It's no doubt that you've probably seen a double neck guitar at some point, and while it does look amazing, one may wonder: Is there really a point in having two necks? Doesn't that seem kind of pointless and heavy? The average person only has two arms, what good does having two necks on a guitar have?
Double necks seem to have become more of something similar to a fashion statement than an actual practical instrument, as the general thought is something about how cool (or ugly) it looks. The practicality in the instrument is the difference of the necks, something commonly overlooked. Most double necks are usually a combination of a 12-string and 6-string guitar, which an average listener probably won't be able to differentiate, again leading to the "This thing is just a giant hunk of wood" argument. However, to a guitar player, the tonal capability of having both 6 AND 12 string necks is a great benefit to have. As a side note: some guitars have more than three necks, but each neck fulfills a separate purpose, in this case, a combination of 6, 12, and a fretless neck.
Add with this a recording loop, and you have a trio of guitars playing at the same time, all without picking up three different instruments.
According to TechCrunch, the average child age 13-17 sends about 3500 texts per month, which they equated to about seven texts for every hour awake; while at first this does seem like a lot of message spamming, allow me to elaborate (and make some tie-ins with statistical data to that Support packet we read in AP Lang...)
Assuming I'm in a conversation, which I do quite frequently with cell phones, the conversation generally lasts longer than two text messages, let alone seven; for example, my brother often tells me of his 3-part response due to content, which makes 3 text messages within one conversation. While I don't quite make a 3-part text (it's usually two), the 160 character limit reduces the amount that can be sent; the limit needs to taken into consideration when counting the numerous texts.
On the other hand, the facts that teenagers text the most out of any age group is definitely significant, especially since seven hours out of the 15 hours they're typically awake are spent sitting in a classroom where cell phone usage is forbidden; the statistics provided by TechCruch should at least tell of the timeframe, as it's unknown if this data is from summer break or during the school year. If the data was taken during the school year, then yes, this would be a major statistic; but if this was taken during the summer, it's completely normal for me to send seven texts an hour.
Clever blog title? Yes. AAAND it's going to keep going with the the theme of song-oriented blog posts.
In case you weren't familiar with it, Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is track 2 on Led Zeppelin's debut album, Led Zeppelin I. Because I don't want to write that all out again, I'll continue by referring to it as track 2 (not to be confused with Song 2 by Blur). This track is the first of Zeppelin's acoustic-oriented songs, featuring Jimmy Page's fingerpicking style; this song was also the first "cover" of a folk song, and as with most of Led Zeppelin's songs like this, the original artist was not credited, instead, Page taking credit.
The song has two main riffs, a soft, mournful acoustic slowly progressing up and down the A minor key, and a harsher electric riff that takes the previous theme and amplifies it. When I listen to this song, the emotion relayed by Plant's voice is simply...moving. His loud emotional wails of sorrow throughout the song do a great job of relaying feeling. The feeling in this song is quite unlike anything that'll be found in mainstream music now; whenever I play this song on guitar, I can't help but bash the strings during the electric interludes.
As mentioned earlier, the guitar present is usually acoustic; electric is added occasionally to add emphasis in the appropriate parts. This song utilizes a fingerpicking style, something I still need to acquaint myself with properly. Overall, I'd rate this song as a definitely-not-beginner-song-but-not-that-hard-either song when trying to learn this song. There really aren't any bass or drum parts very notable in this piece, save for the electric interludes; Bonham adds his drums in these parts, but Jones' bass playing throughout the song isn't particularly memorable.
Next Song: You Shook Me, track 3 (This should be interesting, as I really haven't listened to this song much.)
First time listening to any of their live performances of this song, even if it is used as an intro. I'll make sure to include this video when I cover Communication Breakdown (after which this blog's named after) sometime in a later blog post...
So, after a dry wave (sorry!) of posts, I've decided to switch things up a little. At least once every week or so, I'll take a song, and review the styling and make-up of it. You'll probably guess who the artist will be...so starting this week off, as the title implies, will be the first track ever released by Led Zeppelin, of their album Led Zeppelin I: Good Times, Bad Times.
Finding a live version of this song is kind of chore, as Zeppelin didn't usually put this song into their setlist, most likely due to multiple vocal harmonies, and the occasional guitar harmony (although I have NO idea how they pulled off Achilles Last Stand...)
