Music 101 with Alison Nicole

So, what is music about to me… I think I change my mind every day, because music affects my daily life on so many levels. Music, while its different things to different people, there seems to be one common denominator… Every country has it’s own genre, from the vocals to the perplexing and sometimes annoying instrumental. While almost every genre of music resonates with me to some degree, there comes and goes a song where I just want to slam the dash of my car with a fist to turn off the radio! But you see, someone out there likes that song, as disturbing as that is…

We feel the love, we feel the sorrow, the joys and pains of so many souls when we listen to music. We may remember a certain place, person, smell, color and so on; as the song progresses, we’re either strewn with a tear in our eye, a smile, or possibly a smirk. Our sorrows are somehow drawn out as we relate to the lyrics and bond with the bass. There’s no complications, no-one telling us how to feel or what to do, it’s just you and the vibe of that song. How sweet is that?! Free Psychotherapy in typically 4:00 minutes or under.

I don’t think there are any rules in music, and every song has a spirit all its own. As I shuffle through my iTunes, a new and exhilarating genre evokes my soul. I feel something different every 3.12 minutes, it’s awesome! I feel some effortless release of emotion, and at the same time feeling what the artist might have been going through when he/she wrote that song…. I’m one of those singing-analyzing people, not just with music, but a little known secret, with Medicine! Off track again, I’m so ADD, anyway, I love to analyze music, from every track, to each voice and rhythmic-lyric, and divinely-edited-in tracks to add optimal fullness to every song! Here is where I give props to the engineers, and mixing masters. If you’ve heard bad music, you know what I’m talking about, because the tracks are all off, the rhythm comes in late or too early, and the vocals don’t quite sound right. Of course the musicians lay down the rocks, or the foundation and make it jive, But the Mixers make it JIVE… Know what I mean?! I know you dig music, or you wouldn’t be reading this article. I’ll try not to kill you with my sarcasm.

Now I could get philosophical about the details of every instrument, but the truth is, music is blissful symphony of the heart, and every human-being on earth has felt some kind of an intense emotion at some point that came about from the soul-reaching melody of a great song that took them back in an instant to that one moment in time, a moment that would probably last a lifetime and every single time they heard that one song… Now that’s freakin philosophical!

But down to the bones about it, music can sound like a racket; imagine a bunch of pots and pans, and people pounding sticks, I mean that’s what our ancestors did. We could jolly-up and square dance around the fire to Bluegrass in its most-pure and raw, simple and rhythmic dance. Or we could veg to some hard-hitting bass jazzed by a screaming electric guitar and head-banging drums. For example the Metal band KoRn and the song “Are You Ready To Live?” recorded as a DEMO, a FREE Download I got on @KoRn via Twitter (Hint Hint). There weren’t any vocals, only the the musical-geniuses playing their instruments to the earthy-pounce of the drum stick scaling the skin of their drum. It’s music in it’s most raw and historically-basic composition…

I’ll tell you that I love all kinds of music and I truly do appreciate all genres, even as there seems to be a new one I learn about everyday. Who the hell makes these up anyway? I’m from the day when there was two types of music, Rock and Rock… I grew up in a musical household, with a Saxophone-playing father and a singing mother, whom by the way, retaught herself to play the piano again, so I gotta give my Ma Props! Love ya! Anyway, I remember my Dad sitting us three older kids, my Bro Eric and my Sister Heidi and I, down in front of the speakers, or on the old rust and green couch next to them, and being lectured on Bach, Mozart and several others, that was my earliest memory of Music Theory, I only wish I could remember what I learned back then! I’ve somehow learned the fantastical part of music where you don’t follow any rules… My only wish is that more bands would explore the keyboard or Fret board, and start each song in a little different key, so the whole album doesn’t put me to sleep…

