What if we ditched electricity and just played?

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Original title: « What if we did without electricity? »

I’ve been asking myself this question for several months now…
What if we did without electricity?

What if we did without the help of electric tools to alter the sounds (more precisely) of our didgeridoos, our sounds and our music more broadly?

Well yeah.
I’ve been thinking about it for several weeks and asking myself the question.
I’ll take as my latest example the really beautiful video and the really beautiful sound from @guillaume.le_mer Honestly, the breath is nice, slow, meditative.. but amplified with even a bit of reverb if I’m not mistaken.

And then I ask myself: but why?!!!
What would this breath be without the reverb? It would probably be really good, I think. So what?

It’s didgeridoo, not electronic or techno music (which are electronic music by definition).

Why not just settle for a pure, original sound and breath (whatever the player’s level).
Just a piece of wood and someone blowing into it without fuss, without pretense.

I’m not saying this about you Guillaume, your track is really cool, but I’m asking myself the question more broadly when I see the large number of didgeridoo players (or jaw harp players, it works the same way) who transform their sounds thanks to machines.

So it’s pretty, yes okay, we agree on that point but…

Amplification I can understand, especially on stage, but transformation?

In the same way, I’m questioning samplers and loops.
They produce really cool stuff, that’s for sure. (like Zalem, like Adèle and many others).
But I can’t help but think that it’s again the gear compensating for a single player’s physical inability to do multiple (too many?) things at once…

Anyway, I hope you understand my questioning :thinking: :thinking:
Sometimes I tell myself that all of this is sorely lacking in simplicity, in depth, and in that little something that brings us back to the primary essence, a musician, an instrument, nature, full stop.

So what do you think?
Thanks to you all :grin: :wink::pray:

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Great topic again @Karl :slight_smile:

For me it all depends on what we’re trying to do. Personally, when I play I never touch up what I do, I just blow and let myself go — it’s my pleasure in playing, a little escape into simplicity like you said.
However, if I ever had to compose something on my own, I’d definitely use loopers to have a backing track and compose over it (I use the Orba for example, which is brilliant for that).

So that raises a new question: if we really care about composing and writing, why not look for other musicians to create connections and meet up, complement each other and build together, and in doing so free ourselves from all this technology? :slight_smile:

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Man, I’m completely on board with you on that one!!
It definitely takes more work, because first you have to find these people, agree on the composition and all that… But it’s so much more powerful and interesting from a human perspective!!

I was at a handpan/guitar concert last Friday (it was friends playing, which doesn’t stop me from keeping a critical eye).
So the guys had their instruments and a laptop… a looper pedal…
They were sending a backing track and playing over it.
We heard violin, a female voice, didgeridoo.

At the end of the concert, I go see them and I tell them: what you’re doing is really cool (and it was, it was genuinely really cool, plus it was an intimate setting) but why don’t you invite a violin player? A didge player? A singer?

The concert was really awesome again, but I still thought it was a shame.

I find acoustic versions so much more « real » (normal you’d say, it’s acoustic).

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Cool… for me, adding electronics to an acoustic instrument doesn’t make it easier to play — for example, electric guitar isn’t easier than acoustic guitar, but on the other hand the sound palette is multiplied infinitely. In my opinion, sound transformation is a musician’s tool, so why deprive yourself of it… I consider a looper pedal a musical instrument in its own right — you can do wonderful things with it or produce inaudible catastrophes, like with violin for that matter. Personally I love playing pure acoustic and also having fun with effects on the didgeridoo, especially delay, which I find truly magical…
Your question is well posed Karl, why deprive yourself of it…

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Hey Karl,

I think that beyond the fact that adding effects, if they’re balanced, can improve sound quality and listening pleasure, I reckon that didgeridoo players who are excellent — you mention Zalem for example, who plays a lot with loops and effects — they do it to get a more « contemporary » sound, that they like and that matches better what a « wider » audience expects, not just didgeridoo enthusiasts.

It ties in with the theme: how to make the didgeridoo interesting today. This instrument, still pretty much unknown, is « mono-tone », it only has one note (even if you can add variations to it). Fair few people find that « boring » and not very interesting. At a time when all sorts of solicitations, including musical ones, make the public jump from one thing to another really quickly in a flood of fleeting offers, their ability to « become aware » of something in particular and spend a bit of time on it with the necessary open-mindedness that goes with it is well and truly put to the test.

