My Pink Floyd Playlist

I know I reviewed a Pink Floyd album already, but I’m honestly in love with their sound. I can’t explain it and I know most of my friends don’t understand it, but my obsession with them is such that when I write my own music, I draw extremely heavily from their influence.
So, I went through my various Floyd albums and decided to compile a little list of my favorites, as well as playing a few of them on guitar (or at least the bits and pieces I know).
Perhaps you’ve noticed, but I tend to favor the long instrumental songs over the short and sweet ones with soppy lyrics. Of course, then, my first pick would have to be ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ from the album that shares the songs name. In truth I prefer the live version of the song on the album ‘Ummagumma’ but since I don’t like any other songs on ‘Ummagumma’ I try to pretend the live version is on the original album.
ANYWAYS, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ is a lengthy instrumental song with about 7 minutes of random instrumental passages followed by a further 6 minutes of what I consider the true song. Why do I choose a song with 7 minutes of what some people would call garbage? Well, because the 6 minutes at the end are, to me, one of the most moving Floyd melodies (Gilmours agonizing cries at the end, especially). And the base on the song is phenomenal.
My next song is yet ANOTHER instrumental, longer and stranger than the last. The song, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ was also an album-title-track what was released in 1970. I can’t express how much I enjoy the masterful combination of what sounds like an entire symphonic orchestra and the traditional instruments of rock and roll. The song goes through a series of stages (or parts, like many other Pink Floyd songs) all of which are unique, but usually feed off of each other as they slowly roll towards the final countdown where all elements are combined (if you’re not interested in waiting 22 minutes for the climax, I suggest you skip ahead to 19:10).
Third on my list is a lesser-known song by the band, which appeared on an album they created for a French film (La Vallée), called ‘Childhood’s End’. This song is a slightly more traditional rock song: it follows a basic chord prgression, has lyrics, and is only about four and a half minutes long. And oddly enough, I like the song for all of those reasons. It’s got a great main riff, a excellent solo and a nice amount of badass-ness to it.
Returning to my norm, my fourth song is, again, completely instrumental. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Pink Floyd’s lyrics, in fact, I love them, but it’s definitely more about the music to me. Of course people argue that the lyrics complete the music and that they are part of the music, but really, you know what I mean by ‘music.’.
The fourth song appeared on the legendary album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ which was released in 1973. ‘Any Colour You Like’ stood as the 7th song on the album and its thumpin’ bass line is all I need to get pumped up. Being a lead guitar player, you might find it odd that I enjoy Waters’ bass parts so much. But honestly, I’m desperately and sadly in love with the way he rocked the bass guitar. Its like someone took a gifted guitar player, told him to do the exact same for the bass and just let him at it. What I mean is that he plays the bass with as much variety as many play the guitar. Nowadays you hear songs with melancholy excuses for bass lines that just bore you to death, but with Waters its always unique.
Second to last on my list is, in my opinion, one of the greatest songs ever written. It appeared just one year after ‘Atom Heart Mother’ on the album ‘Meddle’. At more than 20 minutes long, ‘Echoes’ is my favorite Pink Floyd song. It combines a slow minor* melody with a major* bridge and beautiful, psychedelically abstract lyrics to create a musical masterpiece. I particularly enjoy the jam in C# after the first two lyrical verses and before the long period of what sounds like a humpback whale dying,
My final song is, again, from DSOTM and is the first track on that album. ‘Speak To Me/Breathe’ is perhaps the best way to being an album. I can’t explain what it is that makes me like this song, since nearly half of it as silence but for the soft thumps of a beating heart. Maybe is a combination of everything I’ve previously mentioned.
That’s my list. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for good music to try.

Hans Solo

This video does not relate to music in any way. But i love it. It is definitely one of the funniest videos i've seen in a while. Watch it.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Indaba Music

I I was home ill the other day, sitting in my basement and watching a re-run of the Colbert Report. His guest on this particular episode was Dan Zaccagnino, the co-founder of the music sharing site ‘Indaba Music’.
The website was launched February 1, 2007, more than two years ago. I apologize for the delay; until now I wasn’t even aware of the existence of such a wonderful website.
As far as I am aware, the concept behind Indaba is unique to this website; while there are several other websites that allow users to remix preexisting songs, Indaba lets it's patrons lay down tracks to create entirely new songs with people all over the world. A dream-come-true for musicians like me who find they are surrounded by people with no musical talent.
Registering is easy and free and once a member, you have access to all sorts of different goodies.
Probably the greatest draw back is that, at first, the website is difficult to navigate; I think there is just so much to do, that it’s easy to get lost. But once you get past the initial shock of the websites capabilities, finding your way around is relatively easy.
The site allows you to not only create music, but listen to the music of other members or groups, view the records of others (by records, I mean their production history; how many tracks they've layed down, how many were used in songs, ect.), as well as comprehensive profiles.
Once i figure out how, I’m going to be putting tracks on here, both from the website and myself, to demonstrate the usefulness and awesomeness of Indaba Music.