What is it about...?

Down at The Old Vinyl Emporium™ Go Premium A spin through the JC’s crappy record collection.Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Reviews Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

JC is no expert but he likes to twang on his guitar and he knows what he likes. This will be a series of deeply idiosyncratic investigations of unique songs — the type that stick in your head — to set up a story of why they stick in your head. Why are these ones different?

Along the way it will looking at the musical composition, instrumentation, technology, performance and recording techniques that made these songs unique.

1. Spaghetti Western punk disco at the end of the world: Blondie’s Atomic
   1. The major and minor and the perfect fifth
   2. The saddest of all licks

2. The saddest lick: Oxygène IV, “Heroes” and Brothers in Arms

   1. Analog synthesisers and how to shape a sound
      1. Square waves, sine waves, saw tooths and flat waves
      2. Oscillators
      3. Attack and release
      4. Envelope
   2. Arpeggiators

   Hard rock boogie: how some Scottish Australians stumbled upon the sacred laws of rock ’n’ roll

   1. Economy of design: There are some things they just got right first time
      1. Volkswagen Beetle
      2. Zippo lighter
      3. Bic biro
      4. Telecaster
   2. The 1-4-5
   3. Chord voicing:
      1. those open chords
      2. that big snarling G

   4. progressions and melodies

      1. major: country,
      2. minor: rock
      3. mixture: blues
   5. Syncopation: drums and bass on, Vocals and Guitars off
   6. Groove
      1. Straight eight
      3. 12:4 - shuffle and boogie
   7. Pan left and right
   8. EQ
      1. Bottom: bass and kick
      2. Lower middle: guitars
      3. Upper middle: vocals
      4. Top: Cymbals and hi-hats
   9. The golden rule: keep it simple

3. Everything is off-kilter: all-out transgression before it was fashionable: Ashes to Ashes as the genius of David Bowie condensed to 4 minutes.

   1. The “short progression” - a classic Bowie trick (see under pressure, compare with all you need is love, money
   2. Start and end on the root note? No sir
   3. Four on the floor? No sir.

4. Schwing! Why does a shuffle move us?

   1. how time signatures can give us a groove. Straight is white, syncopated is white (the indie drum riff, to swing is not white. It’s gypsy, African.
   2. How they differ:
      1. Boogie
      2. Shuffle
      3. Swing