calinelson.suu

 For this week I chose the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin (linked below). I was surprised to see the song was 8 minutes long but when I looked up the lyrics, it didn't have too many. Listening to it I realized it was because a lot of the song is instrumental and the lyrics are sung pretty spaced out and slow.  Looking into it I found out that Jimmy Page played a 12 string electric guitar for a solo that happens around the 5 1/2 minute mark. That solo was apparently rated number 1 in the a 2009 release of Guitar World magazine for Greatest Guitar Solos in Rock and Roll history. The song is made up of singing and a relaxed guitar playing in the background at the start, then picks up a little energy at around the 2 minute mark adding more guitar layers to the music. That continues until about the 4 minute mark when drums are added into the layering. After a bit of that you get Jimmy Page's guitar solo at around 5 1/2 minutes which lasts for about a minute befo...

      The song I chose for this week is "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder (linked below). The song was released in 1972 and is considered to be in the genre of 'classic soul'. Some of the instruments used on the track include a hohner clavinet, drums, a moog bass, a trumpet and a saxophone. After looking into it I found out that Stevie Wonder played some of the instruments on the track himself. For this song he had Steve Madaio on the trumpet and Trevor Lawrence on the tenor saxophone (both of them having performed with other groups / people of the time like the Rolling Stones.)      The song has a pretty steady beat repeating in the back with some trumpet parts chiming in every once in a while. Personally I like the song and it reminds me of my Grandpa. He has probably played at least one Stevie Wonder song almost every time I've been in a car with him. We also play a card came called Rook a lot when I visit him and he likes to listen to music while we ...

     The song I chose for this week is "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles (linked below). The song was released in 1959 and has two parts to it for a total length of about 5 minutes. Some of the instruments used in the song include the  electric piano, saxophone and the drums. Ray Charles also worked with a girl group called The Raelettes (originally known as The Cookies before working for Charles) who sang the backing vocals for this, and some of his other pieces.     "What'd I Say" starts off with a pretty long instrumental intro that has some fun piano parts in it. I think the breaks for the instruments are one of my favorite parts. It stays pretty relaxed and repetitive, but upbeat. The lyrics in the song are also relatively repetitive and sung in short lines between instrument breaks. There's a lot of heavily repeated lines in the song, but a few of them are : "Tell m what'd I say", "And I wanna know" and "Said one more time...