My favorite viral video from 2008 was this.

This follow-up - edited to Manu Delango’s piece ‘Mono Desire’ - is by the same editor who compiled it using 100 or so short clips from YouTube. Delango plays the Hang instrument. It’s just an example of a beautiful piece of music painting new picture.

My best!

Enjoy.

Other dosages.

This is an unusual way of telling you how bands work; how best of friends work; how a great team works; how partnership works. You have to be in sync with your partner(s) to make it work - to make music as a whole.

But first, you need to get in sync with your metronome. The importance of that is the difference between you and someone great. It’s never the licks, the riffs, the ‘great personality’ of rock stars that you need to drum into your subconscious.

Speaking of metronomes…

Then there’s someone like Jake Shimabukuro, who is a rock star. He writes originals that makes you question your knowledge of what could be done on the Ukulele. There’s a lesson to be learned there: you go against the crowd with the instrument you love to play and the music you love to listen to - you can’t go wrong. Dedication is just not about practicing your craft. It’s how you embrace your relationship with your principal instrument, no matter how much the two of you look odd together, and tell everyone “This is my instrument, and we are gonna make music no matter what.” Think about it: is it any different than announcing your love for someone? And it’s not just about an unusual partnership with an ‘odd’ instrument. To announce your venture/journey with the coolest instrument in the world will also have its critics - same ones who always have a ‘practical’ solution to your life. It’s not easy, I’ll admit, to step up and tell others how you feel about someone, some decision, or career. But if your heart and gut is collaborating on that - it will have an impact on those around you, mind you, both positive and negative. 

Once you’ve done that, you’ve stepped into the cool zone. And people can’t resist cool. 

I’m in no way suggesting, nor do I know enough about him to do so, that Shimabukuro was anything but encouraged to pursue a career with the Ukulele. All that matters is, this guy most likely than not encouraged some kid(s) to shop for a Ukulele, walking right past the guitar section. That’s pretty cool, I don’t care who you are.

It doesn’t quite end there. I went digging and found this video at Stephen’s blog, who found the following video and says this at the end of the post:

Did you hear what he did in the opening bars? That’s “Stairway to Heaven”, that is.

Talk about an oh shit moment. You listen to this and tell me. I’d also suggest paying close attention to :20.

Graham popularized the DADGAD tuning according to Wikiepedia. He influenced legions of guitar players, of them Jimmy Page, Bert Jansch, and Richard Thompson’s names spring up more. If you listen to the samples posted at the end of this article you can recognize this style coming out of some of your favorite guitar players from the 60s and 70s.

Sometimes, we look at the obvious places for the obvious answers. When we do that, we miss out on something this, a comment by Eric from London, for this Songfacts page on the Zeppelin song ‘Black Mountain Side’

White Summer is an almost note for note thieving rip off of Davey Graham’s DADGAD classic ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ (DADGAD is not ‘celtic’ tuning but is Davey Graham’s own tuning developed to play with North African Oud players) Black Mountainside is not a tweaked White Summer - it is an almost note for note thieving rip off of Black Waterside by Bert Jansch - its in DADGAD but Bert plays it in dropped D (big deal of a change). Bert used to live with Anne Briggs and she taught him the song and the melody but not the guitar piece - that is Bert’s alone (Anne Briggs just plays an arpegiated D chord) So to say that Page is the best acoustic player for these tunes is like saying a kid who plays Steve Vai in a guitar shop is the best - anyone can be derivative and play covers, apparently only Pagey can stick his name on the tune and not get sued (but when you rip off folk geniuses who don’t make much money you don’t really expect to be sued.) In short Jansch = genius - Page = magpie
- Eric, London, England

You know Bert Jansch, right? But who is this Annie Briggs? I asked that too.

But that means what? Is Eric from London correct? Graham’s website does indeed say he invented DADGAD. But Yehia from Cairo goes back a little further:

There’s about 10 seconds on ‘White Summer’ which is a total rip-off from an Egyptian folklore tune (played on Semsemia). You can hear it right when Bonzo stops his first bit (around 2:12 to 2:23). All folklore songs from a town called Ismailia in Egypt are based around this very riff. Cool live track, though. Quite long but always entertaining. - Yehia, Cairo, Egypt

The plot thickens.

