when did virtuosity become a bad thing?

in rock, i mean. because it's not a bad thing in the blues, country, funk, jazz, or hip hop (at least verbally). is it middle and upper class guilt somehow? does it have something maybe to do with rock critic chagrin about their own instrumental competence? was it just a marketing gimmick to sell punk? kind of curious. i was just reading geeta dayal's 33 1/3 book about brian eno and she keeps working this dialectic about eno's 'non-musicianship' vs. the hopeless prog rockers (which i think simplifies things (and really it's a great book otherwise! (but still))) and i couldn't imagine someone striking a similar chord discussing pharaoh sanders, albert king, bootsy collins, or ralph mooney, and being serious. not that rock musicians should be virtuosic. but i don't get why it's inherently bad, and why that is goes without saying, except, i guess, as a gimmick to sell punk?

not a bad thing in metal, either, as far as i know

she keeps working this dialectic about eno's 'non-musicianship' vs. the hopeless prog rockers

To be fair to her, Eno was the one who used to go on about being a non-musician, when he obviously was a musician

I came away from Geeta's book with an afirmed impression of Eno as a project manager who brought in the virtuosos - Fripp, Collins, etc etc.

was it just a marketing gimmick to sell punk?

It predates punk. See Eno.

but why is it a bad thing?

Possibly because a lot of arseholes in rock bands used to strut around like they were Mozart, and a Mozart with a massive cock in to the bargain, just because they could play the guitar really fast or play (actually relatively simple) pseudo-classical shit on two keyboards simultaneously or whatever. I've heard of "cock rock" but I've never heard of "cock jazz"... or "cock blues"...

I would guess that guys like Eno were reacting against the bombast and self-importance of a lot of guys (and they were guys!) who, when you got right down to it, weren't even that good

Bad thing because often prestige is borrowed - "classically-trained," for example- and this "virtuosity" substitutes for interesting songwriting, soundscapes, etc.
(xp)

but tom d that is a caricature, no? and you're dismissing virtuosity by virtue of a caricature? is that fair? i mean, a lot of them were good, were they not? isn't jay-z proud of his verbal dexterity and show it off?

and nick geeta does go on to say that eno became an instrumental virtuoso after the 70s. i am not knocking her book at all. the knocking of yes and genesis reminded me of gratuitous slams on the musicians in those bands i see all the time elsewhere. as if in rock and rock alone it's a bad thing to have chops. i am wondering why that is. i sort of get it, but not really

Do you know that story about Billy Zoom of X, Tom D, that he saw all the guys making all those tortured faces whilst they where playing something that after all really wasn't very hard so that's why he decided to smile all the time when onstage.

but yes had lots of interesting soundscapes! and i would bet a million bucks rick wakeman didn't always look tortured. this isn't a veiled defense of yes or anything. maybe to put a finer point on it -- why in rock and rock alone is virtuosity in music defined by its worst elements? what's wrong with steve hackett?

Virtuosity wasn't always a bad thing though, even in the punk era, Exhibit A being Television, it was self-indulgent virtuosity that was the problem.

but what is 'self-indulgent virtuosity' in rock, compared to, say, jazz? defining (and dismissing) any aesthetic by its worst elements seems lazy to me

and you're dismissing virtuosity by virtue of a caricature?

I'm not actually dismissing virtuosity at all

Difficult to play jazz (that's any good) without really good technique. Same isn't true in 'rock'.

Can someone who knows about jazz criticism confirm that jazz musicians don't get accused of self-indulgent virtuosity (or self-indulgence for that matter, given that virtuosity is taken as a given)?

i've seen lots of cocky blues and jazz solos. they tend to be thrilling

Sometimes people complain about 'self-indulgent virtuosity' in jazz too- Oscar Peterson was often accused of this, and Art Tatum used to get it all the time.

But yeah this:

Difficult to play jazz (that's any good) without really good technique. Same isn't true in 'rock'.

― R. Stornoway (Tom D.), Monday, June 20, 2011 6:59 AM (1 minute ago)

Yes, some jazz guys get accused of being flashy, lacking substance, being (counter-inuitively) facile (xp)

Genesis, prog rock in general I'd say.

Also the concept of 'empty virtuosity' certainly exists in classical music, for performers as much as composers.

There's also the Mark S school of thought that there's no such thing as empty virtuosity in any genre.

i wonder why the invective is so much more pronounced when discussing rock. maybe it's class-based somehow, or something

Don't think Genesis were particularly virtuosic anyway - apart from Phil Collins. Why bring class in to it, it's got nothing to do with it, Jon Anderson was a milkman from Accrington!

