A Beatles Virtual Instrument

zed · Post by **zed** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:20 pm

Is anyone else experiencing great delays in the e-mail notification of responses to this thread? Last week I got a notice several DAYs late, and just now I got notification of a response to this thread which preceeded the message which I got a few hours ago.

Somethings up somewhere... but maybe it is with the Yahoo mail server.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:42 pm

I've had lots of issues lately-- signing on has been a problem in the past few days, and e-mail notices may have been a residual casualty of the same server hiccups.

My mind goes back to the day when U-nation went down for well over a year or so. Felt like forever. Then it went down for a month or so last year some time? Can't remember how long. I'm just glad that I can get back on the same day!!

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:54 pm

zed wrote:On that page it says "Lenny supposedly refused a substantial offer from a former Beatle member for it."

That former Beatle must be a little bit frustrated. Wonder why he wasn't given first dibbs to buy the thing in the first place. It must be maddening to be a multi-multi-millionaire, and still not have ownership of your song catalog, and the opportunity to own some of the tools that helped make you famous.

It's a sticky siutation--- you make a ton of records with a band-- the band breaks up-- you go off to start a whole other part of your career and leave behind all that reminds you of the old band.

Time passes, and others find value and credibility in all that you discarded beyond your wildest imagination. Suddenly, you find yourself very wealthy because of it-- and yet as you attempt to gather back everything you tossed aside you learn that some treasures no longer belong to you at any price.

I suspect that when the surviving Beatles were gearing up to do the Anthology remixes and when George Martin insisted on do the remixes on the REDD console, they did indeed discover that EMI had discarded what they had and had to work hard to recover one of them. Now that they've got one fully restored to its original glory, I understand that they've retained it in the penthouse studio at Abbey Road.

You don't know what you've got until it's gone-- and you realize you NEED it!!

Century · Post by **Century** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:32 am

Hi,
Glad to come across some fellow Beatle-fanatics...
Seems they did the same thing with their publishing.... letting it slip away when they were young. Then when the opportunity arose Paul and Yoko were sitting around while M. Jackson bought the catalog. I see the Beatles as an amazing concentration of forces and timing and whatever to enable such masterpieces and such success to occur. I doubt if Paul is all bent out of shape that the Redd is unavailable to him...After all not much else is beyond his reach based upon his justified fame.

zed · Post by **zed** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:44 am

Century wrote:Glad to come across some fellow Beatle-fanatics...

Hey Century! Welcome to the forum. Glad to have you join us. We have quite a few Beatles fans around here, and a few fanatics who spend a lot of time in this thread.

Always happy for more!

Frodo wrote:Time passes, and others find value and credibility in all that you discarded beyond your wildest imagination. Suddenly, you find yourself very wealthy because of it-- and yet as you attempt to gather back everything you tossed aside you learn that some treasures no longer belong to you at any price.

Well I don't know what the story is, but it seems to me that this is probably the fault of executives at Abbey Road. If Paul, George, or George Martin knew that this stuff was being auctioned off, they probably would have made sure that they got it... but maybe they weren't so interested at the time. I dunno. I'd like more details.

Lenny Kravitz sure has done well for himself, I must say.

Century wrote:I doubt if Paul is all bent out of shape that the Redd is unavailable to him...After all not much else is beyond his reach based upon his justified fame.

Probably not too bent out of shape... but likely a little frustrated. It would feel better to me if Paul was in posession of it... or better yet... if it was still a part of Abbey Road Studios where it belongs.

Frodo... I heard over night that half a million people in California have been evacuated and are homeless.

I had no idea these fires had gotten so out of control. Hope you are doing alright, and that you haven't had to flee.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 11:38 am

zed wrote:Frodo... I heard over night that half a million people in California have been evacuated and are homeless. I had no idea these fires had gotten so out of control. Hope you are doing alright, and that you haven't had to flee.

Hey, Zed-- much of what you heard probably pertains more to the San Diego area and one resort area called Lake Arrowhead. Those communities are quite a distance from me, and my heart goes out to those who've suffered.

In my area, we had some close calls. Evacs were closer to 20,000 within an estimated 10-15 miles radius of where I live. Within 5 miles, there were 1500 evacs. Within 2 miles there were none. I feel extremely fortunate. One small fire broke out at the end of the street but was quickly extinguished. The so-called Magic Fire-- (in the photo) is now at 93% containment. We're watching for possible flareups, but winds have calmed considerably. Cooler weather is on the way, so that should help turn the tide for those areas still in trouble.

I'd found a good website a few days ago with George Martin talking about the re-acquisition of the REDD console used for the Anothology, but if you have the Anthology I believe many of his quotes are included in the supplimental documentaries. I'll keep looking, though.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:04 pm

LOL-- you look for one thing and find another!

Guitar Method in the Style of the Beatles

Subtitle: An in depth study of the rhythm and lead guitar styles of George Harrison and John Lennon.

Songs included:

Blackbird
Help
Yesterday
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Ticket To Ride
Michelle
Birthday
Day Tripper
We Can Work It Out
Rocky Raccoon
Dear Prudence
Norwegian Wood
Paperback Writer
Helter Skelter
Here Comes the Sun
Drive My Car
Can't Buy Me Love
Back In The USSR
Get Back
Others...

