"What are you looking at you hockey puck?!"

WD-40 is actually a cleaner. It's commonly thought of as lubrication but it's a cleaner that leaves a bit of residue like a lubricant.

In the comments, a garage guy suggested a product so I would give that a lot of weight.

Personally, I've used a spray form of white lithium grease I got at Home Depot.

Howard Wolowitz-san has entered the conversation...

"Smell...GOOD!"

Looks like the Mayor of Munchkin City.

If you see pic of her now, she looks like Melanie Lynskey, Rose, Charlie Harper's good-natured stalked neighbor from Two and a Half Men.

Though it was Napoleon Dynamite and Pedro...

I think it would make a fun game!

Can it be used with Microsoft Flight Simulator to simulate an F-22 with a sidewinder missile?

Asking for a friend...

Looks like "The We Jumped on a Trampoline for the First Time" gang...

With all due respect, people who are even hobbyist musicians can definitely tell the difference between live and recorded under those conditions. The general public? You're right, prob not.

On Broadway, the ensemble/pit is mic'd but not necessarily every musician individually. It's usually a combo of electronic amplification and natural sound acoustics. In most theaters, the pit is suituated in front and below the stage as has been the standard in theater design since theaters were all live using no electronic amplification.

Excellent point! I remember it went back decades. Just didn't know it went back that long. Thanks!

Oh I agree. I know someone who went from classically trained vocalist in musical theater in college, to national musical theater touring star, to Broadway star, to one of the top agents for TV, Hollywood, and Broadway. If I could tell you who he reps, you'd be amazed.

He has always had super professional performing chops. He told me once that the biggest weakness singing performers have now, as recording artists or in musical theater, is most of them have never been trained classically as vocalists with a voice teacher so they cannot hold notes out for any decent length of time in tune. They never learned to breath correctly while singing or using their ears, nose, throat, respiratory system, and diaphragm correctly. Most of the top performers have been well-trained BTW.

So they learned to compensate with vocal ornamentation so they don't have to. I've seen that SO many times and as a musician, it always irks me when performers overdo vocal ornamentation. Same feeling I get when I hear Kenny G on saxophone. Ugghh...

Thanks for asking. Good question.

This isn't even touching on the long-standing Broadway tradition of providing live music for performances.

When you have recorded music, it's the same every time. Obviously. And there are good things to say about that.

You record it once in a studio and it's done. And you can do as many takes as necessary to get the quality you want. You can't vary it even slightly per performance.

But when you have a pit of musicians, the conductor is free to change tempos and pull out more emotions from the musicians, and essentially mix the music in real time by telling certain sections to bring their parts out or be a little more quiet.

All that translates to a better quality, humanized, energetic, and emotional performance. And pro musicians add an amazing amount of quality when playing live. Plus, playing music through a sound system, no matter how technologically advanced is not superior to live instruments playing in the same room.

The trade off is a slight bit more consistency with a recording vs. a better, more emotional, humanistic performance live.

It's like saying, "Why do I need to go see a 90+ musician symphony perform in a concert hall when I can listen to the studio recording?"

Had another thought on live music vs. recorded... A lot of symphonies are now presenting popular movies like Star Wars, The Princess Bride, Singin' In The Rain, etc. and playing the soundtracks live, under the movie while the movie is playing.

They've been doing this for a few decades now and it's getting a lot more popular. They usually present a few performces of a few movies every year. It's a really cool performance if you can attend.

But it's a big difference hearing a 90+ musician symphony orchestra playing the music live vs. in a movie theater or on a big screen TV at home.

That's what I said. We're saying the same thing.

Reducing live music on Broadway shows started happening a long time ago, like a decade or more. It's not a recent cost cutting measure.

Edit for clariry: Thought I was pretty clear on this. The cost cutting by reducing live musicians on Broadway, trying to replace them with recorded music has been going on for decades. This is not new. Musicians are always fighting this.

One interesting thing is that this argument continues today but regarding live music on Broadway.

Producers are constantly looking to shrink the amount of musicians in the pits of Broadway shows preferring to use recordings presumably to save money. But the quality of the show with live musicians is so much better.

Col. Harland Sanders had a restaurant for a while before he figured out to franchise it.

Thus KFC was born in 1952 when he was 62 years old.

Downfall?

I think he spelled success incorrectly.

Twitter is already in the same ballpark when it comes to profit margin as Google and Microsoft after the Twitter layoffs. Made a 48% swing from a 20% loss to a +28% profit almost overnight.

And they hit record new user sign-ups.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Nope. Stephen King. But close.

"Amazon to invest $1 billion yearly to produce movies THAT DON'T SUCK for THEATERS"

FTFY...I hope.

Their opponents will be toast!

"You were so busy figuring out how you could do it you didn't bother to think if you SHOULD do it."

Hear that somewhere before...