Sunday, December 20, 2009
1:38 PM | Posted by
Dan Ruemenapp
So everyone, as my time to get back to the United States winds down, I am continuously thinking of new song ideas and trying to better myself as a musician. I cannot wait to get back home and start recording my ideas and stacking and mixing tracks as I progress on my record. As a guitar player, I am always thinking of ways to get that "signature" sound. People say that tone is a balance between the gear that the player uses and the soul and technique in the fingers of the player. I feel that I have the soul and the technique to get the tone that I want (Hendrix/SRV/John Mayer), but am lacking in the gear department. In all honesty, I feel that the soul and technique is more important than how expensive the gear you have, but it still helps to have the proper equipment. It is also tough in these economically pressing times for a musician to fully support his needs as a performer.
One thing that all of the guitar idols have in common is a signature guitar. Stevie Ray Vaughan had his #1 Stratocaster, Jimi Hendrix had many, including his famous upside down right-handed Stratocaster and his Monterey Pop Festival Stratocaster. John Mayer uses many, but most of the time he turns to his "The Black One" custom relic Stratocaster. In the future, I plan on building my own guitar to my own personal specifications, that way I will have a guitar that is a part of me and can output the exact tone that I am looking for.
There is an opportunity before me that I can hope to help me out on my quest for a custom guitar sooner rather than later. Rittenhouse Guitars is hosting a giveaway on www.RittenhouseGuitars.com for a custom relic guitar. I do want to win a relic custom guitar from Rittenhouse Guitars. I have entered many guitar gear contests in the past and I really hope this is the one that falls through. This would be the one that could help me get the guitar of my dreams and help me achieve the signature sound I am looking for. If not, I'll just move on and continue my life as a musician.
Music is my life and I will do anything to further myself, not for the money or for the collection of expensive equipment, but for the love of music. This was just a little thought I had on my mind that I wanted to share with you. Keep tuning in for updates on my musical endeavors.
"Oh but are you experienced? / Have you ever been experienced? / Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful..."
Friday, December 18, 2009
This is part two of my final Euro Trip blog posts. After our excursion in Prague, Czech Republic, a few of us decided to take a trip to Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona was home to the 1992 Olympic Games and is the second largest Spanish city behind Madrid. It is located in the Autonomous Community of Cataluña in Northern Spain bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The best part of Barcelona is that it was about 26° C (78.8° F); a welcome change from the cold of Prague and Madrid. Other than Spanish, the other official language spoken in Cataluña is Catalán. I expected Catalán to be a secondary language but to my surprise Catalán was everywhere and was also the primary language of the region. Its use was fairly restricted during the Franco dictatorship, but I was surprised to see how it has flourished since. Luckily, everyone still knows Spanish so I was able to communicate with them all anyway. So after we got settled in at our hostel (it was kind of ghetto but it was cheap and got the job done) we walked around La Rambla (a popular tourist street) and visited the Christopher Columbus monument on our way to the harbor to the Mediterranean. There we looked out to the water and just had a great life chat before our traditional Spanish dinner of paella and sangría. After dinner we just wandered the city exploring before calling it a night.
The next morning we got up and bought some metro passes to get around the city better. The first thing on our list to do was to the the Church of the Holy Family (La Sagrada Familia). This church is a massive and beautiful example of the architectural style which is Antoni Gaudí. The church was not finished in his lifetime and is still currently under construction by architects who wish to finish the spectacular work that was started by Gaudí. They say that it will probably not be finished until around 2040. We had to pay to get in to the church, but hey, we are supporting the construction efforts. We took an elevator to the top of one of the church towers to get a beautiful view of the city before heading down and moving on to our text objective. Next we made our way to Park Güell, built on a hill. Park Güell was also constructed by Antoni Gaudí as you can clearly notice from my photos. It is an amazing park with so many different beautiful aspects there are too many to name in my post. You'll just have to go look at my photos and see for yourself. We kept climbing a trail through the constructed "caves" and eventually worked our way up to the top of the hill it is located on. From there we enjoyed a beautiful view of the entire city of Barcelona.
