Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Build your library

I was talking to a buddy of mine today, and he said he just got the 1500th song on his iPod. Way to go!

Another one didn't want to get the iPod Touch, as it wouldn't hold enough songs. Far out.

Exemplary.

Without sounding like a broken record (pun intended!) here's another kick in the butt to turn your iPod into an electronic lab of million dollar ideas. Namely, get more songs!

One of my teachers gave me a precious grain of wisdom once. He said that my listening library should be as big as my reading library.

(And both should be large!)

Our listening is where we get our ideas and influences. Ultimately, it defines our musical careers.

I saw a great quote in Guitar Player once that said "If you want to play metal, listen to metal. If you want to play blues, listen to blues."

And this is very true. You are, and you play, what you listen to. Exciting, really! Want to inject some latin flavor in your black metal? Flip on the Spanish radio station.

FYI, here's what I've been diggin' lately. Sure, it really doesn't matter, but at least you'll know where I'm coming up with these crazy ideas!

- Mike Stern "Ha Ha Hotel."

- Ozzy Osbourne "Fool Like You", "Don't Blame Me", "11 Silver" and many others.

- Yngwie Malmsteen "I Am A Viking"

- Foo Fighters "The Pretender"

- Survivor "Eye of the Tiger" (seriously!)

- Joe Satriani - various tunes

- Van Halen - Roth-era Various tunes


Subject to change without notice!

3 comments:

Delane said...

Dude...listen to the solo from Dokken's "In My Dreams"...starting at 0:2:09

Delane

Anonymous said...

I'm a big fan of Miles Davis and knew of Mike Stern but never really paid any kind of attention to his solo work. Thank you for sharing your interest in his music. I'm always looking for something new to devour. And finding a gem with decades of material to dig through can prove very inspirational.
Its nice to be back on a jazzier kick. My last obsession involved T-Rex, New York Dolls and EARLY Sonic Youth. Fun as that might be it doesn't help to direct my playing in a very productive direction.
Thanks again for the great post.
Marcey

Anonymous said...

you're articles are phenomenal. Especially your one on finding musical inspiration when you're all out of ideas. Thanks!