Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 August 2006 13:41:14
I bought a record.
It was called English Settlement and I bought it because it had a song on it that was a big hit and a very good tune, even to my young ignorant ears. I listened to that record over and over in the way you only can when you don't own many albums. I memorized every word, every note. Being totally unmusical, I didn't hear musical instruments, I heard sounds. The backing on Senses Working Overtime was the sound of rural England, Yacht Dance was boats floating in a lazy summer sea. And so on. A little later I got the first All About Eve album and one of the songs there has the sound of a lightning bolt on it. Later on I understood that it was a certain combination of notes played on a guitar with a particular type of distortion. But when I first heard it, it was a lightning bolt.
When I learnt to play a bit of guitar, I wanted to recreate the sounds on those records. So I had to listen to them in a different way and pick out the notes that were being played and analyse what effects were being added to make them sound the way they did. So now when I hear those tracks, I hear the notes and I hear the echo or distortion effects. I can't really hear rural England anymore, or the lightning, just guitar riffs. The knowledge I acquired has taken those things away from me.