General Music Chat

If it weren't for Django Reinhardt, I doubt you would have ever heard from Tony Iommi.

OK? Flesh that one out for me. One plays chords and leads so fast I can't even comprehend what the hell he's doing. The other plays with prosthetic finger tips and plays drop D to compensate. I saw them in 99. He's on a level* with Eric Clapton and Santana (who I've also seen), but not much more.

*speaking strictly on a lead guitar basis.

George Martin said that they brought several pianos into the studio and I think the whole band sat down and played the chord simultaneously. The reason you hear the chair is because he was turning up the recording volume while the chord faded so by the end of the chord the recorder volume level was probably maxed out.

The guy who insisted on singing in the shower to get his reverb down was the singer for Yes.

Interesting, never heard either of those. I read long ago they fretted for a while on how to get the piano sustain, but it didn't say how they ended up doing it. I never knew about the piano stool squeak until I read that article and listened for it.

John Anderson was singer for Yes, I don't doubt he did that but it was someone in the late 50's or early 60's I was thinking about. Still can't remember who. Seems like someone like Deep Purple or Clapton. Just can't remember, it's been a long time...Maybe someone like Chuck Berry, or Buddy Holly...???

OK? Flesh that one out for me. One plays chords and leads so fast I can't even comprehend what the hell he's doing. The other plays with prosthetic finger tips and plays drop D to compensate.

I saw that one on VH1 not long ago, they do a short animated rock trivia video clip thing narrated by someone I've never heard of. One was about Iommi and how he lost his fingertips and compensated.

He was asked to join a band, and was going to skip half his last day at work after lunch, his mother insisted he go back to work. He got his fingers caught in what sounds like a metal shear, and used melted wax to develop fingertip covers so he could play...After finding out about Reinhart. He tuned his guitar down a whole step, not drop D, and used extra light strings, to reduce string tension and therefore pain. In those days he had to use banjo strings, al the light gauges we have today didn't exist. People like Clapton and Page were doing the same thing, banjo strings. I don;t know if they go the idea from Iommi or all discovered it on their own, or he got the idea from them, he didn't say. But it was Iommi speaking, telling it in his own words about the last day in the job, wax fingertip covers, Django etc. But Django was who inspired him to pick guitar up and keep going. If he can do it I can too was the idea...

i'm not sure when gtr players first started using thinner banjo strings on gtrs. i know robbie robertson ( The Band) has said he was doing it in his pre Band days when he was playing w Ronnie Hawkins. that had to be early '60's. i always surmised that this prct started back in the '50's but don't have anything to back that up with.

i wonder if using banjo strings on a gtr makes the gtrst dumber! (banjo jokes....since there are no drummers in bluegrass, it's the banjo players who get dumped on)

Ah. Didn't know about the burned hand.
That might have been narrative from the Last Supper documentary that came out in 99, when Sabbath reformed. That's where I learned about it.

Back to Beatles. Anyone else? Prefer the earlier stuff (62-66)? Hello?

Like that first chord Harrison hits @ the beginning of 'A Hard Days Night'. Imagine a kid trying to learn that one.

I tried figuring that one out when I was about 9 or 10, never did. Finally gave up.

One thing that was a problem then, we didn't have the internet to go look up all sorts of interviews, tutorials, lyrics and so forth, I had to listen to a song as often as I could, and quite often had to learn it right off the radio a little at a time, which was not easy since my father would scream at me to shut that (*&$ off every time he heard rock & roll. So I had to listen close, try to figure out the first chord, and take it from there by memory most of the time.

Once in a while I'd see them on Ed Sullivan or American Bandstand, and manage to see what chords were in use, and once I had the 1st chord I could get the rest by ear. Or check it on a guitar string.

I found when I was in tune a lot of songs were a half step off one direction or another, or a quarter tone off, due to changing tape speeds in the studio. One tape deck runs faster than another, the tuning changes. So sometimes what I heard seemed like it was in F, but impossible to do unless I switched to E. That gave me fits sometimes, when I'd try to tune the guitar to a song on the fly and figure it out, then the next one was a half step lower...

And I never did figure out that Hard Days Night chord...

Whoa!

Here you go-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwfH9oAiPH0

This sounds spot on to me but there's STILL tons of people arguing about this until they're blue in the face. Read all the opinions on this subject on the web. It's phenomenal. I didn't know their was a cult that followed this subject. Good Lord!!

why do i get so emotional on this?...