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6 Unique Things That Will Change The Way You Think About Music

Oh hi!  I didn't see you there!

I know what you're thinking: "Is Taylor Swift all there is?"

The answer is yes.

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... oh, the answer is no apparently.  My bad.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a songwriter in a band that features a drummer who built a hand-drum set out of driftwood, a birdhouse and other junk.  I am ALL ABOUT thinking outside the box when it comes to music performance and sounds, as my last blog post suggests.

Recently, I've decided to start hunting for some ideas I'd had to see if they've already been done, and ended up on a bunny trail of exposure to some pretty damned unique music.  Obviously, I'm going to share them with you here.

Now, full disclosure: Here's a list of the research I've done before writing this article:

a.) Zero.  I've done zero amounts of research.

Therefore, I will basically just be shoving my discoveries onto this article and writing my initial reaction.  My ultimate goal is to inspire and be inspired artistically.  So let's see....

1. Drum Pants

Finally!  Now when I drum my hands on my own body, it can actually amount to something!

This is more of a product than an act.  I stumbled on this funnest looking addition to electric drum technology since the Zendrum while looking up whether anyone's ever applied synth drum technology to tap shoes.  Which eventually lead me to...

2. Tilly and the Wall

This band uses a tap dancer instead of a drummer.  Granted, I don't think she's using any drum synth, I think she's just got an amplified sheet of metal that she dances on.  Gimmicks aside, I've now listened to three songs by this band, and I like them a lot.  They've got one of those feel-good hippy indie sounds, with acoustic guitar and dingy keyboards that I've always personally enjoyed.

3. MIDI Tap Shoes

I finally found it!  Now you know it's possible, so there's no excuse.  Now someone HAS to play this instrument in a band.

4. Eigenharp Alpha

What the hell?  Here, I'll include a gigantic picture as well.




This handsome gun looking thing has the nickname "Space Bassoon".  It has 120 keys, plus 12 percussion keys.  Evidently there's a cheaper version available that has 22 keys.  It has a bassoon setup, with a bassoon mouthpiece, and I for the life of me I haven't figured out what exactly the mouthpiece does yet, since the people in the video don't seem to always be using it.  It's very interesting, though, especially since I know a bassoon player, and frankly, it's about time the bassoon got sexy.

Oh!  That reminds me....

5. Kelstone

For some reason, Blogger isn't letting me embed the video I want to embed to show off the Kelstone, so you'll have to click here for a demonstration.  It's a 9-stringed instrument that plays like a cross between a piano, guitar and bass.  My aforementioned bassoonist friend showed me this awhile back, and if you're interested in cool new instruments, do yourself a favor and click that link, and check out this one.




6. Car Music Project

I *just* found (as I was writing this article) a bunch of guys that dismantled an old car and made instruments out of them, presumably as a middle finger to overpriced factory instruments, or at least that's how I like to think it went down.

Instruments include an Exhaustaphone and a Strutbone, constructed from the struts, shifter linkage, and exhaust system; drums made from wheels and trunk, with symbols made out of the floorboards; a Tank Bass made out of the gas tank; an Air Guitar made out of an air cleaner and brake calipers; and of course LOTS of extra perCARsion (I did not make that joke up, that's exactly what they're calling it).


Do you know any other unique instruments/bands/artists/musical acts?

I'd like to hear them!  Contact me either in the comments, or elsewhere (if you know me), and shoot me a link, and maybe I'll include it in a future article!

You're welcome!
--J.m. Gatewood

19 Equal Divisions of the Octave

Please enjoy this taste of the exploration!

Sounds weird, right?  THAT, my friends and loved ones and enemies, is a piece composed in 19-Tone Equal Tempered tuning, or 19-TET for short.

Sometimes it's also called 19-EDO, which is short for 19 Equal Divisions of the Octave.

Now, if you know anything about octaves, you know they're always divided into 12 equal divisions; you start on one note, then go up in tones twelve times and you will hit that note again (except it's the lady version).

Shut up, no they're not.

They can be divided by any number, but the man arbitrarily decided to keep us down by limiting our music to only the 12-TET standard.  WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!

So what you heard in the above video isn't psychedelic music played deliberately out of tune, those are actual classical explorations of music using the available notes in the scale.

Why 19?

If you ask someone who plays with "microtones" why they used the number of divisions they used, most of them parot back with the same answer: "Well, why 12?"  Turns out, they have a point.

19 is actually the next number up from 12 that has a complete circle of fifths.  Theoretically, anything you can play in 12edo, you can play in 19edo.  But you'll have some extra notes to work with.  In fact, on top of the minor and major scales, you also suddenly have sub-minor and super-major scales.  Imagine if minor and major fell into a vat of radioactive waste and all their natural abilities became amplified.

