Blame it on the rain

[BarbaraGordon]

This makes me sad
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline...x-inaugur.html

The only redeeming thing about the entire inauguration (except for that whole part about ending the long national nightmare), and it was a fake.

Spokeswoman says it was because of the weather. <shrug.> You gotta blame it on something...

[FarrahWaters]

Wow, I had no idea. I agree with you, I had thought it was the best thing about the inauguration, a perfect piece for the occasion.

I don't understand the reasoning. If the instruments were going to be out of tune from the cold, why would they play along with the recording? It would have been noticeable. Yo-Yo Ma should have just pulled a Mike Waters and air-celloed his way through the piece.

It's kind of impressive, I guess, to be able to stay in sync with a recording and your quartet at the same time.

I see Aretha also got voice support on her recording. That was not a great arrangement of that song.

[BarbaraGordon]

Originally Posted by FarrahWaters

Wow, I had no idea. I agree with you, I had thought it was the best thing about the inauguration, a perfect piece for the occasion.

I don't understand the reasoning. If the instruments were going to be out of tune from the cold, why would they play along with the recording? It would have been noticeable.

I thought the same thing. They said the President-elect and all the notables could hear the live performance, while the crowd and the tv audience got the pitch-perfect version.

It's kind of impressive, I guess, to be able to stay in sync with a recording and your quartet at the same time.

This explains a couple of oddities I noticed, though, when I watched it a second time through on inauguration day. The piece started out almost inaudible, and then all the sudden got loud -- not like a crescendo, like someone flipped a switch. And none of the instruments were miced, though all the musicians had earpieces. I remember thinking, "wow, that's really impressive that they were able to pick up the instruments that well without direct mics." Not so impressive, it turns out.

The whole thing sounds really bizarre.

[MikeWaters]

you fools had the audacity to hope for a real performance.

[RedHeadGal]

As I was watching that, I was thinking, how cold must their fingers be? How can they play like that? And they were just wearing suits, not overcoats like everyone else. At which point I convinced myself that they must have heaters right there around them. I guess they were just cold and faking it.

[creekster]

Its not that hard to play with a recording, even if you are out of tune. Line 6 makes this really cool guitar that has a built in synthesizer that will do things like make your guitar go to drop d tuning, or open g tuning or some such at the flip of a switch but it only sounds that way in the amp, the actual strings remain standard tuned. This is, at first, very unnerving but you get used to it very quickly (my firnd owns one and I have used it a few times at gigs). For guys like those in the quartet it would be a piece of cake.

[FarrahWaters]

Now we can hear what they really sounded like-- found this on the therestisnoise.com

[BarbaraGordon]

ouch.

[FarrahWaters]

Originally Posted by BarbaraGordon

ouch.

is that for the gruesome sounds, or is the joke too mean?

[BarbaraGordon]

Originally Posted by FarrahWaters

is that for the gruesome sounds, or is the joke too mean?

I wish I hadn't taken my speaker off of mute.