|
I think there's an additional element to the "olden days" of recording ...
the ante for being a studio player was much higher. You had to have monster skills to get in the door - think Funk Brothers, the LA Wrecking Crew, etc.
Along with those skills came a musical intuition, creativity, whatever, that made them make damn fine at cutting grooves, building arrangments, creating tones, all that stuff that goes on behind a great song. It comes from spending 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, sitting at your instrument for 20 years.
Today, you can call yourself a "session player" if you know which end of the sticks to hold, and can remember how to play a guitar power chord two days out of three. Everything thing else can be "fixed". They haven't paid their dues, played the scene, lived long enough to have good ideas on their instrument. So now, it sounds perfect, but who cares? We have dull, lifeless, unoriginal ideas being edited to perfection.
There are still a few guys who are holding it down. Tim Pierce on guitar. Abe Laboriel on Bass. His son, Abe Jr. on Drums. Russ Miller on Drums. All guys who got in the game before the advent of ProTools.
But where are tomorrow's session players? Where are they cutting their teeth? What will we do when the giants have died, and everyone left is recycling the same five drumbeats, the same five guitar tones, and the same good god for the last time the exact same U2 bass line?
You wanna know why the industries is dying? We're running out of musicians.
You wanna know why classical is still going strong? Every new generation is better than the last. They make old music new, with better technique, better understanding, and better musicality.
Lordly, who lent me this soapbox? Take it back! I have work to do!
-sm
|