If I go before I’m old
Oh brother of mine please don’t forget me if I go
LeRoi Moore, founding member and saxaphonist of The Dave Matthews Band, left us yesterday due to complications from an ATV accident earlier this summer.
The outpouring of grief on DMB fansite Antsmarching.org is moving. This blog tribute to LeRoi seems to best sum up his effect on his fans and fellow musicians.
Thanks for all of the great music, LeRoi. You will be missed, and it won’t be “The” Dave Matthews Band without you.
This was on Digg, so some of you may have seen it, but I think it’s worth repeating here. They took the strict ingredients for pop music to recreate its end result:
This happens for all styles of music, including classical. Except for the most trained ears (not mine) it is impossible to tell whether or not recorded music reflects upon the actual skill of the musician. Right now it’s most true with vocalists, but the tools are evolving to let even the most complicated of instrumentals be edited and tweaked to the point of false perfection.
For many, this doesn’t make music any less enjoyable. After all, who cares how it was made if it sounds good? As a music listener, I don’t have huge problems with it, as I’m sure that a lot of my studio albums (if not all of them) have received such treatment. But as a musician, it feels like a disappointment. I like to appreciate artists with remarkable skills, and talented musicians are the ones who really lose out most on this “musical photoshopping”. Sure, when I record drums, I want them to sound perfect, so I don’t object to fudging a few things so that listeners don’t notice my mistakes, but that can’t be done with live music. Hearing something difficult to play on a recording is one thing, but seeing them pull it off with such precision live is another one entirely.
Here’s another point in case, just to beat a dead horse: Saosin’s “Voices” has been nagging at me for about 2 weeks now. Watch the first verse twice: first pay attention to the singer, and then the drummer.
The vocalist is considerably more annoying live- whiny and shaky on pitch. But the drummer’s beat during the verse is incredibly solid - both in recording and in live performance. That’s something that only comes with a lot of work, unlike studio tweaks.
I’m shutting up now, I’m longwinded even when I blog.
I wrote about Ghosts I-IV a couple of months ago. Nine Inch Nails made the first 25% of their new double album available for free on P2P and BitTorrent, and offered the rest for just $5.
Today Nine Inch Nails have released yet another album. This time, payment isn’t even an option. It’s all free, in everything from MP3 to 24-bit/96 KHz WAV files (higher quality than Audio CDs).
I’m surprised by the speed of production here. There are a few things that make it a bit less than amazing in my eyes:
Trent Reznor is free of almost all institutional/corporate ties. Very few steps lie between his studio and getting the album everywhere online.
Nine Inch Nails became popular in the old music industry. Ghosts I-IV pulled in lots of cash because it marketed itself and tons of people bought it. This wouldn’t happen similarly for a new band, since they need both income and promotion without sacrificing one over the other.
If there is minimal monetary risk involved in the recording process, I wonder if less caution is thrown towards the quality of the composition / performance / recording. Or maybe the lack of that stress helps artists loosen up more and be creative. I haven’t listened enough to the new album to make a judgment one way or another on this, but regardless of the artist, it’s something that deserves some scrutiny.
In any case, anything that proves to consumers and music executives that new distribution methods are indeed possible is a good thing in my book.
I'm Zeke. This is where I write about things that are important to me- this blog is here so I can get my thoughts down on paperpixels. And every once in a while, I might have some cool pictures or music to share with you. Make yourself at home! :-)
