Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted August 1, 2010 at 3:07 pm by Severed Head
Finished. Finally. Took a lot longer than I thought it would. That said, I did things differently throughout. Each album ended up looking different in its sheet music file/structure, but I’ve got it down now. I don’t remember what I last decided or what I last wrote, but, basically, my goal is to be able to make a short version of the sheet music, and a long version. My goal is to be able to play the song with only the short version. The long version isn’t much different, but has lyrics too. And if I need lyrics, whatever, I guess that’s cool too. Basically, I just want to get all these songs down and into a nice PDF with good font and working links (so that I can tap the album name/index, then the song name, and have my sheet music come up)… Ideally, I’d like to be able to read this on an iPad, so that I could have entire discographies of sheet music at my fingertips, but I don’t have one, so I’m stuck with an iPod Touch, which is still pretty good.
Now to the ballboy aspect of things! What do I have to say about ballboy after playing through every song? There is obviously a definite style there. Gordon rarely strays from the I-IV-V, but all the songs still sound good. One reason it is kept so well together is the way he relates the words to what chord is being played. For example, the word “home” will be sung at the same time as the I chord, and the tension of the lyrics will be over the V chord. It’s the subtleties that really make ballboy sound so great… Aside from the obvious: the heartfelt, incredibly personal, intimate lyrics. The melodies just stick in your head and stay there. There were songs I didn’t care for at all, “We’ve All Had Better Days” for example, that I love now.
It’s interesting to see the arrangements change over time. At the beginning, on the first album, Club Anthems, almost every arrangement is different. The second album continues with different arrangements and different textures. The third album is almost entirely acoustic. It’s kind of a breakup album. Almost all the songs have the same chord progression repeated over and over throughout the entire song, without any bridge or structure at all. It shows the kind of loop that one gets stuck in after a breakup. The endless cycle. It works perfectly!
The later albums end up with more instruments being used for different effects, and newer different chords. Key changes even! But the recording quality definitely suffers on I Worked on the Ships, the latest album. I had already heard most of the songs in their purest version, with Gordon on acoustic on his podcast, so the only newness upon first hearing the album were the arrangements-and they are terrible. Disney’s Ice Parade on ukulele? Why? It takes away any of the weight of the song.
All in all, I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about songwriting and how songs work, and how to be a good musician with only 3 chords. Hopefully I’ve subconsciously learned a little something about melody too.
Next is how to become a successful musician with 3 chords, some distortion, and some screaming. Here I come, Nirvana!
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2, 3
Long messy all-over-the-place rant-type deal
Guitar, Life, Limb, Music, Philosophy, Time Paradox
Posted June 29, 2010 at 9:14 pm by Severed Head
When I went to see CAKE (for the fourth time! second this year even) the other night, before they played Guitar, John went into his usual brief description about the song and how it was written in a very tall building. I’d heard this many times from the other shows and from many bootlegs. But this time was different. He talked about the meaning of the song, something he so rarely does. He said something along the lines of, “This song is about taking something and just throwing it away. What would happen if you just threw away something really important? Something as OH SO IMPORTANT as music?” When he said this, I laughed hysterically because of the crazy layers of what he was saying, and because the audience was cheering, probably not fully comprehending what John was saying. CAKE have been playing music for years, and I’m sure John has had to give up a lot for music, and over 10 years after the song was written, clearly, he has still not given up on music itself.
I remember reading about it before and writing about it on this website somewhere, but I read about it again recently: Scott Lucas, another frontman from one of my favorite bands, Local H, was talking about, in an interview, how he never left himself any option. He played music because that’s all he left himself. I really feel like that is what I need to do. I’m not sure how exactly I came to this conclusion, but doing anything else has always seemed a bit unsatisfactory to me. I get such a ridiculous amount of job and fascination with all things music. I view playing my instrument as a lifelong journey, not just some temporary outing. More or less, I think, going into the ASU school of music was an effort to prove to myself that I’m a serious musician. And a real one. And here I am! Almost done, and loving it.
But I have another degree coming. But will I do anything with it? And for that matter, does the actual music degree matter? Not really. I don’t want to do shit with either of them. I just got a job with Apple, and I love the company, though I’m kind of iffy about the job sometimes… Well, not even really. I feel like I’m way ahead of my coworkers in my technical support skills, and I genuinely like helping people. It feels good when I get off of a call and my customer is really happy that I was able to help them. Or when I check my customer survey scores and they are awesome! BUT. I guess the big thing right now is that I’m helping people over the phone, and that part kind of sucks. But there are advancement opportunities. And also, the timing sucks. A few weeks ago, for the past few months, I had somehow become a morning person, and was waking up early every day, and didn’t seem to have too much trouble dealing with it. Now, however, now that I’ve taken a 6-3 shift (after trading in my 12:30-9:30 shift!!), I’m no longer a morning person. I can’t stand it, and I can’t get to bed. I’ve been a night person all my life, so what the fuck? This schedule only has 5 and a half weeks or so left to run its course though, so it’s not all bad.
