Well, dammit, Scott. Condolences.
Scott has private comments on his site, but if you want to say something nice and pet-oriented, I'm sure he'll wander over here eventually.
Shondie.
Rex.
Rabbit.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Guitar Fridays: Two-Handed Tapping
by M A N
For most of us, the first thing that probably comes to mind when someone mentions two-handed tapping are the words "soulless wanking." Tapping was the technique du jour during the heady days of 80s shred and came to represent the pyrotechnic vapidity of guitar playing. Fortunately, the technique can be used in some very creative and musically poignant ways.
Before we go any further, let's talk about what finger tapping actually is. It's basically a variation of the hammer/pull-off technique, a techinque used by every guitar player on the planet (except, maybe, Al DiMeola who picks every. single. note.). Hammering is simply fretting a note with your finger without plucking it with your pick hand. For example, if I have the index finger of my left hand on the third fret of the high E string, I use my ring finger of my left hand to "hammer" the fifth fret on the high E string. As you can easily guess, the pull-off then is just pulling off the finger from the fifth fret to play the note on the third fret.
If you still can't quite visualize what I mean, a fun example of hammers and pulls used to the extreme is the opening to AC/Dc's "Thunderstruck." Though, to me, it sounds like he picked the non-drone notes when he recorded the song, he clearly uses nothing but hammers and pulls in the video.
So, two-handed tapping is the same thing, except now the player is using her pick hand to fret notes as well. This allows for a far wider range of notes to be played in succession than with only one hand.
No one is quite sure who the first player was to use this technique. I've read before that there's footage of Jimi Hendrix using his pick hand to tap a note or two and there's a rumor that Django Reinhardt did so as well (how awesome was Django? Cat could play circles around anyone and he did it with just two fingers on his fret hand). But the player that brought the technique to prominance and doomed an entire decade to devoting itself to fingerstyle gymnastics was Eddie Van Halen.
When Van Halen was still playing smaller clubs, Eddie used to keep his back to the audience when he would tap so that no one would steal his technique. It was really quite revolutionary. His song "Eruption" had turned the guitar-playing world on its ear (hell, that whole album did--from Eddie's playing to his signature "Brown" sound, Van Halen was a seminal piece of work) and everyone wanted to sound just like him. Even to this day there are young players who insist that the first thing they learn how to play is "Eruption."
Sadly, that technique became bastardized and so overused that it became the punchline for 80s guitar excess. But it isn't the technique that deserved the scorn, rather the players who abused it. There are some fine examples of players using tapping in interesting and innovative ways beyond solos that scream, "Look at me!" Here are some of my favorites:
Eddie Van Halen -- "Eruption" What started it all.
Joe Satriani -- "Midnight" This is from his Grammy winning album Surfing with the Alien (Which has the Silver Surfer on the cover. W00T!)
Zack Kim -- "Simpsons Theme " Mark sent this along to me and I was simply blown away.
Stanley Jordan -- "Stairway to Heaven - Live" Stanley is one of my favorite players. He never got the fame or name recognition as a lot of the wankers of the 80s did, but his playing put them all to shame.
For most of us, the first thing that probably comes to mind when someone mentions two-handed tapping are the words "soulless wanking." Tapping was the technique du jour during the heady days of 80s shred and came to represent the pyrotechnic vapidity of guitar playing. Fortunately, the technique can be used in some very creative and musically poignant ways.
Before we go any further, let's talk about what finger tapping actually is. It's basically a variation of the hammer/pull-off technique, a techinque used by every guitar player on the planet (except, maybe, Al DiMeola who picks every. single. note.). Hammering is simply fretting a note with your finger without plucking it with your pick hand. For example, if I have the index finger of my left hand on the third fret of the high E string, I use my ring finger of my left hand to "hammer" the fifth fret on the high E string. As you can easily guess, the pull-off then is just pulling off the finger from the fifth fret to play the note on the third fret.
If you still can't quite visualize what I mean, a fun example of hammers and pulls used to the extreme is the opening to AC/Dc's "Thunderstruck." Though, to me, it sounds like he picked the non-drone notes when he recorded the song, he clearly uses nothing but hammers and pulls in the video.
So, two-handed tapping is the same thing, except now the player is using her pick hand to fret notes as well. This allows for a far wider range of notes to be played in succession than with only one hand.
No one is quite sure who the first player was to use this technique. I've read before that there's footage of Jimi Hendrix using his pick hand to tap a note or two and there's a rumor that Django Reinhardt did so as well (how awesome was Django? Cat could play circles around anyone and he did it with just two fingers on his fret hand). But the player that brought the technique to prominance and doomed an entire decade to devoting itself to fingerstyle gymnastics was Eddie Van Halen.
