ELEGANZA

ELEGANZA

Music The New Old Fashioned Way

John Mendelssohn

“We make music the old-fashioned way,” the famous singer Huey Lewis has often been heard to observe very pointedly in concert. “We play it.”

In this age of MIDI (musical instrument digital interface, I think—phone your dealer for corroboration) more rock than most people imagine is “performed” by preprogrammed computers.

While this column certainly understands the appeal of the idea of music being made by actual humans who, in the act of performing, are apt at any moment either to miscue conspicuously or suddenly come up with something that startles and delights both us and themselves—actual humans who hold their breath and sweat during especially demanding passages, who spent many hours in their teens playing scales and bathing calluses in brine while you and I frolicked on ballfields, hung out at the mall, or took drugs. This column certainly understands how such a person might feel about being supplanted by an FM tone generator triggered by a—now, what does it say here?—digital sequence recorder. Specifically, this column, which began its career as a hopelessly mediocre drummer, and which subsequently became an avid admirer of all good drumming, thinks it understands how it must feel to be a very good (but not brilliant) drummer in an age when the only reason to hire any drummer, rather than use a, uh, digital rhythm programmer (that is, drum machine) is that the stage is apt to look barren without one.

At the same time, though, this column has recently fallen hopelessly in love with the endlessly thrilling potential of MIDI music-making. Armed with my Korg Poly 800 synthesizer, Yamaha FB-01 tone generator, Yamaha QX21 sequencer, and Yamaha RX-15 drum machine (all of which I mention by name and model number in hopes the manufacturers’ll read this and think, “Hey, maybe this guy can do us some good,” and send me other products to mention in future columns—(I promise I will. Send! Sendl), I am able, in the comfort and privacy of the aptly nicknamed “music room” of Eleganza Towers, to make recordings with more detailed and varied arrangements than I’d have dreamed possible when I acquired my TEAC-3340 (are you listening, TEAC?) back in the days of platform shoes, lurex clothing and false claims of bisexuality.

My MIDI devices essentially put up to eight (the number of notes the tone generator can produce at once) at my command. And what musicians! They can play nearly anything from flugelhorn to koto—notable exceptions being saxophone and rhythm guitar, of which synthesizers have traditionally done unconvincing imitations—and they play exactly what I tell them to, with never a grumble. I have to endure no yawns or condescending smiles from the sort of musician-for-hire Ray Davies disparaged in “Session Man.” Nobody ever needs to use the lavatory. No one ever ruins a take two and half bars from the end because his girlfriend and dog left him the night before and he just can’t concentrate. Here, for instance, in “Stardom Stardom,” my ancient rant against the randomness of the visitations of Lady Luck, my devices enable me to very convincingly simulate two “Strawberry Fields”-ish flautists in harmony, tubular bellpersons, a harpsicordist, a soft pipe organist, and a Rickenbackerish electric bassist—all balanced to my precise synch with the convincingly simulated drums.

You might imagine that the, uh, downside is that the music sounds cold and mechanical. But you’d be wrong, since I can program my drum machine both to “swing” (that is, to simluate the playing of someone whose hands, for instance, might tend to rush the tiniest bit as compared to his feet, (or vice versa)—and to cause them to speed up and slow down for dynamics’ and excitement’s sakes just as you or I might.

Reading, incidentally, about how it took a jillion times longer for Chris Isaak to record his recent / Sound A Little Like Roy Orbison, But Not Nearly As Good album because he and his producer would settle for nothing less from their drummers than the “perfect time” that drum machines keep, this column can only say, "Huh?" Who in jjis right mind would want his drum machine to keep perfect time?

My devices obscure the fact that I can’t really play anything very well. But I like to imagine that I can compose and arrange with the best of ’em, and I suspect that anyone who’d decry one’s exploiting MIDI technology to showcase his composing and arranging abilities might also refuse to whistle "God Bless America” on the Fourth of July because Irving Berlin was able to play the piano only in the key of F, and then haltingly.

In its way, then, I acknowledge that using MIDI is cheating. But so, in their way, are the use of the selfsame Marshall amplifiers, customized pickups, temolo bars, and wah-wah pedals that Huey Lewis’s guitarist would doubtless feel naked without.

You make your music your way, then, Huey, and let me make mine in my own.