Now that my initial reaction to this video is over, packed up with my equipment and gone in the van,
I've got some stadium staff talk to share. They're the ones who usually know what happening more than the band,
just like the waitresses and bartenders in the bars, and clubs.
You can't hear the floor tom for the rock drummer. There's no hard rock beat.
The tympani get to add accents, like they always do.
What is that big drum sitting back there on a slant, looking like a huge marching band bass drum?
The guy with the mallet is swinging it with the beat, and he starts off bopping with it,
but he's not hitting the drum. When he does it's like one hit at the end of a section, and not at the start.
That's the first thing that should change to make this a rockin' performance.
If the guy with the slanted drum started hitting it to accent the rock drummers bass tom,
that would add the missing element and give the overall sound a big push.
Better than that, as a symphonic upgrade, it looks big enough to sound like a Japanese kabuki drum,
and that kid should be hammering on it, adding a more global sound to the rhythm,
actually, giving it a rhythm. That's when the tympani can pound out some percussion.
I betcha the rock band would get off on it and start doing that themselves.
Rock bands went through a big gong thing, hanging behind the drummer.
Bar-bands here in Ontario had gongs as big as six feet in diameter,
and the drummer would get up to hammer on them maybe once a night.
Some drummers would be playing and reach up behind them to hit it with a stick,
but while it looked good you never really heard it.
A lot of drummers said they didn't want to hit it with their stick while they played,
because it would start to chip up the decorative art-work, making it worth less as a trade-in.
Gongs got banged more after the band was over, fans and groupies wanting to take a hit.
Hey! At one time it took Neal Peart a half acre of percussion just to play a tom roll.
Chicago started that whole take a percussion break in the middle of a song,
lots of rock bands carrying congas around just for that, and they looked good onstage,
even if the rockers didn't have any r'n'b rhythms or play Sly and the Family Stone songs.
Even Jimi Hendrix had congas at Woodstock. So did Santana.
Pumping up a modern rock band with Japanese kabuki drums could be the next big thing,
until drummers realize that four foot diameter Inuit drums made with whale scrotum,
have a deeper tone and a more sociable affect on their listeners.
This is already happening here in the Niagara Peninsula.
I'm happy to say the marine mammals at Marineland are getting into the music the park plays,
more than ever before, and their trainers are surprised to see them add something finny to their stage routine.
No-one could imagine them taking a little hip-hop and adding some fin flop.
To be hard rock symphony historic here, I think it was Deep Purple who first recorded with a symphony orchestra.
When that came out, a lot of other players were telling me about it,
not only because I was at a Deep Purple rehearsal in Toronto, in between a concert in Montreal,
and a six-nighter in a bar in Buffalo, I sang and played a lot of Deep Purple songs.
Back then, I said that's not a rock band experience, playing in a concert hall,
and a symphony isn't a rock band, doesn't sound like one, can't act like one, and isn't as loud.
Deep Purple would also have to play parts exactly as rehearsed with the symphony,
and lead guitarists play leads the way they want to... never the same way twice.
Who could expect a rock drummer to even remember all the parts as rehearsed?
That never happens. Okay, unless you're Neal Peart. He can play in his sleep. That's what keeps him famous.
I never listened to the Deep Purple with the symphony album.
Just for you, Magle.dk members and unlogged-in viewers, here we go.
I just hafta add. Look at what a symphonic production has to do with a rock drummer.
They've got him enclosed in plastic or glass to isolate him.
Can the guitarist and bassist, or lead singer, go over there to talk with him?
Can the other musicians climb up and jump off the drum riser?
Is the drummer allowed to use his magic carpet to set up his drums?
Can he throw sticks out to the audience, a basic rock band drummer thing?
I didn't even see a restless stripper who only dances during the day,
get up with the drummer and bang along for a while, or rub herself on the gong.
Is this what musical civilization is coming to,
symphonies adding a wild and unpredictable element of amplified sound,
to their carefully written and rehearsed acoustic instrument performances?
Are rock band musicians going to start learning to actually read and write music?
Is the world going to realize that a left-handed person invented stringed instruments,
and everyone is playing guitars upside-down? I hope so.
That's all I'm waiting for. Everyone will have to see that John Watt was there all along.
However, as you can see I know the rock band experience, and saw the first Experience.
I know what will happen.
The stage will be set, all the musicians, both symphonic and electric-symphonic,
will be there. I'll be standing backstage with the worlds' first semi-solid-body guitar,
just waiting, being as happy as I can be. A bassoonist might even ask me out for a date,
saying she could take me to her home and introduce me to her parents,
and show me her rehearsal instrument.
But then, Frederik Magle could appear, making the backstage crowd grow silent and watch,
as he comes up to me, asking if he could play my guitar. I could only be flustered,
and knowing how well-rehearsed he would be, I could only say yes, Master Magle.
That would be worth starting a new forum here, if only I could.
Admin it, that's what the forums here need, a new one. Symphonic-Electric.
The musicians, the performances, the instruments, it's all out there,
and for me, it would be wonderful if it was in here.
I must be getting inspired, I'm free-fonting all over the place.
That would also give me more motivation to finish my first semi-solid-body guitar,
my symphonic-electric instrument. Four octaves on an ebony fingerboard.
I'm still trying to imagine everything I can play and the sounds it can make.
A world-wide precedent for Magle.dk forums. I loved typing that.
It would be an honour, as an offer, and a new millennium offering.