v, g, b, d

It's never been interesting to watch a synth player live, less than watching somebody DJ, certainly. There is less physicality to playing an electric keyboard, maybe because the player doesn't feel as direct a connection between body movement and sound (it's not a direct relationship between how hard you play and how loud it gets.) Who would you like to watch: Pete Townshend on guitar, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, or um, Keith Emerson on…uh, Moog?

Unlike Tracer I'm not so keen on horns.

Er.. does that help?

Established fixity seems to be linked directly to heritage repertoire, also: which is partly why I asked this. Is the rock foursome — by virtue of its instrumentalist fixity — now inecapably tied to the fetishisation of heritage (metal, indie, psych, arena-pubrock, beefheartism...)?

leccy guitars are popular, because they're loud, easy to play, easy and cheap to make, and above all fun. Anyone can pick up a guitar and after a bit play the chords to their favorite pop hit fairly quickly. Unlike my chosen instument at school, the double bass, which is expensive, I had to stop playing when i left school and couldn't use theirs anymore, a pig to cart around, and has a really steep learning curve, steeper than bass guitar cos no frets. The rythmn lead bass drum set up is an easy one to achieve an easy one to copy, and also a very versatile instrument, look at the whole gamut of rock sounds to see that.

It's laughable but it makes sense. The public haven't really caught up with the realities of how music is made now; they find the sight of musicians apparently playing recognisable instruments more comprehensible, 'real' etc.

To a large extent the r&b and pop acts have established a 'new' performing style of main artist/s supported by dancers. The dancers are actually doing the visual job of backing musicians ie providing movement and spectacle. It's something I didn't like when it first started to appear but I've got used to it now. In fact when it's done well I think it looks great.

What seems obvious to me though is that the guitar *is* now fading (despite its long-standing hold over the pop imagination). Cranked up guitars and amps obviously sound great, but there's a definite 'historical' feel to that sound. I think the bands know this themselves - a lot of it takes the form of *loving recreation* of particular guitar/amp/pedal/whatever combinations of the 60s and 70s.

No...too 'jazz' (rock's traditional rarefied 'enemy').

Wouldn't that be 'threatening geek' though?

yeah sure, but that worked fine for lots of rock gtr players too.

I won't even touch that one.

Except to say that it's nonsense (that is, assuming I understand correctly what you mean by "most orchestral music").

I guess I'm thinking of jazz-oriented players, since I can do without those rough-toned 80s rock sax solos (as discussed in an earlier thread) or the occasional sappy smooth-jazz solo that pops up. I suppose I just haven't heard many pop bands that use horns in an interesting and involved way.

As far as pianoless groups, the two pre-Ornette groups that come to mind are Sonny Rollins' Village Vanguard sax trio and the Chet Baker/Gerry Mulligan West Coast group.

I think some nutter just did a world record of 20 hours or something...

The trombone thing is news to me, but then I doubt I would've been able to do it even if I was told how.

As for multiphonics, they sound like a nice idea, but I've never found them to be as usable as descriptions often make it sound. Among other things, they're not easily controlled, and unless you're singing and playing at the same time, aren't capable of performing fully polyphonic music of any degree of complexity (Bach inventions, etc.).

In rock music, it's very hard to use horns in a way that isn't evocative of jazz or some other "genre" idiom, like ska or big-band swing. On top of that, a lot of instruments have tended, historically, to adopt timbral innovations that allow them to cut through as soloists (brighter tone, etc.). But in a rock setting, where vocals are so often dominant, the timbral characteristics, and pitch compass, of horns tend to be more or less the same as those of the vocalist; if they're playing/singing simultaneously, a muddle will often result. Since, in rock music, the vocalist tends to sing the majority of the time, there isn't much room left for horns, except for brief improvised solos that, understandably, evoke jazz or jazz-rock.

(Also keep in mind that the dynamic range of horns in practice tends to be larger than that of electric instruments, which tend to either use compression devices, or have compression as a built-in part of their tone generating process -- for instance, tube distortion on an electric guitar. That, too, makes horns more of a bear to deal with.)

Of course, there's always massed horns, which have a completely different effect -- and that's part of the reason that big bands, rather than small combos, were so often the vehicle of choice for singer-fronted swing bands: a large ensemble can generate a blended sound that serves as a "pad" for vocal music. But how many rock acts can really afford to get a horn section -- never mind trying to write for it in a way that doesn't make you sound like Harry Connick Jr. or Earth, Wind and Fire?

Finally, horns lack tonal flexibility -- at least in comparison with the extremely flexible electric guitar, and the near-infinitely flexible synthesizer. One of the ways for which pop music compensates for its lack of polyphonic or (generally speaking) harmonic interest is through timbral variety; I think, as pop/rock listeners, we expect tonal change and surprise as part of the narrative structure of an album or song. Horns simply can't do that -- Miles Davis's wah-wah and delay pedal aside, they can't pull off any great tonal transformations. Consequently, they are seen as a less versatile ingredient in an ensemble, and are treated as "spice" rather than as a staple of the group.

All this, of course, predicates a rather conventional pop or rock structure, dominated by vocals. Plenty of bands have made horns work -- Cerberus Shoal and Geezer Lake come to mind, as does, debatably, Morphine. (And of course, though we're talking more about saxes and brass, umpteen bands from the sixties and seventies used flutes -- Jethro Tull and Traffic come to mind.) But generally, these are bands that have longish songs, with a lot of room for instrumental sections in their work. Three-minute pop songs with lots of vocals simply don't have the timbral space, nor the time, for a lot of horn work.

But anyway the above is GRATE, Phil.

I couldn't give you the vaguest idea of how to play two notes at once on a trombone, but the trombonist I play with does it. :> Maybe I'll ask...I'm sure it's some obscure embouchure (sp?) thing.

I'm still curious where G-R-A-T-E came from, though.