wow… further down my fit of actual weblogging, have you ever been to Halo33? I don’t think i’ve ever seen a log as busily well-designed as that one (and who do i have to sleep with to get a little square? I want a square!!!). Coincidentally, the writer at Halo also owns the delightful FuckMTV which is currently nominated as a Blog of Note at Blogger. Obviously this is a logger with some fair, eh?
Speaking of loggers with flair, my favourite Meg is going offline for a few days and actually invited submissions for a guest blogger. Do i even dare to submit my name for approval? The thought of Tom reading me for a day or too is just too intimidating, methinks. I promise to have a fun guest-logger if i ever leave you for an intentional period of time again. I would ask Spoon, but he never even writes for his own log (although, on the upside, he’d probably just whine about girls and music all day, so you’d hardly know i was gone). I actually have a few people in mind, so perhaps if i ever need to take a short leave of absence again we’ll line up some entertainment for y’all. But, anyhow, back to random surfing. Yum.
Just an observation … if you’re in a fight with someone on the internet and they pick on your grammar or spelling, then you are winning the fight. However, if you are forced to ask them about their homophone choice, they are winning.
That is all.
And, while we’re stuck between a broken heart and a pile of links, go show some love to Benjy from sBlog2 … he’s on the opposite end of my heartbrake situation, and it’s just as bad. Between the two of us we truly are two halves of a broken record (his metaphor, not mine). Maybe i should start some sort of a webring for heartbroken male loggers….
Somes links i’ve been keeping to myself… first, Alex, who’s apparently going through a similar crappy point in his life right now. Rock on, Alex. Meanwhile, you should read Bertie’s new log if you haven’t already; she won SurvivorBlog for a reason, you know. In other news, the incredibly cute (jailbate, i’m sure) Ryan has a follow-up journal to his now-defunct Shock Treatment, which showed off his blue eyes a bit better. And, while we’re snooping around LiveJournal, i bet you haven’t read Leigh in forever. That’s okay, though, because i hadn’t either. Finally, Alayna keeps sending me attentive visitors, so you should return the favour. Oh, and visit our newest hostee at riot.uprush.org. Ok… i think that’s all for now…
I think that i’m under the impression that if i keep writing, something good might come out. Funny, eh? Do you know what amazes me? Arrangements. While i am always amazed at a solo guitarist’s ability to hold the stage with a single instrument, by that same token a well arranged rock band can totally awe me. I have trouble focusing on the fact that each instrumentalist has their own function, their own independent role in the creation of a song. I’m not much for arranging, seeing as it’s usually just me and my guitar, but my sudden fluency in the studio has left all of my songs open for additional parts.
But, it’s not so easy. Sure, i could layer on tracks of bass playing the root of the chord and guitars playing riffs in the same fashion, but arrangements that truly stun me add something with every part they introduce. A terrific example of this is “Goodbye Sky Harbor” at the end of Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity. The song is 16 minutes long, but essentially for the latter dozen minutes the band just repeats a single figure. It start with drums and guitars, and slowly a vocal comes in, and by the time you’re well on the other side of the 10 minute mark the guitars fade away leaving you with just a chorus of voices repeating the same pattern over and over. Eventually a new drum loop is introduced that has nothing to do with the one before it, and you realize that you’re not really listening to the same song – except it is the same song because everything you’re hearing emerged from what came before.
That’s the point of arrangements. Arrangements for my songs should be so that you can take away everything except a backing vocal and a bass and then build a different but familiar song back up from them. Those are the arrangements that feel like more than just a backing band plugging away at roots and downbeats. I’ll have to give it a try…