PJ Onori’s Post

I'm of the same generation as Rick Beato and this is a great watch. As a lifetime musician in my other life, I know the challenges that making music used to bring - trying to figure out how to make a bass guitar out of spare bits of wood in the shed, performing a terrible gig with guitars plugged into a record player. When the pawn shop guitars started arriving on the scene, scraping pocket money together to get the worst one in the shop. Saving up the cash to spend a day in a studio to eventually setting up our own recording space. Moving to the laptop and logic, reason etc. I have boxes of cassettes that sample those periods in my life... hundreds of tracks. Now I have all the stuff on my laptop, the tracks number in their tens and in my view lack the energy of the single mic takes of the past. In the day job, ChatGPT can take a scribbled wireframe and produce a usable, generic app or web screen in less time than it takes to make a coffee, a far cry from the days it took with Photoshop, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. I look back at old portfolio pieces and whilst some of the interactions are bonkers, there's a uniqueness and style that is missing in the 'me too' work that is common today.

Nice vid! The first half reminded me a lot of the analog vs solid state or digital debates. Like it's the little fluctuations and inconsistency in vacuum tubes that make their amps so full, warm, and give them character. And with that drum comparison, great point on in our quests to be so perfect and on-beat, music (and art and design) has lost that soul and swing

"...Music is not as valued by young people. There is no sweat equity put into obtaining it. Having it be a part of your collection. Having it be a part of your identity, of who you are. These are the bands I believe in. These are the artists that I love...These things meant something."