Led Zeppelin: A Musician and Listener's Analysis/When Giants Walked the Earth

 Led Zeppelin was probably the first band that I absolutely idolized. There was something about them that simply made me believe that they were gods. I would hear those names, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and Robert Plant, and I fucking RESPECTED that shit. Page, especially, was my first guitar hero. Plant's angry, yet angelic voice was beautiful and well...a little seductive. I'll be analyzing Led Zeppelin's entire musical arsenal today. Live shows and albums I-IV.

Live Concerts: When Giants Walked the Earth

 Specifically, live at Royal Albert Hall. This was, for me, the most memorable live concert I've ever had the pleasure of viewing, rivaling Red Hot Chili Peppers' live in La Cigale. The setlist was as follows:

1. We're Gonna Groove
2. I Can't Quit You Baby
3. Heartbreaker
4. Dazed and Confused
5. White Summer / Black Mountainside
6. Since I've Been Loving You
7. What Is and What Should Never Be
8. Moby Dick
9. How Many More Times (medley incl. Boogie Chillen', Bottle Up 'n Go, Move On Down The Line, Leave My Woman Alone, "Lemon Song")
10. Whole Lotta Love
11. Communication Breakdown
12. Organ solo / Thank You
13. Bring It On Home
14. C'Mon Everybody
15. Something Else
16. Long Tall Sally (medley incl. Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On, Move On Down The Line)

This setlist was, in my opinion, absolutely perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. And it was performed impeccably. The band really seemed to blend more than ever before. This "blending" was actually the reason that they were so damn good on stage. John and John were both always perfectly syncopated. And then Page lays down his jaw-dropping guitar parts over the rhythm section. With his argyle blue sweater and sunburst Les Paul, he changed the way music was played and heard. All in all, the band's chemistry was that of the human body--perfectly balanced. 

Fun Fact: It was Jimmy Page's birthday! January 9th, 1970. Live at Royal Albert Hall. 

Studio Albums: I-IV

"Led Zeppelin" or Led Zeppelin I, was almost the perfect album. It set the bar for rock bands at the time. Actually, it set the bar for every rock band, ever. Track listing is as follows:

1. Good Times, Bad Times
2. Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You
3. You Shook Me
4. Dazed And Confused
5. Your Time is Gonna Come
6. Black Mountainside
7. Communication Breakdown
8. I Can't Quit You, Baby
9. How Many More Times

This album has all my favorite songs on it, excluding The Wanton Song, Whole Lotta Love, and Since I've Been Loving You. But, instead of seeing these 4 albums as individual studio recordings, I see them as one gargantuan album. If you think about it this way, the albums flow into each other. For example, on Led Zeppelin II, the songs are arranged as such. 

1. Whole Lotta Love
2. What Is and What Should Never Be
3. The Lemon Song
4. Thank You
5. Heartbreaker
6. Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman)
7. Ramble On
8. Moby Dick
9. Bring it On Home

It seems that you could go from "How Many More Times" directly into "Whole Lotta Love", as if it was meant to be that way. Furthermore, if you really look at the listing, each song progresses towards something a little more...clean. Not clean in the tonal sense, but the musical cleanliness that is "Led Zeppelin III. Track listing is as follows.

1. Immigrant Song
2. Friends
3. Celebration Day
4. Since I've Been Loving You
5. Out On the Tiles
6. Gallows Pole
7. Tangerine
8. That's the Way
9. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp
10. Hats Off to (Roy) Harper  

This is another one of my favorite albums of all time. Songs like the Immigrant Song, Celebration Day, Since I've Been Loving You, Tangerine, and Hats Off mean the world to me. But again, this album is part of one huge one. However, I have different thoughts on Led Zeppelin IV. The only really memorable songs on this album are The Battle of Evermore, Going to California, and When the Levee Breaks. That's right. Not "Stairway". Although it was the second song I ever learned to play in it's entirety, it bored me after 4 months or so. That being said, the songs I listed as memorable truly are great. Those songs make the album worth listening to. 

Sound Perception: Equalization

Hello

Equalization is extremely important when it comes to sound perception. You don’t want it too muddy, but not too bitey. I use these terms because when i think “muddy”, i actually imagine a fish swimming through mud. This is difficult and frustrating for the fish, like when there’s a heavy bassic presence. When I think “bitey”, i imagine an amplifier biting off my ears, because that’s what it feels like when there’s too much treble.

So the solution is to fiddle around with your amplifier and guitar until you find the perfect blend of highs and lows. Here’s my EQ right now.

Bright Switch: ON

Volume: >3

Treble: just below 6

Middle: just above 5

Bass: 8

Reverb: 3

Speed: just under 6

Intensity: 10

These settings are perfect for what i need. And what I need is incredible clarity whilst playing with a band. Sound clarity is like an orgasm in my ears, especially on stage. For example, when playing with a band, you obviously have a bass guitar, which adds a lot of presence to the whole mix. When you boost the bass on your guitar, you add so much more to the presence, and that’s great. However, within your guitar’s mix, the output is now overflowing with bass tones. So, you add some Treble. Now it sounds better. There’s somewhat of a balance between the Low and High E strings. But now you’ve forgotten to account for all the strings in between. The answer to this dilemma is the Middle control. You should usually turn this control to a little below the Treble control. Now, you have a balanced mix!!!

sk

P.S. remember the last post--reverb is important to prolong the resonance in the room.

