Why I Can't Stand Amanda Palmer as a Human Being

It's been eight months since my last update here, which coincidentally was a review of an Amanda Palmer show.  Since then, her got to do a TED talk on her crowd funding artistic lifestyle.  I've seen it linked everywhere and praised to the heavens all over the place.  And each time, I glared angrily at my news feed but said nothing, because who goes starting shit on other people's news feed?  Well if you give me five dollars up front, I'll tell you why I think Amanda's business model sucks for music.  You'll receive a thanks at the end of my rant and a sticker valued at fifty cents. 

If you're not aware what all the fuss was about, Amanda Palmer did a Kickstarter to crowd fund her new album.  Fan support was overwhelming, and she made what I would describe as a fuckton of money.  Over a million dollars.  So far, so good.  The controversy came when it came out that Amanda Palmer was soliciting volunteer musicians to play on her tour dates.  She claimed that, despite making 10 times the Kickstarter goal, she simply could not afford to actually pay her musicians.  Steve Albini had one of the more notable rants. 

I'm not saying that Amanda Palmer is an idiot or mismanaged her funds like Albini.  I think she managed them just the way she wanted to.  And I think it's terrible for music, art, and whatever tatters of value labor still holds in this country. 

The new face of anti-labor aristocracy

So we see that Amanda Palmer is able to get quality - and they were quality, she had them doing audition tapes and everything - performers on a volunteer basis. Because no one gets paid other than Amanda, these musicians are either giving up paying gigs or hobbyists to take this job. Thus, these are people who can afford to give out their services for free, and considering music is a notoriously hard profession to get by in, that's a small subset of the professional music community. And poor people are the people who need not apply. Anyone who wants to go out on tour with Amanda in the future has to justify their paycheck against someone willing to do the same work, of similar quality, free. If you were Amanda, who would you take?

So there go like five or six touring jobs a year and the average salary for musicians decreases just a little bit. But that's really not the end of it. Say Sir Paul McCartney reads an article on this, and he says "Well that's brilliant! If I do this, I don't have to split any of my take of the door money! I'll make like $2 million a show." So Paul McCartney starts soliciting volunteers.

Yeah, you'd still pay to play with him.

Paul McCartney's ad hits the internet, and well, what musician WOULDN'T want to play with Sir Paul, arguably the most beloved musician on the face of the planet. He would have a line of very talented musicians a mile long signing up to play his gigs. Because people would literally pay to play with Paul McCartney. And then top tier studio musicians have to compete with the rate of free. And the average earnings of professional musicians who aren't already megastars again drops.

Prince notices. Sting notices. Madonna notices. Lady Gaga notices. Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, Bruno Mars, Ceelo Green, Katy Perry, etc etc. Suddenly the lifestyle of the working gigging professional musician no longer exists. They're competing against competent amateurs willing to work for free - there's no way they're making a living wage anymore. You're a megastar or you're not a professional musician. The only people who can now afford to make music are the ones who are not financially dependent on it.

Congrats, Amanda. You just destroyed the lives and hopes and dreams of millions of musicians everywhere. You've made it impossible for us to find the next Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, or, fuck, Amanda Palmer.  You've made music into fucking polo.

In Amanda's world, this is all Hendricks would have had to eat.

I hope you're right well pleased with yourself, Amanda. Maybe next time you'd think to pay your musicians a little extra for the work and time and knowledge that they give you, and instead make the lives of musicians everywhere just a little bit better.

For the record, Amanda is married to a man whose net worth is estimated at $20 million. She could have funded this album out of pocket. Neil could have given it to her as a birthday gift. Or a "happy Tuesday, we're rich" present.  It's why even the initial kickstarter just reeked of exploitation to me. There are people who actually need Kickstarter to get their dreams off the ground. Amanda needed Kickstarter because why pay for things your much less well off fanbase will give you for free?  Why take the financial risk when she can just ask her fans to take it for her?  She doesn't just crowd source her musicians and production budget; she applies this same ethos to accommodations, couch surfing in her fan's living rooms (see the TED talk), giving them the gift of her presence, when she has more than enough money to afford a bus / hotel / pay her fans for their accommodations.

Amanda's no folk hero. She's a woman of means living off the back of her fans for no other reason than because she can.

Amanda Palmer Concert Review

I am vindicated.  Amanda Palmer played "Call Me Maybe."  Instant four stars on that alone.

Not really.  But sort of.

Solid concert experience.  It dragged on a little more and was a little overblown in its own artistic self-importance, but entertaining and engaging.  The level of musicianship was pretty much top notch, especially for the whole goth punk cabaret thing they've got going on.  But while Steve Vai's (far superior) musicianship was numbing, the Grand Theft Orchestra's musicianship was enthralling.  Probably because they were fun, witty, and musically concise.  But then, brevity soul wit, so that's redundant.  It shows that you don't really need the thirteen hour practice sessions for forty years to be an amazing musician though, so that was inspiring.

On the other hand, I think they were somewhat over distorted - the harmonics were often difficult to hear over the muddy layers - and Amanda is certainly not the best technical singer, though she is quite charismatic.  She's a pretty good song writer when she's not being overly serious though, and her band carried the rest of the show. 

"Pictures or It Didn't Happen" was the highlight for me.

Not paying her string or horn section was definitely the low point.  Pay your f*&%ing musicians, lady.

Guitar Practice Week Six

We're already up to week six.  That 's almost a month and a half.  I didn't have a lesson last week due to surprise Amanda Palmer concert, which I might try to review at some point this week, and this week I had to cancel for Gordon Webster and Rosh Hashana.  Gordon's probably worth it.