56 Examples
Recreating "the classic Beatles sound"
Finger-picking and Chord phrasing
Strumming patterns and alternate tunings
Fretboard visualizations
Onscreen tabs
etc.

DVD
$16 USD

Initial impression (sight unseen)
The blurb sounds great, but for $16 it seems it seems like an awful lot of info compared to The Beatles Complete Scores for $75 USD.

Thoughts?

One glaring error-- Paul McCartney's name was left off the blurb, but Blackbird, Yesterday, Rocky Racoon, and Back In The USSR (maybe others) were included.

dosuna11 · Post by **dosuna11** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:22 pm

Hey Frodo
I believe Paul played on Blackbird.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 11:13 pm

dosuna11 wrote:Hey Frodo
I believe Paul played on Blackbird.

Yes indeed-- and Yesterday, and a few others as well. The book uses Paul's songs but only credits John and George.

dosuna11 · Post by **dosuna11** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 12:18 am

Frodo wrote:
dosuna11 wrote:Hey Frodo
I believe Paul played on Blackbird.
Yes indeed-- and Yesterday, and a few others as well. The book uses Paul's songs but only credits John and George.

My friend Mark who did the mods on Paul's Ricki bass has a studio log book on the Beatle sessions. It has all the logs on who played what when. It was a published book.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 1:19 am

dosuna11

I hope you haven't misunderstood what I was trying to say: I don't disagree with you at all.

My point was that the Guitar Method book mentioned above failed to give credit to McCartney where it was due on such tunes such as Blackbird and Yesterday among others which were included. The book only cites the styles of George and John, and I'm saying that this is incorrect or at least incomplete. They should have given credit to McCartney as well.

Tim · Post by **Tim** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:48 am

Frodo wrote:dosuna11

I hope you haven't misunderstood what I was trying to say: I don't disagree with you at all.

My point was that the Guitar Method book mentioned above failed to give credit to McCartney where it was due on such tunes such as Blackbird and Yesterday among others which were included. The book only cites the styles of George and John, and I'm saying that this is incorrect or at least incomplete. They should have given credit to McCartney as well.

But Paul was the bassist, and there was no bass on Yesterday, nor Blackbird.

dosuna11 · Post by **dosuna11** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:46 am

I agree with you Frodo. It was just a side remark about some info I found interesting in a book that may of interest.
Paul also plays guitar. To truely understand what happened to the Beatles view the DVD "Let it Be." Band wars are always so depressing. George's remarks to Paul are particularly revealing.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 1:38 pm

dosuna11 wrote:I agree with you Frodo. It was just a side remark about some info I found interesting in a book that may of interest.
Paul also plays guitar. To truely understand what happened to the Beatles view the DVD "Let it Be." Band wars are always so depressing. George's remarks to Paul are particularly revealing.

Thanks dosuna11... I appreciate the info and the clarification... now for Tim...

Tim wrote:But Paul was the bassist, and there was no bass on Yesterday, nor Blackbird.

Indeed this is true. But it further begs the question why the DVD includes these two songs and others in its study of guitar playing styles but only credits George's and John's playing styles. Not a big deal, just an oversight on their part. WE, however, know better!

On an interesting side note- during the Tokyo concert where they did Yesterday and all four Beatles played their respective instruments: Paul was on bass and even Ringo played drums for this song. George and John both play Casino electrics. In a different key, no less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdCjaiXmUb0

Just for fun- here's a live performance of the original version-- complete with strings and Paul on acoustic! Pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONXp-vpE9eU

zed · Post by **zed** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:25 pm

Frodo wrote:The blurb sounds great, but for $16 it seems it seems like an awful lot of info compared to The Beatles Complete Scores for $75 USD.

Thoughts?

Did you read the reviews included on the page you included the link for? According to those reviews, you'll be wasting your money...

Amazon Reviewer wrote:Hey Jude, don't buy this video...

This DVD is terrible. Audio and Video quality are extremely poor, the production quality is below amateurish, and it's under 20 minutes long. The "instructor" is neither a gifted speaker or teacher, he's just some verbally challenged guy who hurries through demonstrating 56 one or two measure long segments from Beatles song. The songs are not referred to by name, they are known only as Riff 1 to 56. The "instructor" will play the "riff" once, then play it again slower, and move on to the next one. No instruction is given on how to play what he is playing, so this is not useful for a beginner. As for intermediate to advanced players, you will also learn nothing. (Save for the fact that you could probably make a much better video than this in a Saturday afternoon with your HandyCam...) There is no insight given into George, John or Paul's styles, technique, how they achieved certain sounds or effects, etc. However, the instructor does give you his thoughts on the Beatles body of work after the collection of riffs has been played. Unfortunately, he has no real thoughts, and just babbles inanely for a few minutes.

Doesn't seem very promising. But then the complete Beatles scores does not give you any tips... it is just scores, and a big thick book with small pages. Wish they would release a new edition of it with bigger pages, and with sub-volumes by album, with the proper track orders. That would make it more useful.

dosuna11 wrote:My friend Mark who did the mods on Paul's Ricki bass has a studio log book on the Beatle sessions. It has all the logs on who played what when. It was a published book.

I wonder which book that is. We were just discussing last week whether or not Paul played guitar on the Monkey song.

But I agree with Tim. Paul was just the bass player... and that's it.
But he also played piano.

I wonder who played bass in those songs?? Hmmmmm. Methinks we need that book.