But like I said, I love the company. I can genuinely see myself having a career with Apple. I’ve loved them my life, and they treat me fucking awesomely.
But I don’t want to get too caught up. Not if the alternative is being a musician, whether or not I have healthcare or financial stability.
I suppose I never explained the relevance of the CAKE song, Guitar. Here is the chorus:
If I threw my guitar
Out the window so far down
Would I start to regret it?
Or would I smile and watch it slowly fall- fall- fall?
So… I’ve been thinking about the opposite. Not throwing out music, but rather, throwing out everything else. Most of the crap I own doesn’t have that much real meaning or use to me. Is it really necessary I have all this stuff and waste my time with this crap when I could be playing music? I could be writing songs right this moment, or learning songs, or practicing with a band.
Just some thoughts! I don’t know where I’m going with that or what I want to do about it, or hell, what I want to do with my life. This issue has come up a lot lately. Whenever I get together with my mom, she and my stepdad always ask me at least 5 or so questions about what I am doing after college. And I don’t know. And, from what I can tell, nobody knows. Hell, most people I know get about 2 years into their majors and go “FUCK. I don’t want to do this! I want to switch to this major, but it might take another 2 years, so I won’t”…
My chemistry degree started as something I might like to do. Then changed to the degree I’d use to backup my music career. Now I don’t want to do that at all… My ideal backup career would be something in psychology. A counsellor or therapist of some sort. I think I’d just find that fascinating. I often find myself studying any interaction between humans and analyzing the shit out of everything. I can’t stop. To be able to have that as my job and have people respect my opinion would be wonderful.
But still, right now, it doesn’t really compare to music.
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, one of which is the Nerdist podcast. Bill Burr, a comedian, was on today’s episode. They were talking about a comedian who said, regarding becoming a comedian and finding your style, “Go out and do 100 shows. Come back and see where you are at that point”… I really feel like that’s what I need to do with music. I just want to get out and play a fucking shit load of shows. Write my own music, particularly, and see what kind of stuff I like playing. Stop trying to be cool, and just play music. Not that I’ve ever really made a conscious effort to be cool, as anyone could tell if they listened to some of the samples of music I’ve recorded… I don’t know. I guess it’s really hard to evaluate the stuff I write, but I know what stuff is cool, and what stuff is not cool. But I guess I probably shouldn’t care? I have no idea. Haha.
But fuck… Basically, I guess I should just get out and play some music and see what happens. See what reactions I get, see how I feel (Again with the analyzing of all human interactions! I cannot stop!)….
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted April 18, 2010 at 10:31 am by Severed Head
Haven’t had as much time as I’d like recently. I did finish The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories on the 11th, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to even get to The Royal Theatre until next week, and then it’d be another week for I Worked on the Ships, and probably 2 for all the b-sides, leaving the finish date 4 weeks from now, May 15th.
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2
Future progress on this lifelist item: 4
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Posted March 21, 2010 at 10:03 pm by Severed Head
Finished Club Anthems last night. This process takes a bit longer than I thought, but after performing through the album, I’m very confident in my ability to play these songs… Luckily these are all pretty easy. I’ve started the process for “A Guide for the Daylight Hours,” and not only is this album shorter, but it is easier. I anticipate having this done in the next day or two. I also want to try to finish The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories by the end of the week. At this rate, if each album is a week, I will be done before the end of April. So I am still on track!
My repertoire is currently at 14 songs (1:05:02 in length). I definitely know more songs than that, and I actually probably already know most of Local H’s catalog, but I want to wait until I’ve gone through that process to add stuff.
Also, I’ve decided that for step 4 (“Be able to play through the album entirely without sheet music or a recording”), I think it’s fair to be able to look up the lyrics if I can remember the melody. Which I have been doing. With great success. 
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Future progress on this lifelist item: 3, 4
Learn the entire catalog of ballboy
Fun, Guitar, Life, Lifelist, Limb, Lists, Music
Posted March 12, 2010 at 3:57 pm by Severed Head
So, a while ago, I made it my goal to learn the catalogs of all of my favorite bands, and I thought it’d help me a be a better musician and guitarist overall. I made a list of what bands I wanted to learn the discographies of, but I did not fully define what I wanted to do to accomplish this. It’s important to set very specific goals, if not purely for motivation. So, I’ve put the artists’ catalogs that I want to learn in order, from least difficult to most difficult. It is important to note that Local H is excluded from this list because it requires a particular kind of guitar. More on this in a bit.
