Manifesto II

Kim wrote such a great, well-reasoned response to “The New Rock Guitar Manifesto” that I want to make it, and some responses to it, the second article here at the Guitar Journal.

If you haven't read The New Rock Guitar Manifesto, you should read it first and this will all make more sense. It is here.

Kim is clearly speaking about music rather than hardware. This is extremely relevant and connected to the guitar and even more important than hardware issues. How we see music will affect how we see the guitar in profound ways.

Kim said...
Let me give you my general thought on the whole question of where rock is at first.

Firstly I should make the comment that I, myself, am pretty much over rock. Mind you I'll still enjoy a good Beatles album, Zeppelin, Floyd, Queen, late 80's and early 90's U2 etc etc, but I've heard little of interest in the past ten years, and I'm spacing out my rock in the hope that I'll still like some of the classics in 2040 when I'm 68. Overall though, I've given up on rock.

To me. it’s like hearing an audiophile complain about the sound of CD’s. If you ask them if there are any good-sounding CD’s, they will either say yes, or no, and if they say no, then you can play them a good-sounding CD and they will change their mind. There are, without a doubt, good-sounding CD’s to be found. Once they agree that there are good-sounding CD’s, it becomes clear that it is not CD’s that sound bad that is the problem, it is people making bad-sounding CD’s. They could have made good-sounding ones, but didn’t.

If you still enjoy great old rock, then you still like rock. Unless of course, you believe that what made it great, was it’s newness. I do not.

I think the newness of it was only a small part of the attraction. I also think it was less new than it seemed at the time. The Beatles sounded like the Everly’s, Little Richard, and Buddy Holly all rolled up, and Buddy sounded like country mixed with blues and some Elvis, and Richard sounded like Gospel and stripper music thrown together, and etc etc. It was new to us because we were young (a point Kim makes later on) but also because it was done well, with a solid artistic vision behind it.


It seems that you have the opinion that rock itself still has life in it, it's just that those playing the role aren't filling in all the required criterion. I, on the other hand, tend to think that the genre wore itself out, much as I hate to accept that. In fact I often wonder if the genre wore out, or whether in fact I wore out. Perhaps my listening to so many hours of the style caused me to eventually recognize the patterns. Indeed that is, to some extent, my thinking.

I figure music, in one aspect, is patterns. There's more to it, but patterns are an integral part. There's also different chords, scales, sounds, and, well I don't need to tell you of course, as you know all the ingredients. Point is that you can only hear any one of these characteristics for the first time once. Only once in your life do you come across the first song you hear playing every 3rd 16th beat on the toms. For me it was Bon Jovi's Lay Your Hands On Me. Then, not long after, U2 released Desire. Since that point I have discovered that, in fact, the beat U2 used has a name and dates back to I think some jazz tune in the 20's or something. Either way, those two songs hit their mark with me. Anything that comes now will sound stale.

But if it came from the 1920’s then it should have been stale by the 1930’s at the latest! How in the world did U2 get away with retreading this pattern?

Vision

And someone else will find a way to retread that pattern again, and if they do it well enough, it will join your list after which everything shall sound stale. It’s not the pattern, it’s the song! A great song will both lift the pattern to seem new, while making the pattern transparent at the same time.

While I hear your desire to further the development of guitar, I don't think it will greatly assist rock to be rejuvenated. I think, at some point you hear a song with every 3rd 16th note on the toms, and having somebody do it with a different metal in the bridge ain’t going to revolutionize it for you. Once you've heard that sound that's it. It only has to sound good enough for you to be able to absorb the moment as if it's the best thing ever. If it can convince the listener of that then it's won.

Good point, but still, it’s not one thing, (such as a great new bridge) it’s the totality of long-overdue changes needed in the instrument. I contend that a truly contemporary instrument will inspire new songs. I know how many times I have picked up something totally different, say a Dobro, and immediately written several new songs on it. Multiply that times the number of songwriters out there.

The reason, in my opinion, that nobody has created the same energetic level of quality creation since the Beatles and those surrounding them, is that, at that point the energy flowed. The reason the energy flowed was because it was all new. The Beatles had enough talent, enough technology, and enough musical history behind them to be able to create history in that moment. They had new sounds and avenues to do new things with the tools were open to them. This is the case for most of the greats. And the audience was hearing this stuff for the first time, and hence received it in a highly positive manner, feeding the fire and assisting them to go forth and create even greater music, and so the circle continued.

You can't go back 30 years later and recreate what was. The magic isn't there anymore. It's just not the first time. The first time you capture everyone. 30 years later some of your audience have heard it before, others have lost interest in anything no matter how good it may be, while still others have decided they like some other style instead because the old stuff didn't capture them.

There are teenagers today listening to Nickelback and getting the same kick you once got hearing the Beatles. We all know it's just a cheap copy of something decades old with less soul but more modern recording gear, but they don't. That's just how it goes.

Actually teenagers I know, and my kid knows at school, are generally pretty hip about classic rock and some know it very well indeed. I think teenagers like the Beatles in about the percentage as they did in 1965. Almost all of them like it. They listen to Nickelback for the same reason you or I do; because they want some new music. Not a whole new style, mind you, just new music.

To my mind styles wear out. They always have and always will. They burst to the fore and then recede back from whence they came as another new thing leaps in to take it's place. The difference this time is that what is leaping in to take the place of rock seems to lack soul. The styles that came before rock were all full of soul. To many, those that came after lack some essence, and that lack is growing stronger, if that's something lacks can do. ;o) All styles have come forth and then dissipated, and I see no reason why rock wont do the same. The energy lies with the here and now, and rock is growing old. It will always be a great form of music of course, but people making new stuff well will grow less common, and less easy to find. Tried to find something new in baroque lately? Doesn't mean it's not great of course, just that you can only do so much.

I’m so glad you said that. Baroque, as a new and vital force, lasted for far longer than rock has been around and is still a perennial, attracting millions of passionate fans with every generation. Is there great new baroque music being written? Probably only in theory classes, but it is certainly an influence.

Why is rock running out of ideas so quickly?

Here’s what I think. I think the art movements associated with Modernism have had a huge impact on the style and artistic/social context of Rock. Chief among the ideas of Modernism is The New. Something must be new and different on a fundamental level, it must replace that which went before, and it must not be derivative of older styles. This is why synthesizers were seen as the wave of the future back in the 1970’s. No limits! Any sound you can imagine! Well it was rubbish of course. Synths added a few new sounds, but mostly made either noises (although sometimes interesting noises) or imitated instruments of the past. We who learned about things like the ADSR dynamics envelope, sine, triangle, and square waves, filters and modulation, soon discovered that the designers of acoustic instruments had covered most of the bases hundreds of years earlier. No one thinks synths will revolutionize music on a fundamental level, anymore.

Modernists have always overstated their coming revolution. Always. Whether it be the New Socialist Utopia, Constructivist Art, Atonal Music, Synthesizers, The Machine, The Promise of Eugenics, or The War to End all Wars, modernists always want to see the world in revolutions. The New replacing whatever was hot yesterday; the future continually renewing itself. In reality, it doesn’t ever work that way as the continued existence of things like tubes (valves) in audio right alongside the most advanced of microprocessors, the continued popularity of acoustic instruments, the building of pipe organs today that are hardly different than those of the 13th century, (not to mention obsolete DAW’s making hit records!) and the continual re-issue of absurdities like 1930’s microphones and Mellotrons !

I think it is time to reject the artistic straitjacket of Modernism (along with the smirking absurdity of it’s daughter, Post) and simply accept that music is a continuum and everyone is influenced by someone else.

You do realize where avoiding the old, refusing to use melodic or rhythmic patterns that have been “done already” leads to, don’t you?

Atonal noise, pretentious minimalist drivel, poisoned-brain “academic” music, and finally to John Cage sitting on his chair, silently, for the required time, and then it’s off to the CD-Release Party!

Rubbish

I say, write good songs. Call them derivative if it makes you feel hip, but write them. Write about things you really care about, let the music flow naturally from the ideas and lyrics, don’t arbitrarily put in something stupid to avoid something old, and play them well, like you care about them.

The patterns will become transparent once more.

Too many musicians are tied into knots by fear of doing something derivative, so they do nothing, or worse, do something bad. I do not claim to be revolutionary, but I do hope I write well enough so you don’t notice the pattern too much.

And I don’t care in the least what the painfully hip think of my stuff.

Of course you had many great ideas though in your post. Your points on guitar intonation and bridges are valid, but in a mixed context in my opinion. There is something of beauty in the bad intonation. It's like when I was in year 10 at school, and my teacher told me that 12 string guitars create a natural modulation effect because you could never tune it perfectly, and I said "Rubbish! If you tune it properly it wont modulate at all!" and he simply told me that it always does, because you can't tune a guitar that well, and he was right. Of course my shabby old Ibanez 12 string I bought for $280 in 1989 is far too out of tune with itself, but even on the best guitars you get that little bit of tonal error which just lets you know that you are alive, and the instrument is real.

What you are speaking of is the natural out-of-tuneness of equal temperament vs. the no-beat perfect tuning of just intonation. That wasn’t what I was getting at. I too find just intonation flat and boring (at least on piano, but it rocks with choirs) I just want to actually get guitars to equal temperament! They ain’t even close. I have one guitar that actually intonates at both ends of the neck, matching equal temperament almost perfectly. It sounds really cool! All guitars could be like that. To not even match equal temperament is unacceptable after all these years.

Of course improving the tone of a guitar bridge through better examination of the metals used and greater precision in the building process is a fine idea. I'm sure some manufacturers are giving that some kind of consideration, but I don't hear it talked about much so obviously it's not being done enough.

I pestered several guys, including Tone Pros at NAMM last year and will do so again, but no one really wants to start from scratch with a new bridge design, and that is what is needed. KTS, the Titanium saddle folks from Japan are looking into making a complete Titanium strat bridge. I love their saddles, and they are very nicely-made indeed, but no one knows how much TI is too much until you actually go too far with it. Worth a try though.

Really interested in your neck re-threading experience. I'll stick that in the archives. My brother works in metalwork so if the need arose we could jig something up. Indeed I may consider doing it to my guitar anyhow. I'll sit on it for a bit and see what I think.

I was amazed at the improvement. By the way, inserts can screw into the wood, if the neck is maple, and be pretty secure without gluing them in, but make sure not to make the hole too tight and crack the neck putting the inserts in! With mahogany necks, we left the holes in the neck a little looser, and used JB Weld to keep the insert from backing out. I am leaning towards doing that with the maple necks too.

Do you know about JB Weld? Best stuff since sliced bread.


Thanks again for your great comments!

Don