I really hope this young lady gets the opportunities that so many others don't. it would be such a shame otherwise. it's a crowded music business but we can hope.
I really hope this young lady gets the opportunities that so many others don't. it would be such a shame otherwise. it's a crowded music business but we can hope.
i.ain't.dead.irock
Just want to add my kudos to all the nice words here about Rachel. The fact that she recorded this cover of Inca Roads in a day astounds me; I've known and taught many very talented music students who would consider it a significant achievement to lay down all those tracks in a semester! Congratulations and best wishes for the future!
David
Happy with what I have to be happy with.
I'd be happy just to be able to play ONE of those tracks!
<sig out of order>
Hmmm.... this is interesting. I had no idea they had posted this piece on SoundCloud. Yes, this is indeed Rachel but this recording was never intended for release, and they were never given permission to put this online. This is a working demo of one of Rachel's orchestral pieces. Looks like I need to make a phone call...
Listen to it while you can, because I'm going to ask them politely to remove it from SoundCloud, but this gives you some idea of the direction some of Rachel's music is taking. Thank you for finding this, Rand! ~ jeanie
WOW! I had no idea it was just sitting there underneath Inca Roads when I clicked on her name both showed up.
Rachel is truly amazing. Her voice is so cute singing all those crazy "guacamole queen" bits. I'd love to hear her tackle Montana.
Here is another one-man band prodigy:
FYI - the person who posted Rachel's piece on SoundCloud did not have authorization to do so. It is a lo-fi recording of a rough home demo which Rachel threw together as a reference. Rachel never intended for it to be available to the public. I had to file a copyright infringement report in order to have it removed by SoundCloud.
Dang. Will an "official" version be posted? Or then do you run into trouble with the Zappa Industrial Complex?
Anyway, thanks Rachel's mom! She is very talented.
Sorry for the confusion! Inca Roads is still there - https://soundcloud.com/rachelflowers-1/inca-roads
It is the unauthorized posting of Rachel's original piece that has been removed. I've been told that a couple of people with inside tracks have been working on getting Rachel's version of Inca Roads to Dweezil. We'll see what happens, if anything ~ jeanie
Last edited by Rachel's Mom; 01-02-2014 at 08:27 PM. Reason: clarification
For the facebook users there seems to be a new Rachel Flowers Appreciation Page all you need to do is click LIKE to become a member.
Fantastic. She has Frank's spirit imbued in there for sure. I think Napoleon Murphy Brock would love this too.
My personal fave Rachel Flowers vid is Tarkus being played on Emerson's own modular Moog. The talent of this young woman is astounding.
Yeah, she really does exist within the music.
One thing I'd like to know is, is she playing these pieces based on piecing together the chords and melodies (plus the sounds), or is she actually thinking "Cm7, D flat, Bmaj7" etc.? It just seems there are moments where she's improvising and she HAS to know the changes to be able to do that, which is going beyond just memorizing the notes (which is what some of those other YT videos look like.)
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
I think that at her level of talent, she isn't even thinking "Cm7, D flat, Bmaj7". She's thinking "this sound, that sound, the other sound", and intuitively knowing the whole constellation of melodic possibilities and alternate harmonies within and leading between each of them. I suspect that jazz greats, people like Herbie Hancock or John Coltrane, think like that. Sort of like looking at a piece of the world from the air and seeing the whole thing, as opposed to following roads and reading the signs at each corner.
I tend to believe that, at the top level (where she clearly exists and performs, unlike, say, 99% of the rock industry! including most of the cats discussed here) they musically operate akin to painters, wherein the notes are like aural colors. They don't think, thinking is for the practice room. Performance is all about assembling and crafting all the aural colors they have on their palette.
At the end of the day, all music is aural-yes, even for classical players who are locked to the printed page. The problem is not "I can't play the music I'm hearing in my head". The issue is the exact opposite--you are playing EXACTLY what you are hearing. Then the predicament becomes, is our hearing vivid enough? In Rachel's case, it seems to be beyond vivid, approximating other worldly.
Thus, music being the exposition of the vividness of these aural colors and performance excludes thinking. Someone asked Dizzie, "Mr Gillespie what are you thinking when you are soloing?" He answered , "well some people think I'm thinking (in a very soft voice) "do-Ba-da-dee-Ba-da". In fact I'm thinking (in a very LOUD voice) "DO BA DA DEE BA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The music is so clear, so vivid in his mind it just explodes from his instrument, seems to be the same way with Rachel.
What a great young lady - I wish her the best moving forward in her musical career.
The interesting thing about Rachel's Emerson videos, is they are million times better than any real Emerson video that's out there. You can really see what Emo had written and how it's done.
Here's a blast from her past that Rachel's Mom just posted on Rachel's facebook page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=wPGoWvIRY4M
Thanks, Rand. I hadn't seen that one before. Obviously Rachel relishes a challenge -- that's just nuts.
But I was thinking of how she interprets KE's stuff versus other people on YouTube and I have to say that while she strives to stay as close to the original as possible she still succeeds at conveying the innate power and charisma of the material. Lots of other players are technically astounding but their renditions are almost clinical. I never get that sense with Rachel's performances.
I'm holding out for the Wilson-mixed 5.1 super-duper walletbuster special anniversary extra adjectives edition.
The thing with Rachel is that she never set out to learn music like most of us have done. She started at such a young age and so intuitively that she has no memory of NOT knowing how to play. Music is her first language. She understands how it works, just like we understand how sentence structure works and what nouns and verbs are, but she doesn't consciously think about it any more than we think about sentence structure when we speak or write - it's simply there. ~ jeanie
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