The Grid-Fuzzy Pickles

While having coffee this morning, I listened to “Canadian Sunset” from the Danny Gatton record “Redneck Jazz“. Gatton’s playing never fails to stun me. This particular track features Buddy Emmons on steel guitar as well. The two of these guys seemed to have a special musical interplay. It’s a nice piece of music. Emmons plays a lot of shimmering harmonic stuff on the head; very subtle, ethereal.

I made a trip to Branson yesterday to buy some jeans. I made an attempt to listen to music on the radio. Sometimes I will just keep hitting the seek button ’til something catches the jaded ear.

It occurs to me that in most every type of mainstream music; the drums sound boring to me. To me, if the drums are boring the rest of it will be boring as well.

Everything is “on the grid”.

In most music editing software, a recorded track is represented by a horizontal picture of a waveform that looks kind of like a fuzzy pickle.

Each instrument or voice has a different looking fuzzy pickle that is determined by the timbre, length, frequency and loudness of the notes being played or sung. The bass part is usually a fat fuzzy pickle, a flute part would normally be skinny. If you look at the computer screen as the music plays, the fuzzy pickles all dance and move and go by from left to right. They are stacked horizontally as well. 1 fuzzy pickle for each track you record.

So, you have all these fuzzy pickle moving horizontally and you also have vertical lines that appear. They correspond to the tempo of the song. The vertical lines are “the grid”. The grid is used for editing. If one of the fuzzy pickles is in the wrong place (if somebody sings/plays to soon or to late), you just move it to the correct vertical line on the grid.

In order to use the grid in this manner you must first establish a rigid tempo structure. Once you have the rigid tempo structure in place, you can have the humans play along with the rigid structure. You can have them play to beeps, clicks, groovy ersatz drum sounds any number of things.

The grid is not human. The grid works on principles of zero tolerance-zero variation of a basic pulse.

Once you have all of the fuzzy pickles placed in their proper spots on the grid, you can then start manipulating each one in a number of other ways in order to make the collective group of fuzzy pickles more pleasing to the discerning ear of the modern consumer. Some pickles are too loud, some too soft. Some go on too long, others aren’t long enough. Fuzzy pickles generated by humans are often a little out of tune; this can be corrected as well.

The main thing is to get them on the grid. The grid is useful for orgnization as well as manipulation of the fuzzy pickles.

The grid is everywhere. It is in places where you would expect, like techno, rap and hip-hop music. These are types of music where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear a human being playing drums. The grid is present in places where you would expect to hear a human playing drums too, like rock and roll, country, blues and jazz (especially “smooth” jazz).

The trick is to just have the human drummer aware of the grid while he is playing. You have the drummer play along with a version of the basic pulse that the grid is aligned to. If the human drummer is a little off in spots why, his fuzzy pickles can be moved around same as anybody else’s.

You can also have the drummer hit each drum and cymbal really well one time. The idea here is to get one really nice fuzzy pickle for each drum/cymbal, then you can copy/paste said fuzzy pickle and place it wherever you desire on the grid. If you use this method, you can avoid spending a lot of time with the actual drummer too. If you don’t like this drummers kick drum pickle, you can replace it with another pickle from another drummer. The possibilities are endless as long as you are on the grid.

As a result, some records that sound like there is drummer back there smacking away, don’t have an actual human playing at all. Nobody is actually hitting anything. It’s touch football.

The grid is here and it’s here to stay. Evidently, most people like the grid. People are accustomed to the grid. They are comfortable with the grid. If you took the grid away, it would cause unrest and possibly, chaos.

There are musicians, recording engineers and even record producers that resist the grid. There will always be a small percentage of those who do not wish to conform. The grid doesn’t worry about them; their numbers grow smaller, day by day.

The grid presses on without cease. Click Click Click Click………

The grid is digital, it knows no emotion, it will not falter. Click Click Click Click….

The grid will not succumb to mere forces of nature. Click Click Click Click………

The grid is all powerful. All knowledge is contained within the grid. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

All hail the mighty grid. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK