My name is Lennon Ashton, and I'm a musician from Long Island, New York. My main instruments are the guitar and the piano.
I was the lead guitarist of the rock band Youth Be Told. In 2013, we had the honor of recording some of my original songs with the legendary rock record producer Jack Douglas. In 2014, we got to open for Zebra at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury on Long Island.
I am in the process of writing and recording a concept album. This album will be titled "Distant Shadow," and it will feature music that I have been writing for over a decade.
I have a Master of Arts in Music Theory from Queens College. I also have a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from LIU Post, where I graduated as a co-valedictorian. I am currently an adjunct professor of music at LIU Post. I look forward to teaching and inspiring future generations of musicians!
Thank you so much for watching! This is one of my favorite songs to play on the guitar, and the combination of beautiful acoustic and electric playing makes it such a reward to play. As you mention, there are so many lessons that can be learned by learning the guitar part. The first few minutes are essentially an acoustic improvisation, the electric section requires careful use of a volume pedal and a lot of fast ascending and descending lines, and the acoustic coda has variations on a chord progression through hybrid picking and different chord voicings. The coda is one of my favorite excerpts of guitar music ever composed!
Nice job, one of my favorite solos, the harmonies are so beautiful. The only thing I saw was need vibrato on some of the longer note bends, otherwise you got it down to a T.
Thank you very much! I appreciate that! "Be Brave" is easily one of my favorite Owl City songs. The piano part and harmonies on that song are so gorgeous, and the song always makes me emotional. I made all of these arrangements of Adam's songs by ear. I focused on adding the vocal melodies to the harmonies, and I practiced it enough times that it became muscle memory. I do not have sheet music for it. There is a very accurate one I found on RU-vid titled "Be Brave (Owl City) - Piano Tutorial." If I can get it converted from GarageBand, I can probably send you the MIDI file for my short arrangement of that song, at which point you could add it to an app or program that shows the notes on the piano. Some of my social media profiles are linked in my RU-vid profile, so if you would like the MIDI file for that excerpt of this video, feel free to message me on one of those platforms!
Me too! The finale of this symphony is one of my favorite excerpts of music ever composed! Mahler was such a genius! I really hope that I have an opportunity to hear this piece live at least once. For now, I'll have to find an organ that I can play my arrangement on!
The guitar is a Jackson JS Series Dinky Arch Top JS34 DKA Electric Guitar (Silver Burst), which has a 25.5" scale length, 12”-16” Compound Radius, and 24 frets. Hope this helps!
Thank you very much! Alex is my favorite guitar player, so choosing one solo as a favorite is so difficult to do. I love how unconventional this solo is with the extreme use of the vibrato arm and the elasticity. I have seen a few videos where Alex says that this is his favorite solo that he wrote.
Thank you! This was at a summer music festival/fair, so plenty of people were walking around, but there were a lot that stayed to watch my performance, which I really appreciated. The best part about this show was I was opening for Randy Jackson from Zebra, who is one of my favorite musicians and a dear friend of mine!
Man who are you? I love your video. I want to study music theory with you until I become a master of music notation. You are amazing my brother. Thank you for this video.
Thank you very much for the kind words! I appreciate it. In my opinion, once you get the notation down, the analysis becomes the fun part where you get to really delve into the music that you are most interested in!
How does this channel not have more subscribers? Thank you, Lennon. This is super concise and helpful. I'm a proficient pianist, guitarist, and six-string bassist; I've played by ear most of my life. This video lecture and Andrew Huang's theory videos are helping me better understand how to speak and interact with formally trained musicians, when I've always known how to write and play, but couldn't read or label anything. I cannot thank you enough.