To hook these permanent « zappers » you need to give them proposals they’ll already like at the level of rhythms and musicality in tune with the times, hoping to tickle their interest and get them to appreciate the didgeridoo.

It’s a personal opinion — when you play for a small audience you create an intimate atmosphere that leads to really listening and discovering, like what you do with your human-scale shows. For a large audience that wants to dance and party, you need electronics to meet their expectations. :slight_smile:

Small addition after reading Philippe’s reply. Blimey, that’s true, you can simply love what electronics brings to your creativity, and I love what you do @Philippe_Bechu, which goes to show, let’s open our ears. :laughing: But I also love sessions in the human simplicity of musical encounters with a campfire instead of an electrical outlet! :rofl:

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Thanks to you both @Philippe_Bechu and @Elisabeth_Blanc for your points of view and your replies.
I understand your opinions and I respect them of course.

My question was really about offering « natural » sounds without additions and accepting the idea that a human being is limited in what they can do. Why not simply accept that?

I understand the appeal of adding things of course thanks to equipment.

I’ve always had this contradiction in my head, between the idea that many people here (and elsewhere) share, which is to say that we need to go back to the earth, to true things, to nature… etc. and at the same time call on machines, on electricity to have fun (and I agree, it’s important to have fun of course!!!)

Where I’d be a bit more nuanced is on what you write Elisabeth:

Said like that, it sounds like « marketing » and I find that a shame.

I say it every time, but this subject like others is « under construction » in my head and your reflections and positions make me think and evolve

So thank you for that :pray:

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I think a large part of people who listen to music enjoy hearing what they already know, if you consider the music that makes the biggest sales in the world, the stuff you hear blasting out of car windows and the crowds at electronic music festivals with famous DJs—that scares me. So many people love what they’ve been told is likeable, cool and trendy. I find that pretty terrifying for our freedom to think and feel differently as individuals who don’t feel like sheep. Of course it’s not everyone, thankfully :innocent:. That’s my pessimistic side—you have a more empathetic view of the human species than I do, and it’s a quality of hope in you that I really appreciate.

I agree with you, especially since if you’re drawn to the Didgeridoo, the Drum, the Jaw Harp… it’s because you need those real things you’re talking about, things that are deeply human precisely because of their limitations that echo our own. Raw experience is very important and it’s the one that brings the most pleasure and feeling. But then you might want to add to the physical and emotional pleasure an intellectual pleasure (that’s how I see it) by modifying the sound so it’s more beautiful to listen to, maybe for the ego, in my case :shushing_face:, and to find another musicality, for others.

Work on this subject is still ongoing… :smile:

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thanks for your thoughts, which nourish me, your sensitivity and your understanding dear Elisabeth :pray: :pray: :pray:

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Interesting topic where I initially thought it was a request for a total power cut, which would push even further the impossibility for us humans who are so conditioned, and yet what an unlikely adventure might be born if we let go of some ballast without pathologically clinging on anymore.

Your question, Karl, can benefit us in the sense that it can help us face up to what we claim to advance as truths, which are often just poor rehashes and banalities that pass easily on any occasion.

Questions can sometimes push us into our strongholds, if we don’t flee from them or ourselves into some new lies, and educate us to be what we truly feel and what we truly see.

Not conning ourselves being in my view the beginning of the wisdom to live, the previous questions and answers have oriented me towards the fact that it’s up to each and every one of us to offer to life and the living what can help this world live better, for me out of a radical love in the sense that its spontaneity, its responsibility cannot be diverted for the purposes of community ties and real impoverishments.

Why not create places favouring acoustics, little sorts of churches just to make music there without electricity, places where real religiosity as well as the joy of each and every one can be fully lived?

Questioning established things, that’s what goes in the right direction, and places such as festivals, the few times now when I go there having a lot of fun it’s certain, lead me to wonder about their seriousness, in the living and philosophical sense of the term.

Acrobat who seems like little things or nice proposals to have an electrified audience, I don’t wonder, because ecology which is total clarity with oneself sees me living nicely with less, but that’s just my personal relationship with life and above all the one that is in me.

Not exhaustive the guy, I would have had to cut some big arguments if that had been a funny business.

Have a nice evening friends of the wood

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What a text!! Thanks for your words :pray: :pray: :pray:

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Aaah and here’s another great topic just like you love to raise them Karl (with a title just a tad provocative :wink: )
I don’t have as prolific a pen as our friend Fifrelin, but I’ll share my two cents.

