You mean Gary Go!

http://www.garygo.com/

fruity loops?

Hmmm..... to be honest, even the iPhone is more powerful than what is actually required to produce half-decent backing. If he uses a MIDI interface with the iPhone as a sequencer then the couple of thousands of pounds worth of equipment in the background will make perfectly listenable music. My mate's band still use an Amiga 600 with Octamed for their live backings. Mind you, it is connected to a load of magic boxes that cost more than my fugging car!! Still, if he just shoves a couple of iPhones up to a microphone and manages to pull off a decent gig, then more power to him. It'll probably still be more entertaining than watching a load of middle-aged men trying to look sexy!! I mean, why the hell doesn't Mark Owen just quit. At least he's got half a pocketful of charisma. The rest are just boring! Gary Barlow may be the 'song-writing talent' but he's got the personality of a British Rail worker. And the other two (Howard and Jason??) are just hanging on for grim death. Put 'em down now, before it's too late!!!

<sigh>

Has been using an iPhone to control his synth for quite a while, running around the stage tapping buttons to insert sounds etc.

Still, it's all progress I guess.

ttfn

He's hooked up to 10,000 watts of amplifiers, blasting out hundreds of DBs of sound to thousands of people, and his drug dealer calls to tell him he has some primo stash in from Mexico.

Ugh! 'nuff said.

It's not as if a Take That audience are there for the "music"....

I was listening to Danny Baker's radio show on BBC London 94.9, Monday-Fridays from 3pm on FM, DAB, Sky Digital and online, and his side kick took out his iPhone and showed Baker an app that lets you play it like a flute. You place your fingers over some virtual holes on the screen and hold it up to your mouth like a real flute and blow over the microphone. This causes the sound to play and moving your fingers changes the pitch.

So maybe this odd-bod's using the same app?

He's playing percussion... With a 7lb club hammer...

The bloody delivery medium itself (and a gimmicky one at that) has become more important than the impact of the music it's supposed to be delivering. What arse. Is there any wonder kids have been downloading music less recently when its function has become this meaningless.

A weird novelty act, and also a bloke with an iPhone supporting them.

Sounds to me like the iPhone's going to be the smartest thing on stage over the entire evening.....

Google The Mentalists and iphone, its been in quite a few papers.....

A person who uses a mobile phone to recreate the sound of an instrument is not a musician.

iflute.

as a musicain that used NoiseIO for the iphone www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8yhQHJUll8 on stage before this is nothing new lots acts doing it....yes its a bit of a novelty but it does work.

as mentioned above both Jonathan Coulton (check him out!) and The Mentalists have used iPhones in stage shows.

Don't know about the mentalists but JoCo was good, but there it was a gimmick for one song not the backbone of his act.. I hope this guy's the same cos the gimmick appeal probably won't last for a whole set. I don't know though, I wouldn't be going to a Take That gig anyway, they might love it!

"Jailbreak" by Thin Lizzy, please.

So, not so much "playing" as "selecting pre-recorded loops of digitized crap".

Old stuff. At least when Mick Fleetwood played his jacket (he had a Linn Drum connected to sensors in his clothing) he was actually playing the stuff as in live extemporization.

Even I can do the old Valerie Singleton "I've got one here I made before the show started" type music.

And that bloody iFlute thing sounds more like an occarina. I think the real thing costs about four quid if it's handmade. Or you could run one off yourself out of sculpey for around a pound.

So this is what it's come to? Am I in the minority in actually wanting to see a person play the music I'm hearing?

A musician is someone who PLAYS music. A composer is someone who CREATES music. An arranger or producer is someone who takes pre-recorded music and pieces it together. If you're going to a concert expecting to hear exactly the same thing you hear at home, they why are you going at all? Then again, look at the popularity of all the past and present girl- and boy-bands whose performances don't include musicians of any kind, instead opting to use pre-recorded music with the performers simply jumping around on the stage. Performers are not nearly the same as musicians.

"I just can't believe my ears, some music out these days / The human factor has diminished, in oh so many ways / Fancy footwork gets top bill and I'll put on such a show / One more Midi cable and my band is ready to go... / Changing programs faster than I dare to say / Musicians all make mistakes who needs them anyway?"

So he's got all his tedious 4/4 banging noises and his hamfisted collage of harmonically-challenged pre-digested guff programmed in beforehand, and the only 'skill' he needs to display on the night is pressing the right onscreen button on his bloody iPhone, and that's considered a 'live' musical performance?

And no I've not listened to any of his 'music' on his website. I've never been run over by a bus, and I know I wouldn't enjoy that either.