Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
Original vs. Covers
Music has always been something inspiring for artists, and musicians like other artists have found other works from their field, to be inspiring. Sometimes a good work is a good work, if it is a famous painting, a great movie or a good song, so artists always look back to the roots to learn what did work in a particular time and why.
Making a cover for a song could be easier that composing something original, but making a good cover isn’t anything easy. If an orchestra is interpreting a classical piece, they are reading from a music sheet exactly what the original composer intended to express, but a cover version of a song is sometimes different in interpretation than the original. This is done by bringing old tunes to todays “standards” by artists who want their personal touch in a classic song that had success some time ago and might have today, but by playing it in their own style can make it stand from the crowd.
A cover version, or simply cover, is a new rendition (performance or recording) of a previously recorded, commercially released song. Sometimes if a cover is good enough it could have an effect to revive the original song and to bring it into attention once again, if it wasn’t already. Some artists made very successful careers out of presenting revivals or reworkings of once popular tunes, even out of doing contemporary cover versions of current hits. Musicians now play what they call “cover versions” (e.g. the reworking, updating or interpretation) of songs as a tribute to the original performer or group.
Others try to pay a tribute to older bands by playing some songs of the artist, but there are also bands who call themselves tribute bands and play only covers of a particular band.
While music became more and more diverse it has become more and more interesting to hear different original songs covered in many different ways, like for example Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s cover of ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”, who made it with a powerful metal feel. Some would like the new versions, others won’t but diversity is interesting. Some metal bands try a different approach, to cover songs generally not listened to by metal fans, such as pop, punk, or classic rock songs. For example Children of Bodom’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did It Again” was originally recorded as an in-joke amongst the band members but ended up being released as a bonus track on one of their EPs. Blind Guardian, another metal band covered many old songs like surf-rock hit “Surfin’ Usa” as well as 50’s hit “Mr. Sandman” and oldie rock and roll “Barbara Ann”.
Other bands made covers in a different genre like Run-D.M.C.’s 1986 cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way”, which featured the original band, is a notable example of a hip-hop group remaking a popular song from another genre, and the list goes on.
Here on Sensoria.ws I will try to present the most interesting covers and their originals, starting a category in “Music”, “Original vs. Covers”, so check back from time to time.
Michael Jackson - In memoriam
Michael Jackson died last Thursday, 26 June, after a cardiac arrest and the world stoped for a moment when the news breaked out. The american singer also known as the “King of Pop” had 50 years and this year he wanted to make a return on the musical stage, with 50 concerts being scheduled at the O2 Arena in London, the first being on July 13 and the last in 2010. These 50 concerts should have been his last tournament of his career in music.
Unfortunately for the fans, Michael Jackson never got to fulfill their desire to see Michael on one last tour, but he will remain forever in the memories of fans as the true ”King of Pop” in music, and an important artist for a couple of generations.
Beyond the scandals in which he was involved in recent years, Michael Jackson remains an artist who made the best selling album in the world, “Thriller” wich sold in more than 100 million copies, and entered the Guiness Book of World Records. Among his achievements: he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, won 13 Grammy Awards, 13 number of single links in a solo career (more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 ERA) and has sold over 750 million copies of his albums worldwide.
He began his musical career with the Jackson 5 and in 1971 started a solo career, five of his solo albums became the most sold albums around the world: “Off the Wall” (1979), “Thriller” (1982) “Bad” (1987), “Dangerous” (1991) and “History” (1995).
He had great success on MTV in the ’80s and early ‘90, the popularity of Michel Jackson’s video broadcast, such as “Beat It” “Billie Jean” and “Thriller,” and later “Black or White” and “Scream” had transformed the music video industry into a distinct art form and a promotional tool, helping MTV, a relatively new channel, to gain fame.
Given exceptional scenarios of music and videos, Michael Jackson popularized a number of techniques in complicated physical, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound has influenced many artists, hip hop, pop and contemporary R & B.
His concert in Romania, Bucharest, in the national stadium from 1992 was the only concert released on DVD till now.
Tommy Mottola, a former head of Sony Music, called Michael Jackson “the cornerstone to the entire music business.” He also said about the singer that “He bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and pop music and made it into a global culture”Mr. Mottola, worked with Michael Jackson until the singer ended his colaboration with Sony in 2001.
Here are a couple of Michael Jackson’s videos from youtube.com, in his memoria:
The new Depeche Mode video, Peace
The British band Depeche Mode has launched recently it’s new video, of the song “Peace”. A calm song, “Peace” is the second single from the newest album “Sounds of the Universe”. It’s an interesting video, not showing the band members, it has a story that shows the life of a soldier from eastern Europe. The video was directed by Jonas & Francois who also directed the video “4 Minutes” of Madonna.
