The Blue Wires

Please don’t judge me. I know not what I do. I’ve just finished watching the season finale of the Celebrity Apprentice. I know, I’m a horrible person because of it. But that’s not the point. Near the end of the show they had Trace Adkins perform his latest single. Trace is a country singer, who granted, I’ve never heard of before, but who is apparently a HUGE celebrity in those circles. Over the course of the season, yes I watched the whole season, I’ve really come to like Trace. I liked him right up till the end of his performance on the show tonight.

At the very end of his song, Trace went to hit a few big powerful notes, unfortunately what happened was the auto-tune they had on his voice went a bit hay wire trying to find the right note. Now, those of you who don’t know, auto-tune is a program that helps ‘fix’ notes when someone is singing. This isn’t the same as lip syncing. Trace is NOT Ashlee Simpson!

I just think that it’s wrong that a guy with such a great voice, feels as though he has to resort to having a computer enhance his performance. I, personally, would have much rather have heard a bum, yet soulful, note then the horrible sound of auto-tune gone awry.

I’m not going to say that I don’t use auto-tune on my vocals. I do. I use it when I record vocals. I do it because, well, I’m not an amazing singer. I’m nowhere as close to as good a singer as Trace is. What I don’t do, is it live. When you hear me live, good or bad, you get me. The real me. That’s the point of ‘live’. In the studio, it’s no different then any other effect that gets used in the studio. People edit drums to be in time. They cut guitar parts together to get ‘the perfect take’. Keyboard parts are quantized to be precise. And of course, vocals are tuned.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to pick on Trace, I’m just annoyed with musicians these days, who can’t just perform ‘live’. Try it. It’s fun. Play your ass off! Enjoy it. You’re not going to be perfect. You’re not going to hit every note. Who cares!?! That’s music. That’s life. That’s entertainment.

Picked up the Gutter Twins CD, the new collaboration between Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan.  Its fantastic, I recommend you check it out.  I see the Black Crowes have their 1st new album in 7 years out now too, Warpaint.  Sounds like some good tunes there too. 

So I recently moved from one web host to another one. In doing so, I started looking at my last ‘real’ band’s website, http://www.catapulttheband.com. In doing so I found a link to a really old website that has a video of Catapult playing the Abbey Lounge in November 2003.

In addition to the Catapult video, I also found two videos of Jason’s previous band, Baby Strange also from around the same time. So figure why not shame us both, eh?

So here they are in full video, VHS, color:

http://barbwires.com/videos/catapult.asx

http://barbwires.com/videos/babystrange-dontcare.asx

http://barbwires.com/videos/babystrange3.asx

So after berating my fellow band mates for their lack of posts, I realized today that it’s been ten days since my last post. Shame on me, eh? I’ve been so busy with my other blog, yes, like everyone in the world who blogs I contribute to more then one blog. It can be a real chore to write for multiple blogs. In my case the content is extremely different, so there’s no problem with finding topics to cover for each post. The real problem is the time. Between work, home, baby, band, and the other blogs, it’s difficult to find the time to write for each blog, so somebody has to suffer.

Unfortunately, my other blog has to do with business, so there’s money driving me there, and well… that blog actually gets hits! So that definitely leans me in that direction. However, despite this, I promise to make more an effort when it comes to this blog. I really am.

I’ve been recording my guitar parts for our forth coming, um… I don’t know what we’re calling it, our three songs. I’ll post a blog entry tomorrow talking about how that’s going.

For those of you interested, or just plain bored, in my other blog. You can find it at http://www.mackframework.com. It’s a fun to place to be if you like web application development, Ruby, and you’ve lost your love for Ruby On Rails. If you didn’t understand a thing I just said, then that blog probably isn’t for you.

Talk to you soon.

Its what it comes down to ultimately. The Sound. Funny to discuss on a site with no MP3s for you, the loyal reader (yes, I know who you are) to refer to, but that is what I’m going to write about. See, here is my theory. Every group of musicians has a “sound”. Its undeinable, and really, unavoidable. It is what it is, and hopefully, its good. But at its core, its instinctive. Each of us brings a differnt background to the table. We each hear something different in our heads, but there is a common ground where we can have a “conversation”, musically, together. As a band, we are now writing together like this. And we are discovering, one session at a time, what that sound is. Sure, we can shape it, and we do. But it has a foundation that we really have little control over. Its why Zep sounds like Zep, and the Clash sounds like the Clash. And why the Blue Wires sounds, well, like the Blue Wires. And they way things have been going recently, we are all excited to share it with you all. Stay tuned.