SmokeyJoe

(If I) let You Go / Let It Go Pretty straightforward. --------------------------------------------------------- Sleep is Wrong - Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Let It Go - Idina Menzel Hey, you were asking for it with that one.

Dream a Little Dream - Louis Armstrong

Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police

Everything Turns Grey - Agent Orange

WWIII - KMFDM

The End is the Beginning is the End - Smashing Pumpkins

Well played, sir. Stormy Weather - Ethel Waters

I'll see your Belarussian Band, and raise you 2Cellos. Thunderstruck - 2Cellos

Goth Blocked - Adam Paranoia (ft Stevie Ryan)

In the Hall of the Mountain King - Apocalyptica Unfortunately, I couldn't find the album version on youtube. Am I the only person who thinks that 99.9% of live recordings suck? I want to hear the music, not bad acoustics and a bunch of screaming idiots.

Beggar's Blues - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Still of the Night - Whitesnake

God's Away on Business - Tom Waits

Dj Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Title Theme (Sorry, it was the first thing that sprung to mind.)

Turn the Page - Bob Seger

Depends on what you mean by "casual listening" really. If I'm conscious, I generally have some kind of music playing if I can help it. The few exceptions being when watching a movie, playing/composing, or otherwise needing to focus my aural attention on something else. Even when I don't have music playing, there's usually a song running through my head so, yeah-- 24/7.

Mostly indifferent. I always kind of side-eye at the "writing by committee" approach a lot of pop songs take these days, but after reading the article it seems they're implying that the songwriting credits were added to head off a lawsuit due to some similarities between Uptown Funk and another song written by the people whose names have now been added. Honestly I have a pretty low opinion of the way music copyrights are handled in the U.S. Music has always been a dialogue, with artists constantly covering, altering, and borrowing from each other to create an art form that lives and breathes as it grows. The idea that you can build on centuries of musical theory and development, then turn around and go "it's mine now! You have to pay me if you want to use any of it!" strikes me as completely asinine. Even worse, it kills artistic development--acting as a barrier against the creation of new songs. TL/DR: I applaud the move as a nod of recognition towards those whose work influenced the piece, but as a perpetuation of the idea that music is something you can "steal", rather than something that must be shared and experimented with freely for the art form to thrive, I have nothing but disdain.

That's an interesting site you linked to. Should be a handy resource, though I'll remember to take what it says with a grain of salt. There's definitely a lot of trouble with finding mistakes in tabs and sheet music, especially the stuff you find online. The tabs for In the Hall of the Mountain King that I found have about 2-3 mistakes in the first two riffs, and the second part is completely off from what I can tell. Even worse, someone wrote in with corrections and they got some of it wrong too. I had to mess around to pick the actual notes out by ear, and I'm still working on figuring out the second half--but at least it gave me a starting point. Unfortunately I'm not at a point where I can identify a note or chord by ear, at least not to name it. I can compare two notes and tell if they're the same or not, but I couldn't tell you if it's an A or a G flat or whatever, so while I can hear if a note is incorrect, I couldn't tell you what note it's supposed to be without hunting around for it on the keyboard/fretboard.

Story time: When I was first learning to play the piano as a kid, one of my favorite pieces to practice was In the Hall of the Mountain King. I loved it because it was simple enough for even a beginner to play, but got gradually more complex as you went--and most importantly because it sounded amazing even when being picked out slowly by someone who didn't really know what they were doing. The sense of confidence I got from being able to play something that actually sounded good gave me the motivation to keep working at getting the rest of the song down and improving my technique, where a lot of other beginner exercises bored me to tears and made me feel like a useless amateur. (Which I was, but feeling that way isn't very good for morale. ) That simplicity also left a lot of room for experimentation, allowing me to mess around with different variations and really get a feel for the different styles of playing and how they affected the sound of a piece. Now that I've started learning to play the guitar, I decided to look up guitar tabs for In the Hall of the Mountain King to see if it would be as helpful for practicing this instrument as it was with piano--and wow is it ever. I've picked up more about fingering technique teaching myself to play this piece than all the other practice exercises I've come across combined, and since I started practicing it my playing has improved alot in a very short time. This got me to wondering, does anyone else have a favorite song like this? Something that is relatively simple to pick up but sounds cool and is really good for practicing and developing your technique?

