andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2009-10-14 12:17 pm
andrewducker) wrote2009-10-14 12:17 pm
The Grim Professional Future
I was at a party a few years ago where the people split into two groups - the ones who were happily singing around a piano and the ones who were hiding in the kitchen, aghast that people would sing, in public, for fun. The split was clearly generational in nature - the older folks had clearly grown up singing together, the younger ones considered singing to be something that was done by musicians.
And despite theoretically belonging to the second group I've generally felt that this was a bad thing. My parents used to sing on long car journeys, entertaining us when we were little, and it always seemed like a lot of fun. I can trace the point where I lost any interest in it to my first choir lesson in school, where we all lined up in rows and sang through something vaguely religious - and then afterwards the choirmaster told me that I should just mime along. This would have been twenty six years ago, but the memory still sticks with me.
The idea that a pupil who wasn't good at something should be told to just _stop_ is something that shocks me in retrospect - it's a massive failure on the behalf of any teacher. And the idea that singing is something that should be done only by the trained - rather than a natural expression of our humanity is also something that bothers me deeply.
There does seem to have been a resurgence recently - things like YouTube and Singstar/Rock Band seem to have encouraged people to put their own voice out there in the same way that blogs encouraged people to write. But I doubt very much that we're going to end up back at the point where sing-songs around the piano are common place again.
Mind you - a lot of this is probably down to the fact that playing Grand Theft Auto is a more distracting and, dare I say it, fun way of spending the evening :->
All of this triggered by a quote here in an article on the long history of articles decrying technical progress in the "content industry" - starting with Sousa (the composer) worrying about the player piano and the gramophone:
And despite theoretically belonging to the second group I've generally felt that this was a bad thing. My parents used to sing on long car journeys, entertaining us when we were little, and it always seemed like a lot of fun. I can trace the point where I lost any interest in it to my first choir lesson in school, where we all lined up in rows and sang through something vaguely religious - and then afterwards the choirmaster told me that I should just mime along. This would have been twenty six years ago, but the memory still sticks with me.
The idea that a pupil who wasn't good at something should be told to just _stop_ is something that shocks me in retrospect - it's a massive failure on the behalf of any teacher. And the idea that singing is something that should be done only by the trained - rather than a natural expression of our humanity is also something that bothers me deeply.
There does seem to have been a resurgence recently - things like YouTube and Singstar/Rock Band seem to have encouraged people to put their own voice out there in the same way that blogs encouraged people to write. But I doubt very much that we're going to end up back at the point where sing-songs around the piano are common place again.
Mind you - a lot of this is probably down to the fact that playing Grand Theft Auto is a more distracting and, dare I say it, fun way of spending the evening :->
All of this triggered by a quote here in an article on the long history of articles decrying technical progress in the "content industry" - starting with Sousa (the composer) worrying about the player piano and the gramophone:
"Under such conditions, the tide of amateurism cannot but recede until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant.
Re: part 1 of 2
Absolutely, rock bands covered earlier material same as anyone else - but not exclusively, and the adaptation was only interesting because the band are already respected and enjoyed for their own sound - their original material.
Take the example of Metallica, who in the later years of their career released an album of covers of NWBHM tracks. The album was interesting because all of those songs were done 'in the style of' Metallica - but that was only interesting because Metallica were by this time a well-respected and easily recognisable band in their own right, for their original material.
Contrast that with your average pub cover band and you see the difference - they don't have a 'sound' because they don't have original material. There's no personality there to be imprinted on the rendering I'm hearing. Now, there are exceptions, of course, when it comes to bands that do everything in a certain style - say a band who render goth tracks on recorder quintet or somesuch (or a cello quartet performing Metallica, perhaps), and get their identity that way, but it's basically a novelty, and for all the skill and talent involved it will only ever really be a novelty.
Audiences generally want to hear stuff they know.
Screw the audience - who asked them anyway? Besides, this is self-evidently not the case. Yes, it's harder to grab attention with original material, but that's part of the challenge, part of the attraction. If you're pursuing music as a casual hobby, well, fair enough, no one's forcing you to put the time and effort into original material. But I can tell you, if you do put in the effort, the feeling you get when you see people singing along to something you wrote... that's worth a whole set of covers, any day of the week.
Re: part 1 of 2
Absolutely, rock bands covered earlier material same as anyone else - but not exclusively, and the adaptation was only interesting because the band are already respected and enjoyed for their own sound - their original material.
Many bands get their "training" serve their apprenticeship, as it were, playing at least a percentage of non-original material. The obvious example being The Beatles who did a lot of that in Germany in particular.
Screw the audience - who asked them anyway
Sorry but I have to disagree with that one. Performance is for the audience's benefit, not mine. I can write and record songs or sing them on my own for my own pleasure, but a gig is, to my mind, entertainment,and enjoy myself though we may - we are there to provide the audience with enjoyment.
the feeling you get when you see people singing along to something you wrote... that's worth a whole set of covers, any day of the week
I don't deny it would be. I have had people dancing to a song of mine (the only number they danced to all night)
Personally, I would have to say that if I hadn't been asked to sing the songs I have, then my own stuff would have been written in a more restricted range - just one e.g. doing "Highway to Hell" got me extensive practice in that awkward Bb4-E5 area which I'd never have put myself through as thoroughly purely as exercises - and that expands my range of options for composition. Singing a lot of male-voiced songs gets me more power down low that sort of thing. Else I'd just come up with bluesy rock in a nice safe central octave and a half.
Now, I suppose what I really need to do is get some properly high stuff in >:-)
Contrast that with your average pub cover band and you see the difference - they don't have a 'sound' because they don't have original material. There's no personality there to be imprinted on the rendering I'm hearing
I would beg to differ. Some of the covers bands that I see regularly do have a definite personality. I'd be pretty sure that the ones I am in do - in one case due to having 3 guitarists including a 12 string which tends to give us a very distictive sound. But maybe I am biased :-)
Re: part 1 of 2
Minor pedantic point...
Re: part 1 of 2
Also, in the US almost no one Metallica played to in their early gigs knew that they were hearing covers, because very few people over there were listening to NWBHM - even Diamond Head. Or so the sleeve notes say, anyway.
Re: part 1 of 2
That few in the US were familiar with Diamond Head raises another interesting point: Did Metallica succeed where Diamond Head didn't because they were better, luckier, or just had the benefit of having a wider potential market by being from the US rather than the UK?