I’m sure many of us are familiar with Les Paul, the famous jazz guitarist who passed away earlier today. Much of our familiarity comes from his “signature model” guitar, made by Gibson. The Les Paul is one of the most distinctive electric guitars in today’s music (along with the Fender Stratocaster) and I bet many of us have either played one, or dreamed of playing one. For me, it’s my “ultimate guitar”, one I wanted to have for a while until I was lucky enough to purchase an Epiphone LP model a few years ago.

However, Les Paul means so much more to modern music than just his signature guitar; Les Paul had a huge hand in developing multi-track recording. This is the method of recording 1 track of vocals or music, then listening to that track while playing another new track to match up, or harmonize with, the existing track. I’d say at least 90% of modern music is recorded using this method, and every time a wizard rocker lays down a guitar track on their 4-track, digital recorder, or computer recording software and then records some vocals on top, it’s all due to Les Paul’s innovations.

To see just how far music has come, check out some of the YouTube videos of Les Paul performing along with his wife Mary Ford on the song “How High The Moon” (embedded below). The duo performed along to a pre-recorded track, featuring Mary harmonizing with herself upwards of 12 times, an astonishing never-before heard thing in music at the time.

In addition, Les Paul’s creativity and innovation with recording led to such sound enhancements like tape delay, an effect that’s on many songs and noticeable when you hear a vocalist’s voice “echoing” just after they finishing singing a line or phrase.

In short, Les Paul’s innovations paved the way for modern music, including (and especially) wizard rock. Any of us who record and layer multiple instruments ourselves to create our own wrock songs couldn’t do so without Les Paul’s groundbreaking work before us. Like a lot of you, up until now almost any wrock song I recorded was done using multi-tracking, since up until a few months ago I was the only member of my band. Every song I’ve recorded and put on a CD, or MySpace, or a compilation album, was all done because Les Paul paved the way with his studio work and new techniques so many years ago.

RIP Les Paul 1915-2009