link
and who is the guitarist ?
“someone who plays guitar and likes to know about everything guitar…”
I think when money/mass production enters a hobby or art, it will definitely shift the general focus from the end person to the money machines feeding off them. I wonder if they realize how many teenagers have sold drugs trying to get guitars in highschool?
Or how many teenagers have sold their prize possessions trying to afford a basic drum kit or even a low-grade synthesizer, or how many college students ate ramen for a year to afford their…
Doesn’t matter because those people feeding off the end person probably have never even been that person…they have met them, sure, but never been them.
I had somewhat of the same experience. Except it was at an AES convention. Got lost, ended up at the restricted area, then passing by a door that was just closing, seeing the professional gear that only people with cold hard capital can buy in bulk and hearing one of the representatives say, “yeah Rick Rubin just bought 10,000 of these”. The numbers might be wrong and the representative could have been pitching a fast one but on any level, even a pair of those mastering speakers is equivalent to a down payment to a house. “The Guitarist” executed his observations much better than I could ever have on paper.
I think you have to be the business man psycho archetype in order to not have a complex on ƒU©K!ng people out of their money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekzjzFFE_pY
The industry itself is a business, sure. But then, why are we here?
The following is under the guise of vicious dead pan comedy and not to be taken seriously
We are here to destroy the economy of those who oppose our point of view and make slaves out of survivors willing to shift their point of view to ours
In the dark ages, it was plundering or outright physical annihilation of entire empires. Ahh, the good ol’ days were so much more, how do say… honest
that guy sounds like an idiot - Namm IS a business convention. If he was expecting anything else then he IS an idiot -plus he says he was “dressed in musical oriented clothes (&) walking shoes”
ho ho - read em and weep - i’ll bet he wants a prs and a mesa boogie and use’s the word ‘funky’ to describe things he likes…
oh well, at least he’s honest.
My post was about how NAMM was a lot different than what I expected. What I always heard was manufacturers showing off their newest and best; I wrote about the things i’d never heard about, and how my opinion of musical instruments and the whole industry itself is completely different now.
And I’m more of a Gibson through a Hughes and Kettner Trilogy type of guy to get my “funky” sound.
Thanks for reading.
Yeah, your blog sums up the experience I had the Frankfurt Musikmesse over the last years. NAMM is about ten times bigger though.
Music is a business. What else?
The guys selling guitars are not interested in motivating you to make music, but to buy stuff… just that next fx pedal, replacement pickups and the new updated model of the one-hundreth copy of guitar model xy…
And the music conventions is where business people meet, and some musicians go to either show some presence, showcase gear, or whatever.
The “normal” people might get to meet Yngwie Malmsteen in the mens room (securely guarded by tall broad-shouldered guards…), get stickers, free magazines and some pictures of new gear they will show to their friends (or post to their blog) and thereby do some free advertisement.
But apart from those conventions meaning business, I think it’s a good experience to go there once in a while… just to get an expression of how great, or not so great and silly some things are.
Veering off to a different convention…
It was the first time I had gone to any convention (AES). I got a free pass from a community of sorts.
I don’t know if other music related conventions hold more than business meetings and showcases but I enjoyed the sessions, seminars, and workshops away from the showcase hall. I wish I could have watched it all.
The two main highlights for me were Dr. Charles J. Limb and Patrick J. Donnelly on Beethoven’s deafness which left me with profound inspiration to compose more
in my “mind’s ears and eyes” and John Chowning’s presentation on his “naive discovery” in FM synthesis. Him talking about the implications of vocal synthesis was cool too, kind of like, hey let’s bring back that dead singer back to audible life (yeah, that’ll be the day, a Frank Sinatra patch or how about the deluxe Britney Spears vocal synth, them crazy kids will have a field day on that). Time was runing out, and his laptop performance “Voices” was kind of cut short but nonetheless inspiring.
Is it really like that?!
Cause instruments are getting cheaper and I think that most of the people can afford them.
Like a basic electric guitar and a amp for about 120 €.
Or a basic drum kit for about 230€.
Yeah, synths are never cheap… the cheapest I know is like 250€.
But what I want to know is, is it really that hard to get a job and get some money?
seriously now.
that’s still a load of money where i come from - kids take note, sell drugs.