I get Guitar Centers free catalog that they send out every month and, like many musicians, drool over all the cool stuff that I want and dont have money for. This month, however, their Pedal of the Month is the Boss VE-2, a vocal harmonist multieffect pedal. For those of you who dont know what Im talking about yet, let me break this down for you a little. This is a little pedal that someone can plug a guitar and a microphone into. What it does is listen to whats playing on the guitar, and if the singer is singing out of tune, it corrects the pitch of the voice so that what the audience hears is perfectly in tune, even when the singers not singing perfectly in tune. Humans are not perfect, and sometimes the instruments that they play on arent perfect, either. But things like this create an expectation of perfection from a live performance that hasnt always been there. I found it interesting to learn when I was in school for music production that the very first recordings were recorded live onto each and every album. They didnt have the technology yet to record a performance and then reproduce that same performance over and over again. ~Every single album was another time they played that song in the studio.~ As such, if someone skipped a beat or missed a note, you heard it on the album. I grew up as a kid listening to the 1812 Overture a lot - it was my favorite song, and still is. I memorized it practically note for note, and I found later on other recordings that one or two of the notes were actually mistakes made by the musicians in the concert hall where it was performed, recorded, and eventually released. If you listen to old jazz albums - even Miles - you can hear people occasionally cut a note, sound slightly off, or something like that, making a mistake that apparently wasnt quite bad enough to redo the whole recording. Something that wouldnt be tolerated in a big arena today. Dont get me wrong, Im all for getting things as close to perfect as possible - thats why I practice as often as I do, and Id love to not have a day job so that I could sit and practice and write new music all day. After all, you have an idea in your head, and you want the listener to hear it as you hear it. And I do feel slightly different about recorded albums - The Beatles created works of genius in the studio that they felt they couldnt reproduce live, and the world is a better place for having those songs. A recording lasts forever and is the official representation of your dreams and aspirations. I dont use pitch correction, but Ill play the same thing over and over again until Im happy with it - just like I do at home in practice. Just like professional athletes, who practice all day every day so they can play a perfect game for the win, a musician applies the same work ethic constantly to play that perfect show for the win. Whether an athlete or a musician, no one wants to drop the ball. Thats one of the things I like about Hometeam - every musician in the scene pushes every other musician to become better so that we all get the win. Were all players, coaches, teammates, and, if needed, friendly competition that strengthens that drive to get even better. But, and heres the point Im trying to make after all of my digressions (lol), I worry about the sterilization of music today. I hate that because of pedals like this, people who are born with a pretty face and who spend more time getting to know important people than time spent developing and pushing their craft to the limits are the ones who get ahead. And, like the evolution of every other species, the ones who make it then become the norm and the expectation, and the ones who care more about the art than the money and recognition die off as the money gets funneled into the biz. Pedals are great for getting that perfect tone that you have in your head or for pushing the envelope (pardon the pun) as far as you can with crazy effects and cool sounds. Thats what drives us forward to new ideas. And we all want the show to sound as amazing as possible - its that auditory euphoria that were all striving for. I just dont want sterilized sounds diluting the realness of the music. I want live music perfectly played, not perfectly corrected. Pure music comes from sweat, from spending time at home practicing scales when you could be out with friends, and from wanting to create something new and different with real meaning behind it - not from a box.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 19:35:25 +0000
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