| | | Hey Friend,
I just love the movie "Shrek" from Dreamworks Animation!
There are so many great, hilarious lines spread through the entire movie that I can't help but laugh every time I think of the film.
Doesn't matter how many times I've seen it in the past (and I've seen it at least a dozen times with my kids), I still chuckle when I think of the banter between Shrek (Michael Myers) and Donkey (Eddie Murphy)...
Comic geniuses!
Do you remember this little exchange?
Shrek: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example... uh... ogres are like onions!
[holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes... No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs...
Shrek: [peels an onion] NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers... You get it? We both have layers.
[walks off]
Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. CAKE! Everybody loves cake! Cakes have layers!
Shrek: I don't care what everyone likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I don't like no parfait."? Parfaits are delicious!
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
Donkey: Parfait's gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet!
Guess what?
Songs have layers, too. I'd say they're tastier than onions, more like parfaits, although if you're putting them on a nice hamburger...
Anyway, most people listen to as song as a whole. They usually focus in on the melody and words.
But we're musicians. We like to "peel back the layers" and see how the song is put together (sorry, couldn't help myself).
In mix engineering, the goal is direct the focus of the listener to the main part of the song - which is usually the melody and words - so they have all sorts of techniques to make things stand out.
They can make certain sounds come straight at you out of the speakers, or sounds could come from the right, left, above, below or from behind. It's really cool how much depth and dimension you can give a song with using these techniques.
This is done a lot on guitar parts (tracks) as well. You would want certain parts to stand out more than others, so the engineer would apply his magic and layer guitar sounds and different parts over each other.
Think of it like this...
You have a growly, distorted rhythm guitar part sitting lower in the recording than say the brighter, cleaner guitar sound playing a nice little riff over the top of that distorted guitar. Both guitars could be playing the same chords, but one is played with beefier chords from the lower strings and the other is using inversion up the neck to create some contrast - something interesting to the ears.
You want a really powerful, "balls to the walls" sound?
Power chords are great for those lower tracks. You can use different mixing techniques to make them punch hard or stay gentle.
We're going to cover many of these techniques in The Chord Clinic, but for right now you can rock out the power chords with Easy Power Chords.
I've crammed over 250 chord charts into the ebook from super-easy shapes to some real finger stretchers. Go get Easy Power Chords for yourself!
Peace~
Dave
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