My All-time Favorite Musicians
Monday, May 19th, 2008
1- Gary Moore
Gary Moore is an Irish blues guitarist and singer. As I’ve already mentioned in my older posts, Gary has always been my guitar idol since my very early guitar experience. His guitar tone is unique and warm. I never watched him live yet, but I will definitely do. I guess it’s still very early for him to quit the blues world. What really makes this guitarist amazing is his bendings! they’re just perfect. His music is very easy to assimilate due to the pattern he always follows but in the same time, you cannot expect the next note.
My favorite tunes for Gary Moore are “Still Got The Blues”, “Parisienne Walkways (watch my video)” and “Story of the Blues”.
2- Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong, a cornet, trumpet player and singer, is the king of Jazz Ballads. When I listen to Louis, I can think of a bottle of wine, a cheminee or an old cosy house in the mountain :). Louis’ topics are all based on optimistic romance unlike the blues musicians. His music is very joyful and goes straight to the heart. One funny thing about Louis is that he had always claimed to be born on the USA Independence day (July 4, 1900), but in fact, he was born on July 4, 1901 and he was recorded as an illegitimate black child. Louis died on July 6, 1971.
My favorite tunes for Louis Armstrong are “What a Wonderful World” and “A Kiss to Build a Dream on”.
This song is called “Sahara’s Fate”. Why Sahara’s Fate? well, there are no lyrics, but you will see how this piece expressed my story or my version of the very well known myth “Noah’s Arc”. The hero in this song is Dramata who is a beast sent by God to clean up the earth! By that time, God was angry because of the human behavior. Dramata was the flood that covered the whole Sahara! Only one man and woman stood outside the gate, they had the honor to establish a new life style. This is in brief the theme of this song, you might want to read the lyrics of this song which were never sang! I think this song expressed my story musically much better. In the end, I’m not anymore into this kind of music but I’m still so much interested in Mythology which cannot really be expressed with my current style of music (Jazz/Blues). I cannot deny that this is the piece of music that took time the most (around 3 months) and it’s still one of my favorite compositions. You will notice that I did not record any guitar with this piece because I couldn’t afford paying for a studio, even though, I had a chance to record in a professional studio but after few sessions things started to get messed up because time was not that year a friend of mine and my manager/friend Bash. Anyway… enough talking! Listen to Sahara’s Fate and give me your opinion:
Two years ago, I was a big fan of Joe Satriani and I used to play a lot of tunes for that great musician. I uploaded this amazing song “Until We Say Goodbye”. The guitar sound was really bad, I used my old Fender Stratocaster (That was before I bought the Ibanez JS1000 BTB Satriani Signature) and I sampled the backing track using Cakewalk sonar 4.
I want to thank Joanna for recording “The Revolution Begins” voice. It’s so smooth ;). Not to forget Nick, Fady and DJ Chris (Thanks guys for the tips).
Let’s say we’re playing a C major scale (Do) which contains these notes: C D E F G A B C. The 1-3-5 would be C E and G and they form the C Major chord! But why the hell 99% of the chord we hear nowadays are built over the 1-3-5? didn’t we miss the 2nd (aka 9th = 7+2), the 4th (aka 11th = 7+4), the 6th (aka 13th = 7+6) and the 7th note which is the most used harmony in jazz! So my friends, it’s a matter of perception. Your ears are not used, yet, to those harmonies because you have not been hearing them enough on radio stations. Jazz has no limits. Jazz artists focus a lot on these unused harmonies and once you get used to them, you’ll notice how void the other styles of music are! Get your guitar or piano and play: 1-3-5-7 (aka C E G B) and you’ll get the C major 7th! Kinda cool… isn’t it? Same thing for minor and dominant chords! I hope you find this post useful in case you’ve ever wondered “what is jazz?“.