After sitting on top of the hill, we walked back down and made our way to the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. It was so nice being able to walk down a beach in the middle of December. We walked down and found a fun Eiffel Tower looking jungle gym and climbed on it for a while. One thing we wished we didn't see was two naked men walking down the beach (Apparently they thought it was a nude beach or something, NOT). After our childish fun on the jungle gym we continued to walk down the beach and saw a sand castle competition. Some of those were phenomenal pieces of art. After the walk down the beach we had a quick lunch and went to go check out the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia and some of the Christmas markets in the plaza near the cathedral. After dinner, we went out into the city for the night.
The next morning we woke up early to catch a train to Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain about 1.5 hours by train from Barcelona which is the home to a Monastery which has been the home to many pilgrimages throughout history, including the great St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius went to Montserrat for a spiritual reflection and there he received the revelation to write the Spiritual Exercises and found the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). First we followed a trail on the mountain with spiritual monuments devoted to the important Biblical events which led to a chapel built into a cave in the mountain. After that we took a trolley ride up higher in the mountain to have a picnic basically on top of a mountain.
After that I found an opportunity to climb even higher and farther than the designated trail and I ended up basically in a remote spot on top of Montserrat looking down at the world. I sat there, and listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of "Little Wing" and looked down at everything. I felt completely at peace and one with everything.
It was a magical experience and I just sat there for a good 10 minutes listening to my most inspirational music feeling so real and organic. Then John Mayer's "3x5" came on and it made me think about my entire experience here. It is impossible to put into words or catch inside a picture frame what I have gone through; it is something that you must experience with your own eyes. I do hope that my descriptions help you understand what I am experiencing but it really isn't the same as facing it face to face. Eventually the rest of the group followed me but I went a little farther than they were willing to climb so I went back to join them. After some reflection on the day we went back down to the Monastery and visited the beautiful basilica before heading back to Barcelona.
It was a magical experience and I just sat there for a good 10 minutes listening to my most inspirational music feeling so real and organic. Then John Mayer's "3x5" came on and it made me think about my entire experience here. It is impossible to put into words or catch inside a picture frame what I have gone through; it is something that you must experience with your own eyes. I do hope that my descriptions help you understand what I am experiencing but it really isn't the same as facing it face to face. Eventually the rest of the group followed me but I went a little farther than they were willing to climb so I went back to join them. After some reflection on the day we went back down to the Monastery and visited the beautiful basilica before heading back to Barcelona.
When we got back we watched a beautiful 10 minute fountain show in front of the city hall. After the fountain show we had Mexican food (Finally something spicy!) and then went out for the night exploring the city. The next morning we got up and went to Montjuic, the Jewish mountain, of Barcelona and explored the old Jewish castle. After the castle we visited the Olympic Stadium that was home to the 1992 Olympic Games. We then headed down Montjuic and visited some other impressive architectural buildings built by the famous Antoni Gaudí before heading to the airport to return back to Madrid.
This was probably my favorite trip my entire time in Europe and I'm glad it was the last. Barcelona is a magical Spanish city filled with culture, architecture, and history. It is amazing to say that I went from a beach to the top of a mountain in less than 24 hours, and I found my favorite place in the world. If you want to see photos from my trip to Barcelona visit http://picasaweb.google.com/djruemenapp.
"You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes / It brought me back to life / You'll be with me next time I go outside / No more 3x5's."
Monday, December 14, 2009
Sorry for being M.I.A. for the last week, but me and some of my BC friends took a week-long excursion for our final Euro Trip of the semester before coming back to the states. I am going to split my two trips into two different blog posts so I don't overwhelm you all with a gigantic wall of text. The first of my final two trips was to the city of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic in the heart of Eastern Europe. Normally flights to Prague from Madrid are fairly expensive, but I got mine for 30 €, but only because there was a 3 hour lay-over in Frankfurt, Germany. The airport was really small, and when we looked outside me and my friend Steve were basically in the middle of nowhere. We roamed around and the only merely interesting thing was a dude in a Santa Claus suit who creeped around the airport with a pole covered in tin foil. Finally when it was time to board our flight to Prague, they made us walk to the ghetto RyanAir airplane. After a few hours we arrived in the Czech Republic.
