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Classical Gas is one of the most requested and most familiar instrumental pieces of all time. In an episode of The Simpsons called “Last Exit to Springfield” Homer leads the workers of the nuclear power plant in a strike to recover their lost dental plan. While they picket the plant, Lisa plays a bleak worker’s song. As she finishes, Lenny shouts, “Play Classical Gas”. Lisa plays the guitar and everybody watching the episode on TV goes, “Oh, yeah, THAT tune!” Classical Gas is always asked for whenever a bunch of people and a nylon string acoustic guitar are in the same room. It is not really a great technical showcase for finger style guitarists but it is a great vehicle to show off the sound of the classical guitar.

Classical Gas was released into the world in 1968. A song by The Doors prevented it from turning into a number one hit but it remained in the second place for two weeks. Forty years later it is still among the most familiar tunes of all time and, along with The Anonymous Romance and Leucona’s Malaguena regarded as an essential element of the classical guitar repertoire. And nobody can say why.

The impact of Classical Gas is way more than the sum of its parts. There are very few musical ideas in the tune. It is mainly repetition of a theme made up of a few notes. There are a few parts that are unforgettable “surprises” making use of syncopation, scales, strums, and abrupt time signature changes. Somehow all the bits link together like pearls on a necklace, and the final note adds a sublime resolution.

The composer, Mason Williams, states on his website, “I didn’t really have any big plans for it, other than maybe to have a piece to play at parties when they passed the guitar around. I envisioned it as simply repertoire or “fuel” for the classical guitar, so I called it Classical Gasoline.” Mason Williams’ day job was as a comedy writer and stand-up comedian who had lots of other projects besides writing a classical guitar instrumental.

It was Mason Williams’ work on the Smothers Brothers’ “Comedy Hour” which gave him the opportunity to have his pet composition heard by the American public. The original score of the piece shows only chords and a few notes. Mason Williams had a twenty-three year old composer named Mike Post finish off the arrangement.

At the Grammys it won Best Instrumental Composition and Best Instrumental Performance for Mason Williams and Best Instrumental Arrangement for Mike Post who has had a career full of triumphs in the field of TV theme music. His latest victory is the theme(s) for the “Law And Order” series.

Classical Gas has been employed as the theme music for several news programs, the background music for the Apollo 4 movie, and featured in a number of other movies and TV shows. Many people have mistakenly attributed Mason Williams’ solo version of the tune for a cover by Eric Clapton.

Classical Gas is quite an easy piece to play, the challenge is to play it with passion and dynamics because it appears to non-guitarists, more difficult to play than it really is. Maybe this is the reason it is among the most requested guitar pieces ever.

Billie Holiday was one of the most famous jazz music singers in America. Her real name was Eleanora Fagan. Like most lives of musicians, she had a very bad time growing up which damaged her career. Her life is written about in the autobiography Lady Sings The Blues, but there are many things in there that are not really valid. Her stage name is from an actress, Billie Dove and her father Clarence Holiday.

Billie grew up in the poorest area of Baltimore. Her parents married when she was three years old, but it did not last. They divorced and she was raised by her mother and various relatives. She had been raped when she was eleven years old, and skipped school a lot, so she was placed in The House of the Good Shepherd in 1925. The House of the Good Shepherd was a reform school for Catholics. A friend of the family helped her out of there a couple of years later. She then went to New York to live with her mother. A year later, her mother discovered a neighbor was raping Billie, the man spent three months in jail.

Things seemed to go from bad to worse. Billie had said a brothel claimed her where she worked as a prostitute , and then was in prison for awhile. She started singing for tips in the Harlem night clubs in the 1930′s. It was said when she had not a dime to her name and was about to be evicted, she sang “Trave’lin All Alone” at a club and had the audience crying. She kept singing for tips until she ended up at a popular jazz club called Pod’s and Jerry’s in Harlem. A lot of her performing cannot be discovered, but it is said she was working at Monette’s, another club in 1933 when John Hammond, a talent scout found her.

John got her to record with Benny Goodman that same year. She sang in a group with Teddy Wilson, a pianist. Their debut was the song “Miss Brown You”, and “What A Little Moonlight Can Do”, which made her a famous jazz singer. The year following that, she began recording under her own stage name. Some of the musicians who she performed with her the best, such as Lester young, a tenor sax player. Lester was a boarder in her mother’s house, so they were good friends. He was the one who gave her the nickname Lady Day. She gave him the nickname Prez. She also performed with Artie Shaw and Count Basie.

When Billie was on the Columbia label, someone gave her the song “Strange Fruit” about lynching. She sang the song at a club in 1939, afraid of some kind of retaliation. Later on, Billie said that it was similar to the death of her father, and that is part of the reason why she performed it. She was upset that a lot of people didn’t understand the song. She said,” They’ll ask me to sing that sexy song about the people swinging.” Columbia didn’t record it, but Commodore Records did. She sang that song for twenty years.

