Posted by: bryer | 18th Nov, 2007

Instrumentals

I noticed that some people were talking about instrumentals, so I thought I’d share my thoughts. First of all, instrumentals have kind of been a totally regular thing for me (band geek since 5th grade, orchestra/jazz band in between). Obviously, the large amounts of classical music that I play and hear are, with very few exceptions, instrumentals. Even when going into the area of rock/soul/progressive, I still feel that instrumentals can be very powerful. “Jessica” by The Allman Brothers is truly an epic song, and it would be hard to argue against that. Look at The Who’s masterpiece “Tommy,” and listen to the “Overture” and “Underture” songs, and tell me that those don’t convey all of the feelings of the album. But, maybe that’s just me, I do admittedly have a bias toward instrumentation as opposed to vocalization.

Responses

Not just you, Ben–those two instrumentals from “Tommy” are favorites of mine as well.

I used to do a late-night FM rock show back in the late 80’s. The day the shuttle Challenger blew up, I decided to do an all-instrumental show that night as a memorial tribute. It was tough to fill three hours with instrumentals, but I did it, and the absence of vocals lent a kind of dignity to the show that I don’t think it would have had otherwise.

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