After a quick bus and metro ride, we arrived in the center of the city. We walked towards our Hostel, near Old Prague Square (the older main plaza) and saw Christmas everywhere. There was a giant Christmas tree in front of the beautiful Basilica and little shops and Christmas markets filled the plaza. Later that night Steve and I dropped our stuff off at the Hostel, met up with our friends, and walked around the city before calling it a night. We even met some new friends, Josh and Milli, who were visiting from Australia who hung out with us quite often.
The next morning we decided to explore the city on our own until our other friends, Sean and Michi, arrived later that afternoon. We saw the tombstone dedicated to Jan Palach in front of the Natural History Museum. Jan Palach was a Czech who committed suicide by setting himself on fire in protest against the communist rule of the Soviet Union. We also visited the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, which is the main church located in Old Prague, and also one of the most recognizable buildings in Prague with its heavily Gothic architecture. Then we walked around visiting the Christmas markets throughout the city seeing what each one had to offer. We then took a trip up to the top of the Astronomical Clock of Prague. The Astronomical Clock is mounted on the southern wall of the Old Town City Hall. The Clock is composed of three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the sun and the moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of the Apostles and other moving figures; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months. After the Astronomical Clock, we walked through the Jewish ghetto of Prague and the Jewish cemetery which is a monument to the many Jews who died in the Holocaust. We then went to the Cubist Cafe which is located in a building with a very rare architectural style known as cubism (think Pablo Picasso).
Later that afternoon our friends Sean and Michi arrived and we then made our way out to a traditional Czech restaurant. This would be the closest I could get to traditional Polish food (my heritage) without spending a ridiculous amount of money travelling to Poland. I got to eat some dumplings stuffed with ham and onions topped with some sauerkraut. After dinner we enjoyed what Prague had to offer during the night before heading to bed and beginning the next day.
The next day we took a walking tour throughout the city from our awesome half-American and half-Czech tour guide from Boston, Katka. She made lots of American jokes and I don't think many of the other English speakers there really understood them fully. After our tour through the city and a lunch pit-stop at Bohemia Bagel (I haven't had bagels in forever and it was amazing!), we joined another English tour of Prague Castle. We started at the Charles Bridge and worked our way up the hill town until finally reaching the castle. On the way to the castle we stumbled upon the John Lennon "Imagine Wall." When Lennon was shot and killed in 1980, young Czechs started an impromptu shrine to him on the wall of a garden. At first the police got upset, but eventually they let it grow and let it become legal to graffiti this wall. I scratched my own little saying into the paint myself saying, "Live Love Music," leaving my little legacy behind. We then made our way to the Prague Castle and witnessed the changing of the guard. After visiting the castle we walked to the cathedral at the top of the hill and it was one of the most impressive Gothic structures I've ever seen.
After our tour we made our way back down to the Old Town Square and enjoyed a cheap dinner before spending the end of our night walking down the Charles Bridge and reflecting on how magical this place was. Being in Prague was like being in a magical fairytale land with Christmas everywhere. It is probably one of the most beautiful cities I have seen in Europe, and what is also great is that the entire city is in walking distance. It really was a great trip and one of my favorite trips I've made this semester. I highly recommend visiting this Eastern European city if any of you have the opportunity. Photos of my trip to Prague are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/djruemenapp.
"Alright already we'll all float on, ok / Don't worry we'll all float on / Even if things get heavy we'll all float on."
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sorry if I've haven't updated lately, I just had my final exam for Spanish Culture and Civilization and have been very busy lately. But fear not, here is my update.
After the
The Louvre is the largest national museum in
The next day we spent walking through the city and visiting the
"Hello I love you / Won't you tell me your name? / Hello, I love you / Let me jump in your game."
