Listening Journal Week 1

Hello everybody.  This is my first blog; the first time I've ever set aside words on the internet specifically for other people to view and (supposedly) enjoy.  For those of you who choose to read my entries and critique my work, I'd like to say thank you for taking the time. I do like trying to see things from other peoples perspective and criticism usually won't bother me as long as its constructive in nature. Besides, I figure that if you take the time to read my nonsense, you're probably going to need to vent some steam from taking on such a tedious task.

I've decided that, since I try to listen to a broad range of music, I would do my best to bring some of my lesser known music with me into these blogs when I  write about my "Known" music. But for now, Im just going to put the old ipod nano (blast from the past) on shuffle.  I suppose I should stop with the prelude and introductions and get to work.

I will try to post links to the music I listen to.  Just cause I can :P

Like a Fool- Shaimus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADcregrwPJ8

And there's a link if you care to listen.

Let's see here...I love this song and I'm glad it popped up. I tend to feel like this song should be one of my theme songs as a person. As always the first thing that catches my attention with this song is the introduction of the meaty bass gutar playing its higher notes and lower notes alternating with each other, then with the electric guitar joining in to set everything up. Something I always seem to miss is the drum roll and the keys in the background though, with what I think are a tap tapping of one of the symbols.  This song has a starting tone like no other I've ever heard and I can always tell that it's this song in the first few seconds. Soon enough, a baritone (Heh, vocab) voice comes along and starts to sing in a somewhat lower volume.  On the whole, the dynamic of the song starting out is kind of subdued for a pop/rock genre song.  Soon enough, we hit the chorus and the bands dynamic stays the same as the singers dynamic and pitch rises. In the middle of the song, we hit kind of a mash up/solo with the electric guitar as the guitar player scales notes to make a rising and falling pitch. I feel like I'm doing a bad job as describing the song or sounds, but hey, I'm new at this.  Overall, the song has a medium tempo, it's not really fast paced or slow paced in nature.  It's doesn't have the feel of a happy song or sad song.  I've always felt that the tone color was...kind of a like the singer was joking at himself.  Throughout the whole song, the bass plays in a steady beat, but with a bouncing nature as it goes up and down in pitch. I find it hard to separate the different instruments in the band sometimes in this song, but love how it all works together to create a lighthearted, yet self effacing sound.

Pendulum - The Island Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_c2UpAgtdc

With the typed words 'random music' into a youtube search bar, I find a nice big list of stuff I imagine I've never heard.  I hit the first link that comes up and take a peek at the song to make sure I didn't know it.  I didn't, so I listened to it.  

So...first thought about this whole thing is that I need to take notes when listening to music that I haven't heard before.  There was so much that I wanted to put into words while listening to the song, but after it was over, so much of what I wanted to say or describe just got dumped out of my brain.

I suppose what really caught me with this song was the bass beat.  It was the steady one-two beat you find in some dance/techno/house/trance music.  The kind that makes you want to bob your head to the beat or sets a pace you want to walk to.  The dynamic of that beat was loud next to the silence that the rest of the beginning of the song gives you.  It built up slowly, as most techno songs might, but eventually a baritone voice accompanies a keyboard to give the song not just a heartbeat of bass, but a lifeblood of sound that creates a unique song.  I don't remember when I noticed it, but a deep rumbling bass joins the song somewhere in the early/middle point.  The kind of deep pitched bass you can feel in your chest of you turn the volume up.  Sheesh...I can't think of what else to put in here that might be relevant.  This song...has the feel of a 'walking' song to me. It would be something that I would enjoy listening to while going from one place to another.  The steady beat would almost set the pace of my strides and the singers pitch is never really high or low, but rather constant. I think that if I come across music that has a lot of electrical parts that it's going to be hard to describe and distinguish.