A Short Story: St. Lenox, Folk Music, and The Magic Time-Delay Guitar Trick. Before I begin, let me say that this is not targeted at everyone who does proximately folk music (not even at most people who proximately do folk music). There are a lot of fine folk musicians and guitar singer-songwriters who I consider close friends and who I respect as musicians - people who dont exhibit some of the hifalutin tendencies occasionally described below, and have been enormously welcoming and supportive. There are some swipes at certain strains of the folk music community. Primarily, however, this is more an observation of an obstacle, a fun philosophical exercise in conceptual analysis, a critique of terminology, and a slightly clever solution called The Magic Time-Delay Guitar Trick. Let me start out by addressing a somewhat sore issue. The thing is, there are certain folk music and singer-songwriter circles that I have run into over the years that have exhibited a palpable antipathy towards me. Some of it has to do with the fact that I dont look like a traditional singer-songwriter let alone a singer at all (literally, I have been told I dont look like a singer because Im Asian). Some of it has to do with the fact that I perform in a non-traditional manner. I sing to tracks - albeit tracks that (1) I have completely written, mixed and mastered on my own and (2) contain traditional song structures and melodies common to folk and jazz music. Ive been quietly brought aside a number of times, at open mics of all places, to have a hushed conversation about how theyre not sure Im an appropriate fit for the open mic audience. Ive been dismissed from venues that advertise we dont do tracks as part of their operations - mind you not because they dont have a sound system and mixer - likely because tracks are associated with hip hop and rap. (A problematic policy in its own right, yes?). Ill be given condescending lectures about the nature of real music and real songwriting by certain people heavily into the folk music scene, who then quietly uninvite me to participate in certain gatherings. Its a response I get from time to time from some of the traditional singer-songwriter community, and part of the reason why I have substantial doubts about my long-term success as a musician. The thing is, if the standard response is resistance or cognitive dissonance, then you will do very poorly in an industry that places a premium on first appearances. In any case, I have been thinking about how to read as a folk musician, or guitar singer-songwriter for some time. About a week ago, I came up with a dastardly plan. The plan itself was a variation on a gimmick that I had tried a few months ago. Well call this first gimmick Gimmick #1. Instead of recording an electronic and sampled instrumental, as I usually do, I recorded myself playing the acoustic guitar. It turns out, I play a passable acoustic guitar - its just that I cant sing and play guitar at the same time. This was easy enough. I showed up to open mic, and performed a brand new song (appropriately entitled My First Guitar) to a backing track of myself playing the guitar earlier that day. A simple trick that worked pretty well, if i do say so myself. (1) Like the guitar singer songwriter, I was literally singing to a guitar, and (2) I was also literally singing to guitar sounds that were caused by my playing the guitar - albeit earlier that day. (3) Note that a traditional guitar singer-songwriter uses a pickup to translate the guitar sounds into electrical signals that come out of the amp anyway. I was just using the mp3 player as an advanced delay function to transport past guitar playing to the future when I wanted to sing with it. Of course, this had its limitations. (1) Unlike most folk musicians, I would be unable to perform without a sound system to plug into (a limitation I already suffered from). Hence, I could never do anything like busking. Of course, I do have a portable amp - but amplifiers are frowned upon and tend to get you harassed by the police on the subway, and arrested outside in the park unless you have a permit. (2) Moreover, I certainly didnt read like a folk musician of any sort - I just looked like a singer singing to a track. A solution to one of the problems came in the form of Gimmick #2 - a curious device called a Vibration Speaker System. The vibration speaker system is not a speaker properly speaking - it does not contain in itself a sufficient medium for the production of sound. Rather, it contains a capsule that when attached to an object, makes the object vibrate to produce sound - it effectively turns the object that it is stuck to into a speaker - much in the way that a piano string causes the body and soundboard of a piano to vibrate and produce sound. What is nice about the device is that it is pretty portable, and when attached to a hollow object, creates a pretty good sound. You can produce decent sounds out of a carboard cereal box, a pie plate, etc... In fact, I can get my cereal box to play my instrumentals. You can watch videos on youtube of people attaching vibration speakers to a number of things, and it is rather fun. Of course, with a vibration speaker system, I could hypothetically be more portable - though I imagine cops would still think that I had an amp (and a very weird one at that). I would also not just be a singer singing to a track, since I would have an additional sound-producing object on stage with me. I had ideas of attaching it to a hollow wooden animal sculpture and projecting my tracks through it. Gimmick #3 came in the form of the synthesis of Gimmick #1 and Gimmick #2 with a twist. Heres how it works. (1) Instead of playing any old music through the vibration speaker, I could play recordings of myself playing acoustic guitar. (2) Moreover, instead of using any old object as the matter for the vibration speaker, I could use an acoustic guitar as the object through which to play the acoustic guitar recordings - the very guitar that i used to make the recordings. Unlike Gimmick #1, I could perform in a more portable manner. Moreover, I could read like a folk musician because I would be performing with a guitar. Unlike gimmick #2, I could avoid being harassed by cops, since it would look like I was performing on a guitar, because it would sound like a guitar coming out of what looks like a guitar. It would look and sound like I was playing on a guitar, just like a guitar singer songwriter or a folk musician! Well call this gimmick The Magic Time-Delay Guitar Trick. Because really in a literal sense, I am playing the guitar at time X, recording the audio and then using the audio and the vibration speaker to re-resonate the body of the guitar (at time X+n) to produce the sound that it originally made when I first played it at time X. The guitar is re-living its prior vibrations at a time that I chose, and it can continue to relive its own prior vibrations on my command. A pretty neat trick, when you think about it that way. There are good reasons for thinking that I would in fact be a folk music performer or guitar singer/songwriter. (1) I would be singing to guitar sounds, (2) the guitar sounds would be caused by me playing guitar, (3) the guitar sounds would be caused by the guitars vibration of the air (i.e., not merely a speaker inside the guitar). (4) the guitar vibrations would technically be caused by my playing the guitar, since my playing the guitar would cause the recording which causes the guitar to vibrate, thus causing guitar sounds. These are all things that are true of guitar singer-songwriters, and moreover, are all true of what I would be doing. (5) The guitar would even be vibrating and causing sound due to the vibration of its own strings, in a literal sense. Additionally, (6) I do write a good number of songs that arguably fit in the folk format/tradition. It looks like I have a pretty good case for calling myself a folk musician! Some might argue that the Magic Time-Delay Guitar Trick does not make me a folk musician or guitar singer/songwriter. (1) Someone might object that Im unsuccessful because Im not playing the guitar. This is incorrect. I AM playing the guitar - Im just not playing the guitar at the same time that Im singing. In any case, there are acts that people would call folk music acts where the singer and guitarist are different people. I am doing the same thing - only Im additionally causing music played by guitar to play at the same time Im singing, which is more than the separate singer and guitarist folk act (because the singer just hires the guitarist who causes the guitar sounds). (2) Someone might object that its not real folk music, because Im incorporating electronics. But that cant be a sufficient objection. We still call it a folk act, even if the guitar is electronically amplified with a pickup. Do electronics make it non-folk or do they not? In fact pickups simply work by way of the physically inverse version of what Im doing. A lot of pickups translate the guitars vibrations (not the audio) into an electric signal that it then outputs to an amp. The vibration speaker simply reverses that, taking an audio signal and turning it into guitar vibrations that in turn create analog sound. (3) Someone might object on the grounds that Im merely not playing the guitar live. This is an interesting objection, but is this right? Someone listens to a recording of someone playing folk guitar - they would say im listening to folk music now. By parity of reasoning, I am singing to folk music - just in the way that someone is singing to folk music when they sing with a separate guitarist. Perhaps this an objection to the idea that Im performing as a pure live act - but it seems to not be an objection to me hypothetically being a folk musician. The real objection will be that Im not doing things traditionally - but is folk music really about tradition in the end? For starters, think of the first folk musician - was he or she not folk because there was no tradition yet? She wasnt sitting around saying whats the traditional thing to do? In any case, what we think of as folk music (i.e., a certain branch of American folk music) isnt traditional - it was predated by folk music in other countries who played different instruments and had different chords and melody structures. Anyway, what people popularly call folk music is itself a commercialization of what was folk music before then. People were poor and they made do with the things that they had. Im pretty sure folk musicians back in the day would be happy if someone came in with a different kind of ukelele. They wouldnt be scoffing with their noses in the air about how he wasnt doing it right. Theyd be happy someone found a way to make music with the things they had on hand. Im making do with $100 software and a $30 MP3 player (and spending extra on a $15 mic attached to a $70 guitar to be more folk). I write about things that are important to me in my life that I want to share with others. Meanwhile, someone with a $2000 machine made guitar with Madagascar rosewood inlays, Honduran mahogany, and nitrocellulose finish is telling me that I dont understand the music of the people. You tell me who has it wrong. St. Lenox is folk music. Q.E.D. Also, The Magic Time Delay Trick lives! [Insert Trademark]. [Insert Copyright].
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 15:57:57 +0000
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