Frank

Forming a band in 2007 is a strange and sometimes confusing experience. Technological advances in the recording process have changed the roles that band members traditionally have occupied. Multi-layered digital recording is now widely available at little or no cost. With these technological advances comes a change in the way many bands interact and make music.

My band mate, Brian and I decided to form The Complimentary Toothpicks a few years back while sitting in a dormitory room and jamming on two guitars (the old fashioned manual way). Since those days of jamming we have both acquired Macintosh laptops, which come equipped with the extraordinary free music production software, Garageband, a program that was first introduced by Steve Jobs in 2004. From there…our approach to music has changed drastically.

In a way the production ability can be distracting. The capability to create so many layers and mutilate/manipulate sounds can lead to wasting time with the less important components of music making. Sometimes I'll catch myself spending more time changing the sound of something rather than the actual quality of the melody. Jack White of the White Stripes once compared the new digital format of recording music to an artist suddenly being given a pack of crayons with a thousand color options…the idea being, you only need three or four basic colors to make a masterpiece. While I appreciate the simplicity of the old/more organic approach to music (like the path that the White Stripes have taken), I feel that this is also somewhat limiting and that if you are given this technology you should embrace it and make it work for you, not against you.

However, the digital recording process can also serve to keep band members apart. For instance, with our music, I'll either come in and do vocals on one of Brian's tracks or he will come in and add guitar or bass onto one of mine, a far cry from the old "microphone in front of band" approach of recording. Often the separate roles in the recording of music for the band have lead to competition over collaboration. (In reference to this we've decided to name our first EP the Brian vs. Bart EP.)

Another obstacle is the live experience. When we both make beats, play bass, guitar, synthesizer, and produce, its hard to know who should do what, when, complicating the live music set up. Hence we've yet to perform our songs live, but have recorded many. How do we do justice to our songs in their recorded format, while also making the live experience enjoyable? For inspiration we've looked to one of our favorite bands, The Flaming Lips, who use pre-recorded sounds along with live instruments and vocals, confetti, costumes, disco balls, and visuals to add to the experience.

Outside of recording, the music scene has also changed drastically, the music industry is in a much-discussed slump, and there are few superstar groups left. According to Business Week, the bestselling genre of 2007 has been electronica (according to Business Week), a genre famously dominated by computers and single performers (not bands). And even with the recent excitement surrounding the Kanye West/50 Cent/Kenny Chesney chart face-off, sales are still down 9% compared to the same week in 2006 (at 9.16 million).

I think what we've learned is that technology can be both liberating and confining to the natural expression of music. The bottom-line for the Complimentary Toothpicks however, is it allows us to cheaply make our music, and that's something we cant afford to ignore.

You can check out our music at www.myspace.com/thecomplimentarytoothpicks