So where am I at today, a month and a half into my guitar adventure?  I've got all the natural open major chords down and most of the natural open minor chords.  I'm pretty darn close to getting barre chords down, and I understand their theory.  I've begun my first forays into power chords and single note lines, and those are coming along.  I'm fairly confident with the major scale, though I will continue to work and work and work at it.

More importantly, my ear training is drastically improving.  I'm beginning to reliably hear major seconds and thirds, perfect fourths and fifths, and octaves quite reliably - at least going up.  Going down, I've only gotten major thirds down so far.  The secret: hearing songs that start on that interval in my head.

• Major Second - Do Ray Me, this one is easy.
• Major Third - When the Saints
• Perfect Fourth - Here Comes the Bride, Chariots of Fire
• Perfect Fifth - So Far Away
• Octave - Somewhere Over the Rainbow
• Descending Major Third - If I Were a Bell

Now I just need to add songs to my head for other intervals.  I'm also becoming better at distinguishing between major and minor third, but I still tend to make mistakes with either very high or very low root notes.  I'm going to keep practicing.

I've decided that ear training is the single most important thing I could be working on, so my progress there is really heartening.  I might become a real musician yet.

Side note: I've been pretty much exclusively using my electric guitar at this point.  It looks and feels so much better than the old Epiphone.

No Lesson this Week

Amanda Palmer concert instead.  Two lessons next week though, so hopefully that will make up for it.

It will also give me more time to practice.  I bet I can get "Where is My Mind" totally aced by next Tuesday.  Which means I'll have time to work on other things.  I'm thinking scales, singing, and ear training.

Ear training is going super slowly right now.  I can do it all easily enough from C, but as soon as we take away the anchor note, I'm practically clueless.  I'm going to work on this as my primary project for the week, though, and I'll report back my findings here.

My lesson next Wednesday is focused on ear and voice work, so that will hopefully help.

My other main project: making my strumming very even and clean.  I want it be able to sound exactly the same every measure of the strumming pattern.

Weekend Practice Wrap Up

So Saturday ... I played for six hours.  That's right, six.  The results were palpable.  You could literally palp them.

"Where is My Mind" is like almost working.  The lead part and chord parts are 95% there individually, and I'm about 80% there to stringing them all together.  Since this is by far the most difficult material I've tackled, I think that's pretty good.

This means that my barre chords are coming along.  The F Major shape is no longer a challenge.  Like at all.  And I can hold it much better than before.  I now have the strength to do two or three choruses of "Creep" before having to quit, instead of just one.

Finger exercises are coming together.  By focusing on relaxing, I was able to blast through the first couple finger exercises Tony had given me.  And I've almost aced the G Major scale already, thanks to LOTS of practice.  My technique: learn it one note at a time.  Keeping it simple and mastering the first three notes, then the first four, then the first five, etc., made learning it cleanly far more manageable.

I've almost got the problem chords in "Autumn Leaves" working.  I'll be able to play the chords all the way through at tempo in a week or two if this keeps up. 

I need to watch out for repeated use injuries.  My wrist was fairly sore by the end of the marathon session.  That shouldn't be happening and is not a good thing.  Also, my fingertips were WAY too sore to even touch the guitar on Sunday, though I tried anyway.

I'm excited.  I think I'm on my way to becoming an actual guitarist.

Unfortunately, I need to cancel my lesson on Tuesday due to surprise Amanda Palmer tickets.  I'm okay with this.

I Will Never Be Steve Vai... and That's Okay.

So I Saw Steve Vai Friday Night ...

And boy, what mixed feelings.  It's amazing to watch and be impressed by his technical mastery of his instrument, but it's just not as easy to care.  Some thoughts:

• If you start at eleven, where do you go from there?  Vai's playing lacked the dynamic range to make the virtuosic work exciting.  It was like listening to a Bach piece - the whole thing is so complicated that you never truly realize it's complexity.  Unfortunately, Vai's music lacked the melodic appeal of Bach's music.  As Vai's appeal is essentially as a virtuoso musician, he should be doing everything in his power to emphasize his virtuosity.  This includes playing like a normal person sometimes.
• Keep It Simple, Stupid.  He said a lot, but there were multiple place where even I realized that he could have said practically the same thing in a more concise way, and I think I would have enjoyed it more.
• Keep your playing human - he was at his most interesting when he was singing along to the notes he was playing or when playing simple clear melodies.  The shredding?  Totally not that interesting.
• I have a new found respect for Eddie Van Halen.  His more melodic approach to the same style made for far more memorable guitar work.  Whilst Vai is undoubtedly more technically skilled, it's obvious why Eddie is the one who attained superstardom. 
• Very few musicians have enough ideas to single-handedly carry an entire two hour concert, no matter how proficient they are.  This is why you have supporting musician.  The concert was most interesting when Vai was interacting with the musicians around him.  Unfortunately, these moments were too few.  He has a truly all star backing crew - his failure to utilize them was his undoing.  It's why his instrumental porn grew stale and the Flecktones, Maceo Parker, John Coltrane, etc. remain consistently fresh.

The Number One Thing I Learned:
I can be the amazing musician I want to become without needing to exhaustively master my instrument.  What I do need: A good sense of dynamics, harmony, rhythm, and melody; a moderate technical proficiency; an ear for music; and the ability to play well with others.
I can do those things, possibly with only a few years of diligent study. 
I will never be Steve Vai, but I don't have to be.  Which is great, because I don't really want to be him anyway.

A Wild Steve Vai Appears

So the bad news is that I probably won't get my intended practice time in today...

The good news?  I see Steve Vai tonight.  For free.  Because Kate is a bamf and spent all day hanging out with him making a music video.

Sometimes, life is awesome.

I imagine I will be extra motivated to practice tomorrow.