From: gaf@anasazi.com (Guy Finney)
Subject: Defending the Slugs (was: Winter NAMM 1983)
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.  Phoenix, Arizona USA
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 18:52:02 GMT


I feel I must leap to the front here and defend all that is Good and True
from this wholly savage and unjustified attack on us Slugs. (Okay, now
that I've established my credentials as someone who can sling irrational
hyperbole, on with the reasoned discourse - well what passes for it
in my house, anyway).

ljnelson@unix.amherst.edu (LAiRD j. NeLSoN) writes:
>
>I hope it's just me, but I'm noticing a trend in music in general: people just
>aren't spending the time anymore to learn how to play an instrument well--or
>even passably.
[....]
>An *instrument* is meant to be studied, played and performed
>*on*; it is not supposed to do that on its own.

Maybe the paragraph quoted below refines who you mean by "people", but
speaking as what I call a "music hobbyist", I constantly wrestle with
many competing desires.  One is to have a job that pays well enough to
feed my other desires, which include music, hockey, racing, and shooting.
I would love to be very good at any of them, but I'm not willing to
give up the others and concentrate on just one.  Hey, what's wrong with
having a life that isn't narrow?  I'm not criticizing people who do
focus on one field, I'm just preaching tolerence here.

>Not that this invalidates those
>forms of music--otherwise people wouldn't continue to create them--and not
>that there aren't exceptions to this rule--a band like Incognito leaps to
>mind, at least in the cheese-funk category :).  But objectively we're talking
>an appreciation of the Incredibly Simple built into the framework of modern
>music and modern instruments: artists who let their machines play *for* them
>(and please: I'm not talking live sequencing here--you know what's going on)
>get rewarded both with money and hero-status, and synth makers who produce 
>boxes geared towards *imitating* the *sounds* of those artists get rewarded
>as well.  Am I the only one who's frightened by this?  Am I the only one dumb
>enough to write a 50,000 word church sermon on it?  :)

Okay, so it seems your gripe is more with record companies and others who
hire "musicians", because they don't appreciate the subtleties of fine
playing like you do and end up hiring Slugs.  You want to hear more work
of a higher calibre.  The only real hope I see for you is in the long term -
music education in schools.  Busy adults just aren't going to invest time
in refining their musical tastes (unless you hold that even busy adults
will know good work when they hear it and will flock to it when it's
presented - that might be true).

>Bottom line?  Lack of patience, folks.  We've all heard it referred to as some
>kind of national disease, like a sort of MTV-itis, and as hokey as that seems
>to be, nowhere is it more clear than in the field of contemporary music (by
>which, ironically, I don't mean one narrow *kind* of music, but, roughly
>speaking, music of the late seventies onwards).

Okay, now for my tirade.  Naww, it's sunny and 70 here - too hard to get
worked up over anything right now - I'll have to settle for being just
insecure and slightly paranoid instead.  Whether or not you meant to include
the home hobbyist in your thesis on how awful the music is that's being
turned out today, there is a certain elitist element loose in the land
that needs a bit of a slap.  I don't spend every daylight hour playing
golf, so does that mean I can't go out and play a round now and then
because I'm not good enough?  I never learned to ice skate as a kid, so
does that mean I can't play steet hockey with some friends?  I don't have
the intense desire (read: patience) to learn my keyboard to the level
I'd like, so does that mean I should be ashamed of the music I make?
Nope, nope, and nope.

The elitists are out there, though, sneering at those of us to prefer
broad and shallow interests to narrow and deep.  Heck, time was when
the only people who could afford to be musicians, whether or not they
had any aptitude for music, were the nobility.  Now we have Casio
gizwhacks that almost anyone can afford, and a whole spectrum of gear
above it, right up to a Fairlight or Synclavier (oops, scratch that).
It is not surprising that because more people are making music that
sounds good to them at home, the reverence for the diligent few who
devote their lives to it has declined.

I LIKE the new technology because it lets even a Slug like me make
music, and that makes me happy.  So you won't walk around in fear
of having your ears ruined by my sloppy playing on some streetcorner,
the most I aspire to is playing with some friends and maybe making
demo tapes of original material for sale.  Gee, just think, you might
be zooming along the highway some day singing along to a tune on the
radio that a Slug wrote and sold to someone who could perform it well.

>In short, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, uh, I don't know, go out and
>buy WaveStations or something.  Or hire my quintet.  End of dippy sermon.

Too late, already got a Wavestation.  And I'm only using a tiny fraction
of its potential.  Nyah, nyah.  (Okay, so I wiped the presets and made
my own, but that doesn't make me an elitist.  I just like playing around.)

Time for a swim, I think.
-- 
Guy Finney                                   "Ah, this is obviously some
Anasazi, Phoenix AZ                          new usage of the word 'safe'
gaf@anasazi.com  -or-                        I was previously unaware of".
...!asuvax!anasaz!gaf                            --- Arthur Dent
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth