Date: 09/02/2023
Mood: lethargic
Listening to: A Question of Lust - Depeche Mode
The Tale of Sonne 2016
This one time in 2016 in Sonne, Paul had some kind of technical issue and it has bugged the hell out of me for years now. Because he did something erratic that shouldn't be there musically that was in Flake's parts and physically displayed trying to correct the problem in the video. But it's so subtle that I wouldn't be surprised most people didn't know it. He played it off like it was natural to the song's structure to make sure you couldn't tell what he was doing. It had no business there, though.
It happened on 2016.06.10 in England. Their Sonne was broadcast.
This is embedded to start at Sonne. About a minute from the start he plays an erratic note/noise that shouldn't at all sound like that. Makes no sense and is outright wrong in every conceivable way.
The sad part is, the camera editors cut away exactly on the frame I need to SEE what went wrong. He has to know going forward something is wrong because after the chorus, he immediately uses the lull in the song to test his guitar three times. In a way that seems "natural" to the song but has no business being there.
Normally in Sonne, that part Paul plays three times at is covered by Flake pressing piano sounds on his keys. You can see him here strumming notes to Flake's parts.
This is not normal in Sonne and is the actual moment I first ever picked up on the issue when I watched this clip in 2016 era. I went "what's he doing that for?" because I never heard that in Sonne before. I am used to that part being Flake's keyboard presses. Camera footage editors even show Flake doing it during this part sometimes.
Here is Sonne in 2016 Highfield Festival. Paul doesn't repeat his choices during this moment.
Here is Sonne in 2017 Rock im Park. Paul, once again, doesn't repeat his choices during Flake's part.
This is how I figured it MUST have been him testing his guitar noise following that bizarre note sequence earlier. Back in 2016, I had no idea what the hell was happening or what that was about. But after getting more footage with time in 2017, I realized now it was very intentional and a significant anomaly.
He does it three times, then Till sings more, then Flake does three more presses for six total. Paul borrowed 3/6 of those piano key strokes to make noise when he shouldn't have been doing anything at all. In that sense, it masks what he was doing because he's borrowing Flake's parts and blending it in the most natural way he could without disrupting the song. He made it fit into Sonne's composition. What makes this his ideal moment to test his guitar's problem is that Richard isn't playing and most other noise drops out. Till pauses his singing for a beat. It's the "emptiest" moment of Sonne right now available to him.
From this moment going forward, he appears to know it's tuned wrong somehow. In the chorus, you can see him messing with the tuners in-between playing.
He waits until the next available moment in Sonne to solve something following that attempt to correct it. The bridge interlude. Where you can see him physically listening to his guitar, plucking at it, and messing with the tuners.
He messes with the tuners repeatedly throughout the bridge between playing.
I know you're like, "but how did he pluck at it in the bridge and us watchers hear nothing"? Because he turned his guitar volume on/off using the red knob (usually it's silver... but in 2016...) using the stage darkness to mask this. He holds it close to his ears as best he can because he knows it's turned off. Unlike in Flake's parts earlier he was legitimately using the sound system to hear it. It's extremely subtle to the best of listeners, but in the audio, you can hear his guitar get turned back on and touched by his hands. There's a small chirpy sound to me that can't be a coincidence given the timing and what he's obviously doing.
I believe all this is a very good reminder: Paul really is playing live lol. A faked show has zero reason for him to give a shit how he sounds wrong if it was all playback. They also have no way to replicate his improvisation when it was unique to this show. You can hear imperfections in their playing often, honestly. I know I do all the time.
People can come for Till's usage of backtracks (especially during LIFAD and MiG era it was absurdly excessive). You are never gonna go after Paul on my ear's radar watch. Nope. I know he's live because I hear things he does that are imperfect and human variation all the time. Mainly little improvisations that change the song ever so slightly. Usually nothing special and certainly doesn't make the songs worse or anything. I even hear Reesh do it sometimes too. In this 2016 era Reise, Reise he makes unique human inputs shifts of improvisation at 1:20-1:21, 2:20-2:21, 3:04 each time that is live exclusive to this song. It's not even something he did in Ahoi tour. Man felt like it and went for it. Another example I know is any performance of Feuer frei. After he gets the lyco mask at the interlude, he's very prone to leading back into the song using improvised notes. Then Reesh follows his cue. You can see this on the In Amerika version (and Paris) of FF perfectly if you never noticed it. It happens in many FF performances at the interlude into the chorus to improvise notes. I don't know why it's timed that way, but it is. He does this a lot in 90s footage too. I've watched him give Olli and Schneider their cues. I've watched him signal and tell Richard to move positions on stage. I've watched Paul hold up an entire performance for a 5 second delay because he's busy taking his vest off and Richard/Schneider are left there in limbo unable to start the song. They could have started without him and let him play resync catch up, but they both halt for Paul specifically...
He has random technical flaws, improvisations, and little subtle "off" human brain things in his playing constantly when I listen to pro DAW takes. Sometimes I can even pick it up in phone recordings depending on how it handles the bass. I promise you, he's live. The day he isn't you can be sure I will notice it and complain. This only comes from playing live and technical related things. He's a 100/10 professional man who is professionally working. The average person likely has no idea anything was wrong or sounded off. I bet you nobody at that show even had a suspicion Sonne wasn't a perfect firey explosion banger.
My theory of The Problem is that a guitar tech handed him a wrongly tuned guitar between songs. Because all his Gibson models 'look the same' visually on the outside (whereas Reesh's guitars look different by eye), it's very easy to accidentally swap them wrong or misplace them on whatever they're held in. I assume one of those portable rack mounts if you know what I mean. I swear there's a Paul pic for every occasion omg! In this 2016 TV airing, they show in Links where he has a letter E on the strap too. They all likely have the tuning inside the strap written. Sonne is a part of the encore section of the set list. Sonne comes after Stripped, then a small break, but before Ohne dich and Engel of the encore. This moment in time is near a guitar swap, near a pause in the show, and is clustered around differently tuned songs. My theory is he was likely handed a wrongly tuned guitar and he's trying to fix it. It looks like the issue is his low E or A string's tuners (it looks like he's messing with the A tuner but it's hard to tell lol) which is a likely culprit due to drop D and drop C tunings utilizing those strings notably different. Songs in drop D and C are clustered close to Sonne during this moment. Perhaps that's the cause. Those two strings are very important to like 90% of what Paul plays in any random song, which is why it matters enough for him to fix it. I have wondered if his original error note from the start was him intentionally trying to hear that string separately given how it was like one tiny noise out of no where.
Thank you for attending my Sonne 2016 seminar!!!!!!