I think that by its very essence, our instrument invites a simplicity (hold on the word’s trendy these days) of means. What could be simpler than a plain wooden tube and a bit of breath to make music. That’s been enough for thousands of years for people who knew neither iron nor the wheel. Personally, I quite like the sound of a natural didge, I use a simple wooden feedback to hear myself and even when I record, I barely work on the sound.
I also like this idea that going for simplicity is going for what’s essential and that we have so many things we need to get rid of in order to find ourselves again.

Karl, I completely agree with your point, why use samples and loopers if it’s just to create sounds that could be played by « real » musicians, the encounter is so much richer !
That doesn’t mean that playing solo stops you from having rich compositions, you just have to listen to/watch Waagal (okay I admit we’re touching on genius there).

My consensus spirit invites me to say that I also understand people who work on their sound especially in the context of a concert or a recording. Though less spontaneous in my view, you can find the same satisfaction in the search for the ideal sound to make people feel or emphasize the emotions you want to convey.

Finally, if we set the didge aside, I see electronic instruments as instruments that are totally in their own right. In that case, the musician isn’t compensating for the lack of a partner or trying to hide a sound. You play loops, you mix samples, you mess with sound with effects just like someone else strums their guitar strings or draws their violin bow. It’s just about seeing that as something different, something else.

Of course, richness is in diversity !

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And yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve put out a little subject « my way »:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :grin:"

For the title, it’s my « business manager » side, it’s a bit of a hook to get people to come :joy: :rofl: :wink: and what with the price of electricity these days.. :joy: :joy: :joy:

In the meantime, Erwann (Waagal)'s work is a very good example, I was actually thinking about him (among others) when writing the subject.
You’ve gotta admit, he’s part of a category of musicians who are operating in the stratosphere !!

Thousand thanks to you for sharing your point of view in any case, my dear friend :pray: :pray::pray:

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Since you’re inviting participation as a good business manager, I’ll give you my take too.
Sure, our instrument isn’t electronic, but you’re talking about doing without technology. Yet apart from a pure termite-hollowed didge or bamboo, there’s almost always technology involved in making our didgeridoos… Glue and varnish are highly technical products and their manufacture is part of current technology. They already allow us to

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You’re absolutely right, that’s an interesting point you’re making there Mélanie. I was really focused on the aesthetics of playing in my thinking, but yours is equally interesting!!

Thanks so much then :pray: :pray: :pray:

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On my end, I’m a big fan of pure acoustics. I very often find that even at a lot of small concerts (like at small festivals) it would be much better to let the instruments ring out naturally rather than amplify them poorly and crank up the volume too loud (at least too loud for my ears). Same goes for effects—I very often get the feeling of an extra layer that disconnects from the creative essence.

In music I’m all for Black Out, thanks @Karl! :dash: :hole:

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Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, Jérome :pray:

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hello,
emitting vibrations through the didgeridoo and being satisfied with that, listening the next day to notice that the playing is different, finding other ways to play, a path of perseverance to reach your own vibrational choice.

wanting to improve the sound produced by an artifice makes us dependent on it and distances us from reality, but above all from taking a path different from our own and as a result from ignoring ourselves.
let’s take the example of gps it leads us where we want without our brain having to search for direction, we depend on it and what’s more we no longer use our senses and lose our sense of orientation.
being yourself, understanding yourself, to know how to adapt in any circumstance, that’s the game of life and what a pleasure at the end of the path to have gone from actor to observer

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A thousand thanks for your words Gerald :pray: :pray: :pray:

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One thing that’s not addressed in the discussion thread is the inspiration that comes from a different sound when you play it, with or without effects you don’t play the same way… it’s not so much the embellishment side of the sound through effects that interests me most but the dynamics that it influences in your playing style, what I mean by that is the inspiration is totally different when you have a rhythm caused by an electric bounce of the sound like a delay pedal for example you can lock into the rhythm you set at whatever speed you want… which inspires us to play a certain way just because the effect is there… I think the electric guitar has hugely developed guitarists’ inspiration… that nylon or metal strings don’t inspire us to play the same way as gut strings…
Personally I prefer to play without effects but from time to time I have fun with effects and the inspiration is totally different, it opens doors…

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Yeah, you’re right, if we add effects live while we’re playing we’d get a totally different experience than adding them in post-production, I hadn’t realized that, good call. :+1: