New ratings

Lately, I’ve really struggled with the numeric rating in my reviews. Because one album may be great based on technical prowess and another based on innovation and another based on soul, it’s hard to determine how to put all of these together into one rating. So, I’m going to try something new. I will now give ratings in four categories and then an overall rating. The categories will be:

Satriani – This category is based solely on technical ability and no one illustrates technical ability and absolutely nothing else better than Joe Satriani.

Zappa – This category is for innovation. In order to score high here, an artist must be successfully pushing musical or performance limits. Unlike Zappa, this won’t always correlate to technical skill, but I felt he was the best choice for pure innovation.

*** It is important to note that the Zappa scale is different from the other three. For instance, a 1 on the Aretha scale would be “no soul.” On the Zappa scale, a 1 would be a lot of innovation, but the innovation would be entirely bad. No innovation at all would be a 5. So, in a sense, it starts at 5 and goes in a negative or positive direction while the others start at 1 and only increase.

Dylan – This one is just about the songwriting. An artist could score high here and do a terrible job of performing their own great song. Dylan couldn’t sing, but when he was on, he sure could write.

Aretha – Who better to represent soul than the Queen of Soul herself. However, don’t be confused by the terminology, because this doesn’t refer to Soul Music, but the soul of the music or its truth (even if that truth is just about good times).

The overall rating will not just be an average of these four categories, but it will be based on them. I’m not going to disclose the formula, because it may need to be tweaked as I go. Besides, anyone who loves rock and roll should know which is most important.