Or better yet, imagine this:

THAT, lovelies, is a Cembalo Cromatico.  A 19edo piano.  As you can see, everywhere where there WOULD be a black key if you were playing any old piano at a piano store for normies, there are now TWO black keys.  One to keep the other company.  There's also a pesky black key hanging out in the places where there never used to be, like it's some sort of alleyway creeper.

That's two black keys where there should be one, and one black key where there should be none.

Or to put it another way, you know how C# and Db are the same note (a black key)?  Well, now they're NOT the same note.  There is both a C# and a Db, and they each have their own black key.

Has that song finished yet?  You're probably wondering why it sounded like a midi file.

That's because it was programmed.  See, of the people that have heard of microtones, few people play with them, and of THOSE people, few people stick to one number EDO.  Therefore, instead of building instruments to explore the scales, it makes more sense to go digital and use programs that will switch between various EDO whenever you want.  Not mainstream programs, mind you, open source programs that basically play whatever you program them to using midi sounds.  Therefore, of the people that have written songs in 19edo, very few are played with a warm instrument.  And also, very few of them are very good.  If you search for songs uploaded in 19edo, a lot of them just sound like someone making noises playing with the extra notes.

Here, check THIS out!

I believe that one got programmed in one of the aforementioned programs, and then processed through a professional program to give it that organic piano sound.

Not a fan of classical?

Try THIS ONE.

That's a link to this guy's soundcloud account who calls himself Omega Nine.  He's done some work in 19edo that is more attentive to hooks.  Here's some slower, prettier pieces he's done:

What about on guitar?

Some people have already transformed their guitar into magical 19edo machines.  You can find them pretty easily.  In fact, this is something I intend to do for myself, finances allowing.  All one would have to do is put frets on the neck so that there are 19 frets per octave.  You can find the measurements online for it.

In fact, if a stringed instrument is already fretless, like a fretless bass, violin, cello, etc... you can already play it in 19edo!  It just takes some practice figuring out where to put your fingers.

Why 19?  Why not 32?
This is a project I am taking on myself, along with whoever else wants to (here I'm namedropping Xander, who I credit for mentioning to me that 19edo existed in the first place).  I intend, finances allowing, to get a guitar done so that it can play in 19edo, then write and perform music that way.  All goes well, I'd love to play with a band that way too (again, namedropping Xander, and possibly Dave); have multiple instruments translated to 19edo.  I selected 19 because:

a.) I like the sound of it.
b.) Any more tones per octave would be too many frets on a guitar.  32 frets per octave? Count me out!
c.) I'm committing to only one new EDO.  I don't want to fry my brain on possibilities, I'd rather pick one, write good music in it, best as I can, and see if I can get a movement going.  I think of it like a contribution I can make to our culture.  Worst case scenario, it doesn't catch on, and I'm just a guy with a gimmick.  But I don't see it as a gimmick.  I see it as a good next evolution for western music to take on.

For more detailed information about the theory behind 19edo, click HERE for the Xenharmonic wiki page about 19edo, or check out this video:

Thanks for humoring me!  And if you're interested in talking to me more about it, feel free to drop me a line!

--J.m. Gatewood

J.m.'s Top 20 Favorite Albums

Prologue

This is a list of my top twenty favorite albums.
They might not be my favorite bands or artists, and they might not have any of my favorite songs on them, they might not even necessarily be my favorite styles of music.
At some point, I might make lists of those too.
But these are my favorite full albums; strings of songs put together in a certain order, which take you on an experience.
I'll try and tell you why I like each entry, but music is SUPER subjective, and a lot of times I like albums arbitrarily.  This list doesn't reflect on how good the artists are at their craft; it's more about albums that stuck out to me in my life, or albums that I would tend to listen to if I were going to pop a cd in for enjoyment.
Also, they're specific to right now.  I might have different opinions later.  In fact I almost certainly will because I'm diving into a ton of new music lately.  I've been getting into some pretty awesome bands and sounds lately, but I haven't really had a chance to sit down and listen to full albums yet by - say - Kimbra or Regina Spektor, so I wouldn't be able to include them on my list.

If one of your favorite albums didn't make the list, it's because:

a.)  I've never heard the album.
b.)  I have heard the album but don't like it as much as you.

I'm also going to put a YouTube video of my favorite song from each album into every entry.

