other day. It was a gruelling 4.5 hour ordeal, and we made it even more challenging for ourselves: he took drums, I took bass, and we alternated being the vocalist from song to song. At medium setting for all three instruments, we only failed one song. The price in muscle failure the next morning, of course, was much much higher. Damn you, musical rhythm game!
You know, really, there's no picture more appropriate to this post than this:
Rock on!