Alright, so I am extremely late in hopping onto this due
to coming down with a sickness, developing bronchitis and finally losing my
voice. But whatever, life must keep rolling right? Bit of a cheesy introduction
to my first blog post and to explain the purpose of my blog. My blog is
entitled “let the music roll” because for me personally if the music stops,
there will be a huge empty gap in my life. From a very young age, I have always
had some weird fascination with sounds and sequences and how they form
appealing patterns which led me to pick up a couple of instruments and
experiment as I got older. To this day, I still have the same weird love for
music but a much better understanding of it. I am no musical expert. I cannot
read sheet music. I am not always certain why different aspects of a song work
together as I found reading up on theory extremely boring. However, I am here
to share my view on a few handpicked songs on why they appeal to me and a bit
of an explanation of what might be going on in the song from a guitarist’s
standpoint as that is my instrument of choice.
For my first song that I have picked, I look towards the
genre I have come to love the most over the last four years. Drum and Bass is a
form of electronic dance music hailing from the UK. I will not delve into the
history and description of the genre as I would be able to write endlessly
about it so let us jump right to the song and hopefully you will get the idea
of why this genre is unique. The song I have chosen is called “Love Has Gone”
by Netsky. It is off of his latest album simply called “2”. His first album had
a more typical drum and bass sound. By typical drum and bass, I mean the
sounds used in the production are very ‘fake sounding’. They are pre-recorded
samples that producers tweak around with to try to make it into more of their
own sound. The instruments do not sound genuine. With the latest album, Netsky
has unveiled he will now be conducting shows with a live band as well as his
usual duties as a DJ. Spinning a DJ set is the most common way for a Drum and
Bass producer, or actually any electronic music producer, to showcase their
material to an audience. Netsky was composing his second album keeping in mind
he would need to re-create the songs live with the band while making them sound
identical to how they sound on the record. In order to accomplish this, for
this record he used synthesizers that had plenty of vintage sounds. These
sounds were able to be tweaked as well a little in order for them to fit the
mood and theme of the song being produced. Most drum and bass is simplistic and
repetitive in the sense that it is on average a five minute piece made of a
twenty second segment being looped over and over again with variations here and
there. “Love Has Gone” is in the key of C# minor. It has a highly catchy melody
made of single notes picked out of the C#m chord. Posted below will be a video
of me doing a cover of the song for any guitarist interested in the way I would
play the song. For future videos I will do them in more of a tutorial format
but as my voice is still gone I will not even bother. ‘Till next time!
