Is it live or is it Memorex?

I’m probably dating myself using that reference, but odds are… you remember that question as well.

What I want to talk about today is the value of actual live music verses somebody singing over recorded backing tracks.

If you go into a bar and somebody is singing over recorded back up tracks it’s called “Karaoke night”, and the real fun of that, is anybody can get up and make and ass of themselves. The entertainment value of Karaoke has nothing at all to do with good music. Even if somebody has a fooking amazing voice, they are devaluated by the forum they are operating in.

Another place where pre-recorded backs up tracks are prevalent is church. Christian’s lub to sing about Jesus with the full glory behind them. It’s cheap and cheesy, and perfectly okay when somebody that doesn’t have a lot of talent, but has a good heart, wants to bless the congregation with the gift of song.

Close your eyes and nod Timmy it will be over soon.

I’ve thought about it quite a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion the reason pre-recorded back of up tracks are the keystone of musical banality is because the tracks were never recorded to be the musical bed for a horrible singer. They were recorded by professional musicians to be sung over by a professional singer, with the vocals compressed and Eq’ed, and composited to perfection.

When uncle Bob plugs the CD player in to a line level mixer and run the radio shack “Realistic” mic into the cheesy 40$ spring reverb unit he got at Mr. Reeds garage sale, dutifully patching his voice into the mixer with LOT O’ VERB, and starts to sing “Butterfly kisses”… perhaps things can go awry.

Karaoke is the audio equivalent of having a beautiful airbrush painting rife with detail and taking a crap right in the middle of it. Trust me, people notice the turd. The only real difference being the turd would not have TOO MUCH REVERB.

Now let talk about the doctrine of appropriate technology developed by the Peach Corp.

A while back, some brilliant hippy figured out if you give some third world villager a state of the art John Deer tractor, you are not really going to improve his crop yield. He’s probably using a stick pulled by a mule to plow his field and may have never seen machine more complex then a water pump. The maintenance of a tractor would overwhelm him and he would probably just go back to the stick and mule system he’s comfortable with.

But… if you gave him an iron plow, he would understand it’s use and it would be a vast improvement over the old school stick. Progress is achieved and people gets to eat.

This is why live music works so well. The voice and instrument are coming from a real audio space. It’s an iron plow you can stick in your ear. It blends easily together because it is quality consistent.

Does that mean it’s a turd on a turd?

No… because it is quality consistent. This means there is not huge gap between the quality of the music and voice. While it may not sound… in theory, as good as a studio recording, the listener scales and filters what they hear. If the performance is of reasonable quality, and the emotional content is intact, it can be far more compelling then any recorded performance.

Am I suggesting all Karaoke performers quit performing in Second Life?

Well I could suggest that, but I doubt they would do it. However, a more reasonable solution would be for them to either learn to play an instrument, or find an accompanist. An advantage of finding an accompanist would be most musicians would not want to play with somebody that sucks.

If you talk Bill Ray down the street into coming to your house and picking a few toons on his geetar while you sang… and he smashes his geetar and runs from the room jabbing frantically at his ears with an ice pick, you might not be as good a singer as you think you are.

That being said… let’s address the Guitar-aroke types.

If you are the Guitar God you think you are, start a freaking band. I find musicians love to play with other great musician and most do it will little hope for compensation.

For music to make a deeper impact on the general public in Second Life, it has to be good and it has to be live.

Is it live or is it Memorex? Everybody can tell.