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
So today is the 24th of November. I have really less than two months left in Madrid. I'd like to take the time now to reflect on my time so far and give some of my thoughts I have been having recently of the future. Today I finished my midterm exams for my classes at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. I got a B on one of them and await the results on the other. I also have a lot of reading to do for my Spanish Literature since 1975 class. I hope that not only will this semester abroad be a GPA booster back at BC, but I really hope that I leave Spain with a fairly high level of Spanish ready to make more moves towards fluency. I do feel that my Spanish has improved greatly since I arrived. Actually, since I started studying the language two and a half years ago, my freshman year at Boston College, I fell in love with everything about it: the language, culture, music, people. I swear to God at times I felt like I have some long lost Spanish blood in me. I really improved quite quickly. I knew I wanted to go abroad in a Spanish speaking country because the best way to learn something is to be completely immersed in it and to be completely immersed in something I love would be a great opportunity. So far, here I am, living in Madrid for 5 months, living a dream I never thought in a million years would happen 4 years ago. I have visited different parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Morocco (Africa), and am going to Paris this Thursday. It feels like I have done so much, yet there is so much left to be done. The world is a big place and I would like to get to know it well.
And I sit here also missing my life back in the United States. I love it here in Spain, don't get me wrong, but I really do miss my family, friends, and the culture I have left behind. I guess you realize how much you really love something when you are away from it. I am looking forward to coming back to BC and living off campus and all the new classes I am taking. Right now my schedule consists of: Perception, Personality Theories, Social and Emotional Development, The Fundamentals of Music Theory, and Contextos (Spanish literature class). I am jumping deeper into my psychology major which is very exciting, and I also get to take a music theory class to help me learn the construction of song writing rather than accidental improvisation which is what I currently do. Living off campus will be a great journey into my autonomy as I move into adulthood (I can't believe I'm saying this). I am also excited to start recording and working intensely on my record I plan on putting out. Like I said before, I have already done so much, but have barely done anything at the same time.
Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and I will be in Paris, France. It will be difficult missing such a great holiday, but I would like to take the time right now to extend a big THANK YOU to all of you reading this. You are the ones who give me motivation to wake up and do things everyday. I especially want to thank my family. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be the person I am today and I wouldn't be spending my Thanksgiving in Paris of all places. This great opportunity I am experiencing right now is due to you, so thank you for being my family. I don't know what I'd do without you. You are the reason for my being and I really hope I am making you proud. I'd also like to thank my other friends and loved ones. You guys mean a lot to me as well and I can't wait to get back to my life with you that I put on hold for 5 months.
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and I hope you all think about the things you are thankful for. I know all too well what I am thankful for, and I just want to say you can never say "thank you" or "I love you" enough. Life is too short for bull shit. You got to just take it as it comes and run with it while remembering those who helped get you there in the first place. Keep on keepin' on everyone.
"I'm in the war of my life / I'm at the core of my life / Got no choice but to fight 'till its done / So fight on, fight on everyone, so fight on."
Friday, November 20, 2009
Alright folks, here comes the review for one of my most anticipated records in a long time, John Mayer's Battle Studies. I could write a huge review and complete breakdown of every song but I won't do that to you all; I'll just give you an objective and concise yet complete and semi-biased review of John Mayer's 4th studio album.
With the title based off of a 19th Century war tactic book, John Mayer wanted to create a record based on the hardship in relationships and the everyday battles we face in life. In a rented out Los Angeles mansion/home studio far away from the paparazzi, John accomplished exactly what he set out to do. John wanted to step away from what made his previous record, Continuum, so successful and go in a completely different direction and show his audience there is more he needs to add to his musical repertoire.
Battle Studies starts off with a U2 style guitar effect and breaks in the "love is a battlefield" theme in "Heartbreak Warfare." It is interesting that John selected an acoustic ballad as the second track, but "All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye" fits here perfectly and is one of the saddest songs on the record. The third track, "Half Of My Heart," is a Fleetwood Mac inspired song featuring Taylor Swift and has "Grammy/Big Time Radio Hit" written all over it. "Who Says," the record's first single, is a simple folk song about having control of the pleasures in your life. "Perfectly Lonely" is one of the best on the record, and brags of his great guitar skills. It's a break in the clouds from the heartbreak stating "I don't need anybody." The next track, "Assassin," is my favorite on the record. It is a dark yet sexy song filled with very deep lyrics about a player who has the tides turn on him. The guitar solo shows his Stevie Ray Vaughan influence and this song has great potential to grow live. His cover of "Crossroads," the Robert Johnson song made famous by Cream, is very different from the rest of the record. John plays this song great live, but the studio version just seems very dumbed down. The next song "War Of My Life" is a very chill and great "road trip" song about the battles we face in life. "Edge of Desire" is probably the most emotionally charged song on the record and is about the deep wanting of love from a lonely soul. "Do You Know Me" is a very simple and short song (2:30) which is very open-ended and can get repetitive, yet it has an philosophic feel to it lyrically. The final track, "Friends, Lovers Or Nothing," is an upbeat and great closing song which shows the final battle of love and proclaims that "friends with benefits" is a bad idea.
