Are We Stuck In Time?
The Mobius Strip. You can check in, but there is no exit
Hey folks. I get a lot of stories in my feeds pertaining to guitars, the music industry, trade trends and the like. I also closely follow the recording space in terms of gear and plugins and I’m starting to think that we are living in a time loop. I won’t attempt to follow that concept through quantum physics, because I am way out of date on current thinking, but the concept of being stuck in a loop is so obvious, you’d have to be blind.
Let’s talk about acoustic guitars. When you think acoustic guitar, what comes to mind? For me, it’s a Martin style dreadnought. A very fine guitar. And has been such for over eighty years. When Bob Taylor created his masterful neck joint, that was truly innovative and for a long time, Taylor did not even build dreadnought style bodies in their normal range. But when I look at the latest innovations in acoustic guitars, the only real changes are the woods used, commonly due to limitations or to keep prices the same while increasing profitability by using less expensive, but still great sounding woods. I know that for some a cutaway on an acoustic is akin to heresy, but for most of us, we care about sound and playability first. Manufacturers keep making the same types of guitars partly due to lack of innovation and partly because of the intransigent mentality of many buyers. Intransigence is fatal. I still hear that carbon fibre guitars are crap. When I ask if the person making the statement has ever played a quality example, the answer is invariably no. “If it’s not made of wood, it’s crap”. Nope, sorry, that’s not correct. You may not like it, but it is not crap. And I say that with full confidence because I own three of them. Fear and intransgience keep things this way.
If we move to electric guitars, it’s the same thing. Does it look like a Strat or does it look like a Les Paul? Some very fine examples of both and many excellent instruments that bear a stunning resemblance to these 65 plus year old designs. The default PRS body shape was initially shunned because it looked like neither and it’s an overnight success in only 35 years. Sixty plus years later we still have predominantly magnetic pickups in either single coil or humbucking variants. Both systems work great but in all that time, there hasn’t be a new idea? Probably, but buyers are intransigent.
When it comes to pedals, when did you last see something truly new, and not another version of a Klon, or Tube Screamer or something else? Pedals with multiple emulations of older pedals certainly exist but there has not been anything really new in a very long time, that didn’t sound like a sheep being turned inside out. That’s not innovation, that’s a failed experiment, but people buy based on the label, not always the effectiveness.
Don’t even get me started on recording. Most every microphone made these days of any kind of quality are reproductions of very old microphones. Are the repros decent? Certainly, but everything does not need to be recorded as if it’s still 1952, however good those old mics were. Plugins to the DAW have opened access to what used to be hardware based processors, that were expensive, temperamental, and markedly inconsistent. At a quick glance I found over twenty different plugs, all stating that they were the best implementation of a classic tube based compressor. I need not go into other examples. We are spoiled by the volume of excellent and well priced sound very alike options. I can not afford a real Teletronix LA-2, but I discovered that through plugin bundles I own about eight different “perfect” emulations. Honestly, not all are perfect, but there are a couple where I cannot tell the plugin from the hardware. Not a terrible thing, but where is there something new?
In fairness to you all, I do not count autotune, autotiming, autodrummers or any AI horseshit as innovation. I see them all as curses against true creatives. If you cannot pull off what you record live, without lipsyncing or backing tracks that you play against letting your audience assume that you are actually playing, please get stuffed and make room for real creatives. I own multiple autotune plugins, because I got them at no cost with something else. I personally choose not to use them or work with people who need them. My choice. You are completely free to do whatever you want. However as far as I am concerned it’s all phony baloney.
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