Ratt: Lay It Down

Tonight I'm covering "Lay It Down" by Ratt. Hope you enjoy it.

Ryan Ruins Requests: "Straight Through The Heart" By Dio

It's baaaaaack... That's right, it's Ryan Ruins Requests!

Today, I've decided to ruin the Dio classic, "Straight Through the Heart." I hope you enjoy it. I had a lot of fun making it.

RRR Retired

The Ryan Ruins Requests feature never did take off like I had hoped. The videos themselves were terrible, and the music itself was not that great. It was a fun experiment, but ultimately of inferior quality. Therefore, I have decided to retire this feature. I have removed the videos from my YouTube channel, so they are unavailable, unless you specifically contact me and request that I send them to you. (Trust me, they are not worth it.)

My pursuit, as always, is to maintain quality content for my readers. Considering that, it hardly seems fair to remove a feature without replacing it. I do intend to replace it, and replace it something that I hope will be of much greater interest. Who knows, with any luck, I may stumble upon something that actually expands my readership. (Perish the thought!)

In fact, I hope to be delivering a new feature soon. Stay tuned.

Ryan Ruins Requests

It's that time again, folks. Time for another "fabulous" installment of Ryan Ruins Requests!

Today's installment, dedicated to PG, is the Maroon 5 (featuring Christina Aguilera) classic Moves Like Jagger. As you will soon hear, I do not quite have them moves like Jagger, but you might discover that the moves I do have are somewhat Jagger-esque.

Enjoy.

But What About Ryan Ruins Requests?

Don't be discouraged by the advent of Insipid Pop Weekend. As always, I continue to accept requests and dedications for my Ryan Ruins Requests feature. You can think of them as two sides of the same coin. Or two coins in the same pocket. Or two pockets in the same pair of pants. Or two outfits in the same wardrobe. Or two closets in the same skeleton... No, wait...

My primary objective in these undertakings is to experiment with some home recording, song writing, performance, and production ideas. I post them to the blog on the off chance that they are interesting to others; and also as a means to share my music with people I know more closely than my blog's readership, without having to constantly barrage friends and family with emails alerting them to the fact that I have more output available for consumption. But it's all in good fun.

I used to keep a music-only blog, but I found it less appealing to write constantly about music and composition, and didn't like the pressure of having to produce a recording, a piece of sheet music, or etc. each and every time I sat down to write something on my blog. Stationary Waves has managed to become a good repository of all my thoughts, be they musical, economic, literary, linguistic, fitness-related, diabetes-related, or random. 

The bottom line is: please keep your requests coming. Don't be afraid to push me in new directions and challenge me. That's what it's all about. This blog will be a lot more fun and interesting if we maintain a communication feedback loop. 

Requests Bleg

I have a number of things on the go right now, and I am in the process of organizing it all.

What this means for you is that I have until the end of the day to accept last-minute requests for Ryan Ruins Requests. I still have a sizable back-log of requests from which to add to the repertoire, but having done two 80s pop songs in a row, I am looking for a change of direction this week. Hopefully something either more modern or more complex.

Do you have a favorite song you're dying to have ruined? Hit me up in the comments section, or on Facebook or Google+.

Ryan Ruins Requests: Episode IV - A New Hope

Today's Ryan Ruins Requests is a request from loyal Stationary Waves ready GF of Ottawa, Canada. It's The Fixx: "One Thing Leads to Another."

Don't forget to lodge one of your requests in the comments section of the blog!

Motivation and a Projects-Driven Lifestyle

Not long ago, I adopted a new approach to accomplishing the objectives I set for myself.

The Problem
Like many people with a wide variety of interests that they take somewhat seriously, I often found myself short of time. It started getting difficult to, for example, record an album, plan a series of gigs, write articles, and work out hard, while still meeting my day-to-day obligations such as household tasks and, uh, going to work. Not being able to "do it all" is a problem we all face from time to time. This problem compounds itself the more seriously one takes one's hobbies.

The primary obstacle in "doing it all" is that whenever a significant amount of time is dedicated to, say, working out a lot, that steals valuable time away from writing a great piece for Mises Daily or practicing, writing, and recording new music. One begins to feel that the things one loves to do are in competition with one another. For myself, I began to feel that if I sat down and practiced my guitar technique, I was "wasting time" because it didn't produce anything particularly tangible. In contrast, any time spent writing produced an article; any time spent working out improved my blood glucose levels and overall health; any time spent recording produced an mp3. Unfortunately, everything soon felt like a waste of time. I couldn't finish any mp3s, because my technique wasn't up to par; therefore, time spent recording was a waste of time. I couldn't train for a marathon, because I couldn't set aside enough time to put in the proper miles; therefore, time spent running was a waste of time. And so on, and so forth... It felt like a vicious circle.

The Solution
The solution I devised was to break my hobbies into manageable chunks in the form of projects. (I'm not the first to devise an approach like this. Perhaps the clearest expression of this concept is Frank Zappa's "Project/Object" idea.)

Rather than focusing on what I want to do "in general," I instead decided that I needed a paradigm shift. I know conceive of all my objectives as a series of projects. The major advantages of projects is that they are associated with specific deliverables. Focusing on these deliverables costs nothing, because there is an associated end point. It becomes a matter, not of opportunity cost, but of inter-temporal substitution. This has the rather amazing effect of clearing items off my plate and also allowing me to accomplish more of them.

One way this happens is like so: Because I have made my current workout regimen my primary focus, I know that I cannot seriously dedicate large amounts of time to recording my upcoming Solaris album. As a result, the time I spend on it now is far more precise and focused. On top of that, I don't feel bad about stealing 30 minutes here and there to practice my guitar technique, because the tradeoff between that and recording has disappeared - recording is off the table until I run my marathon.

