Thanks and sorry, Les

Those of you who have visited google’s homepage today no doubt found their logo had a “strummable” guitar, in honor of Les Paul’s 96th birthday. Les Paul helped shape the guitar, and I have him to thank for some of the heavy sounds I really love. But he also contributed to recording and signal processing: he is one of the innovators of multitrack audio, and experimented with signal processing devices. He is very much responsible for creating the impossible spaces that are now so common in music recordings.

I had a hour and a need for diversion today, so I “strummed” the google doodle with my mouse (I found it hard to keep time), recorded it, dropped it into Live, ran it through a bunch of stuff and added a beat. It’s pretty rough, but there you go. Some things are meant to be finished quickly.

Sorry, Les!