Before we get busy pointing fingers, influences work in mysterious ways. When you’re influenced by someone’s music, his/her/their riffs, licks, phrases will somehow find your way into your next creations. There’s little chance after listening to a lot of Gershwin I’ll be inspired to write a Megadeth song. You’ll be astounded, or maybe not, by the heavy influence of Graham’s playing on Jimmy Page’s.

Here we haven’t had a chance to ask Mr. Graham what his thoughts are on this influence thingy. Well, let’s see what we dug up here. By the way, Graham during the opening minutes plays ‘She Moved Through The Fair’

It all ties up somehow doesn’t it. Graham, the Oud. Curiously, though, the opening of that song in question doesn’t at all remind me of ‘White Summer.’ Rather it instantly made me think of the intro to…’Over the Hills And Far Away.’ Oh no? Go to :53 above. Now listen to this.

Mmmm. Still, we’re not saying anyone ripped off anyone because if we play that game, it will never end. Instead it’s better to simply say that Davy Graham’s influence is deeper than he ever was famous. At the beginning of the piece above, the man in the garden says (why can’t they have a chyron on these videos?) …  “we all latched on to what Davy did.”

Amen.

Davy Graham [Bio] [Site] [[MySpace] [Interview]

To Ava: All the above wouldn’t have been here tonight if you hadn’t emailed me about writing for Jemsite. You just gave me the biggest push towards the Bluegrass-and-me connection. Thank you! Of course, you guys too: Furtherton and Stephen.

Metropolis Ensemble: [About] [Blog] [Videos]

The Rite: Remixed from Metropolis Ensemble

read full chapter and the book

Related: Emily Bronte’s poem: The Lady To Her Guitar

Ohad Ezer: [The Plugg] [MySpace] [Linked In] [Twitter]

G: How was your childhood? What did you grow up watching, reading, or listening?

OE: Great childhood…we started in Israel and then moved the US and made the most of it.

Reading: Fantasy and horror books were my thing back then…don’t read much fantasy anymore but am still a huge horror buff

Music: It was the 80’s…watched a lot of MTV and listened to a lot of hair metal bands.

Watching: Loads and loads of television. Everything we could get our hands on. Before Maor learned English I used to watch cartoons with him and translate them on the fly. One day he just “knew” English and that was the end of that.  We still spent considerable hours in front of the TV. (It’s really cold in Boston, you know)

Playing: The legendary NES was everyone’s weapon of choice. I think Maor had some kind of business (mind you he was in fourth grade) that ensured we had a steady flow of games.

G: What was your first gig like?

OE: We played the local mall in our town. When the gig was over, all the school thugs grabbed our singer and beat the crap out of him. Our bass player’s sister saved him from serious pain that day. I was a great gig though.

G: Your favorite and least favorite performance experience? What went right and what went wrong?

OE: Early on I played bass in this punk band. The singer’s claim to fame was that he’d get naked at the end of the gig, walk around for a couple of minutes and then put his clothes on. So this one time he decides to vary it. He does the whole naked thing, puts his clothes back on, we go into a solo and he decides to stage-dive. Only no one is willing to catch the hairy sweaty guy who was just playing with himself naked on stage. He jumps and the crowd moves away. He lands on the hard floor and breaks his arm. I’ve played with a lot of people, but that guy, as nuts as he was, was the most professional. He got back on stage, arm broken, stood there like a goddamn horror show and kept singing till we finished the set. When the gig was over we drove him straight to the hospital. Good times.

G: How would you describe your brother? How is he similar/different from you?

OE: Being brothers we obviously have the same family values, upbringing etc. We are very different though and actually complement each other. Maor is the cut throat, no fear kinda guy who gets things done fast and efficiently. I’m more of a planner. In the end of the day it balances out quite well.

G: How did you find the contributors to The Plugg and how do you decide who’d write what?

OE: It was supposed to be a once a week kinda deal. I think Andrew (Alibastard) was the first guy who found us. He simply emailed and said he’d like to contribute. Once his articles came rolling in it really upped the game. I then found Kendall on what used to be Netscape.com. I submitted a Plugg story, he messaged me that he liked it and the next thing you know he’s part of the family. At that stage we realized that the Plugg can be a great platform for interesting people who want to express themselves. I found D Thompson on Netscape as well…he was just so outrageously funny that I had to convince him to join us. Kendall brought Lee, and Mozzer is also a Netscape guy. Yair is a friend and we are constantly looking for more people to contribute.

G: How has the music and film business changed over the past 10 years? Are you worried or excited about the changes?