When Van Halen was still playing smaller clubs, Eddie used to keep his back to the audience when he would tap so that no one would steal his technique. It was really quite revolutionary. His song "Eruption" had turned the guitar-playing world on its ear (hell, that whole album did--from Eddie's playing to his signature "Brown" sound, Van Halen was a seminal piece of work) and everyone wanted to sound just like him. Even to this day there are young players who insist that the first thing they learn how to play is "Eruption."
Sadly, that technique became bastardized and so overused that it became the punchline for 80s guitar excess. But it isn't the technique that deserved the scorn, rather the players who abused it. There are some fine examples of players using tapping in interesting and innovative ways beyond solos that scream, "Look at me!" Here are some of my favorites:
Eddie Van Halen -- "Eruption" What started it all.
Joe Satriani -- "Midnight" This is from his Grammy winning album Surfing with the Alien (Which has the Silver Surfer on the cover. W00T!)
Zack Kim -- "Simpsons Theme " Mark sent this along to me and I was simply blown away.
Stanley Jordan -- "Stairway to Heaven - Live" Stanley is one of my favorite players. He never got the fame or name recognition as a lot of the wankers of the 80s did, but his playing put them all to shame.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Waid Wednesdays #18: Don't Waste My Time
A sister post to last week's about how to energize your plots by letting the characters make unexpected choices. Fair warning--this post is (a) short and (b) generally more applicable to writers of serial fiction than of stand-alone stories, novels, screenplays, etc.--but maybe there's still something here for you.
One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of "suspense" that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, "Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?", or if your big cliffhanger moment is, "Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?", then I understand Food Lion is hiring. The only reader who might actually be fooled into wondering about the outcome of those questions is one who's never read a single piece of fiction before, and even then, fat chance. If you're going to have a character make a plot-driving choice between two and only two alternatives, at least have it be Sophie's Choice. Try making it a lose-lose, see what that gets you. Remember, the definition of "dilemma" is not "a tough spot," it's "having to choose between equally unsatisfactory options." Or, if you're dead-set on taking the reader down what seems to be an obvious-to-anyone road--"Will he choose the sandwich--or his mother's life?"--try one of these two tweaks, both of which have worked well for me in the past:
1) Follow the "dilemma that I'm not gonna buy" past the point of decision to show us the effect of having to make the choice. Best example: an idea I never got around to using in Fantastic Four but saved for a Flash story. At the story's climax, both of Flash's children were in danger, and even for the fastest man alive, there was time to save only one. Now, I was well aware that every single reader out there knew that, no matter how dire I painted the circumstance, I wasn't about to kill off one of the kids if for no other reason than the story was happening outside Flash's own book. So it was total false suspense. Plus, the solution was a cheat because he figured out a way to save both after all. But I thought it was worth hitting the note of choice because the real payoff, in the story's epilogue, was Flash's resultant emotional collapse. He revealed to us (as Sue Richards would have in FF) that for a second, in his mind, he actually had made that choice. He had picked which child to save, and while he'll never tell anyone (including his wife and including us) what that choice had been, just the nightmare of making it will haunt him forever.
2) Lean into the shallow expectations of false suspense and then immediately hit the readers with a moment of genuine suspense that spins directly out of it. Example, again from FF: I ended one story arc with the apparent death of Ben Grimm, the Thing, which is pretty much the textbook definition of false suspense--no reader would believe I was really killing off one of the Fantastic Four. So I did that with two pages left to go. Then, two pages later, I hit the readers with the real cliffhanger--that Reed Richards, superscientist, was so mentally distraught by Ben's death that he vowed to break into Heaven to get Ben's soul back. Continued next issue. WhaHuh? Presto. False suspense becomes real suspense. No one was supposed to even believe Ben was really dead; not my goal. They were supposed to wonder if Reed Richards had gone insane, which sounded a lot more intriguing.
Bottom line: don't waste my time by asking questions with obvious answers or posing "suspenseful" choices with only one real option. That's just marking time. People (and characters) (and situations) are only interesting when they surprise you.
