Simply Amazing

I got to talk a good friend of mine the other day. It had been a while since we last talked, but whenever we talk, we geek out on new and old music technology and techniques. A few months ago, he'd been on a crazy quest to find out everything he could about vocoders and talkboxes, so we revisited the topics. He told m that I should head over to YouTube to check out a video of Stevie Wonder playing the talkbox. I watched the video and loved it - Stevie is amazing. When I searched for that video, the second search result was a video of Stevie doing a drum solo. I knew Stephie could play a lot of instruments, but drums? He's not usually associated with drums, but he was amazing on drums too.

As I was watching the drum video, I was thinking, "I knew that Stevie is a musical genius, but I guess didn't fully understand what that means." We hear artists on Cd's and the radio or we see them on videos, and as good as their recorded material is, we miss so much of them by not seeing them live. There are certain things that just can't translate on record. It's one thing to hear a recording of a good guitar solo, but it's another thing to actually see that solo played. Back in 2004, I went out to see Ayro perform. He did amazing things with an MPC and 2 keyboards. Later on, when I listened to the recorded version of that same performance, while it was good, it did not approach the experience of what I had seen in person.

I write my music, but I lack the skill to play it live. I'm completely happy with that, but I have to respect the people that can do this stuff live. How can you not admire good, live music? It's simply amazing.