Furthermore, something new and surprising has arisen from all of this: Ryan Ruins Requests. Unable to dedicate sufficient time to a serious recording endeavor, I found myself recording covers as an additional form of practice, and my output has grown as a result!

The first such project (consciously conceived as a project-as-described) was the Prime Numbers show I played last November. We had a limited time to prepare and rehearse our material, and I had a lot of other things going on at the time. I made the strategic decision to focus on the show, and we pulled it off beautifully. Once finished, I quickly dedicated my efforts toward a second project: finding a new job, which I managed to accomplish in just three months.Next, of course, came my 18-week undertaking of training for the Montreal Marathon. It's safe to say that I haven't accomplished this many things in this short a time period in a long time - if ever.

The Challenge At This Point
Nowadays, I find the major challenge with the Projects-Driven Lifestyle is that when a particular undertaking spans a large enough period of time (like eighteen weeks, for example) Motivating oneself to see it through to the end can be somewhat daunting.

I have recently discovered this about running. My goals and desires haven't changed, but it's getting to be quite difficult to push myself to the top of my game for eighteen solid weeks. It seems like such a short period of time, but of course even seconds can feel like an eternity when they involve hard physical effort.

I may not have devised the perfect solution to this challenge, but of course I'm still working on it. My current theory is that I can likely just sally forth with the discomfort, and it will be over before it drives me totally crazy. At that point, I'll be able to start on my next major project, which will be Solaris.

Ryan Ruins Requests: Episode III - Return of the Suck

This one goes out to faithful Stationary Waves reader RR, from Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks, RR, for your dedicated reading... and requesting!

I can't take credit for the drum track on this one. The magic of these drums goes to other faithful Stationary Waves reader WW. 

Say, that gives me an idea... If you'd like to contribute to the next Ryan Ruins Requests, add a comment and let me know.

Friyeee Dayeee Friyeee Dayeeee!!!

Here's a special "guest edition of Ryan Ruins Requests." (Actually, it's completely unaffiliated with me. Just the awesomeness of some friends here in town.) Check it out, I give it my full stamp of approval.

Be Your Own Session Player

After two straight weeks of Ryan Ruins Requests, I am starting to feel a groove coming on. No pun intended. The more of this sort of thing I do (and I have done this sort of thing prior to the advent of Ryan Ruins Requests, in more private venues), the better at it I get. Case in point, I managed to record yesterday's ruined request in about five hours total. That consisted of about two hours' MIDI programming for the drums, bass, tars, and sitar, plus another three hours writing and recording the remaining guitar and vocal tracks.

In fact, I greatly simplified the multi-tracking for "Big Star" for the express purpose of finishing the song as quickly as possible. It is possible to achieve good results by putting oneself under the gun a little bit. (Har har har, yes, smart guy, yesterday's video is "good results" by current RRR standards.)

I shouldn't be surprised, but nonetheless I am please to discover that the more I do this, the easier it is. Much of what you hear on that track is the first available take. That fact is probably the happiest bit of news to report in all of this, because it means my technique is improving. I was relatively pleased by how easy the vocals were to perform. It's not a challenging song, but singing slowly is difficult for all but extremely good vocalists, and I was pleased by what I managed to pull off. (No, really -- If you listen to most vocalists singing very slow songs, you find that they often compensate for their vocal discomfort by throwing in vocal runs. This is so that they don't have to spend too much time on any one note. It's more difficult in terms of musicality* to sing one, long note -- especially a quieter or lower note -- than it is to sing a million faster notes.)

I have also started to discover a bit more about my particular musical niche. To be clear, covers in general are far outside my comfort zone. Nevertheless, I am obviously more at home doing a punk-rock-ish "Teenage Dream" than I am trying to cop Bollywood licks and feel during a slowed-down country song. That won't stop me from continuing to experiment with your requests. I'm on a quest to ruin them all, after all. But it's more than that -- if we don't push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, then we never acquire any new skills. We become one-trick ponies.

And frankly, that's the major reason I'm doing RRR in the first place. Well, that and to generate more blog traffic. I'm sure you'll forgive me for both motives, however.

_____________________________

* "Musicality" refers to the emotive aspects of musical performance, as opposed to technicality, which refers to the strict mechanics of the thing. The easiest way to think about the difference is like this: It takes a high level of technique to play every note of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on a guitar at 200bpm seven consecutive times. But it takes a high level of musicality to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" at any speed without sounding like a six-year-old.

Ruin Ruins Requests: Episode II - The Revenge!

This week's ruined request comes from SG in Illinois, who wanted to hear me butcher a Kenny Chesney song. Apparently, Kenny himself does not fully butcher his own material. (This was news to me.)

Well, SG, here you go. Without further ado, here's a Bollywood-inflected send-up of the best Kenny Chesney has to offer:

Don't forget, you can request as many songs as you like. Plus, I have your old requests, too! Wicked!

New Feature - Ryan Ruins Requests!

Ladies and gentlemen, I now present...

Ryan Ruins Requests (and Dedications)!!!

Ryan takes your requests... and promptly ruins them!

The rules are as follows:

1. Any genre is fair game.
2. Only request songs you anticipate will be ruined.
3. No Prince songs - I don't want to get sued.
4. I don't mind pushing myself to the edge of my ability, but we should steer clear of songs that involve so much virtuosity that it would be any fun to even try.
5. You may request a song for the next week, even if I played your request this week.
6. You may only request one song per week.
7. You may may your request in person, on the blog, on my Facebook page, or via email.
8. Dedications are acceptable. Be prepared to be quoted!
9. Uh, I think that's it.

Today's episode of Ryan Ruins Requests is a send up of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."

Enjoy!