Melodic Madness

This post is going to be all about metal. But seeing as I have not done any metal before and I know there are not a lot of metal fans around here, I will start off slowly with it by doing more of the musical side of the awesomely diverse genre. By going with the easier side of things here it will probably be bands that even if you are a metal fan you might not know.

First up I am going to list Opeth. These guys are one of my favourite metal bands because of their musical talent and diversity. Opeth is generally known as being a very heavy dark sounding band, But! they have a lighter side with a very wonderful musical back ground. This is a band that is not in metal because they like to just through out heavy chugging riffs and growl into the mic. They are into it because of the opportunity it provides to use many different musical backgrounds in one piece. Mikael Akerfeldt the lead singer of Opeth is a very well renowned singer in europes music scene. He has leant his voice to many other albums for bands throughout the "Fantasy Metal" scene, including work for the legendary Arjen Lucassen with his album 01011001 under the band Ayreon. The two songs I am going to show you are from Opeths album Watershed which is their latest release.

The First song is Burden and my favourite from the album. This song is a really good example of how you can blend different musical styles into one song in metal. You will hear them using Jazz influences in parts, a very heavy Blues influence for the guitar solos and a little bit of classical guitar for the outro.




The second song is Porcelain Heart



The second band I am going to do is Rhapsody (of fire). (These guys are super awesome if you are driving through a really mystical looking forest). Their guitarist Lucca Turilli is quite well known throughout Europe as well as the lead singer Fabio Lione. Both of them were also featured on Arjen Lucassens album 01. This is a hard band to appreciate if you don't enjoy theater or opera even the slightest. One thing that does gives them a whole bunch of street cred is that they were able to get Christopher Lee (Saurumon - Lord of the Rings) to do the narrating for all of their albums. Sorry that paragraph was all over the place and really really bad. Here's a couple of songs.



This second on is really really long, but you should watch because it kind of feels like a lifetime achievement being able to say "I've watched the full copy of Rhapsody's Unholy Warcry. Plus it is a really epic song.

Tribute to Les Paul

As you may know, Les Paul died today. I don't think I really need to say anything about him, because if you put his name into Google right now you'll come up with a whole bunch of articles telling you his life story. So what I am going to do is give you a few videos to watch. They will have some of the most famous Les Paul playing artists.

First up, should be fairly obvious. Slash, probably the most famous for only playing a Les Paul
watch in HD



Here's a great song from Ben Harper



And here is the man himself.



And here a commercial feature Les Paul, not the best quality and Japanese subtitles.

Slipity Slide

So I've really been getting into playing slide on my guitar, which made me think why not do a slide edition of New Notes? So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I also realize that I haven't done a post in a while, and that is because I haven't really listened to anything worth posting in a little while. Anyways lets get to it shall we.

First up is the fantastic Derek Trucks. Derek Trucks I think is really important to the music scene, which (people may argue this one) I also think John Mayer is. I believe that they are important because with out guys like these the blues would die with the greats such as; Eric Clapton, BB king, Buddy Guy, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and we know that they can't last forever. Derek Trucks is an absolutely phenomenal slide guitarist and one thing that makes him even better is his music is diverse. Which I didn't realize was possible with slide. Derek Trucks is the youngest person to be featured on the rolling stones list of 100 best guitarists of all time. Derek Trucks main project is The Derek Trucks Band (go figure). Heres a couple of my favourite songs.



This second song isn't by Derek, but it is a really good song with Warren Haynes.



Second up is an oldie but a goodie, Ry Cooder. Ry Cooder gets major bonus points with me, as he was the one to perform and write all the guitar parts for the movie crossroads (definitely a must see movie). With exception to Steve Vai's solo from the guitar battle scene, which was written by the man himself. Ry Cooder is an interesting musician because he plays a couple of instruments you don't see very often, Mandolin, and the Mando-guitar. Then on top of playing both of those, he plays slide on them! I would never have even thought to play slide on either of them. Ry Cooder is Fairly old news, but who cares, if it's good it's good. I'd tell you more about him but I'm going to guess that most of your parents will be able to tell you who he is, or there's the possibility that you are old enough to have gotten one of his albums new (1970's-1980's) So I'll just give you a couple of videos.

(Mando-Guitar)




This last one is a group from Beautiful British Columbia, Vancouver. They are James Lamb, and while they are not a blues group of a slide group or anything like that their secondary guitarist plays a lap slide. I really Don't know alot about these guys, they're pretty under-ground. They don't have a website or anything that I know of and the only material I've seen of theirs is from Vancouver City Limits. So I'll just give you the video.