A lot of people had a problem wuith the wankiness of free jazz.

this seems an ... outdated view, in some ways

in rock its head v groin. too much of that noodly stuff kind of loses the wild raw spontanaety that is part of 'rock's very nature. thats my theory anyhow.

i think i know more people who will refuse to see a band who can't play their instruments very well than who will refuse to see a band who play their instruments too well

A lot of bizarre Hongroesque statements being made here. How do you explain 15 years of Radiohead acclaim if it's a question of 'head v groin' or 'virtuosity = bad'?

that said, i think the idea that this idea has ever held true anywhere is wrong

So Who ARE The Mystery Girls?

matt dc i was going to cite tv on the radio winning the pazz and jop, i don't know if that is a good example or not

thats true but those people are wrong. ever hear the music in a train?

i have to go to bed now. nighty night. i will find the results of this inquiry in the morn.

this seems an ... outdated view, in some ways

Definitely

i think a lot of people, musically, have worked the positive version of this case -- WE AS A BAND BELIEVE THAT A NAIVE APPROACH TO MUSIC-MAKING CAN BE THRILLING AND FUN. but i don't think you can find a band who stand for virtuosity being bad.

thats true but those people are wrong. ever hear the music in a train?

i have to go to bed now. nighty night. i will find the results of this inquiry in the morn.

― Hinklepicker, Monday, 20 June 2011 11:12 (38 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^ valuable new posters

hmmm if anything free jazz was seen as anti-virtuosic - crude,untutored, r'n'b-derived etc - when compared to the chops of more traditional jazz players

I think the success of Muse, amongst others, suggests this is now a dead ideology, at least commercially (if it ever lived, commercially).

There was the interesting PJ Harvey quote about how she never plays an instrument except when songwriting or performing live, never practices, in order to maintain a sense of discovery that fuels her songwriting.

but i don't think you can find a band who stand for virtuosity being bad

Well, there's a lot of bands out there, I'm sure there's at least one!

no i think it is maybe ontologically impossible? i don't know

There was the interesting PJ Harvey quote about how she never plays an instrument except when songwriting or performing live, never practices, in order to maintain a sense of discovery that fuels her songwriting.

maybe she'll discover some more chords someday

I think it's about when virtuosity becomes self-indulgence. Someone like Steve Vai and his guitar noodling peers I can't stand, because the music is about the virtuosity. This virtuosity isn't just in the genes or a background of the music, it's virtuosity for virtuosity's sake. Which is nagl imho.

Steve Vai doesn't actually have any fans at all who aren't guitarists though, as far as I know?

paul bley is famous for never playing unless he's recording or doing a gig but he's... an acknowledged master of his instrument

Oh, you may well be right about that, yes xp

(but i wouldn't be surprised if his reasons are similar to pj harvey's)

xp

I like the concept, but goddammit, it just conjures up images of those long-haired dudes who are always hanging around rehearsal studios and guitar shops, playing "Stairway To Heaven" or killer metal riffs. ::shudders::
― Paranoid Spice (kate), Thursday, 20 October 2005 15:44 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

If you ain't got the chops, you can always play "Chopsticks."
― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 20 October 2005 15:44 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean, the only thing worse than "HOTT chops" is "Killer Chops!!!!"
Dude.

― Paranoid Spice (kate), Thursday, 20 October 2005 15:44 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I guess it makes more sense when you hang out with a lot of horn players, who actually use their "chops" to play.
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 20 October 2005 15:45 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Wish I could remember who was the jazz bass player who was practicing like crazy in his hotel room when Ray Brown knocked on the door and said something like "Man, if you're going to go to all that trouble, why not just play guitar instead?"

Ha!

Then there's some story about a horn player- George Coleman, maybe- who was playing all kinds of stuff at a gig and Miles Davis turned to him and said something like "I don't pay you to practice on the bandstand"

Image vs Talent

Everyone on Sarah Records: Classic or Dud?

Whereas Coltrane practiced constantly (xxxp)

IME a lot of what people consider "bad" virtuosity is bad because the player doesn't really have the kind of musicianship it takes to make great music. I think it's easier to develop technical virtuosity than it is to develop what I mean by musicianship, which I guess is just more of a sense of what sounds and feels good (or sounds and feels in a way that evokes whatever effect/feeling you're going for). It's also possible for a player with relatively low technical facility to have very good musicianship. But generally technical facility, if developed properly, ought to, well, facilitate. I'm probably most impressed with players who have incredible technical ability AND avoid falling into virtuoso cliches.

