Sheet Music Guy !

Unfortunately in the past little while, I haven’t been as productive with the sheet music as I’d like to be.. This can be narrowed down to 3 very simple reasons:

1) Guitar Hero 3

2) Guitar Hero 2

3) Buying GH2 and GH3 pretty much at the same time

Having played a real guitar for a while, transitioning those skills onto these games has been pretty smooth. I got the games a few weeks ago and I’m working on the last batch of songs on Expert Level on both games now, which is about as fun, frustrating, and time consuming as you might suspect.

A lot of people criticized GH3 for being too similar to it’s predecessors, but playing both games simultaniously you come to the realization that there are some key differences in the gaming engine.

GH3 is very very forgiving in the timing of your notes compared to GH2 and 1. If you strum +/- one-sixteenth note of where the note should be, it will still register as a hit note. One sixteenth note is 1/4 of a quarter note, so 4 of them fit into one beat. When the notes start flying at you, this can be quite the handicap; sometimes it feels like I’m just going nuts on the clicker/strummer button, and running my index finger up and down the 5-button fretboard, which works somehow. I don’t die and I pass the level and feel marginally better about myself.

To make up for this, in GH3 when you start to slip up, you slip and fall and die really really quickly.  At times it’s almost like the yellow range doesnt’ even exist anymore.  I’ll be well into the green and playing, miss a few notes and somehow find myself just about to enter the red, at which I’ll hit Star Power just in time to die and get booed off stage.   What good is Start Power if you die too fast to use it?

It feels these tweaks were made to open the door for more extra-ridiculous solos that you now have a fair chance of faking your way through, assuming you don’t slip….which isn’t necessarily a bad or good thing.  Just a …thing.

Still, at the end of the day, it’s the same game you’re playing.  Both games have some songs that are hard for very stupid physical reasons, leading to frustration and hand cramps.  However, for every one of those tracks, there is a song which is both fun to play and challenging that you find yourself going back to once in a while just for kicks.

Just….please let me finish these games so I can get on with my life.

Oh wait, but there’s still Rock Band.

Dammit.

There’s this part in the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille where Remy, the talking rat-chef, is trying to explain the joys of the culinary arts to his brother Emil. He shows how two simple foods, with complementary characteristics, are greater than the sum of their parts when eaten together. I think he used cheese and a grape.

Anyways, keeping this in mind, I usually end my evening off on a healthy note, by snacking on a piece of fruit to stave away hunger….like an apple or a banana. One night I’m munchin’ on my apple and I see some almonds lying around, so I pop some of those in my mouth too….and WOW! What a combination! Not only do they complement and enhance each other’s flavors, but the both these foods are so basic and easily taken for granted that we forget that they are capable of wonderful things.

This moment of realization, of finding a complementary combination of two or more basic foods, will now be known as “Ratatouille” moments.

Soon after this first experience, I had a banana and a few walnuts and BOOM! Ratatoiulle moment #2.

To summarize:

Apple=good
Almonds=good
Apple+Almond=better

Banana=good
Walnut=good
Banana+Walnut=better

For all the mathies out there, assume better > good+good

My piano has been a little out of tune for a while, and it has been bugging me a little bit….but when youTubers start noticing (littledustball!!!!) I figure it was time to take action.

Long story short, my piano is in tune now, making the next song extra-awesome by default.

Video:

MP3: Rihanna_-_Umbrella_(www.sheetmusicguy.com).mp3

Sheetmusic: Rihanna_-_Umbrella.pdf

This was the first of many big singles off Rihanna’s breakthrough third album, “Good Girl Gone Bad”, which was recently “Reloaded” with extra tracks.

I like this arrangement cuz it’s pretty. tee hee!

Having mentioned how behind I am in terms of good music, I’ve tried to make up for it by putting a list together of my favorite albums of the past few years (excluding 2007). This I feel is a much better representation of what I think is the really ‘good’ music, as these albums have been sitting with me for a while and have stood the test of time.

10) Manitoba - Up in Flames (Apr 2003) - This is the album the Chemical Brothers have been trying to make their entire career but still haven’t been able to, except it was made by some guy in Canada five years ago. Their later works are also good, it’s just that this one’s the best.

9) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium (May 2006) - Made me realize how much you can do with very little. Despite their rhythmless drummer, the bass is flawlessly funky and the guitar melodies are a perfect complement. Both discs are thoroughly solid, and neither of them get old.

8 ) Guillemots - Through the Windowpane (July 2006) - Like a sprawling indie/pop orchestra, with a good rhythm section and disco beats. Kind of like a less-loungey Zero 7, with a bigger sense of urgency.

7) Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (March 2005) - Bouncy, beat driven, angsty rock music, driven by the tightest and most effective rhythm sections in indie music today. Super-drummer Matt Tong plays drums in a stereotypically asian fashion - with mathematical precision, attention to detail, and a machine-like sense of rhythm.

6) The Streets - A Grand Don’t Come for Free (May 2004) - Imagine taking a quality TV mini-series about middle class British youths, and watching it through your ears. Descriptive and compelling storytelling with light beats and heavy English accents.

5) Stars - Set Yourself on Fire (March 2005) - Orchestral indie pop? Arh? The fact that I can’t think of a fitting one-line description or comparison for this album is likely a good sign. I can’t count how many times I spun this disc.

4) Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene (Oct 2005) - Imagine an indie-rock hippie super-producer, his dozen-plus hippie friends and a (possibly hippie) horn section, locked in a studio. Take the best 14 tracks out of the best case scenario of the resulting mess, and you have this huge and glorious rock album. The production is excellent, and yet it feels like it might all fall apart at any second.

3) Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (July 2005) - if Queen is rock-opera then Sufjan is folk-musical, except far better than that connotation might imply. A very pretty listen.

2) John Mayer - Continuum (sept 2006) - Putting this in the number 2 spot might make you think less of me, but it won’t be the first time you’ve been wrong. (oh!) Say what you will, but listening to this album makes me want to start playing and singing the blues….and anything that makes you want to take action should rank pretty high on any list.

1) Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, it’s Morning (Jan 2005) - Listening to this makes me want to give up music altogether because I will never in a million years be able to write words and deliver them like Bright Eyes can. It’s so good, it sits in this weird realm of demoralization which lies just ahead of the stuff you might find inspirational. All this despite the album’s heavy folk and country taint. Amazing.

ok, the end! Thanks for reading!

I’ve created a new Blog section for the site so I can talk about my feelings and stuff.  More to come soon!….

I’m usually about a year or two behind the times in terms of new music, so something that’s new, exciting, or groundbreaking in 2007 I probably won’t listen to or understand until 2009. This is the list of ‘good’ music that I really enjoyed this year, with ‘good’ being anything progressive, innovative, or “cool”. Hope you like them too.

9) Jay-Z - American Gangster
It sounds like exactly what it claims to be: Jay-Z as the quintessential American Gangster. If you know anything about Jay Z and/or old-school gangsters, and can picture how awesome it would be if the two did business together, then you have a pretty good idea of what this album sounds like.

8 ) Justice - Cross
When I first heard of Justice and saw their album cover of a giant cross, I thought they were a metal band. It has recently been brought to my attention that they are in fact the exact opposite. Think of what Daft Punk would sound like if they were poppier, funkier, and weren’t robots.

7) Holy Fuck - LP
With a band name destined for mainstream success, Holy Fuck kind of sounds a jam band you’d hear at your friend’s house party…except instead of a guitarist you’ve got some weirdo with lots of random, broken-looking equipment. Noise generators he stole from the engineering lab, and whatnot. Also gone is the pointless meandering…no 10 minute jams. They say what they have to say, rock your socks off, and then move on to the next thing. Their tracks here are loosely played but very tightly arranged, averaging 4 minutes each. Did I mention they rock your socks off?

6) The Go! Team - Proof of Youth
Picture an 80s action-adventure theme song with funky horns, mixed with schoolyard jump-rope chants, mashed up with breakbeats, and played on a cassette tape and through an old boom box. That’s what the Go! Team feels like. If you know The Avalanches, it’s kinda like that, except really really happy. Proof of Youth is very similar to their first CD, Thunder Lightning Strike, so if you like this, get their first one too. After getting sick of this album in mid-2007, I went to their awesome live show and loved it all over again.

5) Burial - Untrue
Think of Moby’s Play album, except mournful, with less pop and more soul. Mix in the dark moody scratchiness of UNKLE or DJ Shadow and dub beats. Serve chilled through headphones after midnight.

4) Daft Punk - Alive 2007
I come from a weird position of being really familiar with Daft Punk’s old catalog, but never really liking them that much…until now. Think of every catchy hook or riff they’ve every played mashed and mixed together into one crazy live set. Most dance sets start at “low” and build up to “high”, but here it feels like they started at “high” and built up to “ridiculous”, periodically bringing it back down to “high” so they have room to make it “ridiculous” again. There are more “omg this is amazing” moments in this mix than in most other mixes I can remember. Not only that but the sound quality is surprisingly good; the beats are bigger, thicker and juicier than any of their studio recordings. I think I sprained my neck listening to this too vigorously. Solid.

3) Kevin Drew - Spirit If…
It feels like a Broken Social Scene unplugged album, except with the same level of messy, grandiose, hippie-style super-production……meaning it’s just as awesome.

2) Kanye West - Graduation
There’s a line in the 007 Casino Royale movie, where M says to 007 something to the effect of “Arrogance and self-awareness rarely go together”. How M feels towards Bond is how I feel about Kanye West. Although he is probably one of the cockiest people alive, his raps show he is acutely aware of each of his vices and has no problems sharing the details and consequences of each one….in rhyme, in detail, and with wit. Judging from his lyrics, he’s actually of the most grounded mainstream hip hop artists out there. Plus, not only are his beats hot, but his collaborations with people like John Mayer and Chris Martin actually work as real songs, not just a cross-genre marketing gimmick.

1) NIN - Year Zero
Before 2007, I was not a NIN fan…..this album kind of changes all that. As is expected from Trent, we get an album full of industrial beats and noise. Most of it here is at a menacing mid-tempo, which I actually prefer to the fast-paced aggressiveness of his earlier work. Although there’s nothing really groundbreaking to be found here, the execution is flawless - every track is amazing. In fact, I think the weakest song here is the big single “Survivalism”. Now, everything in the top 4 was well-executed and could be arguably more original…..but what sets this album apart from the others was the the marketing that went behind the album’s concept. The concept itself is, again, nothing new…..post-apocalyptic future, America as a police state, blah blah blah. How they put the plot into place was pretty amazing. In a technique not so much “grassroots” as “leveraging-your-obsessive-fan-base”, NIN got a PR firm to place ridiculously obscure clues that, when decoded, would hint at a series of secret websites that would draw you deeper into the Year Zero world. The sites themselves are thematically consistent, well thought out, and quite cool. A really detailed listing can be found on http://www.ninwiki.com, check it out. On top of this coolness, the heat-sensitive CD changes colour after you play it, which confused me endlessly when I spun it for the first time.

Anyways, hats off to Trent Reznor for building himself a fake conspiracy theory and pulling us all into it too.

Happy New Year.