A HUGE DISAPPOINMENT

FatVin · Post by **FatVin** » Sunday May 02, 2004

Big wet gobs of blues? you make it sound so appetizing, lol...Thanks (I'm gonna borrow that line, lol)

If you wanna bring keyboards and have strings or flutes or some other, out of the normal rock-band pantheon, instrument, even sequenced, that's one thing,

THE WHO did some amazing things with synths and sequencers. Tell me "Won't get fooled again" and "Baba O' Riley" don't rock, ya know, and it wouldn't kill any of us to play to a click track every now and again, a little discipline is good for the soul.

but to DAT track your own guitar solo? WTF? is right at best, it's lazy, at worst it's outright fraud.

Fleetwood Mac (or Floyd or whoever) bringing on an extra percissionist or background singers, or another guitarist or two, that's okay, cause at least, it's real human musicians, it even encourages me to see the odd hip-hop act show up with a drum kit and a bass player

The core of it has to be a group of musicians playing a good song, together. Prince is making a big deal about carrying a full band with him on his latest tour and the sad news is, that a full band is now more the exception than the rule. This is just evil.

I'm not suggesting anyone chuck out their Yamaha DX-7 (I'm dating myself, I know) or that sequencers are wrong but there is a way to do it that isn't fraud.

The Who are a great example of what is, in my mind, at least, okay to do with a sequencer and there are tons of bands who use synths well, The Cars, leap to mind, and I certainly don't have anything against keyboards, even Led Zeppelin used a mellotron

A Mellotron, for those who don't know, is an unholy contraption using tape loops to simulate flutes or strings or whatever, back before synthsizers, John Paul Jones says he still has nightmares about the tapes stretching on his mellotron due to the heat and the cold, and never quite being 100% sure that the thing was gonna be on key, (can you imagine, 30,000 people in the crowd and you're not sure if the keyboard is gonna work...damn, it's nice to know even the Gods had problems, lol)

But to DAT your own guitar tracks, God, that's just wrong, as musicians, we need to send this practice to the dust heap where it belongs and as audience members we need to. . . just not buy tickets or CD's, to acts who try to pull this crap, we should support live music but it should in fact
BE LIVE MUSIC!

DisturbedViking · Post by **DisturbedViking** » Sunday May 02, 2004

That is very sad I would not think they would pull something like that.

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Tuesday May 04, 2004

I can think of only a few instances where sequences are appropriate for a band. That would be where special FX sounds are needed. Two examples where I've seen it live and work out OK are ELP Karn Evil 9 Impression #1 (FX in Welcome back my friends...) and The Who doing Baba O'Riley (crazy synth background part). The Who used to take a keyboardist with them and put him backstage with the monitor mix tech during a show.

Of course, sequences are always appropriate if that happens to be your band and the instruments are just there as basic rhythm. OK, so I went wild on a few songs...the harmonizer just sounds too cool...and the lights work perfectly in time and I can't help myself...AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

RobTheDrummer · Post by **RobTheDrummer** » Tuesday May 04, 2004

I just think it's a sad thing when bands start to care about money and not the actual playing of their instruments. I mean, the whole point of being in a band for me is to play music and have fun. When I first wanted to play drums, I never thought about making money, I just thought about how fun it looked and I just wanted to do it. When a band starts to lip sync, they are just missing the point, either way you look around it.

bassist_25 · Post by **bassist_25** » Tuesday May 04, 2004

lonewolf wrote:The Who used to take a keyboardist with them and put him backstage with the monitor mix tech during a show.

The cool thing about Baba O' Riley is the way the keyboard part was programmed. Pete Townshend use to put vital stats of people into a computer, and that would create different sequences. If I'm not mistaken, that's how Baba O'Riley recieved it's name; it was O'Riley's stats that Townshend used for the synth part.

songsmith · Post by **songsmith** » Wednesday May 05, 2004

I worked with a cool jazz band last weekend from NYC, session guys who play on and off-Broadway gigs, and I made a little joke about having a band-in-a-box ready to go... they didn't think it was funny at all. Strictly from an employment standpoint, midi-based canned music put hundreds of lifetime musicians out of work. That's the human cost of it on a large scale.
Locally, I think it's sort of what you make of it. Cats like LoneWolf and Zupe and Steve Summerhill are pretty good at it, which is difficult enough, but they also hustle it, sell it, pimp it; and that's as important as performing. It's a lot of work to create a product, but it's even more to market it and sell it. And don't forget that these guys have chops to play without the backing tracks, if they choose.
That said, I doubt I'll ever use tracks. Not because of what other people think of it, but because I like the freedom to change arrangements on the fly, and because my resin-caked brain wouldn't be able to remember that there's a two beat drum fill in the 32nd bar, and therefore I'd be completely lost (has anyone seen my short-term memory anywhere?).--->JMS

Imgrimm01 · Post by **Imgrimm01** » Wednesday May 05, 2004

that is indeed a disappointment ! I will never understand why bands do that.