She began doing drugs in the 1940′s, married Jimmy Monroe, a trombonist in 1941. At the same time, she was with her drug dealer Joe Guy living with him common law. She divorced her husband in 1947, and departed from her drug dealer, but spent eight months in a correctional facility for women. Because her Cabaret Card was taken, she couldn’t perform in clubs in New York City for the last twelve years of her life, except once at the Ebony Club with permission.

She continued on with substance abuse, and getting into the worst relationships with men.
She died in 1959 from cirrhosis of the liver. She was just 44 years old. All she had was seventy cents in the bank, and a $750 tabloid fee. A movie Lady Sings The Blues was done about her life starring Diana Ross. It wasn’t the real story but it gave Diana a Best Actress nomination. Billie has been an inspiration for many people and is still one of the best jazz music vocalists today.

Bass Guitar Tabs And Their Place In The Circle Of Life

Bass guitar tab is an extremely popular way of writing bass guitar music. If you are interested in becoming a bass guitarist you need to get familiar with bass guitar music by playing the bass lines of some of your favorite songs before you let your inner bass player off the chain. Utilizing this handy tool you can learn how to be the bass player in a band quickly without getting too much into boring theory.

The bass player’s job is simply to keep time. Nothing could be easier. Until you try to do it. So what is actually involved? The bass guitar player keeps time by playing a ‘bassline’ which is usually a rhythmic’ sequence of notes. The bass player brings together the rhythmic playing of the drummer with the melodies and chords played by the lead guitarist. Do you need to be a talented musician to do this? Yes you do. The bass guitar player is the guy who switches off his brain and becomes one with the flow of the music. He then switches his brain back on and become the designated driver for the rest of the band.

A novice bass guitarist may not immediately be able to follow (or lead) the rest of the band right from the start. You might need some material to work with while you ease into the job. Bass guitar tab gives the guitar player written directions on what to play to give the bass line to a song. Tablature is a written representation of the strings of the guitar using numbers to show the frets. If you want to learn the bass guitar quickly tab will help you. It is easy to pick up and to remember, and it enables you to learn the riffs and phrases you need to give structure to your band’s music.

A bass guitar tab is a picture of the fret board which can be drawn using Notepad on your computer or, if you like, by hand. The frets are numbered on lines representing the guitar strings. If you have a four string bass, the upper string is the G string, next the D string, the A string, and the E string. The numbers below the lines are the frets where the notes are played. If there is zero below the line it means the open string is played. A chord is represented in bass guitar tabs by two numbers, one above the other. Most bass guitar tabs contain a legend which explains any unfamiliar terms.

With the history of rock music going back for generations tabs are available for any song you can think of. The internet is by far the best source for bass guitar tabs. Just do a Google search and you will have more material than you will ever need. All you have to do is learn and practice. Learn and practice your favorite songs first. Bass guitar is not a musical instrument you can approach without passion. Bass guitar riffs can be learnt from tab books but should be played from the heart.

Is Digital Music Really As Amazing As Its Made Out To Be

Is digital music really worth all of its hype that it constantly receives? Perhaps it is, I do not know really, what do you all really think about it and do you feel that it is truly worthy of its obviously amazing recognition? Throughout this article I want to go over a few things with you regarding digital music and provide you with some different questions that you too might want to ask yourself before believing all of this hype about digital music and how its the greatest thing going today.

Digital music is quite unique and yes, it does make things easier and more convenient. However, with all of that said, is it really all that amazing really? What about the old record players that played those huge records? Me myself, I still think that those things were and are still truly unbelievably amazing and deserve all of the hype that they ever received or still are getting even today.

No matter how incredible digital music is, I am still an avid observer of what pertains to good music and what type of device really deserves all of that fabulous talk that has been going on with the whole digital music thing. Digital music does rock but what about when you listened to your all time favorite bands on 8 track players. How freaking awesome were 8 track players? Me personally, I still believe them to be quite an incredible and unique invention. I still remember listening to my moms 8 track player whenever I was just a little girl and I will never forget that either.

For me, things such as those pieces of equipment, they truly deserve hype, they deserve recognition of some sort, they deserve wows and praise and they should and are still being used by so many people believe it or not. The quality might be a little bit or a lot different than from what you receive whenever you are listening to digital music but does the new and improved and incredible digital music have that raw sound that you remember when you listened to an old album playing or whenever your mommy put in her favorite 8 track into her 8 track player? I really, truly, and most honestly, do not believe so.

Too many things are changing and sometimes it can be very exhausting trying to keep up with all of the incredible and scary changes being made. Digital music is just another change in our lives that we are going to have to get used to but some of us might not agree that it is all that it is cracked up to be, believe it or not!

Stick to your guns on this people, you do not have to agree with the majority of people out there, be yourself, you are an individual not a group of people trying to make a choice. Digital music is crystal clear and definitely amazing, but some things are just better left untouched, you know what I mean?