ENJOY!  ;)


20.  Issues - Korn

I grew up in a dysfunctional nuclear family, so someone gave me Korn to listen to.  My stepdad walked into my room while I was listening to it, heard the vocalist drop the F bomb, and immediately broke the cd into pieces.  So naturally, Korn became one of my favorite bands.  They're crude, depressing, gothic, spiritually negative, angry, and to top it all off, geared towards youth.  Everything you would want to AVOID your children getting exposed to.  I was caught between two of their albums for this entry; Issues and Untouchables.  A lot of Korn fans would disagree with me, but I'm not a Korn fan anyways, not these days.  Korn always had a very raw sound, but these two discs were better at filling the space.  It was a tough call, I kid you not, I'd written an entire entry about Issues and then deleted it to write this.  The songs are just more unique and creative on this one.  Every song has at least one clever musical concept.  It's last on the list because unlike the other entries, I'm actually wary to listen to this one anymore except for nostalgia and appreciation, because it IS such a spiritually negative cd.  That's goth rock for you.

19. Lenka - Lenka

This entry is the polar opposite of the previous entry.  It's one catchy, bubble-gum-poppy, cheery, bouncy song after another.  And none of it is technically impressive, or even particularly that inventive or unique.  It's the sort of thing you'd listen to after listening to Korn, in order to cure yourself of whatever's infected you.  I've only heard this one first album by this artist, and one other song (an alternative a cappella harmonied-up version of the track below, which I WISH they'd included on the album).  I get the impression that Lenka made every sound on this disc using her keyboard, but I could be wrong.  It is an absolute delight to listen to.  It's charming, and puts me in a positive mood.

18. Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) - Slipknot

I grew up during the nu-metal movement.  The first album I heard by Slipknot was Iowa.  I thought it was garbage.  Their first two albums were loud, muddy guitars, drums that sound like someone's crashing into everything, and a guy screaming at the top of his lungs from start to finish.  After I got used to the sound, I recognized that what they were doing was very creative and technically impressive, but my first impression was that they sounded like the musical interpretation to a car accident.  Then they released Vol. 3 (the Subliminal Verses).  Suddenly everyone in my high school that was vaguely into the nu-metal scene were huge Slipknot fans.  It was clear why: they clean up nicely.  It's like when you agree to go to the dance with that unpleasant person who's not terribly social, and doesn't take care of themselves hygienically often enough, and wears a raincoat even in nice weather, and sometimes throws up in gym; and then when you get the dance, they're wearing a nice dress, or suite, they've shaved and brushed everything and they smell nice, and they've got good posture, and they're being charming and thoughtful, and you're like "damn, THAT's what was hiding in there?"  In the case of Slipknot, they added guitar solos, the vocalist started singing hooks, and a couple of the songs on here are straight up gentle acoustic contemplative pieces.  The rest of the time, the guitars are muddy, and the vocalist screams at you.  A good time is had by everyone!

17. The Young and the Hopeless - Good Charlotte

I'd forgotten about this album for years until my girlfriend reminded me it existed the other day.  This isn't necessarily an album that demands to be experienced in any particular order, like a lot of the entries on this list.  But I still think it's best to.  I always feel like I miss out when I don't.  Probably because if I don't listen to the cd in order, I don't listen to certain tracks at all.  And they're good tracks.  Good Charlotte is sort of a youthy, outcasty, culturally defiant sort of band, but they're still somehow a lot of fun, and they put me in a good mood.  They also make me feel like I'm driving around with hooligans and knocking out mailboxes with a baseball bat and hanging out in abandoned warehouses.

16. Unfortunate Snort - Pinkly Smooth

This is one of the weirder entries.  It has very few tracks on it, for one thing, and it's also not a very cleanly recorded album.  It almost seems to be unfinished, or recorded in someone's home studio.  Which is strange, because two people in this band are also members of the famous metal band Avenged Sevenfold, so you would think they'd have had plenty of access to whatever professional studio.  This album is fucking nuts.  Pinkly Smooth is listed as "experimental metal", but it sounds more like theatrical prog using metal instruments.  The musicians are extremely talented, and while it SEEMS like they give zero shits what they're playing at any given moment in a song, the truth is, none of this could have been pulled off without planning every note.  It has a certain charm to it as well, since the songs are so A.D.D., and the lyrics are about who-even-knows-what (seriously, I'm pretty sure the lead vox is just making noises with his mouth sometimes, instead of saying anything).  They'll go from a ska-esque 30 seconds of singing, to a hardcore breakdown, to a western hoedown, to a classical piano piece in the same song.  Unfortunately, the lead vocalist/songwriter/pianist in this band is the same person as the drummer from Avenged Sevenfold (Jimmy Sullivan a.k.a. the Rev), and if you haven't heard already, he'd passed away far too young.  Avenged Sevenfold got a new drummer and is pressing on, but this is the only album and the only songs we're likely to ever hear from Pinkly Smooth.  And that is a shame.

