Along with about 100,00 other people, I attended IBMA in Raleigh at the end of September. I’m reliably informed that it wasn’t 100 million people but it certainly felt that way. Crowds were a big part of the theme this year and that’s great, because crowds of people at IBMA means crowds pf people loving Bluegrass music and that is always going to be a positive thing. Crowds of people also meant I was statistically more likely to know some of them, and there is no greater thrill for someone who is usually the only Bluegrass fan in the room (or maybe even in the country) to bump into friends from various camps and festivals. Seeing these people in the flesh instead of by email and Facebook which have become the normal means of communication these days was terrific. Getting to hug my teacher, who I usually only see by Skype, right after he won a Momentum Award was also a big thrill. (Yay for Nate Lee!)
But of course the whole point of IBMA is to hear some great music and I very definitely did that. There were too many musical high points to name them all though so I’m not going to name any of them. Instead I’ll skip on over to a somewhat secondary (to some) area, namely the trade hall.
When you enter the trade hall in Raleigh you enter on ground level and the hall is on the basement level, so there is a moment when you stand on the landing and look out over a sea of Bluegrass bliss. The buzz of conversation, the sound of instruments being tried out, and the happy noise of people chatting to friends, buying things and generally having a great time washes up over you. I felt as though I had found the Promised Land. This Promised Land is better than the Biblical one though because THIS one lets you buy things. I swear I heard my credit cards whimper as I got onto the elevator and descended into the hall.
There was so much to buy and try that I had to return multiple times. (Well ok, I also kept returning because I knew there was I chance I would bump into Darol Anger at the Dudley Violin stand where my fiddle spent the week being a demonstration instrument. And yes, my stalking techniques worked and I did finally bump into him!) I managed to mostly avoid buying any instruments, but I did fill my luggage with some choice items I’d like to tell you about.
Obviously anyone who plays a stringed instrument needs strings, and so I bought lots. Nothing so simple as steel core or nylon core and would you like to try our non-whistling E string these days though. Apparently string technology has got to the point where I virtually need to know which side of the hill the spruce in my fiddle grew on to be able to pick the best strings for it. That’s pretty complicated for someone like me who has a bad memory for details but I suppose it’s worth it because if I pick the right strings I am reliably informed by all the nice string vendors that I will be playing just like a professional any day now. I guess my fiddle’s spruce grew on the wrong side of the hill because I sound just like I always did with the new strings, only a bit poorer. Now that I think about it, that IS the way professional Bluegrass musicians sound so the vendors told me the truth after all.
Less obvious, for a fiddle player, was the need to buy a capo incorporating the latest technology. But since I sometimes play really bad rhythm guitar I discussed it with my credit cards and they decided I could go ahead and purchase one. All three of my new capos are very spiffy but they have not improved my guitar playing in any way. I guess a badly played G chord just capos up to a badly played A chord no matter how good the technology. Sigh. Perhaps one day they’ll make a moving capo which slides itself on and off and decides which fret it needs to sit on and which chord I need to be playing based on my past playing efforts, similar to the way Netflix decides what movies I should watch. Let’s hope it’s soon.
Tuners of all sorts abounded of course. There were tuners which sit neatly on the scroll and some which sit messily there too; tuners which sit down on the body of the fiddle; tuners which sit on the guitar headstock or on the back of the headstock; tuners which sit upside down on the headstock (that one really appealed to this Australian) or even tuners which swivel their display depending on how you move your guitar-that one made me feel a bit sea-sick actually. Strangely there were even tuners suitable for banjos but I did think that was taking things too far. There were metronomes available as well and of course we all love those so they were selling like, um, metronomes.There was a nice variety available though, for those few who really did want one, even metronomes with built-in tuners (and tuners with built-in metronomes too). Oddly I didn’t buy one of those but obviously I plan to start using one any day now. What there wasn’t were metronomes which would make you play in time or tuners which would actually help you play in tune, which seems like they would corner the market if only someone would make them.
Except there’s no need for that Holy Grail of tuners because also available in Bluegrass Nirvanah was a microphone with autotune software appropriate for Bluegrass music. Being the sceptic I am I hung out and listened to the sales pitch a bit. Sounded great actually, no need to ever actually learn how to play in-tune again, just set the software up and always play through the provided microphone. Wow, Holy intonation Batman. I was just about to buy one when I realized that 1) I could only afford this or food next month and in-tune but hungry didn’t seem like the best option and 2) Bluegrass is generally acoustic music so turning up at a jam with my microphone, power board, extension cables, computer, software and an out of tune fiddle probably wasn’t going to make me popular. Perhaps again the professionals who use sound systems all the time are the only ones who will benefit from this technology.
With all of that technology available to make us sound better I got to wondering why more people don’t. Sound better that is. What keeps the average player sounding average? My teachers all say silly things like “you don’t practice enough”, but I’m fairly sure there is more to it than that. Could it be that professional musicians are hiding the perfect technology from us non-professionals? Could that be why there were times when only the professionals were allowed into the trade hall? Were they selling the SPECIAL technology to the professionals during those secret times? I bet they were. If average players were allowed to have this technology imagine how wonderful life would be for us!
Imagine if there was some sort of technological doo-hicky that could help us remember tunes, always play them in tune, with perfect rhythm, perfect style, sounding just exactly like our favorite professionals. Imagine what you could do with all those “wasted” hours spent practicing and improving your craft. How much better would the thrill of sounding amazing through no skill of our own feel than those tiny little improvements that happen day by day with the old-fashioned way of becoming better? Imagine how much fun making music would be if you didn’t have to put any effort into it. If all you had to do was decide you wanted to play something and magically it just happened at the touch of a button wouldn’t life be better? Exactly, who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t be prepared to pay at least $50 for something that did all of those things for us, you’d have to be crazy to turn down an offer like that. So with that in mind, I’d like to sell you this amazing gadget I stole from a professional musician while they were taking a nap at IBMA. I promise you it will do exactly everything I just said and more besides. And really, $50 for an ipod is pretty cheap right 😉