I could have gone into greater detail in my review but I didn't want to overload you all. Overall, I think this is a great record. I can't really compare it to any of his previous work because it is completely different. It seems to start the story of heartbreak with the sun out, then the record gets darker and deeper, and then the sun comes back out at the end. I do like Continuum better musically, but Battle Studies is much more mature lyrically and his vocals are much more improved. I would have to place Battle Studies somewhere between Continuum and Room For Squares/Heavier Things. Tickets to the Battle Studies World Tour go on sale for the general public tomorrow, November 21, and expect me to be one of the first to guarantee a spot to see him. John continues to influence me as a musician and I am glad to be along for the ride.
"Clouds of sulfur in the air / Bombs exploding everywhere / It's heartbreak warfare."
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Hello all. This past weekend was a fairly chill weekend, seeing as we only did a single day trip with our class and the rest of the weekend I just stayed and enjoyed Madrid. Thursday and Friday were just fun weekends out with friends enjoying the nightlife of Madrid. We went to an Irish bar one night where everyone spoke English and they even had ESPN on the television. I was very excited to see American sports on TV again. Saturday, all of the BC kids went to El Escorial and Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), which are both about an hour away from the city, but still located in the province of Madrid.
El Escorial is a multi-purpose palace built by King Philip II of Spain. It has one of the oldest libraries in the world. The architecture is kind of dull and gray, but I'm sure it was rockin' back in the day. Here is some basic information about El Escorial. I don't feel like re-typing all the notes I took during our field trip so all the credit here goes to Wikipedia. El Escorial is a historical residence of the king of Spain. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, royal palace, museum, and school. It is located about 45 kilometers northwest of the city of Madrid in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Philip II of Spain, reacting to the Protest Reformation of Europe in the 16th century, devoted much of his lengthy reign and much of his supply of gold from the Americas to stopping the Protestants. Philip asked the famous Spanish architect Juan Bautista de Toledo to design his palace. Together they designed El Escorial as the focal point making Spain the capital of the Christian world in the Iberian Peninsula.
After El Escorial and a quick picnic we took a quick visit to Valle de los Caídos ten minutes away (Valley of the Fallen). The monument built there is massive. It is built right into a mountain and a gargantuan cross situated on top of the mountain of the monument can be seen from miles away. The following information is also from Wikipedia. The Valle de los Caídos is a monumental memorial mausoleum erected at Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains near Madrid built by the order of the former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco who ruled Spain from April 1939 until his death in November of 1975. The monument was built to honor those who died during the Spanish Civil War. Only the names of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (the first leader of the Spanish fascism party) and Franco himself are honored individually. The rest of the fallen in the war are honored anonymously. Franco claimed the monument to be a "national act of atonement." As a surviving artifact of Franco's rule, the monument and its Catholic basilica remain controversial, especially due to the manner and circumstances of its construction (built by political prisoners).
El Escorial and Valle de los Caídos represent two periods of transition in Spain. The transition from the Catholic Kings of Spain to the Austrian Kings and the transition from dictatorship to democracy, respectively. I am currently going through a transition period myself here during my studies in Madrid. First, my classes are starting to get into intense mode as midterms are coming up and I have a lot of reading and studying to do the next few weeks. Second, tomorrow I register for classes for Boston College in the Spring 2010 semester. I have all of them picked out, and now I need to get some back up plans ready just in case they close before my registration time. In a few days after I finish registering I'll share my course schedule with ya'll.
I didn't take many pictures of El Escorial or Valle de los Caídos because I was taking notes the whole time, but of the pictures I did take you can visit soon at http://picasaweb.google.com/djruemenapp.
"Because these things will change, can you feel it now? / These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down / It's a revolution, the time will come for us to finally win."
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