OE: The biggest change is obviously technology. All of a sudden musicians can reach out and touch everyone. In turn, music fans are not confined to their local stores and venues. The downside is that everyone is a musician nowadays. It used to be that only the serious (or rich) people were able to record something. Nowadays, you can download some shareware program, buy a cheapo microphone and all of a sudden you’re a bona fide musician. You can set up a MySpace page and invite some people in and you’re also global. The poor music fan who used to get his recommendation from some sweaty guy at his local record shop, now has to sift through millions of wannabes in order to find what he’s really after. I’m personally very excited about this. Yeah, it’s a jungle, but hopefully we’ll be there to help musicians and music lovers get what they want.

G: Why aren’t more artists taking control of their career? How would you advise a new artist to do so with the tools available these days?

OE: There isn’t much that an artist can’t do these days. The price of recording music is no longer an issue. Artists have more potential fans than they could ever dream of. In turn there are great tools to help artists and great opportunities out there. Why aren’t more musicians taking control? 6.5 million artist pages on MySpace…that means someone is doing something. It’s only the beginning of course. The days of getting stoned and playing a couple of local gigs in hope that someone discovers you are over. There is lots of talent out there and the artists that will do well are the ones who take charge of their careers. It applies to any profession, but for some reason many artists I’ve met don’t believe in hard work. The thing is, being an artist is very hard work, and if you’re going to channel some of your energy into making a name for yourself through the internet then you’re already halfway there.  Go find licensing opportunities, manage your fans, get yourself heard by as many people as possible. Yeah, spending a year in a van a collecting 1000 fans is great, but if you take your laptop along with you, you can get 10 times as many fans on the way.

G: What do you see emerging as the business model for the music industry?

OE: I can understand the whole music tax thing. There are a lot of good arguments for it but it also rewards failure. I’m kind of hoping it doesn’t happen, but knowing the industry, it probably will.
There are tons of proposed models, and anything that tries to listen to what the actual music consumer wants is fine by me. I’d also love to see artists start to perceive themselves as proper businesses rather than handing most of their livelihood to someone else just because they think they can’t do it on their own. Whereas this kind of attitude took some very progressive thinking 5 years ago, it is now the only way to proceed, and more and more artists will take control of their destinies.

G: What are your 5 favorite guitar driven albums?

OE:
Sonic Youth – Goo

Smashing Pumpkins – Gish

Built to Spill – Perfect from Now On

The Cure – Disintegration

Cursive - Domestica

G: 3 Recent Guitar Albums

OE:
The New Year – The New Year

Metallica – Death Magnetic

Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash

[Update: Check out Ohad's Top 20 albums of 2008 post at The Plugg.]

G: What are you working on currently?

OE: Musically I’ve been helping Naama Hillman complete her album. It should be out very soon and has some really amazing songs on it. Other than that, I’ve been working and working on YouLicense with the aim of making it the best site for music licensing (and earning some real money for artists).

Maná: [Bio] [Music] [Site] [YouTube]

Metallica - All Nightmare Long

I’ve always wanted to interview the brothers, pick their brains to see how they work, work together, and are able to balance multiple ventures. The interview with Ohad (Charbarred) is coming up next week. I do have to apologize to both because I’ve been sending them questions since May, they have always been prompt in answering them, but I have been sitting on them. I’d initially intended to post them on my other blog but didn’t feel like they quite fit in that platform. When this blog launched, I knew no two people would be more perfect when it came to the web, new music, the evolving industry, and the use of social platforms to build brands.

Maor Ezer - Co-Founder and CEO of YouLicense [YouLicense] [Virv] [Linked In] [The Plugg]

G: How was your childhood? What did you grow up watching, reading, or listening?

ME: My childhood was the best. I had the privilege of spending a few years in the US, Boston to be exact. Lots of music from a very young age - I still remember quite distinctively Ohad, my brother, handing me the Beastie Boys License to Ill cassette. I guess I started with Bon Jovi and David Lee Roth and quickly moved on to heavy metal long haired bands. Didn’t do much reading, TV was always on, like today I’ll take any TV series that comes my way. I’m a HUGE TV and cinema buff, I even spent four years running a DVD store.

G: What was your first gig like?

ME: Well, seeing that I’m not a musician, I didn’t really have any gigs apart from tagging along with Ohad to most of his.

G: How would you describe your brother? How is he similar/different from you?