One of the greatest sins in any story is false suspense. The kind of "suspense" that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. And it's an easy trap to fall into, so watch carefully for it. If your story hinges on the question, "Will Superman be pushed so far in his battle against Lex Luthor that he'll have to kill him?", or if your big cliffhanger moment is, "Wow, is Spider-Man really dead this time?", then I understand Food Lion is hiring. The only reader who might actually be fooled into wondering about the outcome of those questions is one who's never read a single piece of fiction before, and even then, fat chance. If you're going to have a character make a plot-driving choice between two and only two alternatives, at least have it be Sophie's Choice. Try making it a lose-lose, see what that gets you. Remember, the definition of "dilemma" is not "a tough spot," it's "having to choose between equally unsatisfactory options." Or, if you're dead-set on taking the reader down what seems to be an obvious-to-anyone road--"Will he choose the sandwich--or his mother's life?"--try one of these two tweaks, both of which have worked well for me in the past:
1) Follow the "dilemma that I'm not gonna buy" past the point of decision to show us the effect of having to make the choice. Best example: an idea I never got around to using in Fantastic Four but saved for a Flash story. At the story's climax, both of Flash's children were in danger, and even for the fastest man alive, there was time to save only one. Now, I was well aware that every single reader out there knew that, no matter how dire I painted the circumstance, I wasn't about to kill off one of the kids if for no other reason than the story was happening outside Flash's own book. So it was total false suspense. Plus, the solution was a cheat because he figured out a way to save both after all. But I thought it was worth hitting the note of choice because the real payoff, in the story's epilogue, was Flash's resultant emotional collapse. He revealed to us (as Sue Richards would have in FF) that for a second, in his mind, he actually had made that choice. He had picked which child to save, and while he'll never tell anyone (including his wife and including us) what that choice had been, just the nightmare of making it will haunt him forever.
2) Lean into the shallow expectations of false suspense and then immediately hit the readers with a moment of genuine suspense that spins directly out of it. Example, again from FF: I ended one story arc with the apparent death of Ben Grimm, the Thing, which is pretty much the textbook definition of false suspense--no reader would believe I was really killing off one of the Fantastic Four. So I did that with two pages left to go. Then, two pages later, I hit the readers with the real cliffhanger--that Reed Richards, superscientist, was so mentally distraught by Ben's death that he vowed to break into Heaven to get Ben's soul back. Continued next issue. WhaHuh? Presto. False suspense becomes real suspense. No one was supposed to even believe Ben was really dead; not my goal. They were supposed to wonder if Reed Richards had gone insane, which sounded a lot more intriguing.
Bottom line: don't waste my time by asking questions with obvious answers or posing "suspenseful" choices with only one real option. That's just marking time. People (and characters) (and situations) are only interesting when they surprise you.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Ephemera 2009 (8) - The Mostly TV Edition
-- Castle has steadily improved since the somewhat cloying pilot. The characters are unfolding in interesting ways -- I totally buy Fillion as a good Dad. The clue paths are smarter than most of the crime shows on air (the elevator video and the Bluetooth for example). Just smart, smart series choices. A little heavy on the pop music openers, but that's me. Special shout-out to the costume designer.
-- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: man, I could watch Jill Scott do that allll day long. I have a particular weakness for localized procedurals, and the fact it's shot in Botswana is amazing. Particularly like Anika Noni Rose.
-- Kings: Dead show walking. Well, shit. It's wildly uneven, but when it's good it's filthily good. One is tempted to blame the folks at NBC, who have literally decided that they will never be the number one network again, so "hey, instead let's become a glorified AM radio station". However, I'm willing to be irresponsible and generalize this fiasco out to indict Hollywood marketing's general cultural cluelessness.
If you watched the promos for Kings, what you saw was either a cryptic "butterfly" campaign, or more recently a series of ads focusing on the soap opera around a king's family -- very Dirty Sexy Money, with red-tinged shots of sexy beautiful people dancing in a club. What you have not seen is Ian McShane and Brian Cox acting a smoking hole through your television. What you have not seen promoted is the fact that this show is based on the biblical story of King David. God and faith are discusses reverently and seriously in every epsiode. And the "sexy" clips taken from the eps for promos are relentlessly cherry-picked. This thing is more sexless than almost every other drama on TV.
After years of the cultural Right bitching and moaning about how Hollywood doesn't provide for them, NBC could have gone to every evangelical church in America and said "We're serializing the story of King David in a modern, very relatable way. Here you go, a multi-million dollar series, in prime time, based on a Bible story. You're frikkin' welcome." But that sort of cultural outreach, guerilla marketing would never have occurred to most of us here in LA. Mock Fireproof all you want, they got the job done.
No, the guys who were probably two doors down from the "SyFy" geniuses came up with a campaign that brilliantly made sure no one who might like the show would even know what it was about. They took the most unique show premise on network television and did their damndest to make it look like every other show on television. Rock on.
