The Nostalgia Factor

No, its not a televised talent show about cover songs.

I often talk about nostalgia and its powerful effects when triggered by music here on this blog; its pretty much the only reason we all still fondly headbang to Limp Bizkit and sing along to some of the awful stuff we grew up listening. That power to take you back to a specific time and place, even a specific emotion you were feeling at the time, has a great effect on our minds when we hear nostalgic music.

However today I want to discuss a particular side effect of this nostalgia - rather than its effects on looking back, what are its effects on looking forward?

More Autotune...it ain't so bad really

Someone linked me a song this morning by a band whose singer is a dude but looks and sounds like a woman, and I ended up liking the song so much I checked out their other songs and they were all so catchy that I ended up spending all day listening to them. Anyway, the point is that, aside from being whiny angsty emo (Oh Vinnie, why do you listen to this crap? That's a topic for another post) its autotuned through the teeth and I found myself not really caring.

Y'know, Autotune isn't all a bad thing.

Review: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (Also, a rant about the Hype Machine)

The hype around this band has always confused me. "Innovative", "Best", "Fresh" and so on and so forth; these are words constantly thrown out in adverts and from other people. But everything I ever heard from them has just been...standard. What's so good about them?

Well somebody told me there's some brilliant songwriting etc etc etc so I decided FINE I WILL GO AND DO AN ALBUM LISTEN. I've done this before, because I don't like having an uninformed opinion and if someone keeps annoying me to have an opinion on something, or to change my opinion on something, then I usually cave in after a while and go FINE.

I've done this for Linkin Park's latest (and still rubbish) album (and may do a write up later on) and I also did it for Avril Lavigne's latest in the vain hope that somebody will have at least written ONE good song on there (There wasn't). So I shall do it here.

Important things I learnt from last night's gig:

From our set:

1) Just because you're not stuck behind a mic all the time doesn't mean you don't have to pace yourself. Going mental in the first song will mean you're half dead by the last song. Stamina is the name of the game.

2) Sweaty fingers + Fingerstyle bass = a new challenge. This challenge must be mastered.

3) Vocal warmups really are all they're cracked up to be.


From other people:

1) Do check that everything is plugged in. Especially just before you play. Last minute idiot checks are vital.

2) Stop bringing Line 6 Spiders to gigs. They sound horrible.

3) Don't ever, ever, EVER gig without a bass player. You lose 100% of the punch and impact from your sound. ESPECIALLY if you are a metal band.

4) If you didn't bring a big enough crowd with you, don't complain that the room is empty and people can't be arsed headbanging to your standard unoriginal sounding metal and would rather chill at the back of the room than come to the front, as you've spent the last 5 minutes trying to get them to.


And lastly...be a good band. Practise, practise, practise, write some better music, then practise some more.

Most of all, love what you do ;)

Vinnie

Another apology to my followers!

Hey guys

Thanks for being patient! Still ill and now got a bloody wisdom tooth coming through which is causing intense amounts of pain, so the schedule for my daily rounds seems to be off and thus the blog is being ignored at the moment.

I will aim to have some insightful stuff up soon, in the meantime feel free to look through the archives and comment on some of the older posts!

Also, got a gig tonight, the first gig playing bass with my new band. Wish me luck!

Vinnie ;)

Posting will resume soon!

Sorry, been ill all weekend. Sucks! Gonna try and get some rest so I can post something interesting in the next few days!

Another post on "Sound Quality"

Those that have been following WAS for a long time may remember a post I did last year on Sound Quality. I thought I'd address the topic again; its been a year, I've learnt more and I still enjoy discussing it.

So what's changed? I've got more Vinyls, overpriced Monster headphones are popular (My little brother bought some! Gah) and now online retailers are talking about 24-bit downloads (which I will discuss in a later post). mp3 quality is getting better, but hard drive space is also moving to a point where we can have higher quality lossless formats on our iPods.

So where is this all going to go in the next few years?