{"id":152461977,"date":"2024-12-04T13:31:02","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T13:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=152461977"},"modified":"2024-12-04T13:31:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T13:31:02","slug":"in-defense-of-wrong-notes-sloppy-playing-and-imperfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=152461977","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Wrong Notes, Sloppy Playing, and Imperfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We play by the ‘suggestion’ method: one person changes chords, and gradually, the rest of the band comes around to that suggestion.” – Dave Barry, interviewed on the Cracked podcast, paraphrased<\/h2>

Rockism\u2014the belief that only music played by live bands has value\u2014is a scourge. Dave Grohl\u2014father of a child outside his marriage and currently working to regain trust of his wife and kids<\/a>\u2014gets onstage at the Grammys and rants about \u201cmusic made with computers\u201d [citation removed due to copyright claim by the Grammys]. But everyone\u2019s known since at least the 1960s that good music comes from a combined human and material element\u2014material here meaning that the quality of your tools matters. <\/p>

\"Pretty<\/figure>

A guitar player relies on amps and pedals, a drummer\u2019s sound is as defined by their kit as it is by their playing, and no bass player has ever sounded good on a Gibson bass. Similarly, recording equipment matters. Yes, there have been developments in mic placement strategies in the last 50 years and yes, I do<\/em> like the way Creedence\u2019s drums sound, but those things are neither here nor there: recording technology has gotten really, really good. <\/p>

The scales have imbalanced a bit, though. 21st century music, even when it\u2019s ostensibly not<\/em> electronic, often feels squeezed of every trace of human playing. Now, I won\u2019t waste your time\u2014griping about how pop music is overproduced isn\u2019t even low-hanging fruit, it\u2019s an empty tree branch. So I\u2019ll train my ire to my second-favorite band, Polyphia. Here are guys who think <\/a>a ton<\/a><\/em> about how they want their instruments to sound<\/a>, and they make beautiful, complex records<\/a>. But, idk\u2014listen to them live<\/a>, and you can really tell how much of their records are made on computers. <\/p>

Again, this is not necessarily bad. All the Polyphia dudes are great irl players. But I want to take some time to praise more human elements in recording.<\/p>

Before we get started, I get into some (possibly mythical) reasons I think of Miles and Mingus the way I do here<\/a>. Also, here\u2019s that <\/a>Cracked<\/a><\/em> interview with Dave Barry<\/a>. It\u2019s great! I\u2019m just not gonna re-listen to a decade-old podcast to get a quote right for the epigraph. I got a lotta tables, and I gotta get my kid from school. <\/p>

The Improviser, Miles Davis<\/strong><\/p>

Kind Of Blue<\/em> is the album people think about when they think about jazz. Seriously\u2014I was at dinner with some friends once and this guy says \u201cI want to start listening to more jazz,\u201d so I says to him I says, \u201cyou should start with Kind Of Blue<\/em>\u201d and he points to the ceiling and says \u201cI want to listen to this\u201d and wouldn\u2019t you know it, \u201cSo What\u201d was playing in the restaurant.<\/p>

\u201cSo What\u201d isn\u2019t what we\u2019re talking about, though. We\u2019re talking about \u201cAll Blues.\u201d<\/p>

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