Re: Marcus Paus ON the net -- The Fast Lane

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Date Posted: 20:22:24 08/14/02 Wed
Author: G. Gerig
Author Host/IP: zaphod.jpl.nasa.gov / 137.79.36.29
Subject: Re: Marcus Paus ON the net
In reply to: Daniel Sacilotto 's message, "Marcus Paus ON the net" on 20:48:02 08/12/02 Mon

>Of course he can�t compose shit, and I prefer a
>billion times anything Shawn has produced. Who cares
>about speed anyways.
>
>Paus is the fastest, but Shawn is the greatest :)

_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/

I listened to this guy and I wasn't particularly impressed. He reminds me of that 80s Yngwie clone named Impelliteri - speed for speed's sake, but zero melody. (But then Paus is a youngster so I'll cut him some slack.) Actually, although Yngwie was somewhat more interesting, he suffered from the same shallowness - speed for speed's sake, and melodic only in the sense that someone endlessly practicing classical scales is melodic.

To my ears, what sets Lane miles above - in context of speed - is the same thing that sets people like Beck (Jeff of course,) Schenker and UJ Roth apart: Each may be playing faster than hell, but they never, ever lose sight of musicality. Which in turn is why the work of Lane, JB, Schenker, Roth has the unmistakable quality of timelessness, while the SpeedRacers are largely forgettable, often only months after they first hit the scene.

There's another analogy I always think about in terms of speed. "Speed" simply means the quantity of time between two given notes. Assuming as a hypothetical a superhuman player with unlimited picking speed (maybe an advanced robot or something) - at some point in advancing speed the human ear will no longer be capable of distinguishing between individual notes. In terms of sound they'll have to merge into a continuous sweep.
This idea hit me one day when I was looking at a waveform displayed in high resolution on a digital oscilloscope. At high resolution, the curve of an analog sine wave, for example, is actually converted digitally into thousands of tiny stair-step levels to display the equivalent of what the waveshape looks like - first up, then leveling off, then back down, etc.
If you think of each stair-step as an individual note, then step back and look at it from a distance, the visual effect of the steps becoming a smooth curve is analogous to a lightning-speed string of notes becoming a continuous pitch-bend.
(Midi techies will recognize the reverse of this as the mechanism by which an analog-to-digital converter does its converting - by sampling sound levels umpty-million times a second and assigning to each sample a digital quantity for immortalization in cyberspace, which comes out the other end in such high resolution that you don't hear the individual steps.)

So what was my point? Hmmm (D'OH! I always do that...)

Oyeah! The single-minded pursuit of speed can yield shallow results if that single element of technique is emphasized to the exclusion of the more vital and less-tangible fundamentals of musicality, taste, and melodic sense. I guess another word for that would be: "soul".

This is not to disparage speed - it is in fact one of the most exciting elements in music, and a big part of why SL's music resonates to the core of my being. But for speed to enhance rather than detract, it has to carry with it the caveat of "used properly."
The difference between a player who uses speed properly (i.e. tastefully) and one who does not, is always readily apparent.

Ok, time for me to just shut up. 'Sorry for the soapbox-book...

- G

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Replies:

Re: Marcus Paus ON the net -- A. Davis, 17:16:09 08/19/02 Mon