Studio InSession

Watching Studio In Session. I've passed by this show so many times. I don't know why. I wish more people would watch this to see what a real band with real musicians is like. Not some dude on a laptop with loops and a sequencer. People who practice and are tight when they play together. It's not something you can get from a program. It's personal, communal.

I appreciate that there is something to be said for a well programmed techno dance tune but it's not about music. Listen to the radio and you can pretty well substitute lyrics song to song and they will fit. When you are in a band, you're not confined to the box. Maybe it's a symptom of the genre but 99% of dance tunes don't stray far from a very generic formula. There might be a few variations but you can almost anticipate how each song will progress.

With a band, you're not bound to that. Just the fact that you're dealing with a group of people makes the possibilities so much more vast. Everybody hears things in different ways. When you get a bunch of people with different ideas together, some real magic can happen.....if they can get along on anything. Sometimes the conflict foments creativity.

I know some people find organic music boring. Is it the music or is it the listener? Are you really listening? Are you bored because you're not hearing what you expect to hear in the format that you want to hear it? sometimes you just need to listen a little deeper. A good song can take time to develop. Sometimes there's some background to give. Some time needed for the story to build up.

A band is the ultimate human interaction that is not sexual. It's people feeding off of each other's vibe and paying it back. That can be a very sweet thing.

A sequencer plays everything back perfect but it only plays things back one way. Sure there are programs like Ableton's Live! that allow you to do some very limited improvisation but it's not like you're playing every note. You're triggering sequences or loops. You can't make one trigger more expressive than another really. Not like you can with any manual instrument. And let's face it, one "DJ" on stage setting off triggers isn't really a performance. It's Aural masturbation.