Music Theory Concepts I learned recently

-A power chord consits of the root, 5th and an octave.

-A songs key signature will determine the scale that should be used, f.ex if the song is in A major, there's going to be a lot of the A major scale being used in the songs in its riffs, licks and solos.

-You can use the "octave triangle" to locate the octaves in a certain key. Octaves work differently on the guitar then the piano. 

-Overtones. They seem most common for vocals, piano and violin. They might be used for guitar in some fashion, however i'm not sure.

-Pentatonic scales consists of just 5 notes, hence "penta". Major and minor penatonic scales share the exact same notes. Penatonic scales are simplified versions of major and minor scales. Comparing the major and major penatonic scale, the penatonic scale admits the 4th and 7th degrees. Songs that are 100% melodically and harmoically within the pentatonic scale are very rare in western music.

Why Kevin Moore is a Genius

I admire how his music touches me emotionally, his music is so infused by emotion. I also admire how he went on from Dream theater in 1994 because he was starting to feel like he wasn’t passionate anymore about the band and also that he had a vision for his own music, I admire that sort of individualism in people. People who aren’t afraid of carving out their own path, despite what other people might think. 

His genius was in creating unique atmospheric music that used spoken word samples, in f,ex there’s nothing that sounds like the song “White Robe”.  His music is very atmospheric, sometimes ambient, introspective and sometimes moody. 

What he did to maintain his creativity is try out weird and experimental thing in his music, f.ex in the song “Please Hang Up”, he recorded a Neil Young album, and cut out all the music, so that it would only hear pops and noises, which added greatly to the ambiance of the music. Another example is using a German bingo show and using a person counting some numbers as the intro to the song “Even The Waves”. Otherwise, he used a NASA taping of some astronauts visiting space and a narrator documenting their experiences on the songs “Astronaut Down” and "Lunar". And one of the most interesting things he did was use a public domain film called Age 13 as a basis for a whole album. He used various sound clips of people talking in the album, what he also did was use the album as an inspiration for all the music and lyrics, and even the artwork which is a still frame from the film. Using prayers in “Andrew Was Drowning His Stepfather” is another example of his creative genius. Animal sounds and rain are also used throughout the album.

Some of the influences include: Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Roger Waters, Jane Siberry, Laurie Anderson, Lisa Germano, Pole, The Cure, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, The Way Out, Gordons and Acid Undertones.

These days, Kevin Moore is a liscened psychatrist working in Minot, North Dakota. He has a patreon where he has been releasing demos for the past 8 years, however it's gone inactive in the past few years, hoping that a new album is still in the works!

Ian Watkins-An insanely sick and vile person

True crime fastinactes me, and the more twisted the case is, the more twisted the case is, then the more I am into that case. There's this singer for the band "Lostprophets", this guy is insane, I mean truly insane, not only did he give hard drugs like Crystal meth and cocaine to kids as young as 10-12. He is also a serial pedophile, preying on his fans. 

Lostprophets where a pretty mediocore pop band who where around 2004 to 2012. Their music is pretty mediocore standard 00's rock. This lead singer named Ian Watkins had supposedly a pretty comfortable childhood, without much trauma or childhood neglect, which are two very common things for criminals. Ian watkins and some of his schoolmates founded the band in early 00's. Being influenced by punk bands as well as bands such as The Police, they set out to achieve their dreams of rock stardom. However, none of the band members could know just how depraved Watkins was. Around 2012, when Watkins was prosecuted, none of his band members knew just what he had done behind the scenes. The only thing they had been aware of, was his hard drug use of crystal meth and cocaine which had started around the time of when their third album was released.

It seems that prison hasn't done much for Watkins, he has been sending love letters to a mother of a 6 year old daughter, begging her to send him explicit pictures of herself, so apparently he was allowed to have a phone in prison, which is frankly bizzare. This makes me think of if prison really changes people, or if they remain the same. Watkins hasn't changed since his arrest though, that's for sure. Don't know if he's still a pedo though.

Strain theory, Labelling theory, Chicago school, Biological perspective...