MLT Club Member Jung Roe
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Thanks for the kind words Daryl!
I’ve learned so much about guitars at the MLT Club, and I love following all the guitar shop talk and customizations Lisa talks about. After all, Lisa is one of the greatest guitarists that ever walked the earth along with Mona. It’s in how expressive she is on the guitar, able to pull our heartstrings and make us feel the emotions and the magic in the music. She is brilliant. I think that is what a great musician is, and Lisa’s prowess on the guitar makes her one of the best guitarists in rock and roll right up there in the top echelon of the great guitar legends.
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Some more ideas for the MLT Notebook: Start a Common Place Book.
So I’ve kept personal journals and work notebooks for over 15 years now, and one of the things I’ve started doing naturally a while ago is collecting quotes and inspirational phrases and ideas from others books, movies, documentaries, youtube etc…., as well as from my own self-reflection. I started carrying over these quotes/ideas to every new journal. I have a section in the back of each journal that is now 10 pages long of quotes and inspirational ideas.
I learned recently this is a thing, called “Common Place Books”, and something many great thinkers and artists have been doing over the ages, going back to Aristotles time.
Great thinkers and creative geniuses like “Aristotle, Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain……etc all kept some form of notebook that helped them reflect on certain ideas, and helped them in their creative pursuits.” If you do a search in youtube for example, you will find a rich resource on “Common Place Books”.
A Common Place Book is a collection of quotations or passages, and a place to reflect upon them, where you make that knowledge your own, where you actually think about the ideas that resonated with you.
Commonplace book: A book in which commonplaces or passages important for reference are collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to with our without arrangement. – Oxford English Dictionary
How A Commonplace Book Boosts Your Creativity:
I know I digress, but hope this is helpful to someone and gives an idea of one way to utilize these wonderful MLT Notebooks.
NOTES & IDEAS
And now it’s up to my imagination
What it is I’m making of it allHere are my 15 years of journals.
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Hi Russ
Lisa uses the Gretsch Duo Jet (G6128T-DSV) with the white pick guard installed. She mentioned that in one of the Ask the MLT forum replies. I thought she started using a different Duo Jet after the Cavern performances, but it turned out she just took the white pick guard off for the all black look.
I found the link to that post:
test2.monalisa-twins.com
Restricted Membership Area – MonaLisa Twins
Restricted Membership Area – MonaLisa Twins
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Hi Roger
I know how you feel. I feel home sick for MLT. I think it’s similar to going away on the most wonderful vacation you could imagine for several weeks, and it has to end, and you come back home, and you miss those previous weeks so dearly, you feel home sick for it. You wish you can go back. We have their wonderful music to tie us over until the weekly Friday posts commence, and there is that additional livestream for the general public. I hope as a suggestion MLT will do some livestreams through the year. Just hanging out with them is absolutely magical, a most wonderful time. 😊🎈
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I’d gladly catch Mona’s cough, just to have been there in person with them! 😁💖
Hope you feel better Tim, lot’s of vitamin C. They say once you caught it, it’s too late for vitamin C, but I don’t think so,
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Daryl, if any politician is as GROOVY ❤ as the one in I Bought Myself A Politician, she has my vote! 😁
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Hi Daryl
Agree, the music industry today is more interested in finding acts that will fit their mold, and the record labels/promotors are very rigid. With the Beatles, their Mersey Beat sound, initially got them attention, but back then groups could still create and innovate and drive the direction of their music. There was still room for artistry in the music. Though with Brian Wilson, Capital certainly did not support him when he decided to grow past Surfing and car songs to more complex and innovative sounds, but he still did and there were other record labels and promotors who would support him. That is not the case today. I hope you get a chance to see the other video I posted last night.
I always found AC/DC lyrics and subject matter juvenile and that part never appealed to me, but Angus and Malcolm Young’s driving guitar work at one point mesmerized me. For me their powerful instrumentation work had the same effect as some of Beethoven and Bach’s instrumental wizardry. Took me to the same place. Now the refined music of classical is much preferred for me, but occasionally I do enjoying turning up the volume of an old AC/DC song if I hear it on the radio or something. I liked more of their earlier stuff during the Bon Scott days. “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)”
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Hi Bud,
Thank you for your thoughtful and valuable insight. Being a music teacher, I know you look at music from all perspective and depth. I agree, whatever the genre/style and what ever the time period, new or old, there is just good music and not so good music, and all the elements melody, rhythm, and harmonies play critical factors if the music is good or not. I also find melody is the most important aspect for me. If I find the the song has a melody I like, then I tune in. In the post Beatles solo careers, I was always drawn to more of Paul McCartney’s (melody genius) solo works over the others, though John Lennon had some amazing ones like “Imagine”, which is perhaps my favourite of the FAB4 solo songs.
To your point also I learned the musician’s unique perspective/experience makes a huge difference. When I first got into classical music, I bought up a whole bunch of CDs of Beethoven and Mozart’s piano works, oblivious to who actually played the piano, thinking it will all sound the same. I wasted a lot of money initially. Then as I got more and more immersed in the music and heard other version by different pianists in some of the classical radio stations, I found certain pieces I thought was just OK, was actually remarkable by another. One musician that made a huge difference for me was Glenn Gould and his Bach keyboard works. Bach was always too abstract for me initially preferring Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin. But Glenn Gould’s interpretations were very pronounced on every note almost, that it made Bach’s keyboard works suddenly come alive. So now I have most of Bach’s piano works exclusively by Glenn Gould only. I also was lost to a lot of Bach’s Violin solo pieces until I came across interpretation by Arthur Grumiaux that made Bach’s Violin works suddenly come alive. Listening to other performers, it is not the same.
