I can show you extremely complex drum parts played without sheet music?

Yes, I got to learn a lot of great music taping this alternative radio show when I was a teen (Villa 65, VPRO radio, NL). Not always got the name of the band on tape so wondering for decades which band it was. A few years ago I was doing stage monitors for Sebadoh, and they started playing one of those songs.

Pretty much. Sometimes it aligned with other less-savory movements (like the backlash against disco, where a lot of racist and anti-LGBT forces co opted a long-standing "fuck corporate radio" movement) or became a pseudo-pop style unto itself (prog, grunge) - but "you won't hear the best stuff on the radio" has been the advice of in-the-know music lovers since way back when radio was the peak of mass media (blacks need not apply).

Radio is still going?!

You can’t. You need a new mic.

SM57. It’s honestly the best deal in the industry and idk if they still have it but I got mine at 100 bucks as a bundle with a tripod stand and XLR cable.

Pretty common, if nothing else to pretend that you hate mainstream.

You've got two camps; the whole "corporate rock sucks" ideology and the "it's cool to hate popular things" state of mind. Especially if their loyalty to a specific genre becomes part of their "persona," they tend to reject anything outside of what's acceptable in their inner circles.

Most will eventually outgrow it though. Can't tell you how many people I know from high school who were proto-goths now get excited about upcoming Def Leppard concerts (or other groups they sure as hell wouldn't have listened to as a teen).

I grew up with pirate radio in la hell they even played shit like the germs or dead Kennedy’s sometimes. Listened to a lot of oldies stations too. Was huge into hardcore punk and thrash metal in the 80s

Amusingly my local oldies radio is now mostly 60's-90's rock, some of it relatively obscure.

Yes they do. Primary violinists will almost never have sheet music in front of them - then you have Pianists that will play an entire repertoire without any sheet music either.

I’ll dig it up but there’s this an amazing pianist that can play a whole hour of Liszt using only memory.

[removed]

I don’t know if I qualified as alt but I listened to KROQ back in the day because they played Sublime and shit

No, the 60s to 90s was the last and on some stations the peak of real radio. Internet killed it.

Mainstream radio has always been mainstream. It doesn't appeal to alternative sensibilities, aside from that cool DJ at some ungodly hour, that we all stayed up to tape

Well, depends... Radios are generally commercial/trying to appeal to wide audience/normies.

Alt, by definition, is not that.

However I don't think that preference of alt music results in hate towards the popular.

I feel like Sandinista is more the band openly experimenting and combat rock is more of a focused end product of weirdness. I’m not trying to knock Sandinista too much, but I wouldn’t recommend it to someone new to the band. I would however recommend a lot of songs from it, which are so unbelievably good that I imagine would lead to diving right into it.

Unlike a modern band, an orchestra or classical ensemble usually doesn’t have a particular set of songs that it knows. It is expected to perform a variety of pieces throughout the entire spectrum of world music.

If, for example, you had an orchestra memorize every symphony it played you’d have a massive decrease in the number of pieces it can perform each year in exchange for the unclear benefits of memorization.

Have you tried memorizing 1-1/2-2 hours of extremely complex music? They would have to do this every week during the performance season. They also practice several hours a day as well as teach at nearby universities. It's a full schedule and memorizing really doesn't add anything to the performance.

Because it’s very complex music and the pieces are very long. Little bit different from a pop song with four chords that repeat over and over.

Haha, what, over 45 years now and I still can't listen to Tubular Bells and then enter a dark room without telling Alexa to turn on the light.

They do! Once you play something enough you can basically do it by memory, but the pieces have so many moving parts that it's important to keep your place with everyone. Plus pieces can be LONG and there is a huge chance of stumbling and getting off if you don't have something to keep you on time

Someone showed up with a proximity activated gate once. Plugged it right into the mic and then the mic cable as normal. Every time he stepped off the mic, the gate closed and there were no drums or backline trying to leap into the mic. Quite the brilliant device and the only time I ever saw one

Nice, I’d suggest then avoiding this avenue of support and call direct. That was a crazy convo.

MinecraftCaveNoise.mov

Don't let that stop you. Tim Armstrong of Rancid has been fronting a band for 30 years and still hasn't bothered to learn how to sing.

You can't. Omnidirectional means "from all directions". You need a cardioid mic for directionality you need for vocals.