There's probably an element of attitude too though -- some people treat playing their instrument like an olympic sport, as though the russian judge will give you more points for difficulty.

thomp that 'image v. talent' thread is a great case in point! this still seems a pretty dominant attitude ~

Certain guitar tones are more acceptable to people for some strange reason - like in England, where, despite the fact that punk is now 25 years old, actual playing of instruments is still frowned upon, unless it's by stoned, mumbling oafs like Bernard Butler and John Squire and their repulsive offspring like OCS and Toploader, for whom music stopped somewhere between Buffalo Springfield and 'Astral Weeks'. I've been told that this is because nobody can afford music lessons.

it's possible that where i live we haven't caught up to how this attitude has changed since 2001, though. but still, bands like, i don't know, battles, seem to be very rare exceptions

A jazz pianist friend of mine told me a story about hanging out with Herbie Hancock, who in turn told him a story about some kid in a jazz program he was teaching at. Herbie said "This kid practiced 12 hours a day, but he STUNK." And my friend said, "Even practicing 12 hours a day he was that bad?" and Herbie said "No, I mean he STUNK. He didn't bathe regularly."

some people treat playing their instrument like an olympic sport

Pretty sure I once read Irmin Schmidt using this exact analogy when asked about Keith Emerson (don't know exactly why anyone would ask Irmin Schmidt about Keith Emerson though)

well, qualms, it seems to be a v common case that ppl are into bands like the whole sunburned diaspora or the sun city girls diaspora, there seem to be a lot more bands on that model around; those people can play, definitely. greater acceptance of metal. the sorts of records that a bill callahan or a joanna newsom is releasing now vs ten years ago. tv on the radio vs the rapture.

english indie bands don't really count because they don't really count

as music

but, like, wild beasts?

also, i don't know, the records made by valuable ilx posters owen pallett and steven tyler; and all the people the former has worked with.

i think i'm trying to make the two cases simultaneously that i. anti-virtuosity isn't really a thing anymore and ii. there is a new virtuosity that is a thing

I think of Patrick Wolf as, if not a virtuoso, then very definitely about chops.

Yeah I also got the impression that in the last 5-10 years indie culture actually HAD come back around a bit on virtuosic playing. There were all those mathy sub-genres, and a lot of people really geek out on bands like Hella and Deerhoof with unabashedly *sick* drummers. I definitely get a geeky thrill out of how well Greg Saunier plays the drums, although at the same time I don't like Zach Hill who is probably technically even better.

Perhaps mentioned upthread, but virtuosity became bad when virtuosos started to act like their virtuosity actually made them better than others (see: ELP; Malmsteen, Yngwie). I mean, even early punk was rife with virtuosos: Verlaine/Lloyd, Quine ... um, Clem Burke ...

(x^ n post)
Miles complained about Coltrane too, telling people he "lost his mind and can't play no more" shortly after he left the band.

punk freed people up so that anyone could do it, but unfortunately it also freed people up so that anyone could do it.

But then you could say that technology freed people up so that anyone could do it, but unfortunately it also freed people up so that anyone could do it

yeah pretty much.

a little knowledge, etc...

http://skreened.com/render-product/k/a/m/kamaawrcmanawucelaiy/spiderman-with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility.anvil-unisex-heavyweight-ringer-tee.heather-red.w335h380z1.jpg

plus i think there are probably just a lot less peolple sitting in their rooms practicing for hours on end cuz mario needs to get to the next level or something. kids used to actually get bored enough to want to practice for hours. and the people who DO practice for hours have to end up in metal bands cuz where else are they gonna go? they can't play with the indie rock bands cuz they would be the one guy who could play and that would be silly. UNLESS they are a drummer and then they are good anywhere.

Pavement!

I think it's easier to develop technical virtuosity than it is to develop what I mean by musicianship, which I guess is just more of a sense of what sounds and feels good (or sounds and feels in a way that evokes whatever effect/feeling you're going for). It's also possible for a player with relatively low technical facility to have very good musicianship. But generally technical facility, if developed properly, ought to, well, facilitate. I'm probably most impressed with players who have incredible technical ability AND avoid falling into virtuoso cliches.

All of this is OTM really, first part especially.

x-post The number of indie bands I know that feature at least one bona fide guitar virtuoso restrained enough not to show off is pretty high. Which may explain why so many indie guitarists dabble in post-Fahey/Basho et al. weird folk stuff, since it allows them to show off in a less gauche manner.

scott you make a ton of sense. thanks

Tom D, what makes you think Mozart didn't have a massive cock himself?

