Carl Dershem wrote:
[snip]>
Recent strikes on New York and Philadelphia helped, but ... the general
public just doesn't care, so long as they get what they want. They
consider canned music or synthesized music to be good enough, and
because almost no one nowadays plays music, and they think those
schmucks on "American Idol" are the epitome of musicianship, they don't
appreciate just what it takes to play at the level we're discussing.
"Heck - those people on Idol do great and they're just amateurs - isn't
it that way for all musicians?" It only takes talent - training is just
added expense, and not entirely necessary.
How to get past this mindset is a mystery to me. Any ideas???
cd
I'm not sure that it's a case of "the general public just doesn't care"
as much as "the general public just can't tell due to heavy amplification."
I recently saw "Wicked" in Boston, and there was certainly a very live
orchestra, but it was buried beneath the audience and was amplified up
onto the stage, with the singers'/actors' voices mixed to "perfection"
(in quotes because it was definitely over-produced and that
amplification added a sort of barrier between the stage and the
audience, to say nothing about the fact that everybody was apparently
from some alien planet or some mutant colony where everybody has a tiny
dot on some sort of extension growing somewhere from their heads).
There were live string players as well as synthesizers. Through the
sound-system I certainly couldn't tell the difference -- it sounded like
a large string section.
A well-designed string synthesizer run through heavy amplification
really doesn't sound different from a live string section off in some
hidden spot and run through the same heavy amplification. It was very
disappointing for me and reinforced the reason that I don't make an
effort to set aside $400 to take my family to the professional theater.
Luckily for me, the tickets were a gift, so it was definitely worth
what I paid for the evening ($15 for parking for 4 hours) but only when
they get actors/singers who can really project and know how to get their
sound to the audiences withOUT heavy amplification will I make an effort
to spend that sort of money.
And I don't think that statement "almost no one nowadays plays music" is
true. Yes, lots of people think the singers on Idol are great, but that
doesn't mean that they think those singers on Idol don't have any training.
I think that a part of that mindset is the responsibility of musicians.
People like what they like. Period. Yes, a lot of what they like is
what is force-fed to them. But a lot of what is force-fed to them is
due to what they have liked in the past. Force-feed an audience Haydn
and Mozart (like many/most symphony orchestras do) and you build a
climate where the Haydns and Mozarts of the early 21st century can't
find programming space to get their music heard. How is that different
from force-feeding a greater public American Idol and then complaining
that they have no appreciation for musicians who have come up the
old-fashioned way (small local gigs to slightly larger regional gigs to
larger more important regional gigs to less-important major-urban area
gigs to ever-more-important major-urban gigs until one day they're
playing to sold out stadiums and concert halls around the world.)
And when the general public attends a Broadway show, they're there for
the entire spectacle, the sights and sounds and smells that begins when
they draw near to the theater and continues until they are tucked into
bed long after the show is over. That a violin sound is played on a box
with vibrating strings or on an electronic synthesizer is such a tiny
part of that whole spectacle that it often is totally overlooked amid
all the other details, and only long after the show is a happy memory
does the audience learn that it was a synthesizer, and then only from
reading the complaints from local string players who feel slighted.
People go to see the show, not to hear the violins.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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