Composing with Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters

Tags

60 minutes, blues, country, foo fighters, grohl, jazz, march, music, new orleans, nirvana, preservation hall jazz band, punk rock, rock, rocker, sunday

Dave Grohl, an ex(?) punk rocker from the band Nirvana and now of his own band Foo Fighters, set out on a project of discovery and found the interconnectedness of many popular forms of music from blues and jazz to country and rock. He was tremendously affected by New Orleans where he connected with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and partook in a traditional Sunday jazz march through town. To me, it is interesting that a Punk Rocker discovers Jazz.

Watch the 60 Minutes story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/common/video/cbsnews_video.swf

Be sure to watch all the associated videos.

Follow that wave

Tags

ambleside, beach, city, cloud, log, logs, mountain, ocean, rock, sand, sea, sky, wave

Once again, I have used lines to draw the viewer into the photo to the subject. The waves are powerful and draw one’s eye along the beach to the buildings. But are the buildings really the subject? Look at the size of the boulders in the forefront. They seem to be competing with the buildings. Both are actually man-made. But wait, the waves and the beach also compete. They say, look at me, while taking the eye to the buildings and the mountains with the housing subdivisions. Even the sky seems to be pointing to the mountains.

Notice the depth of field. Everything is in focus giving opportunity for many subjects to be studied. I could have blurred the background, or the foreground and, thus, change the whole photo. The rocks at the bottom take up about as much space as the beach, city and mountains, while the water and sky hold a similar balance with each other. However, the two that match are, in reality, so different in size. A photo can be deceiving. As for colour, the bottom of the photo is somewhat duller than the top, as if to say, follow the wave and see more colour. The path of the wave provides a feeling of life and power, that seems to diminish as one moves away from the strong, powerful rocks.

This photo was taken at Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver looking west. You can see the neighbourhoods of housing up on the mountain. This beach is all man-made, as are the buildings and the houses, of course.

A grey day at the beach

Tags

ambleside, beach, dark, dull, grey, ocean, rock, sand, sea, sky, tree

This photo is a bit haunting. I like it, not because it is grey, dull and haunting, but because of what it reminds me of. Let’s take a trip in the semi-circle of this little bay. This is a public beach in a well populated place. On a warm summer day, there would be many boats. A small yacht club is just to the left. There would also be scores of people on the beach, many would be swimming. Even more amazing is that this was taken at Ambleside beach in West Vancouver looking toward the Lions Gate suspension bridge and the port and city of Vancouver. None of this is visible, but hidden deep in the mist.

The composition of this shot is interesting, beginning at the bottom with the rocky sea wall, moving to a sandy beach protected and interrupted by some breakwaters to hold the man-placed sand. These are also storm drains to take rain water into the sea. The curve of the beach take one eye around, exploring the various items, along a very nice looking beach with trees in the background, ending on a rocky point with something sticking up on it. It is an native carving. Most of the shot is grey, dull water and sky. The sand has a hint of brown and with it some warmth. I find the overall colour interesting. The whole photo is the colour of sand.

The scene looks still, lifeless, even dead. No wind, no waves. But wait, there are signs of life. As I said, this is a very busy place and if one looks closely, there are people on the beach. Along where the trees are is a parking lot. Beyond the point is a dog park. So, one’s eye is taken from rocks to sand to rocks again and, left in the grey mist, and one must wonder what the place is like on a nice sunny day.

Music I didn’t love

Tags

beatles, classical, folk, generation gap, herb alpert, jazz, music, nostalgia, paul mccartney, pbs, pop, rebellion, record, rock, rock and roll, swing, tijuana brass, trumpet

I’m not sure what happened to me, or what has happened to me now regarding music. As I have mentioned here before, I am a strange bird when it comes to the music of my time. Popular music has never really interested me. When I was very young, my mother exposed me to a variety of music and I can recall her introducing me to classical music. She even quizzed me to learn some of the main composers and their important works.

Later, since I had taken up the trumpet, I became a fan of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. They played a variety of what I might term Mexi-pop. I bought the music and played many of the tunes.

During high school, I sort of had to listen to the music of the kids I was hanging around. I tried and did, sort of get into it a bit, yet, one day I discovered the music of my parents’ generation. They had a few albums and I began to collect more. Soon, I was searching the junk and antique stores for 78s—records that turned at 78 RPMs and were somewhat rougher sounding than the 33 1/3 RPM microgroove records of my day. I got really hooked on the 40s music and soon branched back as far as the 20s. I joined a club of record collectors and went to jazz clubs and festivals. I was a record collector.

Enough of that for now. My background as a record collector can wait for another time. I want to get to the point here.

As one lives and travels through life, there must be a certain amount of osmosis that takes place. Now that the folks who made the music of my time are aging, people want to look back and remember the music they grew up with. It brings back memories and that is what we call nostalgia.

I find that, even though I was listening to other music, I seem to have some knowledge about the popular music I really didn’t love and was not listening to. I even like it. It doesn’t sound a bad as I thought it did and certainly seems to sound better than anything that came after it. Is this a common phenomenon?

After all, I can remember vividly the commotion of complaining and discussing by people of my parents’ generation when electric guitars and rock music came along. This coincided with the new kind of dancing that didn’t involve touching, only wiggling. Anybody could do it. I remember the older generation trying it out. Here was what came to be known as the ‘generation gap.’ It started with music and spread to most aspects of life resulting in rebellion and then separation between the older and younger generations. Wait, this is about music, so let me get back on track.

Rock and roll music was characterized by some people who complained that “You only need to know three chords to play it.” That may have been true for some of the music, but much of it, as I watch the nostalgic reunions of musicians on PBS television, was played by some pretty skilled musicians. Even Paul McCartney or the Beatles surprise himself.

Once the Beatles stopped touring and turned to doing all their recording in a studio, they started to experiment with various ways of getting new ‘sounds’ to their music. McCartney describes how they used to recored his bass playing and vocals separately. That left him to develop some pretty complex bass parts. As he explains it, when he did start to play the tunes live, he was unable to play his parts and sing at the same time. It took him some time to get used to doing it. I can recall seeing a clip of him playing live and I was amazed at what he was able to do.

I was born in roughly the same year that rock and roll was born. During this time there was a revival of folk music. So, I began to hear pop-folk and pop-rock music. There were a variety to sub-types, like surfing’ music. It was music I didn’t love, but came to like, since it represented my time, therefore, it holds some level of nostalgia in my mind.