PLAY IT LOUD

PLAY IT LOUD

See, Feel, Touch Yourself (Or Die)

Guitar Arnie

Every time you saunter out onstage to play a set, your performance, the energy you expend, should do more than dissipate through your fans" spacious craniums. Every precious little note you play, every dazzling move you make, must, by all rights, be recorded. Then, after the set, not only can you spike yourself up for a mainvein electroego-shoCk, you can also note that your fly wasn't all the way up, there was a piece of spinach' between two upper teeth on the right, and your rhythm guitarist's harmony parts were off by at least half an octave.

It's so easy to review and edit your musicianship and stagecraft with inexpensive recording devices that failing to do so is a brash admission that dll your bravado is nothing but false professionalism. I remember one famous entertainer (so well known that his name has slipped my mind), who told a story of how, when he got his first tv series, he would spend the day after it was broadcast watching kinescopes of the show. The first week he saw himself rubbing his nose every thirty seconds. It looked terrible. The second week's kinescopes showed the nose-rubbing gone, but he'd unconsciously replaced it with ear pulling. He finally managed to get his nervous habits down to the big toe of his right foot (wiggling) which was out of camera range.

If you want to be a professional superstar, you've .got to get your nervous habits, and your missed notes, out of sight. The only way you can do that is by finding out what they are, admitting them to yourself, then combatting them. The first step is the hardest; you'd be surprised at the mistakes you make which you just don't .hear. And more guitarists would wear masks if they had any idea of the kind of faces they made during those sexy solos.

Every performance can be divided into its audio and visual segments. The most basic portion of rock, as theater, is the sound. Then the aptness of the visual in relation to this sound must be considered. If they are both satisfactory and together form a coherent media whole, you're on your way to staging a performance which, as far as I'm concerned at least, is what guitars, amplifiers, and the people who play them are supposed to be about.

The sound first: this is the easiest, least expensive, and primary level on which you must review your performance. For the cost of a wah-wah pedal you can buy an inexpensive audio cassette recorder with which to monitor your music. Most hundred dollar, battery operated, mono audio cassette machines will do the job. The easiest to use is a model like the Sony TC-40 or TC-55 with built-in microphone and automatic gain control (AGC or-ALC or AVC, depending on the maker). These units will, when placed at the back of the hall and pointed at the band, give you a fairly reliable indication of what your sound and sound balance is like.

A slightly more sophisticated method of recording the audio is to take the signal out of the p.a. system. Most p.a. amp heads have output jacks for "monitor", "auxiliary amp", or "tape recorder", This is usually a "line" signal out (it may say 600 ohm) and is unamplified so that it won't overload the input of your tape recorder. Using the mike signals from the p.a. head, you get mainly the vocals with the instruments at whatever level they leak into the mikes. You can use any type of tape recorder for this, open reel, cassette, or whatever, either stereo or mono depending on the configuration of the amp you're taking the signal out of. The tape you'll get from the p.a. head will be different from that recorded by a cassette recorder held at the back of the hall — it will give you a better indication of the quality and accuracy of your vocals, but shouldn't be used to judge your instrumentation.

The final method of recording audio is to mike both voices and instruments with separate microphones and mix the signals onto a stereo tape recorder as if you were doing a live recording session. By and large this is too much trouble, the results aren't all that spectacular, and the work involved will keep you from making a tape more than infrequently. The point is that you should tape every performance, reviewing your work day by day. To this end, I'd advise a simple Cassette recording that can be made with a minium of trouble.

The advent of inexpensive half inch video equipment has made it possible for you to see as well as hear your set. For about a thousand dollars you can buy a camera and video tape recorder, set it up before the show, and let it record your set for instant playback on any tv set after you finish. The cost of the tape is about $10 a half hour and it can be reused over and over again. Even stars like Elvis do this, setting up the small, lightweight camera off to one side of the stage and just letting it run during the show.

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If you want to avoid ,the expense of getting video gear (it's really easy to operate, by the way), you can rent a camera and video tape recorder for thirty or forty bucks for a few days or you can dig up a local video group (most schools and colleges now have media departments stocked with this low cost gear) and have them tape for you — they'll usually record for the cost of the tape.

The advantage of video recording is that you get both sound and picture and that you can see what you look like as well as what you sound like. As you coipe to realise that music is an audiovisual medium which you, as the musician, are in charge of communicating to your audience, you'll find that your act gets better just for the new level of consciousness.

So next time you swagger out onstage, make sure that you actually look and sound as tough as you think you do.