My goal is to try to get through an album a week, but, as I move on, I’m sure that will become more difficult as the albums become more difficult. For example, one Jimi Hendrix album could take months, and don’t even get me started on Paul Gilbert.
Still, as ridiculous as a goal as this is, whenever a musician has played with Paul Gilbert, they’re always impressed by his knowledge of the catalog of basically every band… And this isn’t just any old band too. This isn’t Nirvana and ballboy and The Offspring (like me). This is The Beatles (a ridiculous catalog), Van Halen, The Who, etc. I’d really like to get to that point. It really shows dedication. And I can acknowledge that it might not be until my 30s or later that I finish learning all of these. That’s why it’s a lifelist.
Anyway, here is the list of what I want to do… First, I want to go album by album for each band, starting with the earliest album chronologically and working my way to the most recent album. Next, I want to learn any b-sides or alternate/live versions (to a reasonable extent… I’m not going to learn every single guitar solo from every Primus bootleg I have, but I want to figure out their main structures and cues)…
Now, what it means to actually even learn a song becomes an issue. The following criteria are what I’m looking for:
Be able to play the main guitar parts (rhythm and lead)
If there is no main guitar, a guitar version. If it’s chords on a piano, I want to learn all of those on guitar. Or maybe piano. But the main chord progression. There will certainly be exceptions to this, and I’ll bring those up in upcoming entries.
The guitar solos (or the equivalent, if it is a flute or I don’t know… god knows what… Just a really important part)
For certain bands, particularly, Local H, a special guitar is required. When Scott Lucas plays, he has a bass pickup attached to his guitar, and has two outputs, one for the bass, which goes to a bass pedal and bass amp, and one for a guitar. I want to make a guitar with this set-up, and be able to play all Local H songs in the same manner, switching back and forth between the pedals. I feel this is the only true way of REALLY learning the catalog. Otherwise, I might be playing the chords in a different way than Scott does.
So, in terms of the actual method of learning all of this music, I have this order:
1) Play through the album while listening to it.
2) Notate how I played them, make it as short hand as I possibly can (a lot of the ballboy songs will be stuff that takes up less than a line like Cm-Eb-Bb=main riff)
3) Put the album on shuffle and be able to play the entire thing without sheet music
4) Be able to play through the album entirely without sheet music or a recording
5) Add all of the songs that I learned to a “Repertoire” playlist, and, after finishing an album, go through a fair amount of this playlist, and be able to play through it without sheet music. This will help to keep the older stuff I learned in my head.
Anyway, the first artist I’m working on is ballboy, and the first album is Club Anthems. Next up is A Guide to the Daylight Hours. I’m going to try to get both of them finished by the end of the next week… Hopefully with another album, even. We’ll see. Here’s the to-do list for ballboy:
Club Anthems
A Guide for the Daylight Hours
The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories
The Royal Theatre
I Worked on the Ships
B-sides/Acoustic arrangements
Future progress on this lifelist item: 2, 3, 4
Own over 2 months worth of music/songs
Posted October 11, 2009 at 11:14 am by Severed Head
Finished! I added the songs that pushed me over last night. Not even songs, really, as they were instrumentals… My guitar studio instructor gets annoyed when I call those songs. Music nonetheless. The song that pushed me over was Jewel by Marty Friedman from Dragon’s Kiss, an instrumental guitar album of his.
Good times! Time to buy some alcohol to reward myself… Bought some Bailey’s already for another thing I crossed off the list in the private section. I might buy some chocolate liqueur right now or some Disaronno. Good times though!
62:06:38:50 as of 10/11/09!
Past progress on this lifelist item: 1
Letter to Jake about playing music
Awesome thing of the week, Comics, Conspiracies, Dreams, Fun, Fun Facts, Grammar, Guitar, Life, Limb, Lists, Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Plane, Propaganda, Robots, Snakes, Time Paradox, Uncategorized, Website
Posted July 25, 2009 at 11:58 pm by Severed Head
I think maybe we should just start booking gigs here in Phoenix. I will find some that you and I can both make in terms of dates. If we get booked, I’ll really quickly record some shit and send it to you, and we’ll basically jam some songs off of that at the show since we won’t really have time to rehearse.
