perfidy

Now the robots will control our music!

Two readers have now emailed me this article, about the impending launch of an all-digital electric guitar by the venerable Gibson company, father of the electric guitar (thanks, mapgirl and NDR!).

As Gibson Guitar Corp. launches a new digital model, company CEO Henry Juszkiewicz can close his eyes and almost hear the music.

"The defining moment will be when a certain lick in a popular song is out there, and it can't be done with anything else but a digital guitar," Juszkiewicz says. "It only takes one example to really inspire people."

That, Juszkiewicz hopes, will usher in the age of the digital guitar -- much the same way as the Beatles and Rolling Stones inspired a generation of young people to pick up a standard electric guitar in the 1960s.

"It opens a whole new palette of possibilities," Juszkiewicz says. "It's a little bit like hearing stereo as opposed to mono."

....

The advantages of the digital guitar come down to sound and control. For 70 years, the electric guitar pickup has translated string vibrations into an electrical signal fed to an amplifier. The player can control the tone and volume, but output is limited to a mono or stereo signal. The signal itself is noisy by today's standards, and stray frequencies often cause an annoying hum.

"Some of the guitar pickups popular today go back to the 1920s," Juszkiewicz said. "We have not changed a lot in terms of the instrument."

NDR argues that now is "time for revolt" before the electronic guitar does for the bell-bottom-flapping-stack-of-Marshall-tens power chord what the CD did for high fidelity. I'm kinda with him on that, but I find to my surprise that I can't get too worked up.

Here's why. As with compact discs versus vinyl, there is an ineffable warmth to the sound of analog that digital simply cannot match. Listening to Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps" on LP is a fundamentally different experience from listening to it on CD, and don't even get me started about the gritty trebles and woolly bass tones of some early jazz CD transfers. The same debate has already played out among the musicians of the world as the flatter-sounding yet more durable transistor amplifiers have become more common than the rich and gorgeous yet tempermental vacuum-tube varieties. And yet tube amps retain a dedicated (even fanatical) following, and most guitarists play one of a few models, most of which are decades old.

Myself, I don't care. There's a sound for all seasons, and digital guitar will merely open new frontiers. Much of what Gibson's CEO touts as shocking new innovation already exists in the from of guitar synthesizers, which have become increasingly refined and useful over the last decade or so. Moreover, the guitar synth has already found its niche without taking the place of the proverbial Sound Of Les Paul into Marshall Head. Vernon Reid, Elliott Sharp, and a fleet of others have made whole careers out of wrangling their guitars like plectrum-struck keyboards.

At this point I should offer some full disclosure. While on the bass guitar front I am a dedicated purist for four strings (5- and 6- stringers sound thin and grindy), for twelve years I have been the proud owner of a Fender Ultimate Stratocaster featuring new-generation Fender Lace pickups that are as unlike the traditional wire-wound magnet versions as a Mac running OSX is from a Dell running Win98. They sound awesome, bringing that classic bell-clear Strat sound but more so, and with greater sustain since the magnets are much weaker than normal and create less drag on a vibrating string. I'm a dedicated user of effects (mostly cheap) and signal transformers, but only when they are called for. If I had money to burn, I'd buy myself a nice big tube-driven Mesa/Boogie amp with a Line6 Pod preamp and a whole flotilla of rack effects. I would rip out the rhythm part to "Janie's Cryin'" and people five hundred miles away would cower at the sheer sonic power of my awesome riffage.

But if I had money to burn, I'd also buy one of the new Gibsons in a heartbeat. Back when I played every day, I got pretty good at playing two parts at once, palm-muting the lower strings to alter the tone in the lower register at the same time. The new Gibson digital allows you to customize the tone of each string independently, which would let me take that technique to the next level. Freaking sweet!

Think of it this way. The Hammond-B3, the Fender Rhodes, and countless generations of increasingly sophisticated synthesizers have failed to put Steinway and Bosendorfer out of business. To the contrary, Yamaha now offers some models of piano that integrate a digital preamp, processor, and hard drive with the finest in traditional piano construction and tonal shaping. The very best of these are magnificent. Yet most people when buying Yamaha still go for the baby grand, spinet, or upright devoid of the bells and whistles. I think the same will go for guitars. As long as Mexico keeps turning out the pinewood Fender Stratocasters for $300 a pop, and as long as tube amps can be gotten used for $150, Gibson hasn't immanentized the eschaton for heroic rockin' guitars. They've merely ushered in a new era.

Let me be the first to welcome our new six-stringed overlords.

