One of the most controversial topics, that many people want to weigh-in on these days, is the unplugged-keyboard factor. While many will say that it’s not a big deal, there seems something a bit odd about that logic. If a band is playing un-plugged, it’s typically brought to the level of conspiracy — all parties involved that know are sworn to secrecy. But surfing myspace, a keen eye can find many incriminating pictures of bands playing without a power cable, laptops with no visible sound cards, or the ominous usb-cable-to-nowhere.

Before I proceed any further, I’d like to point to another similar phenomenon that I saw/heard back when I listened to “guitar music”. In my early teen years, I use to buy these things called “imports” (ie. bootlegs of bands playing live). I often times noticed that some recording didn’t differ from place-to-place: same set-list, same encore, same unimaginative crowd shout-outs, and almost no variation in music. At that point, I’m really not clear on what the difference would be of a band playing live or clicking play.

You hear many excuses for the un-plugged equipment: it sounds bad live, can’t be played live, too expensive to haul around equipment, and (maybe the most interesting/provocative defense) ‘what’s the difference.’ What really is the difference for you?

I’ve seen highly innovative live set-ups, which involve multiple people pretending to play. What I really wonder about is – why? I’m aware of the fact that when things are actually done live, people complain (a very long time ago, I saw Decoded Feedback play with a very talented live drummer, and while I thought it sounded great, it didn’t have the smoothness that sometimes is demanded of electronic music). But there just seems something painfully deceptive in a karaoke act, but I would argue that it’s no different then a highly talented band repeating verbatim what they did the night before.

Though a new paradigm that’s emerging in electronic music, is the person performing on-stage has a hell of a lot more fun then anyone witnessing it (this is also the case with most DJs). I’ve seen/heard some amazing improvisation done with Ableton, but it’s really boring to watch (see Edgey).

This gets to a somewhat-interesting but a bit dated discussion on the original vs. copy in art. I don’t really feel like going into it, but you can read this historic essay.