UCLA Post Game Thoughts

And sure enough: “Pass’ father recognized early that his son had “a little something happening” and pushed him constantly to pick up tunes by ear, play pieces not written specifically for the instrument, practice scales and not to “leave any spaces” – that is, to fill in the sonic space between the notes of the melody.”

Definitely a scale based player. Spot them a mile away. I looked that up because he has the Berkley School of music sound and was wondering if he went to music school.

Another tell tale sign of the scale players is you can’t hum the melody of the lead. Good melody has leaps (i.e. string skipping on a guitar). It’s usually moderate tempo as to allow notes to settle in/register. The mind can’t process above 16th notes easily.

Forgot to answer the 2nd half of that question. Compelling as in what? I need that defined. If you mean virtuosos, it would be a pretty typical list you see everywhere. If you mean individuality/creativity, that would be a separate list, and I’d have go through my record collection and pick out the guys. To me guitar has two components: (1) technical and (2) creative. The creative is more important because without it you get the god forsaken noodler. Technique matters to a point (like the Bob Mould level technique is fine) …gotta be able to play that competently, but after that, it is all about creativity. There are guys who can play circles around Jimi Hendrix, technically speaking, but they lack any creativity or musicality (e.g. phrasing, feel, etc). Thus, they are unknown wankers. They are all over youtube wanking it up. If you asked them to write a musical song they wouldn’t know where to start. If you asked them to play the Mixolydian mode in 15 different positions they’re rattle it over in 60 seconds. Is that music? Not to me. It’s noodling and wankery that sounds like shit.

Different strokes, I guess.

BTW, most “virtuosos” are notorious for their rigid practicing. It’s not as if people come out of the womb shredding or writing sonatas. Even the Mozarts of the world weren’t as natural as people believe and required a lot of practice (took him 10 years one he began playing to produce his first work). I encourage Marcdog (and anyone else) to practice if he wants to noodle like that.

Well, every guitarist is out of tune. It’s actually mathematically impossible to have perfect intonation on a guitar. You can get the open strings tuned perfectly, but once you fret you shorten the string, and by definition that will change the pitch (shortening the string makes the pitch flat on whatever note is fretted). So, I really hate criticism that “x plays out of tune”. EVERYONE does. Zero exceptions. Even fretless instruments have that problem. It’s a problem of strings and bridges/saddles. It’s a mathematical inevitability.

Secondly, he plays in tune enough. Nobody hears differences under 1/3 a semitone off pitch, except those with perfect pitch. Mould is in the realm of normal/good pitch. Maybe a song here or there is off (I’m not going to go through their vast catalog looking for > 1/3 off notes). If he was greatly off pitch consistently, he wouldn’t be a famous and influential musician. People don’t want to hear off pitch, at least in western music. Now if you get into World music, those micro-pitches aren’t even considered off pitch, so that’s another reality all together. Pitch as you are defining it is very Western and not absolute.

James Iha…he wrote some pretty melodies for Smashing Pumpkins. Not good guitarist, imo. Very average. Above average song-writer in terms of melody, but poor lyricist.

What Mould did have was a sound and feel which fit his niche, a niche he created. He was genius within that niche. He was nothing else. I highly doubt he could play Asturias, if he could a simple tonality in G… 7?

Does he need to be anything else? Genius or ability aren’t defined by playing someone else’s music or difficult pieces. It’s actually the opposite, imo. Creating something great out of nothing. It doesn’t have to be complex. There is a bad association with “complex” = “great”. Really bad bands like Dream Theater get by on that. “We play poly rhythms and 32nd notes” and the crowd oohs and aahs. Poor Bob Mould just strums G to C and it sounds better, because he understands…musicality. Complex music has its place for sure. I like a lot of classical music, etc. But complex doesn’t = great. Just like Riley’s complex playbook blew for QBs. lol

When I say he was off time, it was as if his amp was out of phase intentionally all the time. That’s how egregious his work is to my ear. Perhaps he was in tune, but being off time makes him off tune to my ear. That is not genius. That’s thoughless.

I’d have to hear an example of this out of time issue. Phase would not make something out of time, but instead it would weaken certain frequencies as you had phase cancellation. Something like a flanger produces something similar phase, but again, to most ears that won’t sound out of time. Reverb could make it sound out of time if the delay is long enough, but most HD albums are close mic’d with almost no reverb. Again, I’d have to hear the song that’s out of time to comment on it. I’ve listened to a lot of HD records and never heard that.

BTW, I think Joe Pass is a good guitarist. Of course he is good. But cliche/obvious scale licks between chords always turn me off because it is hackneyed. You can turn on youtube and find a lot of guys doing those same licks. Just research the Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, etc box patterns. Research modes. Joe Pass has great fretboard mastery. That’s what I give him. He has nice sense of chords and moving them cleanly. His runs are cliche, though, and they’re non musical.

My opinion of course. It’s known that not everyone hears music the same.

I agree, WFO. I actually studied theory for 3 years with a private teacher so I know quite a bit, but I never use it, and all the technical stuff I self-taught after the fact (he wanted to teach me that during our lessons, but I insisted on theory b/c I needed to know WHY certain things sounded good). Theory is fascinating, but if you use it to compose you’re doomed. It’s only useful after the fact as a masturbatory study. Sometimes if you’re composing and have a brain freeze theory can help. But using it to say “I’m playing Dm in the key of C so time for the Dorian mode noodle that I memorized”. F THAT. I can spot it a mile away.

Musicality/phrasing/feel are huge.

You should check out some Husker Du, btw, since you like punk. They’re hardcore/punk/rock hybrids. Some people hate Mould’s voice, but if you can get past that they have some awesome songs and energy.

I actually like Warehouse a lot, which I think was their last or one of their last albums. They become almost pop at that point.

Celebrated summer is awesome. I’m working on a cover of it, actually. The guitar parts are surprisingly tricky at those speeds.

They definitely have some duds. I’m not saying they’re infallible. Just that I’d rather listen to them, warts and all, over a lot of the more technical/”skilled” musicianship out there. Though, as I said, I think Mould hit a point where he was technical enough. Like if you’re a 6/10 on guitar that’s good enough to do almost all you need to do.

Was Grant Hart on drums? I guess I can google it. lol
Don’t feel like. But I think he was drums not bass…either way, the drums always sounded more out of time than guitar. Like instead of the drummer laying down the beat he was trying to play along to the guitar. Very clear during the arpeggio section of Celebrated Summer. The drum hit comes in late.

But whatever, that is syncopation defined so…

Having played in a band for years, I think when one guy goes out of time it isn’t necessarily a sign of bad musicianship many times they just get excited. Band is all about the push and pull and playing off one another, so if you sense one guy is getting into the music and pulling (this tends to happen during choruses and any build up), you should join him. Sometimes HD didn’t do this, and it is noticeable, but I don’t think it matters too much big picture. Ideally you hope the drummer is the one leading those tempo changes so everyone can follow him. If it’s coming from somewhere else everyone tries to match and it can fall apart, but that’s more common with amateurs who don’t practice. Like these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NoXaSajq0

Hahahhahaha. I could not believe it when I saw that a few weeks ago.

Right? Are they trolling? It’s hard to imagine 4 guys could be that off by accident.

Even if they are trolling, it’s very funny.