grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
The point that you were making earlier about who defines what's real and what isn't real had me thinking about how some of the instruments we now take for granted came about and that's one of those aspects of humanity that I often find myself marvelling at.
The bass guitar was meant to be simply an amplified version of the double bass. Few people forsaw it completely shunting the double bass aside.
Electric pianos weren't really meant to be instruments with their own unique sound. They were meant to be a way of having an easilly portable piano on stage which was why they were originally called stage pianos.
The mellotron {and it's forerunner, the Chamberlain} was invented by an American guy called Harry as an instrument to be played at home for family entertainment, that could play back taped samples of whatever instrument was recorded onto the tapes it housed. But it ended up helping to revolutionize certain sonic aspects of 60s and early 70s rock and pop and few people that used it tried to emulate the sounds of an actual orchestra even though they often used orchestral settings.
The synthesizer had an interestingly vague, almost directionless, early few years until the likes of Stevie Wonder, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Jan Hammer started utilizing it as an instrument in it's own right with it's own sound, rather than as an imitator.
The early drum machines and syndrums sounded
'kin awful as actual drums. But when certain bods used them percussively and texturally rather than as an attempt to be drums, they took on a life of their own. And the same thing happened with 90s R&B and rap drums once sampling had become de rigeur.And even the beloved electric guitar was very much the poor relation to the acoustic initially. It's main reason for existence was to be heard in jazz outfits above the noise of all those horns and drums, a little rhythmic accompaniment, not dominant, maybe the odd solo......It was rarely the dominant instrument in 50s rock'n'roll. That honour fell to the piano and saxophone.
Compression in recording and it's benefits on drums, bass guitar and other instruments was accidental. Compression was designed for radio before recording had taken off in a big way.
Even sample enhancing of drums isn't new. As far back as the 70s, engineers would have objects whacked to the beat of the snare and add the sound in mixing for extra 'presence' and wallop. And what with layering of guitars and adding synth bass to bass tracks and even shadowing the guitar with organ for extra body {the organ by itself was inaudible}, the notion of artifice and using things differently to what they're designed for is a long established one.
I first became aware of VSTis when I read Charlie Watts talking about how, in the 60s, if you wanted a tabla, you'd go to the Asian music circle and rent an Indian guy to play them but nowadays {this was 2003} you'd use samples. It wasn't so much because the actual player wasn't available; they were the Rolling Stones after all. Any player they wanted, they could get. But some of these 'fake' instruments have textures of their own that the real thing won't necessarilly bring you. In the case of tablas, I have both. I have more scope and love the sound of the sampled ones. And the actual ones, I use to get a very different sound to the way I've always heard them sound when played by people who know what they're doing !