[wik] A side note to NDR: just imagine a world where Joy Division had to record "Love Will Tear Us Apart" or "She's Lost Control" without the benefit of synths. I think in twenty or so years we'll be saying the same thing about the Gibson digital guitar.

As the May 17th deadline approaches after which gay couples will be able to wed in my fair Commonwealth, Governer Mitt Romney has pulled what could charitably be seen as a bozo move.

Romney, who has done everything in his power to stop the marriages from going forward (which is of course his right), has invoked a 1913 state law that bars out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. That seems like a reasonable stopgap, an attempt to mitigate the effects of couples from other states marrying here and going back home, forcing a painful and rancorous re-examination of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution. Unfortunately for Mitt, his problem is with gay marriage itself rather than its political consequences, and the law in question was originally passed to ban miscegenation by barring interracial couples from out of state from marrying.

Furthermore, straight couples from out of state are not barred-- and the Governer has not instructed that they be barred-- from getting married in Massachusetts, though the law is still on the books. It's just the gays, like the blacks used to be. To my mind, it's more than a little hypocritical to revive an antiquated law whose intent everyone today would agree is fundamentally immoral in defense of an ostensibly moral crusade.

With this in mind, I challenge all comers to tell me with a straight face that gay marriage, complicated as the question is, is not a civil rights issue with strong ties to the past.

Hat tip to brdgt.

See if you can spot what's wrong in this short piece from the New York Times:

SUDAN REGAINS HUMAN RIGHTS SEAT: Sudan was elected to another three-year term on the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights, but the United States delegation, citing allegations of ethnic cleansing in Sudan's western Darfur region, walked out of the meeting before the vote. The deputy representative of Sudan, Omar Bashir Manis, accused the United States of "shedding crocodile tears," and said American forces had committed atrocities against prisoners and civilians in Iraq. Sudan ran uncontested, as one of four nations chosen by the African Regional Group to fill four allotted vacancies on the commission. Daniel B. Schneider (NYT)

Now that's rich. Not only is the Sudan home to a continuing human-slavery industry, and not only has the Sudan been the site of various atrocities, imbroligos, attempted genocides, and general antihumanitarian mayhem for the past fifty years, but they are also a member of the UN's Human Rights council and have the temerity to claim that the actions of some US soldiers and civilians are worthy of scorn in comparison. The difference between us and them: we're punishing soldiers for humiliating and torturing POWs; they're harboring slave traders. Good for our delegates for walking out of that vote.

Not that all this is surprising or anything; it just gets my goat. When the Sudan can score hits off your human rights record, you know it's been a bad week.

What did Michael Jackson say to Woody Allen?

Can I give you two fives for a ten?

GeekLethal put me on the trail of a Yahoo(!) news piece on a new fad: fantasy record labels. Universal's distribution arm, UMVD, has launched the program among retailers whom they deal with with the aim of raising awareness of new Universal product. Sure it's a cynical ploy to earn retail footprint, but what a concept!

Here's the deal. Much like with fantasy sports, you do research into bands, tour schedules, bios, etc., pick a roster, and compete against your peers for fabulous prizes. The team who charts the highest and sells the most units at the end of the 36-week season wins. But unlike my fantasy baseball league, in which I stand to win a few bucks if I win the season, winners in UMVD's SMASH (Scoring Music and Selecting Hits) program get consumer electronics.

This sounds like an idea that has found its time. A friend of mine had this idea a few years back but, lacking programming acumen and overweening ambition, we never got it off the ground. I suck mightily at A&R, but I always thought it would be fun to see if I could pick the winners out of a crop of upcoming releases.

The most interesting stuff will happen when UMVD takes this to the public. I'm willing to bet that SMASH will become something like an Iowa Electronic Market for music, except with less war and more exposed thongs. I can't wait to sign up.

As if our usual stuff weren't moronic enough, please take a moment out of your day to pay homage to pure trash genius: The Exorcist as re-enacted by bunnies. Go see! The power of Christ compels you!

Thanks to GeekLethal for the notion.

The main Ministry computer is off taking care of its own private matters today (note to self: buy helmet and JDAM), so I have been deputized to take care of some Ministry business in its stead.

So... ladies and gentlemen, if you will direct your attention to the left-hand side of your screen, you will see that the Ministry welcomes two new weblogs to the blogroll, Patton's Opinion8, and Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution. The latter, being an econoblog, is a sop to Minister Ross' penchant for numbers and the games they play.

One further note.... "Calpundit" is now "Political Animal." Same Kevin Drum, slick new high-end digs.