Just to get the ball rolling and play some fun shows. What do you think?
Guitar, Lifelist, Music, Pissed off rants, Robots
Posted July 12, 2009 at 11:59 am by Severed Head
But when it comes to video game soundtracks, that is, specifically the remix/cover ones made by fans, there are TWO things I absolutely hate:
1. Adding vocals to a song with no existing vocals. If it were in a choir version or they were wordless vocals like an a capella thing, that is cool, but adding your own shitty lyrics or some rap? Fuck. That. Talentless. Shit. Why the hell does everyone need to separate the songs with vocals from songs without? Like, I hate when people tag songs as instrumental in the song title or just point it out in general. Instrumental songs are often WAY better than songs without vocals, though certainly not always. I guess it’s annoying when people demand either way. But, regardless, what’s not acceptable is ADDING YOUR OWN SHITTY VOCALS TO A SONG WHICH ORIGINALLY HAD NONE.
2. Sampling the original song. There are two ways I’ve seen this done. The song will start out with the original, and then it will EXPLODE INTO THE NEW SONG. or whatever. But it won’t do it on beat or in a clever way at all. But it just comes with a really strong amount of cheesiness, I feel. The other way I’ve seen it done is playing the original song, and then just laying down some other instrumentation on top of it. How fucking goddamn lazy can you be?
Anyway, coming soon: PSI Rockin’ Omega by Broken Harmonica, the entire soundtrack to Earthbound REDONE.
Harrison’s Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: Drugs, Alcohol, Religion, etc.
Awesome thing of the week, Conspiracies, Dreams, Guitar, Life, Lifelist, Limb, Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants
Posted May 31, 2009 at 8:55 pm by Severed Head
First of all, let me get this out of the way if any of you are wondering. People are all fucking stupid.
There.
You know why kids who go to Catholic school are fucked up? It’s because they’re raised by people who make certain behaviors taboo. Drinking or drugs or candy or video games or sex or what the fuck ever. Simply, when people are repressed, socially, politically, or otherwise, they end up lashing out, eventually. People who don’t drink who suddenly start drinking do stupid fucking shit and burst out and get drunk. Nearly everyone does. I personally RARELY hear of anyone who starts off drinking light and knowing his or her limit. No, they start off pushing their limit. (This applies to driving too. There’s a lot of ass holes out there slamming on the accelerator to make it to a fucking red light. If this isn’t a perfect metaphor for the folly of this American society, I don’t know what is) And I’m not saying people shouldn’t drink, but they need to practice restraint. Moderation is the key to ANYTHING being good. Our society emphasizes two extremes: instant gratification, and this religious bullshit of nearly everything enjoyable is related to sin.
But here’s why getting drunk is stupid. It’s one thing to drink to get a buzz to relax a bit and get out of your head. It’s another to kill brain cells and act out and deal with your problems, emotionally or socially, with a bottle. People call it social lubrication for a reason. But once you start depending on that for social interactions, you’re fucking pathetic. Plus, let’s be honest. 90% of being drunk is acting like you’re drunk. Alcohol can affect your system, but only as fucking much as you let it. Not only are YOU the one choosing to imbibe more alcohol once you’ve already caught a buzz, YOU are the one deciding to act like a fucking idiot at a party to get attention. And the thing that bothers me most? People embrace this behavior. Everyone does. People enjoy a drunk. At this age at least. Once you get older? Not quite as much. Want to know why? Because it’s fucking pathetic.
Now, I’m all for the idea that life is about your interactions at people and that, while we’re here in our short lives, we should enjoy it, but personally, the large majority of people I know drink in order to be someone else. They’re almost repressing an alternate identity, and then when they drink, letting that personality come out to become the drunk version of themselves where it’s acceptable to act on impulse and do stupid things.
Largely, drinking is self-destructive. So are drugs and any other form of acting out. Sex with strangers or people you just met. etc. This doesn’t seem apparent to a lot of people. This is because, going back to earlier, our society emphasizes this instant gratification bullshit. AND YOU ALL GIVE INTO IT. There are a few good ones out there, but let’s be honest, THIS BASIC PRINCIPLE IS HOW OUR COUNTRY JUST GOT FUCKING FUCKED. People don’t want to put in the goddamn hard work to make money these days, and some ass holes making money on buying and selling stocks made some decisions that fucked us, the general public. I don’t want to get political here, because I don’t think it’s a political issue. Stupid people got into too much debt, putting trust into companies who are supposed to keep one’s money safe, but DIDN’T because they were too busy fucking around trying to make a quick buck. And I mean. I can understand where these bankers and stock traders who fucked our shit up are coming from. They don’t want to work hard. They want to take the quick, easy option, and make lots of money. Nearly everyone who comes into my store wants a new condition book for a used price. Everyone wants to be on the winning end of a good deal, yes? But when it comes down to taking the easy option over the hard option, the easy option almost always wins. The hard option might take a bit longer to pay off, but that’s not what we want. Well, let me tell you this, kiddies. If you keep taking those easy options, you’re going to fail, and you’re going to be pathetic. Andrew W.K., not exactly a great philosopher, someone who preaches partying and instant gratification, outside of his music, does have a really great idea. I remember watching an episode of his show where he said “Nothing easy is ever good, and nothing good is ever easy.” I don’t like maxims that use “nothing” and “ever”, but looking at my life and everyone’s around me lately, it has never seemed more true than right now.
