FIDDY Sheraton Gibsons! (Anyone get that reference? Hint below.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by PamWinterReturns
I’m glad they can restructure and stay in business. Maybe more musicians will get back to buying from them.
Mark, while true computers can help with different sounds, true music fans appreciate the hard work and finesse of playing guitar. You get a Jimi Hendrix doing Star-Spangled Banner or Stevie Ray or Jimmy Page doing unique sounds on guitar, it astounds you. You appreciate the work that went into it, the genius behind it and the magic fingers.
Computers and organs create sound but I get more enjoyment and excitement watching someone make their guitar play magic sounds than watching someone play a keyboard. I’m not a child of the new millennium. I prefer the old style. People hit every key on piano or organ; they didn’t hit an electronic button and have the instrument play back while they danced and pretended to look like they’re having fun.
Compare an older song to a remake version done today. The older is less busy, more musical, more raw and real. New stuff is electronic repeated notes, no errors, perfect timing and canned sound. If you’re used to current crap, the older guitar work sounds quite ingenious.
(Yesterday I got stuck listening to a pop radio station. Every song sounded alike. Electronic, soundboard-created vocals, incessant computer-generated drum beats (boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. No break, no extra beats, no lower or higher range) and it sounded manufactured. Words didn’t tell a story, they filled space. I know it’s today’s music but I’m old school. Real musicians, real singers, real artists who loved money but played for the love of music. After a while I asked that they turn it down or switch to classic rock. “Like Chuck Berry?” the twenty-three old asked. “No, The Beatles, Queen or CCR.” I said. She’d never heard of CCR even by full name. “Stuff my mom likes.” Yeah, sweetie, I’m old enough to be your mom).
Some days you just don’t want to get out of bed and face today’s world.
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I think you would appreciate this story. It's from my rock journalism days. I interviewed the Bee Gees when they had their "comeback" album
One. We talked about many things but what Barry Gibb told me has stuck with me all these years:
"What concerns me are the standards today's young musicians are trying to live up to. For us, our generation in the sixties, we had The Beatles and Elvis and Chuck Berry before them to try and live up to. We had to try and sound as good or better than them. We never could, no one could, but that was our standard, y'know?
But today? You can buy a keyboard, hit a few keys and buttons and what comes out pretty much sounds like what you hear on the radio. So in the future this will be the standard? Real musicianship and having to learn how to play your instrument will be lost. That's not a good thing."
This was in 1987.
Pete Townshend talked about the "loss of dynamics" which is pretty much what you summed up in your post. There's no "open spaces", no building of tension, no shifting time signatures, no crescendos and no fucking guitar solos. In other words, no dynamics. Just a wash of sound meant to put you in a trance-like "happy zone" where you aren't really listening or hearing the music, just moving to it in blissful ignorance.