Rock music was anti-classical and anti-jazz from the beginning, so the anti-virtuousity started already then. Then, there was sort of a backclach against this anti-virtuousity thing in the late 60s/early 70s, but there would have to be a backclash against that once again from people who wanted to go back to the "original values" of rock music.

Surely, if you are into rock'n'roll, punk, R&B, reggae or hip-hop, I can understand these values, but then, with rock critics who are often into really great guitar heroes, it feels kind of stupid. Metal has gotten over it after a short NWOBHM spell, and prog seems to be more accepted again too. But there is still this anti-feeling against perfect production, for instance.

Don't think Genesis were particularly virtuosic anyway - apart from Phil Collins.

Genesis were originally started as a songwriter team, and their virtuousity laid more in composing/arranging than in actually playing. There is a lot of theoretical thinking behind, for instance, the chord changes Tony Banks would tend to use.

I don't think Rock music started in any way with relevance/reference to classical music, for or against.

I think people made music to dance to.

Oh don't mention dancing with Geir around

I want to.

Rock music was anti-classical and anti-jazz from the beginning,

Think Geir's taking the words of "Roll Over Beethoven" a bit too seriously

Yeah, I thought of that too..

I want to agree with Hurting's comments regarding musicianship and virtuosity (and I instictively do), but it feels like a too-easy way out of a difficult question. The way it's usually presented, musicianship is like this nebulous characteristic of a player, or some "property within" him that allows him to make "good music"--another, uh, pretty nebulous thing.

Virtuosity is at least easier to point to, although I still think it's a very elastic concept. Verlaine/Lloyd get pointed at as virtuosos, but it's it only in the context of punk that they have, like, AMAZING chops? A Vai listener wouldn't be all that impressed by the dual guitar work on Marquee Moon, I don't think.

As to the initial question, my immediate response is, virtuosity a bad thing for whom? There are millions and millions of people out there who just wanna listen to somebody rip it up on his instrument and play a lot of notes real fast. I too find myself asking questions that feel global and pervasive but upon closer reflection only apply to, say, me and my like-minded friends or peers.

i think it was a definite feeling in indierock/punk/noise worlds though. don't know about RIGHT NOW. but in the past, yeah, "noodling" and pro production was definitely suspect to a lot of people. this might have started out as a reaction to the millionare rock star, but over time i think it just became a default defensive opinion of people who just, you know, couldn't play all that well! or who had never bothered to learn how to play. amateurishness became the steve vai of, um, the underground.

yeah I'm not sure where this "more talent = worse" attitude really comes from except in regards to guys like Keith Emerson (who I really do like)

(even now lots of indie type people have doom side-projects because metal might be cooler amongst the hipsterati but doom is still the only form of metal they can play. hahahaha!)

(or lo-fi black metal "projects". thank god for bm. last refuge of a lazy scoundrel.)

LOVE this: "amateurishness became the steve vai of, um, the underground."

Odd/crude/yelping vocals will cover up for virtuosity. While there were punk bands like Germs or Minor Threat where everyone was learning on the job, a hell of a lot of them had great musicianship despite their up-from-the-streets posturing. There's a scene in X: The Unheard Music where Bonebreak goes all Lionel Hampton on a set of vibes in his bedroom. Voidoids, Clash, X, Bad Brains, Minutemen, Meat Puppets all come to mind for their proggy moments, covered up by the user-unfriendly singing.

Maybe it's that whenever somebody seems to wear a musical affectation as a badge, it starts to veer into the realm of the icky feelings generated by Wakeman, et al? Scott, you articulated in that one sentence what has always bugged me about a lot of twee. I want to say "anything that screams 'hey look at me' turns me off" but that's not quite true either, as I love a lot of stuff that flaunts its chops in some way. I need to think more about this...

Had to skim through, but this is like talking about what the distinction is between "jam-bands" and other genres or sub-genres that "jam." What jam-band fans look for in their music is masturbatory noodling that is the basis of their songs, where in other kinds of music technical proficiency is generally there as icing or to serve the song, not the other way around. Jam-band fans only care about the proficiency of the players, like how crazy they are at soloing.

because it's not a bad thing in the blues, country, funk, jazz, or hip hop (at least verbally).