You may notice that, on the whole, the blogroll skews decidedly rightward. Part of that stems from Founding Minister Buckethead's conservative predelictions, and my own less fervently held centrism (which Buckethead describes as 'drifting in the great Brownian sea of the American center'), but the rest of the story is that many lefty bloggers just ain't that great, and if they're sometimes great, they ain't funny (notable exceptions include Norbizness and certain members of Crooked Timber and Begging to Differ). Can anybody recommend some great and funny leftward bloggers?

This concludes Ministry business for today. Your compliance is appreciated. Indeed, it is expected.

Beginning with one of the best ledes I've seen in a long time,

Christian teens are stealing Jesus music

this Seattle Times article tells the sordid tale of Christians pirating inspirational music.

The findings were a jolt to many in the evangelical music industry, who expected churchgoing teens to be mindful of the commandment that states, "Thou shalt not steal."

"I'm surprised and disappointed that the behavior isn't that ardently different between Christians and non-Christians," said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, the leading trade group for evangelical music.

While downloading a Metallica song and putting a metaphorical finger in the eye of Lars Ulrich might give one a certain frisson of excitement; stealing the Word of the Lord should provoke a slightly bigger "hey, wait a damn minute" from the conscience. Or at least make you reassess your commitment to the moral system that motivated the musicians whose music you're stealing.

[hat tip: Sophont.]

I'm having a hard time reconciling battlefield success in the War on Terror with the loss of the cultural or social contest.

Recently, BBC reported that Santiago Cathedral in Spain will remove a statue depicting St. James, aka "Moorslayer", to avoid upsetting non-Catholics: "Among the reasons for the move is to avoid upsetting the 'sensitivities of other ethnic groups' ". Similarly, a hospital in Norway removed a mural of Winnie the Pooh characters, which included Piglet, from its children's wing for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. Meanwhile, a town in Michigan caved instantly to local Muslims' demands for amplified calls to prayer across the city in what Muslim leaders there called "a pioneer city for the whole United States".

In other recent news, rampaging Muslims destroyed and defiled 29 Orthodox churches and monasteries along with 800 homes in Kosovo. Don't hold your breath waiting for arrests. And just two years ago, terrorists of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade shot their way into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and used it as a fortress for weeks before ultimately surrendering to the IDF. They were exiled.

So.

Wherever or whenever Muslims care to defile, destroy, or disrupt non-Islamic religious structures is fine. Whether it's armed bandits, marauding mobs, or craven domestic "leaders", the result is the same. There is little coverage, little concern, and zero outrage from international or domestic organizations. Apparently, Muslims can dictate not only the terms of public expression, but affect what goes on in within religious structures outside of Islam, as this statue business illustrates.

As a thought experiment, consider what would happen if Catholic militants stormed one of the 150,000 holiest sites of Islam and used it as a strongpoint for a month- under arms, sleeping, eating, defecating, urinating within it; or the local Protestant sect in Riyadh demanded that church bells ring to summon worshippers; or for that matter, lodge a complaint with the government of Turkey and explain that those huge minarets at the Hagia Sofia "upset your sensibilities".

Terrorists and jihadis are wasting a whole lot of human capital, effort, and material in fighting the US military. Instead of training, fighting, and dying, all they had to do was move here and demand everyone else accomodate them. No muss, no fuss, and guaranteed effective.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pops the Bush "tax cut" hot air balloon. I don't know who these guys are, but at first blush, their numbers look a lot like my own do. They've got somewhat different inflation-adjusted income figures over time, but their time scale is different from mine.

Bottom line is this: The Bush tax cuts are doing exactly what they were designed to do: Benefit the political donor class (to borrow a descriptive phrase from David Cay Johnson). Nobody seriously believed that tax cuts for the wealthy would create jobs; twenty years of recent history means we know that's just bullshit.

This whole tax policy debate bears astonishing similarity to arguments about smoking and health. Sure, we know now that it's bad, and you were a dope to ever think that it was good for you. But in the seventies and eighties the jury was out as far as health effects went...the tobacco profiteers maintained their public ignorance about the health effects and went to extremes to ensure that the debate stayed confusing.

Today's "conservative" is reduced, in his pro-tax cut rhetoric, to vague protestations of "it's just wrong to tax", or "the rich people will leave, and we'll all be in trouble".

One of the ideas behind democracy is that if we all vote in our self-interest, what comes out of the sum of that is policy that benefits to most people. What is utterly mysterious to me is how many otherwise decent and smart people vote for a party whose fiscal policies amount to stabbing that voter in the back.

Our cultural clash with Radical Islam has taught us a great deal about a spectrum with politics on one end and religion on the other. If we presume that facts were ever available to support a position, knocking away those facts one by one results in a shift to the religious end of that spectrum, if one continues to support those positions with the same level of fervor...