-- " ... a bigger gun." Whew. Despite a dip in mid-second season, it now looks like Life becomes my American equivalent of the British Life on Mars. The meta-plot is unfolding beautifully, and you can't watch the last five minutes of the latest episode and tell me that isn't some of the finest TV directing (and DP-ing) being done right now. I mean, don't get me wrong -- the British LoM is 16 eps of perfect TV, as far as I'm concerned. But I'll go back and rewatch Life again, for its own sake.
-- Better Off Ted made a really subversive choice last week. The two female leads are Portia del Rossi's Dick Cheney-like Ice Queen and Andrea Anders as the free-spirited dreamer trapped in the soul-crushing corporate world. Using Ted's daughter as the lens, the show (I assume intentionally) implied that given the choice, an Ice Queen with a belief that a little girl should be empowered is a better role-model than a weak character who feels so trapped in her world that she rebels through childish misbehaviour and fantasies of escape. They took the Butterflies Are Free paradigm out into the alley and double-tapped it. Aces.
-- This poster is currently up on the board in the Leverage writers' room, and in my office at home. (grab it here, h/t Smarterware)
-- Skype is proving to be invaluable in coordinating with the Portland production office, but Google Voice makes me weak in the knees.
-- In the Comments, the book or series of books you think would make a great transition to TV. Miniseries/Brit format (6-8 hours) allowed.
-- No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: man, I could watch Jill Scott do that allll day long. I have a particular weakness for localized procedurals, and the fact it's shot in Botswana is amazing. Particularly like Anika Noni Rose.
-- Kings: Dead show walking. Well, shit. It's wildly uneven, but when it's good it's filthily good. One is tempted to blame the folks at NBC, who have literally decided that they will never be the number one network again, so "hey, instead let's become a glorified AM radio station". However, I'm willing to be irresponsible and generalize this fiasco out to indict Hollywood marketing's general cultural cluelessness.
If you watched the promos for Kings, what you saw was either a cryptic "butterfly" campaign, or more recently a series of ads focusing on the soap opera around a king's family -- very Dirty Sexy Money, with red-tinged shots of sexy beautiful people dancing in a club. What you have not seen is Ian McShane and Brian Cox acting a smoking hole through your television. What you have not seen promoted is the fact that this show is based on the biblical story of King David. God and faith are discusses reverently and seriously in every epsiode. And the "sexy" clips taken from the eps for promos are relentlessly cherry-picked. This thing is more sexless than almost every other drama on TV.
After years of the cultural Right bitching and moaning about how Hollywood doesn't provide for them, NBC could have gone to every evangelical church in America and said "We're serializing the story of King David in a modern, very relatable way. Here you go, a multi-million dollar series, in prime time, based on a Bible story. You're frikkin' welcome." But that sort of cultural outreach, guerilla marketing would never have occurred to most of us here in LA. Mock Fireproof all you want, they got the job done.
No, the guys who were probably two doors down from the "SyFy" geniuses came up with a campaign that brilliantly made sure no one who might like the show would even know what it was about. They took the most unique show premise on network television and did their damndest to make it look like every other show on television. Rock on.
-- " ... a bigger gun." Whew. Despite a dip in mid-second season, it now looks like Life becomes my American equivalent of the British Life on Mars. The meta-plot is unfolding beautifully, and you can't watch the last five minutes of the latest episode and tell me that isn't some of the finest TV directing (and DP-ing) being done right now. I mean, don't get me wrong -- the British LoM is 16 eps of perfect TV, as far as I'm concerned. But I'll go back and rewatch Life again, for its own sake.
-- Better Off Ted made a really subversive choice last week. The two female leads are Portia del Rossi's Dick Cheney-like Ice Queen and Andrea Anders as the free-spirited dreamer trapped in the soul-crushing corporate world. Using Ted's daughter as the lens, the show (I assume intentionally) implied that given the choice, an Ice Queen with a belief that a little girl should be empowered is a better role-model than a weak character who feels so trapped in her world that she rebels through childish misbehaviour and fantasies of escape. They took the Butterflies Are Free paradigm out into the alley and double-tapped it. Aces.
-- This poster is currently up on the board in the Leverage writers' room, and in my office at home. (grab it here, h/t Smarterware)
-- Skype is proving to be invaluable in coordinating with the Portland production office, but Google Voice makes me weak in the knees.
-- In the Comments, the book or series of books you think would make a great transition to TV. Miniseries/Brit format (6-8 hours) allowed.
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