Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Les Paul Versus Taylor Swift!



This post isn’t really about Les Paul versus Taylor Swift. That was just pretend for an exciting headline. Sorry. (I do mention both of them, though, later.)


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To be honest I don’t have much today. I did some new music today (I started on electric guitar—Les Paul reference—then switched to keyboard), but I want to get a video to go with it, so I will try to have that for Friday.


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We’re having a little bit of a storm here tonight:



There’s a lot of lightening and it is really windy outside. The trees are blowing back and forth and tomorrow there probably will be a lot of big branches broken off and fallen on cars.

I’m parked under a tree, but I’m too lazy to go out there and move my car.

This is the kind of weather when, in horror movies, the mad scientist sends up kites with wires attached to them to catch lightening and bring his monster to life.

Too bad that good stuff never happens in real life.

If I were doing a movie, I’d have a night like this be the setting for when the dinosaurs burst up through the cracked asphalt of parking lots and start rampaging through cities.

Too bad that good stuff never happens in real life, too.

About the most interesting thing we’re likely to see around here will be some big branches cracked off trees tomorrow. That’s okay, that’s kind of interesting. But it’s not as interesting as mad scientists bringing reanimated corpses back to life or dinosaurs returning to our world to start their rampage.


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About the only other thing I have for today is to recommend everybody head over to Google’s search page. The “doodle” for Thursday (June 9) is in honor of Les Paul’s birthday. I think he would have been 96. It looks like this:



Google put together a little guitar synthesizer and you can play the strings by moving your mouse over them. Also, there’s a built in recorder, the little red button at the bottom. You click on the red button, and then you can play a song on the strings, and then press the red button again. The guitar synth saves your doodled song and plays it back. It’s about the only Google doodle that I’ve really liked.


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Les Paul of course was a great guitarist and, for the most part, invented the electric guitar as we know it today. He also more or less invented multi-track recording. One of his first big breaks in national show business was when Bing Crosby—of all people!—was impressed with his guitar playing and hired Les Paul for his radio show.

Les Paul started out in the country and western music world.

There’s progress for you. Once upon a time country and western fans had Les Paul. Now here in the 21st century, here in the George Jetson world, we get Taylor Swift.

Just one of the many reasons I’m rooting for the dinosaurs to dig their way out and come bursting up through our parking lots.

There’s a great Les Paul biography available. I posted about it in A Nod To Guitars With Knobs.





















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