My cousin and I were once discussing how music has changed so much. We both came to the final conclusion that the quality of music has changed greatly. He had thought that it has slowly been degrading and backed up his idea very well. He said that great expertise in music started out with Beethoven conducting large orchestras of highly skilled musicians. Then, he talked about how bands were formed next. They were all still greatly skilled musicians, but there were fewer members and they usually had solos to show how experienced they were. And now comes the modern age day of rap. Mainly all that makes it good is the lyrics and bizarre dances. There are usually only a few members, and it's just a guy expressing his feelings with a poem backed up by some other guy making a bunch of strange noises (sometimes not even using turn-tables).
Now go back a bit, and you are in the age of classic rock. Big names like Queen, Guns n' Roses, Led Zeppelin, and Journey come to mind. Now these were some really great bands. Everyone played an important role from singer to drummer. Their sounds would just work together perfectly. And in the majority of all classic rock songs, there was a big solo where a member of the band's choice would have their moment to shine by showing the reason why they are a famous professional musician. Nowadays, many bands have singers that sound alike due to new-age technology that alters their natural voices and tries to create a "perfect" voice. This does not make any sense to me at all. Why would somebody want to change someone else's voice if that is what made them famous in the first place. Looking back at classic rock, you can see a wide variety of different sounding voices. Freddie Mercury's voice and Axl Rose's voice sound nothing alike. The guitarists and drummers also were what made classic rock so great as well. Slash from Guns n' Roses was an expert at what he did. Sweet Child o' Mine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-qx47-C2Q0) takes my breath away every time I listen to it. Watching John Bonham's solo to Moby Dick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed5YvFkcR7g&feature=related) leaves me speachless by being suprised that someone can get that good at playing the drums. Looking back at moments like these make me think about what has happened to the music industry.
Showing posts with label muzac. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muzac. Show all posts
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
MTV 2009 VMA's
The MTV Video Music Awards was a fascinating night. It contained mind-blowing live performances by so many artists of different genres. Muse, Green Day, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Pink, and many more music artists had a share in the limelight. I was especially amazed by Lady gaga's performance. I am the kind of person who normally does not enjoy listening to pop music because of new-age technology that has altered so many the musical artists' natural voices. So many pop stars (who's names I will not mention) probabaly don't even sing that well live becuase they have resorted to bizzare dances and lip-syncing. I was amazed at Lady gaga's natural voice. I heard the song paparazzi on the radio and her voice sounded completely different (fake) compared to what it sounded like live. To be honest, I think that she is a great singer with a powerful unmodified voice. The other thing that I really liked about her performance was when she started bleeding and scared the audience. If I was wrong about Lady gaga, then I feel ashamed about saying that pop music is full of a bunch of lip-syncing dance freaks.
The other reason why I brought up the Video Music Awards was because of the little dramatic incident involving Kanye West and Taylor Swift. The way he acted was pretty disrespectul. I was sort of suprised because he just marched onstage and said what he said. It sounded a little bit like a cheesy joke, so I thought it was something that MTV had put him up to, but I guess it wasn't. Everyone took the joke/comment he made the wrong way and got really pissed off at him. Taylor Swift looked pretty hurt after Kanye implied how Beyonce should have won. I didn't get to hear Kanye's side of the story until today. My mom told me that Kanye apologized on Jay Leno. She told me that Jay asked Kanye, "How would your mother feel if she saw what you did?" Kanye broke into tears and said that the reason the incident happened was because of his mother's death. He still hasn't gotten over it and tries to block out the pain with drinking. While I was watching the award show, my mom pointed out that he did in fact have an alcoholic beverage of some sort. Hopefully, this won't happen again.
The other reason why I brought up the Video Music Awards was because of the little dramatic incident involving Kanye West and Taylor Swift. The way he acted was pretty disrespectul. I was sort of suprised because he just marched onstage and said what he said. It sounded a little bit like a cheesy joke, so I thought it was something that MTV had put him up to, but I guess it wasn't. Everyone took the joke/comment he made the wrong way and got really pissed off at him. Taylor Swift looked pretty hurt after Kanye implied how Beyonce should have won. I didn't get to hear Kanye's side of the story until today. My mom told me that Kanye apologized on Jay Leno. She told me that Jay asked Kanye, "How would your mother feel if she saw what you did?" Kanye broke into tears and said that the reason the incident happened was because of his mother's death. He still hasn't gotten over it and tries to block out the pain with drinking. While I was watching the award show, my mom pointed out that he did in fact have an alcoholic beverage of some sort. Hopefully, this won't happen again.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
What Will I Blog About?
For my blogs, I plan on writing about numerous subjects. I want to write about things that I use or activities I do on an average day of the week or weekend. School is probably going to be a major topic because most of my life revolves around it. I wake up early to get ready for school. I talk and fool around with my friends at school. And even when I get home, I have to do work for school. Other topics that I will most likely write about will be music and movies. When writing about movies, I will share my opinions about different genres and favorites that I have enjoyed watching for many years. This might apply to my thoughts on music as well. Ever since my cousin and father had enlightened me to the world of rock and metal, my view on music has changed quite a bit.
This year, I hope to improve my writing in one major way. I really want to find my own individual style. In sixth and seventh grade, I had teachers that gave the class handouts on formats they wanted their students’ essays to look like. I got so use to following and relying on the formats that it almost became second-nature to look at the handouts the whole time I wrote any document. Then, in eighth grade, I had a teacher that objected to that form of writing. He made us write final drafts only one paragraph long almost every other night. He disliked the “filler” sentences and words that were there only so the students could reach the assignments minimal length. For his essays he wanted us to explain everything because it is better to leave the reader well-informed rather than completely lost. He would always say, “In my class, two plus two equals five as long as you can explain it.” Since people see things in different way, this caused group discussions to have multiple answers to just a single question that was brought up. I was finally starting to understand writing. But, that was a while ago, and I haven’t written as much ever since then. In ninth grade other classes gave me more homework than English class, so I might be a little rusty. I just hope that I can try to improve on interpreting and explaining the text again.
This year, I hope to improve my writing in one major way. I really want to find my own individual style. In sixth and seventh grade, I had teachers that gave the class handouts on formats they wanted their students’ essays to look like. I got so use to following and relying on the formats that it almost became second-nature to look at the handouts the whole time I wrote any document. Then, in eighth grade, I had a teacher that objected to that form of writing. He made us write final drafts only one paragraph long almost every other night. He disliked the “filler” sentences and words that were there only so the students could reach the assignments minimal length. For his essays he wanted us to explain everything because it is better to leave the reader well-informed rather than completely lost. He would always say, “In my class, two plus two equals five as long as you can explain it.” Since people see things in different way, this caused group discussions to have multiple answers to just a single question that was brought up. I was finally starting to understand writing. But, that was a while ago, and I haven’t written as much ever since then. In ninth grade other classes gave me more homework than English class, so I might be a little rusty. I just hope that I can try to improve on interpreting and explaining the text again.
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