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Category: "MIDI"
As I scoured the web for song ideas for my act, it occurred to me that we might be running out of original ideas for song titles. It also occurred to me that some contemporary songwriters have obviously taken inspiration from other songwriters’ existing titles. Case in point: What do you think of when you hear, “Stairway To Heaven?” Probably most people would say Led Zepplin from the 70s. But did you know there was another song more than ten years earlier with the same title written and sung by Neil Sedaka? Sure enough. Check it out. Despite the same title, they are as different as night and day.
It’s been nearly three years now since I dissolved my musical duo in favor of going solo with my MIDI files. It has been an adventure and a learning experience. However, like everything else, you can fall into a rut, so to speak, and that’ll make you start thinking about alternatives. Although you may not actually need another member (or two or three) there may come a time when another live musician is just what you may want to keep from going stale.
You younger Cybermidi readers may think I sound like a geezer, but I’m really aiming this at the people of my generation (I’m 52). Wilfred Brambell, who played Paul’s grandfather in the movie A Hard Day’s Night was 52 at the time the movie was filmed in March of 1964. Next week Paul McCartney turns 60 and that fact doesn’t sit well with me. It made me realize just how fast time is flying by.
There was a time in my musical career when I’d have proudly stood up on stage and sung my lungs out with my version of Herman’s Hermits version of “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” and then waited for the teen adulation to come pouring up from the crowd at me feet. Of course, I would have been fifteen years old at the time and the song would have been climbing the charts. These days, some forty plus years later, I’d have to be drunk and on one of those jobs where you end up playing to just the bartender and I’d have to be paid a lot of money. Otherwise, ain’t no way I’d make a fool of myself that way.
When I first introduced the idea of using MIDI files to my duo partner, I was met with skepticism and doubt, as well as a degree of disdain. After all, we’d both been professional musicians for more than thirty years by that time. My partner considered using MIDI files as cheating, so to speak. He envisioned us playing along to the MIDI files and getting unbelieving stares from the crowd. He thought surely they’d know something wasn’t right here and that they’d boo us off the stage or at the very least, hold their noses on their way out the door.
I can go back forty years and recall when our four-piece band first recruited a keyboard player. Unlike the rest of us, he was trained and schooled in the fine points of music. That is, he could read it and play it better than any of the rest of us could have ever imagined was possible.
For the most part, I’d have to say that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my experience of playing live with MIDI files. However, there have been some moments that have tried my patience. Moments that made me wish I was still in a live four-piece band. Moments that made my ears hot and my face flush and my nerves jump. But all in all, I have to say that I wouldn’t and couldn’t go back to a four-piece band after having experienced the freedom of a solo act using MIDI files.
I’ve written several articles about the use of MIDI files to replace several band members who may have grown out of the band thing. I’ve written about duo acts and solo acts filling the voids left by departing members. But I hadn’t even thought about MIDI taking just one member’s place. I did mention in an early column that I’d seen Steppenwolf perform live without a bass player but that I’d later learned that the band had the bass parts sequenced.
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