Jessica
I am struggling to learn the material for the Floyd band (hereafter referred to as Run Like Hell, for that is their name). More specifically, I am struggling to learn one song: Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band.
Most of the stuff I am already more than passingly familiar with. Turn It On Again by Genesis may be in 13/8 but it's been waiting in my mental notes for over 20 years; at the audition I could've played it in my sleep, even though that was the first time I'd ever attempted it.
Jessica, however, is going to be hard work. It was the original theme from Top Gear (the current theme is a reworking of it), and it's going to be hard for two reasons. Firstly, it has a lot of tricky changes which don't count in obvious ways, so it'll take a lot of work to comfortably lock into my memory. And secondly, it's extremely busy, because the Allman Brothers Band had two drummers. Which means that while I'm playing it I won't be able to remember what bit comes next, because I'll be too busy remembering where all my limbs are supposed to be right now. This is going to be fun...
On an entirely separate note, I discovered something that amused me today in the ID3v1 spec. ID3v1 is a spec for MP3 headers, containing artist, song title, album, genre, etc. Genre is chosen from a list defined by ID3, and subsequently expanded by WinAmp.
Primus - who you may know from the theme from South Park - are the only band to be listed as a genre, because they wouldn't fit anywhere else.
This fills me with glee, because it's always been very hard to describe Primus. They tend to use chords not found in nature and make bass guitars do things they were never designed to do. The best I can come up with is this: Some bands sit comfortably in one genre, others straddle two or three. Some make a home in one genre, but borrow from many others. Some don't borrow from other genres so much as mug them.
Primus don't mug other genres so much as hit them over the head with a shovel, drag them back to a swamp, and use their body parts to make balloon animals.
Most of the stuff I am already more than passingly familiar with. Turn It On Again by Genesis may be in 13/8 but it's been waiting in my mental notes for over 20 years; at the audition I could've played it in my sleep, even though that was the first time I'd ever attempted it.
Jessica, however, is going to be hard work. It was the original theme from Top Gear (the current theme is a reworking of it), and it's going to be hard for two reasons. Firstly, it has a lot of tricky changes which don't count in obvious ways, so it'll take a lot of work to comfortably lock into my memory. And secondly, it's extremely busy, because the Allman Brothers Band had two drummers. Which means that while I'm playing it I won't be able to remember what bit comes next, because I'll be too busy remembering where all my limbs are supposed to be right now. This is going to be fun...
On an entirely separate note, I discovered something that amused me today in the ID3v1 spec. ID3v1 is a spec for MP3 headers, containing artist, song title, album, genre, etc. Genre is chosen from a list defined by ID3, and subsequently expanded by WinAmp.
Primus - who you may know from the theme from South Park - are the only band to be listed as a genre, because they wouldn't fit anywhere else.
This fills me with glee, because it's always been very hard to describe Primus. They tend to use chords not found in nature and make bass guitars do things they were never designed to do. The best I can come up with is this: Some bands sit comfortably in one genre, others straddle two or three. Some make a home in one genre, but borrow from many others. Some don't borrow from other genres so much as mug them.
Primus don't mug other genres so much as hit them over the head with a shovel, drag them back to a swamp, and use their body parts to make balloon animals.