The Simple Things

Suddenly, success! The MIDI light blazed and glorious digital sound erupted from the monitors. Smiles. “Let me show you what this thing can do!” The amazing demonstration was worth the wait and the technical agita.

The next presentation was for a new drum doodad. The cat launched into his spiel: “Imagine showing up to a gig with 45 snare drums!” Dig it, I thought. Welcome to the brave new world.

I’d happened to have played a party a few night ago with a drummer friend who, besides being a total groove as a musician, just happens to own the single best-sounding snare drum in the world (It just is; I don’t care what anyone else says). It’s some no-name thing that the gods blessed with extraordinary powers. He’s had it for years and it’s all he needs for a live gig. It sounds amazing, cutting through the band without a mic and delivering a rich, round thwack.

Seriously folks, imagine if a drummer showed up to a gig with 45 virtual snare drums. Can a cat realistically process all those choices? It made me think: What happens when the keyboard player shows up with 45, or 145 sounds? I know I’d spend the night tweaking, not grooving, removed from the music.

Give me that one great piano, a few EPs, and a funky Clav. Organ? That’s a whole course of study! Getting your sounds together takes some serious thought and time. We’re entering an era with an embarrassment of riches for sounds: keyboards, samples, controllers, and modules, not to mention amps, speakers, and laptops with virtual instruments. Ultimately we need to choose sounds for our gigs and our recordings that best express the music that’s inside of us, on the page, or on the stage. Besides, wading through hundreds of tones is no way to spend the first set.

Go to the clinics, check out the stores, see what’s out there, but then do you and your buds a favor. Try to be lean and mean, do your tweaking at home, and show up to the gig ready to play some music!