Thank you for the very kind words! I am glad that you find my video beneficial. Yes, music theory is wonderful for interacting with other musicians. Many great songwriters and composers did and do not know music theory, and they would compose by ear. Over the past few centuries, certain scales, melodic patterns, harmonic progressions, rhythms, forms, chromatic chords, etc., have been used across tonal music of various styles. Because of this, our ears and minds can be indirectly trained to anticipate, expect, and gravitate toward certain musical practices, and this is why you'll find many similarities between music of different periods whether or not theory was involved in the creation of the music-composers' ears guide them! Theory itself allows us to make sense of these common practices, analyze various elements, try to understand the purpose behind every note and rest that happens in a composition and the thought process behind its creation, and try to understand why composers and listeners seem to enjoy certain things that happen in music. Good luck with your musical journey!
Thanks for watching! Tried to cram as much content as I could into a summary video, not knowing how long the final result would be. I'm glad that it reviews a lot of topics for those who need a refresher. And there is so much more to theory than I covered in here!
Is there a reason none of the examples or concepts are played on an instrument? A big part of these subjects is ear training and this method of teaching does very little to help.
While I do agree that ear training is very important when it comes to learning music theory and developing aural skills, as I say at the start, this video was not specifically designed to teach these topics for the first time, but rather to provide viewers with a compact overview of the topics that they would encounter by taking actual theory courses, reading theory textbooks, etc., which can be helpful for those that are preparing for major written exams that are more focused on the theoretical knowledge and non-aural questions. I also did not know how long the final video would be, and I did not want it to end up being excessively long for a review video that is primarily focused on summarizing. Thankfully, the feedback that I have received from tons of people since posting the video has been very positive, with many students telling me that it has helped them to study and prepare for their classes and exams, which was one of the main motivations for making the video in the first place. For people watching this video who would like to get more out of it, I would recommend that they try to play through some of the examples on a keyboard, which would allow them to "hear" the theory while also giving them a chance to practice things like sight-reading, converting Roman numerals to chords, voicing chords, harmonizing a melody, adding upper voices on top of a bass line, playing tonal and post-tonal scales, and other skills related to keyboard harmony. Although this is a review video, some might watch it because it gives them a general introduction to music theory. For those who want to learn these topics at a more in-depth level, I recommend that they check out some of the amazing lecture series that are on RU-vid that cover these topics through full lessons and courses, combining analytical skills, aural skills, and more.
Its like Rick Beato said when he broke down this song, the lead solo is so idiosyncratic to Scholz, that no one is really gonna replicate this as Tom did it. But you got really close to the LP version, well done young fella. All you need now is an old Rockman. ;-)
Thank you very much! I always enjoy watching Rick's insightful videos! This is a challenging solo to play, and because the studio version involves some harmonizing and doubling, playing it as a single player will not capture every detail from the original, so one has to decide on a way to approach it. Double tracking a solo can be very challenging, but when done well, it can create a very cool sound. My favorite example of this from this solo is probably the second-to-last phrase, where the solo has that fast alternating pattern that ends with a bend. The chaos and tension in that phrase is awesome! Tom has a distinguishable style of playing and a sonic fingerprint that is recognizable to many listeners of rock music! A Rockman would be very cool! Finding a good Boston tone was one that I always wanted to achieve. I was so happy when I discovered the awesome app called Tonebridge, which simulates so many famous guitar tones. This tone was very close, making it more fun for me to play this solo!
*Google credits Barry Goodreau for the 3 leads in Long Time. He also played the leads in Dont look Back and Used to Bad News. Rik Beato swears up and down it was Scholz so who knows. Great Job. KUTGW*
Thank you! That's a cool fun fact that I hadn't thought of before. I just watched some live videos, and yeah, Tom plays the organ part on "Long Time" instead of the leads. And I know that when I've watched videos of "Don't Look Back," he's playing rhythm guitar as well. It's very interesting since the lead parts in those songs sound like something he also would have written and played. Boston has got a signature sound!
Tom played all those leads, in his basement, while Barry and the rest of the newly hired road band were on the west coast. Make no mistake, Tom spent a large portion of his life sitting in that basement perfecting every subtle nuance of all those songs, all alone with that old Scully deck. Countless hours, creating, editing and over dubbing. Splicing in stuff the oldschool way, with a razor blade. No way he would have put some road band guitarist licks on that first creation. That album was, and still is, his Opus.
@@bobbyboykin7137 *What'd he call em ... "Snipets"? hahaha LOL And with 1 wrong computer click 6 full months of night and 18 hr. days work vanished forever and nothing he could ever do could get it back...Ever.*
@@LennonAshtonNY *Scholz wrote em and played em all alright no doubt about that whatsoever. He had those songs under construction for years before he'd met **_ANY_** of the band. From what I understand Scholz let Goodreau adapt some of the leads to his style and record those on 3 possibly 4 (Let Me Take You Home Tonight) and thats it. Simple as that. Thats also why he never could come up with his next batch of songs fast enough to suit the record companys and was sued.*
I used an older iPhone when recording this video, and then compression occurred when compiling all of the clips into one 3.5-hour video. Music can be heavenly, so I guess you could say this video compliments that attribute. 😂
Really good job, young man! I've been listening to, and trying to play, this song since it came out and you just blistered the solo. Well done. Well done indeed! 👏👍👍
Thank you so much! This is such a fun guitar solo to play, and it is definitely worth taking the time to learn it! I love how this solo has beautiful melodic lines that require virtuosity. As a musician, having music that keeps you challenged makes playing such music more thrilling!
Thanks so much! I used a Boston setting on an app called Tonebridge, which has awesome simulations of famous guitar tones. I highly recommend this app to guitarists!
As I wrote in another comment, I learned this solo by ear, so I do not have any tabs for it. The solo is in the key of E♭ major (mostly the major pentatonic scale), with some G♭s thrown in for some added color (mode mixture). If you get comfortable with that scale around the middle of the guitar neck, that will make this solo easier to learn. And to really get the most out of playing this solo, try to find a way to get the notes to sustain. I used a guitar with a Sustainiac pickup, but performing near an amplifier can also help. I hope this helps! Someone else commented that there is a Rocksmith video here on RU-vid that might help too. It's worth checking out. This is a very fun solo to play!
Thank you for this! Literally all I ever wanted from a video on theory. I just found your channel but I figure a lot of people could benefit from it. Please consider making a part 2 ( I know this one’s for AP lol) I think more breakdowns in this video’s simple chalkboard style could help many people out. thanks a lot lad
Thank you so much! My goal was to create a comprehensive overview of some of the key topics in music theory, and I am so glad that many people are finding it helpful. I might make an updated version of it in the future. I highly recommend looking up Dr. B Music Theory on RU-vid. Dr. Brellochs recorded his music theory lectures, and his style of teaching is phenomenal! His lectures cover the majority of the things that I covered in my video, and he breaks them down at a microscopic level, whereas my video is more of a macroscopic overview.
Dude, you are so talented! From the thumbnail, I almost thought you were Steve Perry during the 70s :) Glad to see you upload another video. Been a while. Would be cool if you came to CA to do some shows with Zebra!
complimenti ti seguo da molto tempo e ti stimo molto. Sono nato con i Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Mike Oldfield, Alan Parson, ecc.ecc. Adoro Turn of the Century degli YES, sei molto bravo a suonarlo, sei perfetto e si vede che suoni con amore ti auguro buona vita a te e alla tua musica. mi piacerebbe ascoltare qualcosa di tua composizione Grazie per aver letto il mio messaggio Sergio Italia
Grazie per aver dedicato del tempo per scrivere un messaggio così carino. Sì, "Turn of the Century" è una delle mie canzoni preferite di tutti i tempi, e sicuramente la mia canzone preferita degli Yes. Apprezzo davvero le gentili parole e ho intenzione di pubblicare parte della mia musica solista in futuro!
Thank you! I had a lot of fun using Tonebridge to get the guitar tones for several of my cover videos. The tones that others created on there for various songs and guitarists are spot on!
Taught myself to sing with “energy”. Let you Ponder that for a moment lol! Now I need an instrument. I have acquired a piano and guitar. Music theory, yes… need it :) Also just downed 1400mg of edibles and will attempt to write a song today using this video as a guide 👀 Wish me luck and luck to all :)
