les Paul was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitars. Various bands paid tribute to the legend on his birth anniversary. Darpan Mago reports
The light ambience and uplifting music charged up the whole premise. The music was about emotions, it brought a sense of belongingness amongst everyone who were strangers before the guitars and drums got rolling. The Matchbox celebrated the birth anniversary of les Paul, a legendary guitarist and innovator. Different bands performed during the evening to honour the legend.
Applause and cheers followed as young bands from the city played some heavy rock music to pay their tributes to les Paul. “His design of guitars is not plain looking and simple. Paul developed new designs in collaboration with Gibson and this instrument revolutionised rock music. Many famous guitarists like Jimmy Page from led Zeppelin and Slash from Guns N’ Roses brandish a Gibson les Paul instrument. From the last 40-50 years, every musical legend sometime or the other has taken advantage of its signature sound. Besides being a musician, les Paul was an innovator, a visionary who had a foresight into things that weren’t visible to the ordinary man. His design of guitars produce an unmatchable sound,” said Shenjit Basu, a vocalist from the band Virtus.
Before 1950s, recording compositions took numerous retakes. With each glitch, either by an instrument player or a vocalist, musicians exhausted numerous hours of studio sessions till they got that ‘perfect take’ in all synchrony. This was the only tedious process, till les Paul convinced Ampex, a recording device manufacturer to build him a three-track recorder. After experimenting with recording devices, the first multi-track recorder having an ability to play multiple parts in a same song was born. This allowed recording of different tracks or channels of sound separately and then playing them simultaneously. Now each track could be recorded or deleted without affecting the other tracks. If one made a mistake, the others were saved of endlessly repeating the whole recording process. Expressing his admiration for the genius, Ashvin Venkatesh, lead guitarist at The Iyer Project said, “Gibson les Paul electric guitar is to musicians what holy book is to all religions. Besides being a jazz, country and blues guitarist, he was also songwriter. Forming the fundamentals of modern music production, his innovation include experiments with overdubbing and delay-effect.”
Bands like The Iyer Project, guitarist Namit Chabbra, Virtus and Man Goes Human performed covers from the 60s and 70s and also a few of their own numbers. The Iyer Project enthralled the music enthusiasts with their alternate Carnatic rock, Virtus belted out covers of led Zeppelin and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. later, Man Goes Human ended the night with jazz and blues numbers. Giving an opportunity to budding guitarists to laud the creation, les Paul guitars were also on display.