sábado, 27 de septiembre de 2008

First Post

For the first post I'd like to introduce one of my favorite bass players of all time: Tony Levin.

He is known for being one of the most innovative musicians in the last decades. In the brief video you are about to watch, he talks about the Chapman Stick, a 12-string instrument that contains melody and harmony sections, which are played at the same time with both hands.



Tony Levin is best known for his work with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Liquid Tension Experiment, California Guitar Trio, among others, but has also released several solo albums; nevertheless, his work as a solo artist is not as known as his collaborations mencioned before.

In 2006, he made an appeareance on the show Animal Nocturno (Tv Azteca), playing some of his solo stuff as well of some King Crimson songs. The video for this performance is shown below as a link, in case you want to see it.

Tony Levin Band performing Elephant Talk

Finally, I'll present a performance of Tony Levin with King Crimson, it may not be what you could expect from a average band, the music is complex, with changing tempos and "awkward" melodies, hope you'll like it.



- Miguel Ángel Benítez Torreblanca

3 comentarios:

Sergio dijo...

I've never heard about the Chapman Stick, I found it a very interesting instrument.
The things that i found peculiar in this instrument are:
- It looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar containing 12 strings, 6 string acting like the strings in an electric guitar and the other 6 like the base strings.
- The way of playing the instrument: hammering with our hands instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking like in a normal guitar.
- The helpfull provided by the base strings, these strings give us the correct tone in a melody. For this reason I think that the Chapman Stick has a bigger range in the tones that it reaches compared with the other strings instruments.

About Tony Levine I think that he is a great musician, the music that he creates is different, if we
compared with the usual music that we listened on the radio, but I think that every piece that he creates and he plays has life, he left a little piece of his sould... I don't know a lot about music, but I like what
I heard in the videos.

Norma García dijo...

Awesome! The music, Tony Levin, the Chapman Stick, everything was amazing.

I believe that Tony Levin is a great musician and a wonderful bass player. The music that he produces is fantastic, progressive and very original. And, despite that I've heard him before, in some performances he did with Peter Gabriel, I didn´t know who exactly he was. And now, after having heard and watched the videos that you posted, I get a better idea about him and his music and I really like it.

And, apropos of the performing that he did in Mexico for a national television company, it was really good and kind of unusual, I believe, because it is not very common to watch this kind of artist in our television and I conceive this as a progress.

About the instrument, the Chapman Stick, it was the first time that I hear it and it caught my interest immediately, it sounds incredible and I love that it holds together melody and harmony by itself.

By the way, I consider this first publication to be the perfect way to start our blog, good choice! And thanks for the introduction.

Greetings, Norma.

Verónica Poujol dijo...

Hi Guys, I really loved what you did. Your comments and the idea of posting here something you are passionate about-music-.

Just one thing. Please edit or proof-read your comments before you post them. Peer-correction I mean, so that your spelling and grammar really shows as perfect as possible.
As a matter of fact, you did pretty well here.
Mark: 10!