“Peace” was filmed in Romania and features Romanian actress Maria Dinulescu. The actress said in an interview that the idea of the video which was like an short film, was to interpret a man that comes from a communist past into a present that he doesn’t recognize any more.
The band Depeche Mode resumed it’s tour with a concert on Monday in Leipzig, Germany.
You can see the video “Peace” bellow. The single will be launched officially on 15th June.
Depeche Mode - “Peace”
A Jean Michel Jarre concert compressed into 2 minutes
An unconventional video got my attention on musicradar.com, a concert of Jean Michel Jarre compressed in just about 2 minutes. It’s an interesting video, as you can see the beginning of the gig with the crowd filling in the concert hall, the entire concert with the movement on the stage, the lights and the final with the crowd living and the gear being gathered from the stage.
Although an interesting approach for a video, the drawback is that there’s no sound, well you can’t compress that in 2 minutes too, or you can but you wouldn’t understand anything.
Anyway everyone knows that Jean Michel Jarre’s performances are great expressions of visual arts to, not only music. Well you can see the video down the page, but if you have the chance I suggest you go for the real thing and go at a concert, if Jarre is performing near you. You can check his tourdates and buy tickets here.
The timelapse video, from Malmo:
The Classics - Frank Sinatra & Friends
Frank Sinatra was undoubtedly one of the greatest singers in the world and his influence was and is very high among the musicians of today.
I viewed some clips with him on youtube.com and I remembered what great voice Frank Sinatra had.
I guess we’re lucky that we can view this rare videos with him of some classic songs and also some rare footage with Frank Sinatra’s friends, Dean Martin & Luis Armstrong, two other great singers from Sinatra’s time.
Bellow some of the great music clips that got my attention:
The Girl From Ipanema a classic song, this version by Frank Sinatra will be very interesting for jazz and bossa nova lovers. Frank Sinatra, one of the most influencial jazz singers performs this song with Antonio Carlos Jobim, one of the most influential popular composers of the 20th century, who was primary force behind the creation of the bossa nova style.
And two other legends, Drean Martin & Louis Armstrong performing duets with Frank Sinatra.
This is an interesting performance of Frank Sinatra with Dean Martin:
A blues song of Sinatra & Armstrong:
Frank Sinatra had many collaborations, let’s not forget his performances with Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Liza Minelli and even Elvis Presley. You can view these great jazz duets with Frank Sinatra by clicking on each name link as the list is to great to post all the clips here, but never the less it’s worth the efort of watching them 
Enjoy!
Workshoplive.com a resource of free courses, guitar, bass, piano and drums
Among the many sites that offer online courses for all sorts of music instruments I found one that stands out for its complete content completely. Workshoplive.com offers both guitar lessons as well as bass, piano or drums, something for every band member :).
The lessons presented are in video format and can be seen directly online and the video lessons are accompanied by scores and tabs.
Besides the lessons presented by teachers, there are many lessons presented by famous artists such as Joe Satriani … though this is a special section, which is paid for separately.
Sure the website has a down side, to have access to all lessons you must become a member, and that costs, but price may be worth to someone who will use the full resources of the site.
Anyway, here comes the good part:), now the site provides free access for one week at the following address www.workshoplive.com/playfree, everything you need is an email address.
Enjoy!
Audio frequencies, interactive chart
Have you ever wondered what is the audio spectrum of certain instruments or voices? Probably most of you do not:) If you read further then you are probably interested in the link below. For those who record audio or are mixing in the studio or at home, this is even more useful, because it helps you to better define an equalizer settings (EQ).
If not, you can simply look out of curiosity:)
It is an interactive chart with different values to certain instruments that produce sounds or vibrations of air, how they are perceived by humans, although more correctly the sound could be defined as any variation of pressure (air, water or other media) that can be detected by the human ear.
Human ear responds to sound intensity, which depends on the frequency. The frequency is expressed in cycles per second, in Hertz (Hz), in other words when you hear something you feel the air vibrating diferent times per second, low notes have less vibrations, while the high notes have more vibrations per second. In general the human ear hears between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, but the most sensitive to sound frequencies for the human ear are between 2kHz and 5 kHz.
And if I brought this up, the ones who don’t want to listen to neighbor’s music or other noises, as the case may be, or the ones of you who make music at home and need to soundproof the house you live in, can learn how to soundproof your home and what materials they need here.