[Dixielandjazz] Musician cloning

[david_haupt@agilent.com]

In the same spirit as chord averaging and song averaging, I offer my observations from last night.

As a volunteer for the local performing arts center, I end up seeing a fair number of artists I would not normally go see.  Last night's show included the early rocker Little Richard.

His band of ten included Richard on piano, another chap with a piano placed way offstage, two drummers playing in as close to lockstep as they could manage, two fellows playing 6 string Fender bass, again in lockstep, two guitars which mainly played in lockstep, although one occasionally took a break from strumming to screech out a few notes individually, and two horn players who rarely put the instruments to their mouths.  I marvelled at the complete duplication of players in the rhythm section.  It finally dawned on me.  This is merely an example of the fine engineering practice of providing redundant components in a system.  In theory, if one component fails, say a drummer, then you have another, identical component, and the net effect of the overall system is as if you had not lost the first component.  These musicians were rather young, below 40 anyway, so I thought they were not all that likely to be near the point of wearout, but one can never guess the lifestyle they 
 partake of.

The two bassists were a truly eery sight.  One played left handed, and one got the uncanny sensation that one was seeing only one player, and his reflection in a mirror.

In OKOM bands, I notice that if there are two performers playing the same instrument, they are usually taking different parts of the tune.  But if they were given the same part, then the band would realize this improvement in reliability, yes?

Dave