15. Karmacode - Lacuna Coil

I wasn't certain what to call Lacuna Coil, so I googled it, and apparently they're "Italian gothic metal".  That seems misleading, at least for this album.  I would guess what stuck it in that corner of the room at THAT table, with THOSE kids are the guitar's sound and the one vocalist's style.  And maybe the dress code?  There are two vocalists in this band, a male and a female; and while they blend well, defer to each other often, and don't have a diva attitude, the female vocalist steals the show.  She's got a pretty voice, and fantastic range and control.  She sort of reminds me of Amy Lee from Evenescence, if Amy wasn't such a showoff.  They both sing all their songs straightforward, and that's really my favorite part about this cd: the songwriting (as opposed to the style, the mix, or the performance).  The songs are beautiful.  The instruments don't get fancy, the guitars have a distorted heaviness to them, the keyboards round the sound out, the melodies are awesome and catchy, and the harmonies and backup parts make the songs epic.  They end this album with an original remake of Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode, which I normally wouldn't care for especially as an ending track, just out of principle, but they pulled it off quite nicely, and it is an excellent send off after taking the journey from start to finish.

14. The Art of Breaking - Thousand Foot Krutch

Thousand Foot Krutch is a Christian band.  I don't remember how I got exposed to them, but I would hazard a guess that it was at some youth group function.  They're one of those bands that seems to get the hang of their sound and who they are with each passing disc they release.  The vocalist is incredibly impressive.  They sometimes have lines that make me feel like "really?  That's what you chose to say?", because they'll... well, they'll opt for lines that pump Christian youths up about being Christian youths instead of expressing actual things with any sense of poetry sometimes, and that can sometimes be more awkward than Korn's disturbed sex songs.  But they are catchy songs, well written musically, and they kind of DO get me pumped when I listen to them.  The latest album I listened to by them is the next one up, and I almost made THAT this entry, because they once again improved on their sound, and got more comfortable with who they are, but I didn't, and here's why: there is a difference between writing songs to be played for a live audience and writing songs to be listened to in a cd player in your alone time.  Take it from me.  Aaannnd this list is my favorite albums, so.... This album kicks off with a sort of a fist-pumping anthemic rock piece, ends with a reverent prayer-song, and explores a lot of fun ideas and moods in between.

13. Neck of the Woods - Silversun Pickups

I only just recently discovered this band, thanks to my drummer playing this very album repeatedly in the car.  To be honest, I'm tired of it now because it got overplayed.  But they have a very good sound, and this album in particular was very well put together.  The studio work is extremely polished, and the songs aren't just good, they're put in juuuuust the right order that you're compelled to listen to it that way.  It reminds me spiritually of a Boy Named Goo, by the Goo Goo Dolls (which I didn't include because when I looked up the tracklist, I discovered I didn't recognize some of the songs).  Let me be clear though: they don't sound like the Goo Goo Dolls.  Their sound is completely original.  But it gives ME a similar FEELING.  I don't know, WHATEVER, I'm giving up on that particular thought.  Silversun Pickups is very into catchy bass riffs and vocal melodies, so expect to get both of those parts stuck in your head.  I highly recommend checking it out... just for the next couple months, don't check it out in earshot of me.

12. S&M - Metallica

A whole ton of my favorite Metallica songs from a bunch of their records played live but with classy violins and shit?  Don't mind if I do!  Honestly, I wish Metallica always had this sound.  I like them without it, but I LOVE them with it.  Metallica is at their best in instrumental composition and the extra strings complimented their sound in exactly the right way.  The only thing I really don't like about this album is that, since it's live, the lead vocalist does things that only make sense live, and not on a cd.  Things that are more for the sake of getting audiences pumped than for making the songs sound good.  Those things don't ruin the album for me though; it's still absolutely one of my favorites to listen to.

11. ...And The Rest Will Follow - Project 86

I pretty much HAD to include this one.  I listened to it A LOT growing up.  I listened to everything by P86 growing up, and I still follow this band, but I listened to this one the most.  Brand loyalty maybe?  They're a band I've built a relationship with.  Very few people I've shown this band to really like it that much, so it's always fun when I DO meet another fan, because I NEVER get to talk about them with anyone but myself in a mirror (don't judge me).  P86 is fundamentally a heavy rock band, and the vocalist yells a lot.  Not screams, yells.  Kinda like Rage Against the Machine, but less repetitive.  This album you could tell they poured a lot of love into.  It's rich with melodies (the guitarist sings a lot on this album as well, and the way his sweet melodic voice contrasted against the more abrasive lead is just my favorite), and they will often go from loud to quiet to loud at the drop of a hat.  Sort of like System of a Down, only they take themselves seriously.  The lyricist is one of my favorite poets as well.

10. Jetsons: the Movie (1990) Soundtrack

This is the only soundtrack that made my list.  I think it's the only soundtrack I listen to nearly this often.  And I listen to it A LOT. And sing along.  And dance. It's SUPER 80's pop sounding.  It's got a lot of songs by Tiffany on it, who is an artist I like, because she voiced Judy in the movie, and they gave her songs to sing.  The movie is okay, but the soundtrack is my favorite.

9. White Lighter - Typhoon

I've only heard this album twice so far, but it's immediately one I've fallen in love with.  I loved Typhoon from their previous album, Hunger and Thirst, but this album seriously stepped it up.  They're a very large indie band with what SEEMS like way too many members, but somehow they're capable of doing very impressive instrumental work, very orchestrated and tight movements (no repetitive jamming AT ALL), and they're super emotive.  They hit big, grand highs, and gentle, tender lows, and they really make you FEEL the emotions they're expressing - the sadness is always hopeful and mostly contemplative, the happiness is always grateful.  On top of that, the lyrics are almost C.S. Lewis level deep and clever.  Almost.

8. The Concert in Central Park (Live) - Simon and Garfunkel

It's funny that I should include two live albums on this list, since neither of them were put together with an album really in mind; they were literally just live performances that got recorded and sold.  But here's the thing: they play their best songs in a good order, and I love Simon and Garfunkel's songs more here played live than I typically will the versions on their albums.  I think it's because on a lot of these songs the drums sound better live than they do with the awkward drum tracks that are included in many of the original studio recordings.  But it could also be partly because this cd was my first exposure to S&G, and after listening to it as often as I did, the original tracks would have sounded weird no matter what.  Either way, Simon and Garfunkel have been one of my major influences as a songwriter, and when I talk about loving a particular song I usually have the version from this cd playing in my head.

7. A Thousand Suns - Linkin Park

Linkin Park's first album got REALLY popular when I was in late elementary school, early middle school, and a lot of my friends got that cd and played it all the time, and subsequently burned out on it and started hating it.  That's the rule when you're that age: everything you liked when you're younger is stupid and immature.  By the time their next true album was released, most of my peers weren't that interested.  They were like "psh, Linkin Park?  I'm into Flogging Molly now."  (Seriously, there was a huge Flogging Molly trend in my high school.  I don't know why.)  But damnit I'm stubborn, and I kept listening to Linkin Park's stuff right up until to-day.  A Thousand Suns is their fifth album in.  The cd they released before it was a complete departure from the sound that made them famous in the first place (from rap-metal to... Dawson's Creek background music?), and this album was a complete departure from THAT sound.  But I love it.  It's like one big song, made out of several little ones.  The sound is very enjoyable, and it's all very well mixed.  Linkin Park, believe it or not, is also a big influence on me as a songwriter.  I hope I'm able to be as diverse and experimental after I've been writing as long as they have.  They have melodies, jungle raps, heavy rock jams, and sound-scapes.  It's an enjoyable ride.

6. The Used - The Used

I learned about this album way after everyone else.  I guess screamo is this pretty popular genre, and the Used is a sort of cult hit.  I don't think I'd qualify as such a die hard fan as all that, but I admit as soon as I'd heard the Used, after getting one of their more recent cds as a gift, I wend out and got/listened to the rest of them because I liked them so much.  They have die-hard fans for a reason.  They are a very high energy, very catchy band, that isn't afraid to be cheesy, or goofy, or dark-humored and is also capable of dropping some heavy, intense moments on your chest.  They didn't make me a fan of the screamo genre, just a fan of the band.  I don't... like, PLAY screamo now, or dress in Halloween colours and dye my hair and wear eyeliner.  Nothing like that.  This cd is my favorite of theirs, and I wouldn't skip a single track listening to it from start to finish.

5. Avenged Sevenfold - Avenged Sevenfold

I gave this band a chance because my friend Graig pestered me.  I'm glad he did.  After I got used to the vocalist's vocal tone (He's insanely talented, but I just didn't like the way his voice sounded at first), they became one of my favorite bands of all time.  Every member is talented beyond belief, and they work together so damn well.  They play a classic sort of metal, heavily featuring guitar harmonies, and almost inhuman drum parts (at least until the Rev died, see entry 16).  That made this entry tough.  I actually had City of Evil written down on this list, because it's the more theatrical album which was just one creative idea after another within their selected sound; but I changed it at the last minute to their fourth, self-titled album.    I changed it because it IS better structured, even though the sound is more raw, and they changed the song styles up a bit more when the mood was right.  Plus, other people in the band sing more here, and that gives it a really cool flavor, especially when the drummer got a part.  They kicked the album off really cleverly by starting off with a City of Evil-like riff before pounding into a more rock and roll, mosh pit, fist pump song.  Each song was awesome and took you to a new place, capped off with a long, theatrical prog piece with a horn section, and a well written country song that they managed to make not only NOT sound out of place, but sound like there could never have been any other way to end the cd.

4. Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

Of COURSE there's a Beatles entry.  There's ALWAYS a Beatles entry.  They're the effing Beatles.  I like the Beatles, and this is my favorite album from them.  I always felt when I listened to it, like they set the stage at an actual club, concert, or festival and then completely immersed me in a story, or in several short episodes or events, interluded by a circus show; and even though the disc doesn't last that long, I feel like it continues all night and everyone's partied till morning, and maybe I even camped out, slept, and they picked it back up where they left off.  It's the closest I've ever heard a studio album come to giving me the experience of a bitchin show.  It's very unusual for a music cd to completely immerse me and take me out of the real world like this one does.

3. Feel Good Ghosts - Cloud Cult

A lot of what I have to say about Cloud Cult, I already said about Typhoon.  They have epic highs, tender lows, and their songs are super emotive.  Cloud Cult is a bit less contemplative, however, and more spiritual.  They're not afraid to touch on dark subjects, but no matter how sad the emotions they invoke, they will never ever depress you.  There is hope everywhere, every breath is a blessing, and everything is always positive forever.  And while that may remind you of a cross between a guy selling you motivational tapes and that guy in your town who's always on a mushroom high, the attitude in these songs are contagious, and I always feel more blessed by everything around me having listened to them.  Feel Good Ghosts is likewise edifying.

2. Mesmerize/Hypnotize - System of a Down

System of a Down is also one of my favorite bands, so it's hard for me to pick an album from them as well.  If I allowed myself to pick multiple albums by the same artist, this list would be way longer, and it's already kinda long.  In fact, I ended up cheating a little on this entry, probably.  Maybe.  To be honest, I'm not sure.  Technically, this is a two-disc album as evidenced by the intro song on the first cd being a slowed down version of the chorus from the last song on the second cd.  But they sold them separately.  But the cases are compatible.  But both discs are sort of laid out like they're individual albums?  But they're named similar?  I suppose the best way to look at it is that the second cd is the sequel to the first one, and they ARE meant to be enjoyed together as one complete piece.  Like Sonic 3& Knuckles, if you're familiar with that.  I feel almost morally obligated to erase this entry and replace it with Toxicity, but I'm not going to.  This album has a better mix-down, the songs are up-beat, catchy, and relatively accessible compared to Toxicity.  Plus, while System always had a talent for memorable harmonies, this particular tracklist turned the guitarist into a second lead vocalist, gave him equal time on the mic, and the two of them blend and contrast really well with each other.  You can also tell they'd taken better care of this album(s), more time was put into polishing the sound, and arrangement.

1. The Con - Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara are identical twin sisters from Canada, and they're an excellent songwriting pairing.  Their last album aside, you get the impression they write their songs in studio and layer on whatever instrument parts the song calls for as they hear them in their head.  No unnecessary polish either, they make sure all the levels are correct and then release the cuts into the wild raw.  Well, they master them, obviously.  They'll typically write songs about very familiar subjects like dating, going steady, breaking up, or self-identity, and they'll approach it in a pretty dead-on, honest way, as though they're literally right in the middle of whatever they're singing about, singing right to the face of whoever they're singing to.  But as dead-on as they are lyrically, you really get a sense of how dramatic and passionate and committed they are about the little things, and that's pretty unique.  Like they have perspective enough about the source material, but they still let themselves feel their feelings to their full extent.  Whatever the reason, these songs resonate with me, and the musical concepts are very clever as well.  The Con is an experience I frequently return to.

YouTube Comments that will Change the Way You Think About the Objectification Of Women!

Hurray!  I'm pulling an UpWorthy!  By which I mean I pulled a thread off the organic internet, turned it into an image, and then posted it on my blog with a compelling "hot button" sounding title.  In my defense, I WANTED to just post it straight to Facebook and let it decay into obscurity after the initial reactions, but the picture was too tall and you couldn't read it.

So I found this in the YouTube comment section of a video on Idea Channel.  I believe it's a satire; they had planned this, or even used other YouTube comments and switched the gender identifiers around.

The video itself is here.

