In the 70s and early 80s, my company (Wirebender Audio) did a fair amount of sound system design and consulting, mostly with bands who wanted to buy Dan’s latest loudspeaker systems. I developed a rule-of-thumb, intended to help guitar players know how much their volume and egos cost their band: “For every 100 watts of guitar amp, you’re going to need 10,000 watts of PA.” Mostly, that went in one deaf ear and rattled around in an empty skull until it came out as “What did you think of my 20 minute solo on that last song” Most likely, I thought it sucked, pretty much as badly as did your band’s sound. In case you wondered.
I try to limit my exposure to live, amplified music to “as little as possible.” Red Wing does a Wednesday evening free concert and, mostly, I use that as my excuse to get out and hang with friends in the park and, occasionally, the music isn’t too bad, either. Last night, the music was “classic 70s white people blues,” featuring a cute-but-coarse female lead singer and an overbearing guitar player with no sense of rhythm. Not high on my list of things I ever needed to hear again. Been there, done that, suffered that, tolerated that, hated that.
Inspirational characters like Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Richie Blackmore, and an almost infinitely long list of insanely loud lead guitar players taught four generations of guitar wannabes that rapid-twitch random finger motion was an acceptable substitute for musical talents involving frivolous complications like melody, harmony, rhythm and timing, and group composition.
40 years ago, I experienced this kind of player close up and way too personally. I ran the tech services department for QSC Audio Products for a few years and we tried to carry on the company’s “yippee we survived another month party” tradition after the company had long abandoned that sort of thing. Initially, there were three of us: a drummer, a bass player, and me (on guitar) and we just jammed. Often we’d start with a rhythm from either the drummer or me and it would turn into something or we’d stop and try again. Then I hired a young man who idolized Yngwie Malmsteen, but who had memorized Daryl Sturrmer’s “New Country” solo off of Jean-Luc Ponty’s Imaginary Voyage album, which impressed the hell out of me. It wasn’t until he tried playing with our little group that we all realized this kid had no idea how to play in a group. He’d spent his whole playing career in his bedroom “playing along” with records with no one to tell him that timing is at least as important as getting the notes right. It’s hard to imagine a worse case of getting the notes right at the wrong time, but this kid pulled off that miracle as if he had no idea that rhythm even existed.
The guitar player in the band we suffered last night was a great example of that plague of notes without context. Typically, he was also the loudest thing in the band by at least 10dB. The mix was a mess and the “tone” quality of the performance was mud, edgy distortion, and a complete lack of rhythm (the drums were totally buried by bass and guitar). You could hear, but not understand a word of, the vocals.
And now for something really different, a band with a magician leader and something totally magical for a guitarist.
No comments:
Post a Comment