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Not so at the Music'Expo 95. I mean, can you see somebody going all the way down to the Porte de Versailles, to 'browse' grand pianos or sets of cymbals?
No. There are only two types at the Music Exposition; sellers of instruments of music and performers looking for new tools.
There's something about a varnished black grand, that
makes grunge cringe.
Everything that can be demoed is - not by the sellers, but by the potential customers. Hey, over here: try out this baby grand; over there, try out this very understated electric guitar, and further over there; this new drum configuration: and all, just all of it, amplified to the nth power, with appropriate industrial-grade speakers. The kind that used to be used for the monthly atom-bomb alert test.
Glitzy is what drums look like, even if they sound like
something big, round, hollow, and hard.
At first you might not be aware that you are only hearing a part of this performance-oriented expo. Behind each major stand, there is, a.... sound room. These are tiny, usually white boxes, with dark windows, and inside there are these dim figures doing mysterious things with these mysterious machines that look like black ironing boards outfitted with piano keys.
Then, when you have noticed one of these little white cave-like boxes, you will also become aware that they are.... vibrating.
Another feature of the Music'Expo: At the expo grounds at the Porte de Versailles, there is a lot of ambient traffic noice; from the rue Vaugirard, from the boulevard Victor, from the Peripherique that goes right over the expo site, and from the Metro line running underneath it. All this background noise you do not hear at this expo. At the Salon de Livre, yes; but not here, today.
I am not sure quite where the divide lies, between traditional instruments like the brasses, the wooden strings... and the electric guitars, that you might find together in a complete music store. In Paris, the amplified stuff is located in the streets below Pigalle, and the unamplified are around the rue de Rome, just west of Gare St Lazare. Both in the 9th arrondissement, they are a short walking distance apart.
At the Music'Expo, except for some pianos, some brasses, some acoustic guitars, and, of course, drums - most traditional instruments seem to be missing.
I think the reason is, musicians have been fooling around with electronics for twenty years. A computer's word processor can be replaced with a pencil and a piece of brown wrapping paper. A violin, on the other hand can be, and has been, replaced by a microscopic computer chip; that can simulate one violin, or forty; with echo, choruses; tempo changes, built-in out-of-sync, everthing a musician with imagination might want to do, but not be able to do, obviously, with one violin. This musical instrument on a chip is not scorned by musicians - far from it.
I can hear you non-musicians out there thinking, 'Give me unplugged any day.' You see it on the great clip-show, MTV. Hey, it can sound pretty good sometimes, can't it? So what do you think these 'plugged-in' musicians are up to? Do you think they go the the Music'Expo with a diskette of pre-recorded data, slide it into a synth's diskdrive, and jam?
No, it ain't that way at all. Nosir.
A synth is the soda-fountain of musical instruments. Big or small, they can have 128 varieties of every instrument you can think of, in one box. Think about that for a minute. Then remember that the whole thing has a clock in it. And memories. And effects. Hundreds of them. A musician's dream machine. Just talk to a guy in a synth shop some time. You might not be able to whistle, even in the bathroom, but these things can make you dream too.
Okay, they are too much. You have to use restraint. You hear all kinds of examples, every time you turn on the radio, of lack of restaint. Less can be more. It brings us back to simple acoustic instruments, unplugged. But you can't play them any better than you can whistle, can you?
That is why musicians are happy with instruments on chips and amplifiers.
So why do some musicians play electric guitars, or drums, or saxophones - when they could play whole orchestras?
These instruments are sexy. They feel good in the hands. To a drummer, those drum-heads arrayed in front of him are like a smorgasboard of sounds, to be played like tickling... the strings of a bass. And you know what they look like.
So there you are. At the Music'Expo, as a 'browser,' you are out of sync.
Go out and buy a little synth, and come back next year for more. That 'something more' might turn out to be something sexy. Whatever you do, don't try and tell me puritans don't have fun playing music.
It's other-worldly. Watch musicians sometime when they're jamming. They don't say, "Hey, Frank, lets loop that last fun bit a couple of times." No, they can't 'talk' out loud - besides there's no time - they half-lower an eyelid, or lift a shoulder, some almost imperceptible body thing - and the message gets received, and they do the loops - and it works! They all know it. They look happy, don't they?
It's odd nobody has tried to outlaw this sort of behaviour. And the band played on.
Return to Richard Erickson's Paris Journal
Updated 06/95