ME: Good question! I guess at the end of the day we were brought up on the same things and were influenced by the same icons/ideals. We’re different in each one’s unique view of the world and way of life although similar in thinking of how we debate and analyze things as they happen. We’ve got a good connection and I’m glad to be working on all these projects with him.

G: How many ventures are you currently involved in? How do you divide your time among them?

ME: At the thought of focusing and trying to manage my time better, I’ve dropped a few projects lately. My main project, some might call “my day job” is YouLicense.com which is and always has been my baby and probably the only one of the bunch where I put months if not years of thought and attention to create. Other projects I’m involved in are The Plugg which has become my favorite hobby, VIRV indie music tv which is basically realizing a vision and paying back my dues to pop culture and music as much as possible. I also had a local project in Israel www.1909.co.il which is a Tel Aviv focused (1909 is the year Tel Aviv was founded) culture portal offering  the best in news and events, I don’t work on it much there’s a team operating it now. I got another small blog project, www.thecoversproject.org which I play around with from time to time.

How do I manage my time? It’s been a struggle the past couple of years but we’re lucky in the sense to be working with amazing people and some of the projects are funded by different companies or people (VIRV, 1909, YouLicense) so we were able to hire these same amazing people to help and support and most importantly take some of the work load off of us. We’re a team of four partners on YouLicense – myself, Ohad, Tomer Kaplan and Asaf Cohen which also helped make this project possible. Today, YouLicense is growing and leaving it’s “garage” days and moving on to become a proper functioning company with staff and management.

G:  Tell me how The Plugg got it start. I understand you weren’t keen on the idea of blogging.

ME: Well, this is a question for Ohad, my side of the story was I convinced him for months that we should open a blog/digg clone that centralizes all the recommendations for music, TV and films he always sends me via email. He wasn’t too keen about it at first, he had his suspicions that it would be a real time consuming thing, which is right I guess, so I pushed him to agree and from an unsuccessful shot at being a digg clone (pligg platform) we quickly switched to a music and entertainment blog and grew the community of readers and writers to one of my favorite sites on the net and as I hope one of the most respected sources of entertainment out there.

G: How has the music and film business changed over the past 10 years? Are you worried or excited about the changes?

ME: Change is always welcome from where I stand. Innovation has driven these awkward industries and spun them in many different directions allowing endless new opportunities to present themselves. I’m excited about changes to come and revolutionizing both the music industry and the film industry by giving the average Joe user the power to monetize their music in a new profound manner and on the other side connect willing film makers with musicians from all over the world enabling them to do business with one another in an easy to use platform that won’t send them begging to their bank clerk at the end of the month because they needed a cool soundtrack for their film.

G: Why aren’t more artists taking control of their career? How would you advise a new artist to do so with the tools available these days?

ME: That’s a pretty big question and a huge debate people are talking about right now. Some believe the artists should sit back and make music while record companies/bookies/publishers and other agents run their business. I believe in the power of web 2.0 or better put – the long tail – the niches of the world - which take control of their product/intellectual property/agenda and deliver by themselves a self run business where they can actually monetize rather than chase down agents and labels.

How? By utilizing the amazing tools like YouLicense, MySpace, sellaband.com, amiestreet.com and thousands of other unique tools that enable the artists to promote themselves to an endless audience worldwide. If I were an artist I’d be hanging around YouTube recording new videos all day, finding fans on Imeem.com, chasing down playlists on Last.fm, and chatting up clubs on Second Life. It’s there, it’s free, take advantage.

The bottom line is nothing comes without hard work and all the projects I’ve worked on the internet taught me this – the HARD way, I see how artists promote themselves before a show or trying to find a record label – why not put the same efforts and resources to building your online presence and business – there are many amazing tools out there and many amazing people looking to help and connect artists with opportunities.

G: What do you see emerging as the business model for the music industry?

ME: Tough one. I guess we won’t be able to avoid the music tax/ISP charges coming our way. They will be subtle and I know in some countries already when you subscribe to an ISP (internet service provider) you pay a little extra for the “VIP” plan and receive unlimited access to bucket loads of music. I really don’t know the answer to this question, I can make up models and argue with myself for another 2000 words here but the thing I’m sure of is that change will come from the users side this time around rather than the corporations and industry leaders. We’re just pawns in the users game – isn’t that what the internet and web 2.0 are all about -giving users tools and having them decide what is the best model?

I followed up with Maor few weeks ago, this time focusing on YouLicense, which has, since our last exchange evolved quite a bit.