Okay, enough mushy stuff, so I later found a place in my heart for Heavy-Metal, with sometimes vile lyrical content, but divine composition in the instrumental, with the fierce electric guitar that could rock anything off you if you gave it a chance… Guitar Asylum TV @GuitarAsylumTV via Twitter and Facebook (I had to throw that plug in there, they’re my guilty Saturday Night pleasure). There’s a different “Rock Star” on every weekend! Rusty Cooley, Houston’s resident “Best Guitarist” awarded earlier this year, brings his wise and well-thought questions to the hot seat, where such greats as Andy McKee, with is famed outlandishly-difficult guitar symphonies; great electric guitar composers, Mark Tremonti, Zakk Wylde of “Ozzy“, and truly the list goes on and on, it’s purely AWESOME and hypnotizing at times, studying the artist, then watching Rusty Cooley’s Master Class, @RustyCooley1 (A plug for ya Rusty!), who plays in his sleep. Yes, he’s that good! He plays that guitar with the ease of a 2 year-old pounding a pot, I mean you have to watch him, his wrist bones are not attached to his phalanges nor to his metatarsal’s! In English, his fingers… He plays the electric guitar like Christina Aguilara sings, except it’s not annoying when “He” does too many runs, in fact, he makes it seem virtually impossible for even some of the greatest guitarists out there to copy anything he plays. I think most of us dream of playing like him, but the reality is that no-one can, that’s only one reason why you should watch @GuitarAsylumTV on Houston’s own KTBU TV Channel 55, and while you’re at it check out @DayOfReckoning1 on Twitter, a great new Heavy Metal Band featuring Rusty Cooley as lead guitarist, they’re looking for a new BASSIST, there I go plugging again. I just can’t help it, there are some things I just believe in… Music above all else, will always be one of them.

CHECK OUT GUITARASYLUMTV’S OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.guitarasylumtv.blogspot.com

Whenever I write about music or anything really, I have to be listening to music while I do it. When I’m doing an album review I listen to each song as a whole, and type it as I feel it, same with analyzing a vocalist, it’s not something I want to remember later, it’s something that’s firing through me at that moment, so it’s absolute truth to my heart and what I’m feeling at that very moment. I’d like to think I’m a descriptive writer and I do write as I listen and type whatever the hell is going on in my head and in my soul at the instant that note hits that string, that drum and that vocalists reveals their soul. I think sometimes it gets me high, in the most natural sense of course, but it arises in me emotion cosmetics can’t cover up, it’s a whole-body experience and is felt in the deepest crawl and crevasses of my brain. And the great thing about it is that I get to feel that way each and every time that song graces my eardrums.

So there I go, on another rant about music again, you see that’s why I have Twitter, because I can never stop thinking about music and music is my drug, truly! @musicmydrug via Twitter (there’s a plug for me!). As I was saying, music inspires the young girls to want to dress like Britney Spears, and for the guys back in my day, it was the fashionable men of the legendary archetype, Led Zeppelin… You see music inspires us from in the womb with an embryonic Symphony of ultrasonic waves, to the the music our parents played as they rocked us; it either put you to sleep or made you dance a little in that diaper. Ahhh Life was good back then, innocently though, we were being molded to have the strongest opinions, to have a defined character that associated our personalities at our core to the type of music that we now play in our car.

So as it goes, I love it all.. (as the Symphony in the background hits the final symbol) really I was listening to Classical Music that instantly turned into ‘Van Halen‘ with David singing, or whining or something, whatever it is he does that gave him his infamous character. Truly, I think music touches every human soul on the face of this planet, right down to the unknown african tribe, to the refined businessman, or the thick-souled spirit of a true and ever-lasting Rocker… I think we can all have appreciation for one another because for most of us starving musicians, music has been the hardest thing we’ve ever done, yet the most rewarding thing we’ve ever done. Though the climb is awesome and oh so inspiring to the artist, few of us are really rolling in the dough, but do we ever quit? Hell NO, music is either in your blood or it’s not, and if it is, you can’t help but let it influence your heart, your soul, your mind, and essentially your lives. It’s truly the medicine God put on the face of our planet earth for all who should grace its floor….

“Thank you from my heart for sharing in my love for music and for reading my glorious rant on all-things music. I’m a hugger, so here’s a hug and hand of respect and admiration for who you are…”

Always Remember to live in Peace, Love and Music
————Alison Nicole Osmond

A Miracle Happens Every Day in My Life…

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