Girl Meets World, Episode 1 Review

So I watched the debut episode of Girl Meets World, which is a spin off of the older show Boy Meets World.  I followed that up by watching an episode of Boy Meets World for a little compare/contrast.  The following are my thoughts.

IMMEDIATE IMPRESSIONS:  Boy Meets World (hereafter BMW) was an ABC show, originally a coming of age story about Cory Matthews, Shawn Hunter, and Topanga Lawrence.  It aired in 1993, the starring characters were all in Middle School, and the show centered on jokes and every day life lessons.  Girl Meets World (hereafter GMW) is a Disney Channel coming of age show about Cory and Topenga's daughter Riley, who is in Middle School, and the show centers around jokes and every day life lessons.  The formulas and setup aren't that different, but the style difference is noticeable.  GMW LOOKS like a Disney Channel show.  The set, clothes, camera work and pacing is very heavily influenced by the successes of Hannah Montana.  After the initial "Oh, THIS is the vibe the're going with?" you stop noticing so much.

There IS something about this show - at least the first episode - that leaves you feeling like it's WAY different than BMW, and I think that most people will assume it's because it's the style without giving it much thought.  Of COURSE it's not going to have the same vibe.  Teenagers now aren't going to wear early 90's fashion, and the Disney Channel crew isn't going to use out dated camera technology.  I think I have a better guess as to what the difference is.

CASTING/CHARACTERS: Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel reprise their roles as Cory and Topanga, main characters, and that seems to be about it for characters from the old show beyond the odd cameo.  At least so far.  And they didn't miss a beat stepping back into character.  Rowan Blanchard plays their daughter Riley, and I can see why they went with her.  Her mannerisms are SUPER similar to early Cory mannerisms.  Middle school Cory and Riley are both driven to be social (and socially accepted on some level), but are massively uncomfortable in their own skin about it; wearing their inevitable awkwardness right on their sleeves.

Cory perhaps will get a few more laughs out of it than Riley will, until Riley learns to commit.  She can't be internally analyzing her own every word, blushingly stumbling over how to say "hello" to a cute boy, and then expressing herself confidently and honestly to her father right in front of him the next second.  Sabrina Carpenter plays Maya Hart, Riley's best friend and token bad influence from a rough family (neo-Shawn Hunter).  Maya is perhaps a little more attention-commanding than Riley.  She leaps without looking, and gets into trouble.  The Cory-Shawn dynamic was a large part of what made BMW such a great show, and GMW knows this, and unapologetically sets itself up for a similar character dynamic.  I DO hope that the writers go through the trouble of bringing something new to the table with the new characters, rather than give us a 1:1 Cory and Shawn, but as millennials and girls.

WRITING:  I'm probably going to spend more time here than anywhere else, since I know more about writing than anything else.

The writing in GMW is strikingly similar to BMW, with one major difference I hope they fix.  The setup and conflict in this episode were relatively low-stakes and served mostly to introduce you to the new characters, which is what a new sitcom should certainly do.  GMW also felt like it had to spend a little of the first episode winking at the viewers who are watching because they remembered the old show.  Not too much time; this is definitely NOT BMW trying to relive its glory days, and it's not Cory and Topanga self-celebrating what a good run they had.  But they bothered with a couple of moments to kind of point at the old show and say to the newer younger viewers the parents of the main characters have a huge history of character development.  I think the writing probably assumes the target audience is more the younger viewers than the die-hard BMW fans.  They clearly want to write more BMW episodes, and they want to draw in the millennials, and this is the only way to do both.  (Note: Michael Jacobs and April Kelly created both shows)

The keyword for the writing is subtlety.  GMW needs to show and not tell.

The jokes in GMW are pretty standard sitcom jokes.  They're a little hit and miss in the first episode, but I think that's largely because they're relying a little too hard on characters we haven't REALLY gotten to know yet. They TOLD us, for instance, that Maya is a trouble maker.  So a couple of the one liners she delivers, while they SHOULD be funny, don't land as hard because we didn't get to SEE her be a trouble maker yet.  Shawn has said similar one liners in BMW, but by the time he did, we already saw him making trouble.  We didn't HAVE to be told he was bad news, we just watched him rent Mr. Feeny's house out as a bed and breakfast while he was on vacation. Thankfully, Maya DID make enough trouble before the episode ended that the jokes should hold some more weight later.

The drama does a little of that too. In a new show, you need to start small and grow it.  GMW wants you to care about Riley's middle school problems a little sooner than we're really given a reason to.  So again, they sort of have to tell you who the characters are so that they can show you who the characters are.  It could very well be that Michael and April are better at middle episodes than they are an beginnings.  Lord knows they've had way more practice in the middle.  Again, the stakes were relatively low, and mostly served to show you who's who.  Since sitcoms of this sort are designed so there is a sense of sequential order, but not so much that you ever HAVE to watch the episodes in order, this episode can be saved by the character development of later episodes.  The trouble Maya gets her and Riley into in episode 5 might save the jokes she made in episode 1.