Adam Carolla has a podcast, and with nearly every guest that comes on, Adam asks “What’s your story? How did you get to be successful?” You know many of them said shit like “Well, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I got lucky?” NONE OF THEM. IT TAKES FUCKING BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS TO GET TO ANYWHERE REMOTELY RESEMBLING THE TOP. Do you think it’s any coincidence that Brian May and Paul Gilbert, arguably two of the greatest and most successful guitarists, who get to do whatever musical projects they like without worry for money or approval from critics, don’t do drugs or drink heavily? IT’S NOT. And I want to be at that level, personally. I’d love to have complete artistic freedom, playing music with my idols, or able to play with any musician I want. As my old chemistry teacher said, it’s the American dream to aspire to mediocrity. Well, I say: FUCK THAT SHIT. I’m not going to settle. I’m sticking to my fucking morals and my beliefs and my work ethic, except that instead of just sticking with that stuff, I’m going to keep making it fucking better. A lot of you know that I’ve worked harder and fucking harder each year for my life. I’m doing two majors at college, and two of the hardest fucking majors, I might add, and I’m doing it in just a bit more than 4 years. I’m not going to sit on for 5 years of college and hope everything works out, I’m fucking making it work out.
And you think Paul Gilbert and Brian May and all these great musicians are naturally that way? Of course not. I read this wonderful article by my guitar instructor talking about some of the great musicians of all time, the classical composers. Do you think they just got more inspired than everyone else, and that’s why they’re so good? No. They put hours and fucking hours into their craft. They worked their goddamn asses off to get to a level of musicianship some of us can hardly comprehend. This shit takes fucking time and hard work. And now their music is still being played today. More than half the shit on the radio is never going to be heard from again 100 years from now, but people are going to keep listening to and playing Bach forever.
And let me just add, by the way, that most of you people out there who really need the help don’t fucking accept it. My beliefs and my ideas about alcohol and drugs go against nearly EVERYONE’s I know, and I hardly exaggerate. I have a few friends and a wonderful girlfriend who agree with me and who curtail these stupid behaviors, but I must emphasize how few these people are. And it’s hard. It’s hard for me to maintain certain friendships and seeing them go down this road and not giving into the ease of mediocrity. It’s fucking hard as well. So why do I do continue to be such a stubborn ass hole when it comes to drugs and alcohol or being lazy? Because, like Andrew says, nothing good is ever easy and nothing easy is ever good.
Posted February 14, 2009 at 12:05 am by Severed Head
For the most part, I try to avoid excess in my life, but this is different. This is my passion, and the majority of these guitars would serve different purposes.
Anyway, I own 8 guitars right now, and have a list of about 18 more I want.
I currently own:
“Alexandra Johnson” – Johnson JG-620-N
“Vikki” – ESP/LTD V-100
“Alexa” – Yamaha FG-441S
“Sarahjayne” – Ibanez RG470RC
“Alison” – Ibanez PFS512-NT-14-04
“Crushinator” – Ibanez SRX500SBB
“Michelle” – Greg Bennett classical
“Felisa” – Sunlite classical
Next up to own: Ibanez RG 3120
To own: Ibanez K7, Ibanez PGM, Ibanez PGM (set up for 3 strings in octaves), Ibanez Fireman, PRS, Brian May Signature, Epiphone Flying V, Fretless Bass, BC Rich Bich (Baritone?), Jackson Randy Rhoads, Gibson Les Paul, Manson mirror guitar, Godwin guitar organ, Gibson Skwisgaar signature, A nice acoustic
To make:
Zebratar (The main features being an Ibanez super wizard neck on an RG body (painted white with zebra stripes) with an extra bass pickup over the bottom two strings, much like Scott Lucas’s (Local H) guitars), Ibanez Fretless guitar