I always felt with rock music, especially Beatles and Beach Boys, a cover by anyone was not worth the time. Why listen to a cover by someone else, when you can listen to the Beatles and Beach Boys original version. Well that all changed when I came across MLT. Their interpretation, especially with the harmonies, add another dimension to the songs. For example, the Beach Boys God Only Knows I listened to for decades was a good song, but it wasn’t until I heard Mona and Lisa’s take on it, that I realized just how amazing that song is! All of the covers MLT do are like that. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a great song, but MLTs version when I first heard it is out of this world! I lost interest in rock/pop by about the late 90s in favour of classical because there was nothing interesting any more, and I was tired of the old stuff. Mona and Lisa brought me back to the Rock/Pop genre with their originals and covers as they breathed new life into the music.
In the female super star realm, while I was not familiar with Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift’s music, I did enjoy some of Madonna’s stuff over the years, in fact some of her later songs I thought were brilliant, and is a culmination of her decades of experience coming together. It’s her “Power of Goodbye”, and “Frozen” I think are some of the best works by any pop artist.
With current pop music today, I think the problem is that it lacks creativity and innovation. It’s just the same “pop formula” being recreated over and over again. It all sounds the same. And I think it is because the Record Labels are unwilling to take any risk with promoting new sounds and innovation, and are only willing to promote an artist that will fit into their mold singing songs that conform to their “pop formula” that they feel will make money. And they rely on “familiarity” that the current listeners are brain washed and addicted to. It’s a cash cow for the record labels.
I found this brilliant video about what is wrong with the music industry today a few years ago, and I think it sums it all up. The future of rock/pop music is in the hands of MLT and other independent artists, as mainstream pop/rock music is dying. If you have a chance, I would love to know what you think of this video Bud from your professional perspective.
Music today as an art form is dying, and here is why.
https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII?si=DHVZUUZNNP-ZJjt5
Happy New Year
Jung
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Hey Bud
If you click the reply button for the post you were originally replying to, the text may still be there when you open the reply window again. That has happened to me a few times and, and so I try to get in the habit of copying the text to my clipboard as often as possible when I am typing a long message, or if it is something really long I compose the text in another app, and then copy paste it in to the reply. Good luck, I hope you are able to retrieve it.
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Hi Daryl
Here is an interesting video that gets to the heart of why music is so lame today. I advanced it to the part where it talks about why today’s mainstream music is so mediocre and uninspired, but the whole video is interesting.
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Hi Russ, glad to help. Was nice to revisit that guitar post.
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Hi Daryl
Good point. It is often too easy for Governments to take the view that people are starving in other places, and only those activities that work towards a strong economy is all that matters. While this is all important, I also believe it is important to allocate funds for science and innovation projects for the long run, to further humanity and make the world a better place. Also, funding arts and humanities in education and human development is critical. As Robin Williams said in the movie “Dead Poets Society”, what is the point of learning to read and write, when there is nothing worth reading and writing about.
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Hi Bud
Yeah I ‘m with you on the weather. Living in the Pacific Northwest, and technically a rainforest along the BC coast, we get a lot of rain, and in the past years a drizzle that starts in October and ends in May HAHAHA. We are not the biggest consumers of coffee in the world by accident, with Seattle being home to the very first Starbucks in Pike Place Market, I’ve been to it many times over the years. We need that soothing and picker up java boost a lot. A very renowned piano man busker performs around there often too, Jonny Hahn, check him out next time you are in the area. Local KING 5 and KOMO 4 have done news features on him over the years.
Thanks for all the wonderful pointers to stay physically and mentally healthy, a lot of golden nuggets of wise advice there. Here are a few inspirational quotes and reflections I’ve collected over the years in my journals:
1..Spending time on what interests you, like your hobbies, is also a form of self love.
2..Without music/art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. – George Bernard Shaw. (an important one for all of us!)
3..If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. – Albert Einstein
4..And here is one for Mona and Lisa: One person can have a profound affect on another. Two people can work miracles. They can change the world. – From an episode of Northern Exposure (Andrew Schneider).
5..I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious. – Albert EinsteinHere is a bonus:
6..Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond imperfections, and see the beauty of life.
Happy Holidays to all.
Jung
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MLT withdrawal indeed. JP, I will be in the other car at the lake too, a few hundred feet away.
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Hi Daryl
Taylor Swift is certainly a phenomenon, but it’s not because of good music. I saw a good program a little while ago, about how the music industry capitalizes on “hooks” in music, certain canned vocal sounds that when played often enough through very similar assimilated music that they push out in streaming media, it has an addictive effect, and the crowds start to crave it. it’s not good music, just canned music people have gotten drawn and addicted to.
When I took a gander through the top 10 Bill Board Charts recently when the Beatles Now and Then song was released a few weeks ago, all the top 10 stuff sounded similar, with a set of common hooks and off the shelf vocal mixes. If you are young and you stream that stuff all day and night, soon you get addicted to it, and the brain thinks it’s good music. That’s how the record labels along with streaming services and Apple and Samsung work together to keep feeding the golden goose with assimilated artists producing the same regurgitated sound in molded music that the industry has determined is good music and is what shall be promoted. “Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated”… is what todays music industry is all about. Rick Beato has some pretty good videos about the sad state the music industry is in with bland music that dominates the charts.