G: What led you to the idea of establishing YouLicense? Did it come out of frustration from - what?

ME:  I had a small label locally in Israel and had heard about licensing and really wanted to pursue getting the music I represented on famous TV shows and basically had no idea where to being with. So one thing led to the other and I had envisioned an open for all online music licensing marketplace – I called Ohad, my brother and told him the raw idea which was in the beginning a place where artists can sell copyrights (publishing) completely or partially – he loved it and we started researching the market. Also, at the time, both myself and Ohad were very active internet users on blogs and social networks – so I guess that helped us shape the product as well both from a marketing point of view and from a UI point of view.

G: Who is this service for? How does YouLicense work for: a) Someone offering music and b) Someone buying music?

ME: The seller side of YouLicense is for independent musicians, record labels, publishers, production music companies and aggregators alike looking to further expand their licensing business – as YouLicense is non-exclusive and open to ALL to register we find many different types of sellers from around the world. Adding their music whether they are well known tracks or indie is just furthering the reach and attracting more attention to their catalog for probably what is the most lucrative side of the music industry. Currently you can find on YouLicense artists like The Stone Roses and Thievery Corporation aside thousands of independent artists.

On the side are the buyers, the licensees. Originally we planned to attract tier 1 buyers from the TV, films and advertising industries that generate large deals but carefully pick and choose the content they use. As time passed since our public launch last August, we’ve been seeing many deals happening from a new breed of buyers – the long tail. These are the guys licensing music for slideshows (many photographers on YouLicense), websites, flash intros, flash games, presentation, tutorial DVDs, compilations and so many other unique uses I’m still amazed every day. We also do bigger deals, I recently placed a few songs on MTV’s road rules, the hills and some others.

Just for fun, here’s an interesting example of a new model made available to both the buyer and the seller only through a platform like YouLicense: look at the opportunity Beatpick are offering – they’re basically paying $7 per song for a year to play it in a large chain store in Italy. Now, this might sound cheap but lets look at it from another angle – current models for in-store licensing are made by the PRO’s (BMI, ASCAP, etc.) they charge royalties per song paid (couple of cents for a play I would guess), they usually will charge the store a “blanket” license and just play what they want. Here come Beatpick and offer a better deal (I’m assuming) for the stores and the artists - $7 a song times say 20 songs per artist and guaranteed exposure in stores. That sound like a good deal – usually artists would love to have their music played on a radio for promotional purposes…

I’m sorry for the ramblings, but I wanted to show you an example of an interesting model that can only exist over the internet.

G: How has the service changed since the launch? What’s your favorite part of this service?

ME: The idea pretty much stayed true to its core – although we get many feedback emails from artists and meet many industry professionals and after hearing all their recommendations we did add many features like playlists, MP3 sales, quick license for pre-cleared content (the artist can choose a pricing package to license his music at a click of a button) and have also built a unique private label solution where we create fully branded stores on company’s domains (see example here)

My favorite part of the service is that the marketplace is connecting seller and buyer directly – like eBay. This model doesn’t exist anywhere else for music (or photo I think) licensing, We do not represent the content and resell – they connect DIRECTLY with one another through the system.

G: At the moment what aspect of YouLicense are you seeing an increasing interest in?

ME: Because we’re fairly new I guess all aspects of the marketplace including the private label solution are growing equally – fastest growing is the content part of the business – we’re seeing many new exciting catalog coming in from labels and aggregators, for example very soon we will have the biggest Chinese catalog in the world available for licensing worldwide.

G: What has surprised you most about how YouLicense is being used by licensers and licensees? How many have signed up from both sides?

ME: I guess I pretty much answered this one before with beatpick example. But what is further fascinating to find out was how artists didn’t know they can generate deals on their own and by linking to their online stores and placing the widget on their MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc. they are bringing in a lot of business for themselves. No one believed they had potential licensees in their day to day client base and it turns out they did.

G: What’s next? What’s being added to the service in the next few months?

ME: So much is going on – our main focus is the private label solution as the open marketplace is pretty much ready and working. We’re adding some nifty features for the artists and buyers including a focus on the search engine.

G: Since this is a guitar-driven blog, what 5 musicians/bands who’ve joined YouLicense are you excited about?

ME: Tough one, there are many, here’s a nice playlist with rock tracks – you can also grab it as a widget (let me know if you have problems with it).  If you want to gr