Bit of an Intro and "Love Has Gone"

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!