My sincerest hope is that they don't try and make Riley and Maya Cory and Shawn 1:1.  It's clear they're setting the show up to run a somewhat similar course; Riley comes from a good family, but needs to learn to be comfortable in her own skin, and Maya comes from a bad family and needs to be (as the show put it) "fixed".  But they won't get away with an exact repeat.  Riley and Maya can't have Cory and Shawn's problems all over again.  For one thing, nobody CAN pull off Cory and Shawn.  For another thing, they're girls.  Riley is allowed all the similarities she wants with Cory, particularly because she is his daughter.  But Cory was a shrimpy, fruity middle schooler who had bully problems and tried too hard to please everyone.  As a girl, Riley simply can't have those same disadvantages.

She's not terribly shrimpy, she's not wanting for romantic partners (in the pilot episode, the cute boy (whose name escapes me, because his entire personality is "cute boy") seems completely fine with her sitting on his lap, and Farkle Minkus made it abundantly evident that Riley and Maya are desirable enough), and her people-pleasing impulses come off less weasle-y from her than they did with Cory.  Cory tried to use charm he didn't have.  Riley lives in a world where Zooey Deschannel exists, and so can actually be charming.  In fact, if they actually want to get a laugh out of a socially awkward, people pleasing female character, in situations that are believable for that sort of personality, they could stand to take some notes from "the New Girl".

The writing overall was pretty alright for what it was.  The winks at the old series were extremely distracting, however.  They took the whole "passing the torch" theme a little too far for my taste, and spent too much time drilling the "this was once Cory's world, but now he's already met the world, so now Riley has to make it HER world" into your head.  How many times do you guys need to say "world"?  You trying to start a drinking game?

Oh.  Well, alright, I'll watch it again later with vodka then.

DIRECTION/FLOW:  I don't know as much about this department.  I only know so much about how it's done or how to do it well, because I don't have any first hand experience with television shows on this level.  As I'd said before, GMW is newer than BMW, so the cameras are better, the styles are more modern, people dress... well, at least they dress how the Disney Channel thinks people dress these days.  Beyond that, the pacing and flow is mostly the same in GMW as it was in BMW.  I mentioned that the jokes have the same writing style, and the actors give them much the same sort of slightly-absurdly over-the-top delivery.

They don't really let you think for yourself, however (and this is that tell, don't show problem).  In BMW, the cameras would back off mostly and treat it like a live stage performance.  Multiple characters would be on screen at a time, in a relatively open space, and even though only one person talks at a time, perhaps only to one other person, EVERYONE would be acting as they would in that situation.  If they're in the background of the shot listening, they're wearing an expression.  If they're NOT listening, they're doing stage business, and whatnot.  In contrast, GMW tends to make you pay attention to what they think you need to look at.  There are more close-ups on whoever is talking, and it makes the whole vibe a little more cramped.  This is a relatively small nitpick in the overall scheme of the show.  It doesn't break the show, it's just a personal preference for scene setting.

Like that.

CONCLUSION:   Boy Meets World was probably a more family oriented show than Girl Meets World feels like so far.  It's not quite as smart yet, and it hasn't taken any risks to the wholesome Disney Channel vibe.  BMW addressed very real issues sometimes in a very real way.  I remember one of the early episodes where Cory and Topanga fell asleep at the school and a rumor started to spread that they had sex, and while Cory was being celebrated for it, Topanga's reputation took a real hit.  Cory had a tough decision, and the stakes were kinda high.  Will GMW have any episodes like that?  In a later episode of BMW, Shawn dated a black girl, which at the time was still a rarity on television, revealing a certain latent racism in the media.  That still exists.  Will Maya date a black guy?  I can't think of a whole lot black guy/white girl partnerships in sitcoms, other than a brief relationship Ally McBeal had with the landlord from Rent.

A lot of people collectively decided to watch Cory Matthews grow up and go to college and such.  There may be a new generation of people that collectively want to watch Riley Matthews grow up.  To me, the draw of the show is seeing how Cory Matthews, all grown up, parents Riley as she grows up.  I don't relate to twelve year old girls, but I do relate to Cory.  And Cory cares about Riley.  If the show does well, it will do so because of the father/daughter relationship between these two.

I'll have to watch more episodes before forming a more permanent opinion about the show.  Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think!

--J.m. Gatewood