Sound Perception: The Impact of Reverberation

Hello

 Sound travels through the air in waves. Think of a concert venue as an ocean setting. The stage is a wave break, and the audience is the shoreline. The walls--they're the continental shelf. Walls are what determine the affect of the sound wave. 

 So keeping this "ocean of sound" in mind, we can look at how sound is perceived from the audience's point of view. Let's use a teacher giving a speech in a high school gym as an example. The gym is fairly large, often with a maximum occupancy of over 2,000 persons. With this much space, sound is bouncing off of everything and travelling through large spaces when the building is empty. However, when it's filled with 1,000 people, sound seems to die out. This is why we use amplification. So we give the guy giving a microphone and connect it to a PA system at a reasonable volume. Now, everything is perfect. Sound is distributed evenly, reaches every corner of the building. But every amateur in charge of the PA makes the same mistake--they forget to account for reverberation.

Reverberation (or reverb) is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is produced. Reverb is what allows sound to persist through the air after is has been absorbed by things in it's path. Natural, or architecturally engineered reverb, is already there. Remember in the gym, when the amateur sound guy forgot to account for reverb? That would be totally fine in the gym, because the gym is designed to allow sound to fly through it when people are inside. When artificial reverb is added to a signal, the sound persists. In the gym, this would be horrific. The words of a speaker wouldn't be decipherable at all. However, in a small venue, where the space is enclosed and filled with people, a reverbless signal would die out when it gets absorbed by people. In this scenario, it's okay to add a bit (or a lot) of artificial reverberation. 

 Reverb is a powerful tool in a sound technician's arsenal. Use it wisely. 

sk

Music +301: An Introduction; What YOU need to know first.

Hello

 Welcome to Music +301. This series of posts is designed to help you learn to expand your musical abilities past chord progressions and basic melody making.

Topics that you should roughly review before continuing:

• Music reading  
• Basic Chord Construction (Major, Minor, 7th)
• Major, Minor, and Pentatonic scales 
• Interval recognition and construction

Let's start with reading music. This is necessary in every aspect of music if you ask me. All musical notation in this series will be in well...musical notation.

(e.g)  If you don't read music,

 Some people, guitar players in particular, believe that they never have to learn to read music or even take formal lessons because it's impure or uncool. The fact of the matter is that if you haven't taken lessons and have little knowledge of music, chances are that you won't get anywhere REAL in music. Reading music help with cognitive abilities outside of music, as well. So go learn to read sheet music!

 Next is basic chord construction. I'm talking very basic. Basic like 1-3-5 and such. If you can't do this yet and you know how to play a major scale, figuring it out shouldn't be too difficult. We learn chord construction to further our knowledge of improvisation. (ex: switching bass notes around, adding stacks of thirds, AUGMENTED THIRD chords, diminishing for tension, etc)

 Ahh. Scaling. Major scales are obviously the primary scale to know for this course. As for the Pentatonic scale, it's necessary simply because it's used so often. Honestly, they have little use in music, but in guitar playing, they're extremely helpful if you lack dexterity.

 Finally, intervals. This is the essence of music as we know it. No more explanation.


Follow this series if you'd like to learn all about higher level musical training.

sk

The Importance of Swing

Hello

So I'd like to talk about my favorite genre of music--swing jazz. Actually, not necessarily jazz. Anything can be swing-ed. But let's focus on jazz. A song is "swung" when the eighth note is accented with a flare to it. This allows one to play on the off-beat and push the tempo easily. Jazz musicians in the 1930-40s used the elongated beats to improvise for long sections and blend melodies together. For example, Duke Ellington, one of the greatest bandleaders of all time, composed songs like "It Don't Mean a Thing" and "Pitter Panther Patter" to allow ridiculous amounts of improvisation and melody making.



Performed by Gabriel Salentz and friend. Quite phenomenal if you ask me.  






I want to bring back swing. Bring back the swing revolution.

So if you're in a band, make music on your computer, or just clap, SWING IT.

boo wap wap wap bo wap

sk

Unfathomable

This photo of the Earth was taken by Voyager 1 in February, 1990. The spacecraft was 3.7 billion miles away from Earth.

 "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme" leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner , how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

 Carl Sagan.

Kiss the Atmosphere

Hello guys

I just launched my solo project, "Kiss the Atmosphere". It's ambient guitar music! Check it out, give it a like, follow me, etc. I've been wanting to start this for a long time now and I'm glad i finally got my first track out there. I spent a good hour or two just mixing this after learning it and what not. So, if you have some time, please give it a listen.

Thanks

sk