Oh definitely, you can really hear it in their guitar playing. It's funny, while researching surf music I found out that it actually had a big influence on the music used in those old spaghetti western movies, so now a lot of more western/country style songs also have that sound. I hear you about not thinking in genres. They're really just artificial boundaries for the most part, whereas the music itself tends to incorporate elements from a wide variety of sources. In my head I usually classify music more in terms of sound or feel, but those concepts are kind of nebulous and don't really translate into words very well, so in conversation I'll often tag a label such as "surf" or "swing" or "punk" on there to give other people a general idea of what I'm talking about. As a result I tend to use genres a bit more broadly than most people seem to. I suppose once I get a better understanding of musical theory I'll have an easier time describing the different elements I hear in songs, but thus far that understanding has been very slow in coming. My brain just doesn't seem to be wired in a way that's compatible with some of those concepts--or at least with how they are typically presented.

Sure thing, and thanks again!

Alright, thanks again! Definitely get what you mean about Arab "sounding" scales. When researching surf music I found out that Misirlou is actually an instrumental arrangement of an old Greek folk song about a man who falls in love with an Egyptian woman. So basically the psuedo-Arab sound goes all the way back to there, where it was actually intentional. After that I guess it just got picked up and incorporated into the genre. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this. A lot of what you've said makes a ton of sense now, but for some reason I couldn't distinguish it on my own before having it pointed out to me. I guess music is like that sometimes. At any rate you've given me much better insight into this genre and a number of good starting points to wrap my head around how to write music that has that classic Surf sound to it. It'll probably be a long time before I'm good enough to actually play any of it, but at least I know what direction I'm headed in now instead of wandering around in the dark, so to speak.

No problem, and thanks again! I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to help me out with this.

Thanks a ton for the response Rudi! This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Some of the terminology is a little over my head, which I more of less expected, but it should be easy enough to look up. I really appreciate you taking the time to lay this out for me. You're right that examples can be a big help. One person's notion of the "definitive" songs of a genre can often be very different from another's, so here's a few of mine: -Surf- Misirlou - Dick Dale (Or pretty much anything by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones, really. His cover of Riders In the Sky is amazing.) Pipeline - The Chantays (Hard to say whether I prefer the original or The Ventures' cover) Mr. Moto - The Bel-Airs Phantom on Lane 12 - The Mono Men Daikaiju Die! - Daikaju Even some punk songs have distinctively surf-sounding elements, like Agent Orange's Bloodstains or the Dead Kennedys' Holiday in Cambodia. Of course, a lot of Dead Kennedys' songs sound like really pissed off surf music, and Agent Orange has been known to do some freaking awesome surf covers. (Just as a warning, those Dead Kennedys tracks are suuuper NSFW, and more than a little political.) -Swing- When I think of swing music, the first thing that comes to mind is Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway. Cab's pretty much the god of swing as far as I'm concerned, but just for the sake of variety: Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing) - Benny Goodman Is You Is Or Is You Ain't (My Baby) - Louis Jordan St. James Infirmary - Louis Armstrong Save My Soul - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Zoot Suit Riot - Cherry Poppin' Daddies Hey Pachuco! - Royal Crown Revue Stray Cat Strut - Stray Cats (Some might say this is closer to Rockabilly, but just listen to that bassline!) ...and of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention: Why Don't You Do Right? - Amy Irving (Sorry Peggy Lee, but you've got nothing on this version.) Well, now that I've let my inner music nerd flail all over the place, hopefully that'll provide a better cross section of the kind of musical styles I'm referring to.