The track starts off with short hi-hat quarter notes, proceeding into eighth notes for the entire song; I tried to play this myself, and it's by no means easy to do; throughout the entire song, Bonham (drummer) plays eight notes on the hi-hat pedal, at the same time maintaining a constant eighth note beat on cowbell, abnormal snare patterns, AND a non-linear bass drum pattern. Once this pattern is all put together, there's STILL the bass triplets at around 0:25 in; what sounds like a double-bass pedal sound is somehow made by a single pedal, through some confounded technique (I'm not that great of a drummer =P)
The guitar part in this song is kind of repetitive, and is consequently not one of favorite songs to play, but the chorus and verses are good songs to learn for beginning guitarists. When I first tried to learn this song after only less than a year of playing, the solo pretty much broke my fingers when I attempted playing it...even after a few more years of playing I still can't get the descent at 2:03 right. After the second solo, the guitar part fades into the background with minor solos played behind the Plant's small phrases, with Bonhams beats taking over at the end of the song.
To rap this post up, the bass part of this song is a great example of what bass parts should be; although I'm not usually in favor of unison parts with the guitar, Jones (bassist) has two separate solos, at 0:55 and 2:01, which doesn't happen very often. I've trying playing this song on bass (my brother's bass is still lying around), and it's definitely fun to play, especially since a lot of songs's bass parts are the same duhnuh duhnuh duhnuh over and over again...
Sorry for not covering lyrics/vocals, I really don't pay attention to them as much as other parts, since I always get distracted by the instrumentals. Unless the vocal part contains something major (yes, I do realize it's half the song), I probably wont make a separate section for it.
The final part we've all been waiting for: multiplayer.
Multiplayer in Battlefield has always been the highlight of the series, and Battlefield 3 is no exception. Large scale 24-man battles, vehicles, and oodles of guns and attachments make Battlefield 3 the best in the series (so far).
Having 24 people seems like it would be a major issue at first...but the immense size of the maps in BF3 solve that issue with ease. This however, brings the issue of too much space in the map into play, which can and does become an issue from time to time. The PC version fixes this by offering a 64 player option, but unfortunately on the consoles, 24 is the limit; Dice tries to fix this by restraining the maps to a certain size, but I can still say from experience that I do occasionally run out of people to shoot at.
Vehicles always add a different flavor to the battlefield of Battlefield; BF3 has the standard armament of tanks, boats, and helicopters are present, along with jets being brought back. Vehicles can be modified in a way similar to attachments can be added to weapons, with three slots pertaining to separate categories to modify. Vehicles in Battlefield provide a means for either transportation, or more commonly, protection. As a player, vehicles can get VERY annoying when no engineers are present to take them out, leading to a quick ragequit. On the other side, being IN a vehicle gave me a 43 killstreak, so I'll restrain from complaining.
In the previous Battlefield game, Bad Company 2, guns could only be modified with the use of specializations, similar to Call of Duty's perks; this only allowed for one attachment at a time with little customization. In Battlefield 3, each gun can be separately modified with three attachment slots: optics, barrel attachments, and gun modifications (such as extended magazines). The ability to have more that one attachment at a time without using something like Bling/Warlord (Call of Duty perk that allowed multiple attachments on one weapon) made my day when I found about it.
Co-op is a feature becoming more prevalent in First-person shooters nowadays, however, co-op campaigns usually have problems with lasting value, and overall enjoyment; for example, Modern Warfare 2's co-op was somewhat enjoyable during the first few playthroughs, but the short, repetitive objectives of each mission led to another game in my dust-heaped cabinet. Co-op generally works the best in free-roam games such as Grand Theft Auto and Mercenaries 2; the unpredictability of free-roam, together with the uncontrolled chaos presents a new experience every time.
The co-op of BF3 follows a separate story from the campaign, but like the campaign, doesn't efficiently establish proper characters; I still don't know either character's names, or even WHY the things in the co-op were happening. From what I could tell, there was a large boom-boom in the subway and people were freaking out...a fairly generic, overused plot.
Battlefield 3's co-op possesses the same issues as every co-op; repetitive kill-anything-and-everything-you-see tactics lead to fast boredom. The incentive of BF3's coop is unlocking new weapons in multiplayer, supporting the idea that the true point in first-person shooters is the multiplayer; developers may as well completely avoid wasting resources on developing anything BUT the multiplayer.