Is this true wrt to blues and country? If it is, then isn't virtuosity #936 on the list of great things about country (apart from bluegrass)?

xpost That's a great scene, bendy. And iirc, it's accompanied by shots of each band member showing off their chops.

And in the fwiw category: I interviewed someone who played for/recorded with Miles Davis and he called James Carter a showoff.

xpost I'm an extremely novice guitarist who still takes lesson. I once brought in a Television track to my teacher, who wasn't terribly familiar with them, and while he didn't find the song hard to dissect, he was taken aback by how impressively arranged and through composed the guitars were. Bedhead was another group that quietly blew him away, not just for the clarity of the guitars but for the broader vision, which relies on a more subtle form of virtuosity to pull off.

I got that Miles Davis quote backwards. Herbie Hancock:

I’ll never forget what I experienced in the 60’s when I played with Miles Davis. I learned such a lot when I was a member of his quintet. Saxophonist George Coleman used to practice in his room all day, experimenting on various scales and melodies. One day Miles said to him “I don’t pay you for experimenting up in your room. I pay you for doing it with the band on stage”. And Miles was right. Experiment takes place in front on audience, and the audience is a part of it.
The true experimental field for a musician is the stage, and only during the concert there are momenth of truth.

Also, if you're talking amateurishness and the, er, Underground, John Cale is a perfect example of a classically trained virtuoso playing down to suit the music, no?

A friend told me a great story about his friend sitting in on organ at a James Brown session. Apparently, the song was moving right along, so the organ player, getting into the groove, moved to the upper level of the keyboard. James Brown immediately said "hold it," stopped the song, turned to the organ player and stated: "Son, you have no business being up there."

Meanwhile:

After a successful run of tour dates overseas, shredder rock-pop metallers and fan favorites Mr. Big,vocalist Eric Martin, guitarist Paul Gilbert, bassist Billy Sheehan, and drummer Pat Torpey, will be hitting the road in the United States this summer in support of the band's new album, WHAT IF... The tour opens in San Diego, June 30th, and marks the first time in 13 years the original line-up has toured North America! ...Formed in 1988, Mr. Big forged its place in hard rock history by combining trademark virtuosic musicianship with stellar vocal harmonies. The quartet produced numerous hit songs that ranged across a wide array of rock genres.

and george should have said fuck you its my room!

x-post

Haha, exactly, scott.

Remember reading interview with Billy Sheehan back in the day in one of the umpteen bass magazines he was on the cover of and he kept saying I'm not about the chops, I'm not about the licks, I'm all about the groove, I'm all about the song so I was thinking "wow,cool" and then I actually listened to Mr. Big.

^ and this is why virtuosity is a bad thing

this argument does feel pretty dated tho, maybe we should start a disco why is it so bad and hated thread

vehement objections to virtuosity in rock do seem rooted in the 70s and with good reason - case in point, the black sabbath bootleg of their 1975 asbury park show is one of the greatest live recordings ever until they descend into noodling gtr and drum solos. I saw blue oyster cult a couple years ago and couldn't believe they were still doing this type of shit, I don't want hear your bassist solo for 5 minutes, play "godzilla" you fukkers!

I'm not even sure this is a rock critic thing or punk musician thing, more like a human being thing, who wants to listen to some dude wank off?

Has Derek Smalls taught us nothing?

obviously you can find great music made by people who are on all kinds of different levels of mastery or whatever.

i do find, though, that i prefer to listen to people who are either on a very high level playing-wise, or crude stuff that is more about improvisation or found sound/objects/banging on pots and pans. that mid-level/indie rock/know a few chords/can kinda keep a beat stuff has to the REALLY strong in the song department or the charisma department or have some stand-out element for me to care about it nowadays. cuz there are a zillion bands full of bored/boring dabblers out there.

i'm kidding though. i don't really listen to any current indie rock. and there are plenty of boring improv/noise people too. nice people! but boring.

Bedhead was another group that quietly blew him away, not just for the clarity of the guitars but for the broader vision, which relies on a more subtle form of virtuosity to pull off.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, June 20, 2011 9:57 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Totally! Did you play "Lepidoptera"? Because I've played this for my friends to show them how great Bedhead were at restraint and subtle complexity in their compositions. The ultimate example in my opinion.

Scott kidding but still otm. The last band I liked that was like that was Bettie Serveert. After them the deluge.

the reason why i listen to so many records from the 70's is because they had really awesome recording studios filled with cool gear and people could play and the people who could play had really cool ideas about sound and music. probably because they were high. but still...

with a lot of new music i hear, the production doesn't sound nearly as good to me, the people can't play as well, and the people playing aren't as eager to take risks with sound/music. they might not be high enough. i don't know. there are plenty of exceptions. most of the really adventurous modern music i hear though is in the realm of mostly unheard experimental/electronic music. or britney.

I'm not even sure this is a rock critic thing or punk musician thing, more like a human being thing, who wants to listen to some dude wank off?

― the manarchist cookbook (Edward III), Monday, June 20, 2011 10:30 AM (12 minutes ago)

Jam-band fans do. If I was a South Park writer I'd pitch a story where the boys go to a jam-band festival and there are just dudes standing on stage literally playing with themselves in front of thousands of fans.

one of the reasons i can never totally hate on the completely hateable major labels is that they let a zillion weirdos run rampant in fancy recording studios once upon a time and come up with the kinds of recordings that hardly anyone would be able to afford anymore. so there is that. if more young untrained bands were let loose on a million dollar studio maybe they would come up with cooler sounds. i dunno.

But accountants run the major labels now, not as many true music fans that would let that happen anymore.

i don't think virtuosity is seen as a bad thing in indie rock anymore, and hasn't seemed like that for a long time, even since the 90s, i mean fugazi could play, yo la tengo could play, they were minimal but they could play, even going back to dino jr mascis could shred it up, greg ginn could shred, etc

and i mean like don cab and math rock and dillinger escape plan and etc...tortoise, someone mentioned bedhead...silkworm dudes could play, lots of ppl could play

they had really awesome recording studios filled with cool gear

yeah, even the lowliest 60's or 70's rock records would have some insane bass part with insane tone or a drum sound that you couldn't get today if you tried to get it for a million years.

i really do believe though that the most interesting things happening today in sound/music are almost all electronic/digital in nature, so, in way, it just doean't matter as much about playing ability. rock bands do feel a little passe at times. indie pop bands. they feel like the dark ages.

i'm all for rock being like dixieland or some other moldy fig style. it had a good run. and its getting there in a hurry. if it isn't there already.

I love you, Scott Seward.

How depressing must it be, to be Coldplay's drummer, knowing full well that NO ONE IN THE WORLD could or would ever recognise you by your playing or by the sound of your kit.

i think bands could still have great sounding records, for whatever value my band was i always had great bass tones on recordings because we put a good microphone on a big ampeg 70s cab with a big ampeg 70s tube head and i played a 60 precision...and we went to 2 inch analog tape.

it really wasn't hard. it was simple in fact.

I'm with scott on many points in this thread. I think the average record was better when you had an army of high-level studio musicians and expensive studio setups and well-trained engineers all over the place.

But '50s and '60s rock records can sound good, too, and they didn't really have that.

@ the beta banned - yes, and I know other people who do this, and then compress the bass track so it sounds like it was done on Garageband, or else pile other stuff on top of it within the same frequency range, so all the texture and detail you spent ages achieving is aurally invisible to the listener.

i'm all for rock being like dixieland or some other moldy fig style.

And Joe Carducci is moldy fig rock's Pied Piper. Follow him.

How depressing must it be, to be Coldplay's drummer, knowing full well that NO ONE IN THE WORLD could or would ever recognise you by your playing or by the sound of your kit.

But that's precisely what you sign up for when listening/liking (loving?) Coldplay, that inoffensive, nondescript sound that no one could really love/hate. I've always assumed Coldplay actively attempt to create this sensation.

there were certainly studio musicians in the 50s and 60s

But this is a band whose lead singer's daughter is named after a fruit.

Quit being homophobic.

Oh, I know! But, you know, two-track and four-track studios.

xp

KJB - I see what you're getting at, but I'm pretty sure that Coldpay, and Snow Patrol, and all the rest of that shower, would actually love to make, and are trying to make, really individual, standout, characterful, great-sounding records. They're just fucking idiots.

How depressing must it be, to be Coldplay's drummer, knowing full well that NO ONE IN THE WORLD could or would ever recognise you by your playing or by the sound of your kit.

Yeah I'd be crying into my enormous piles of cash.

everything sounds good later

one day we'll wax nostalgic about overcompressed rock hits of the oughties when some new horrific has been visited on music production

brian eno is a huge fan of coldplay's drummer

I gather the Coldplay rhythm section are too fucking blitzed on coke to feel the enormity of their mediocrity, and the blitzing is probably for that exact reason.

I love Eno but he invented ambient music, man; of course he loves Coldplay's drummer.

however much i admire Eno's past work, dude is a hack as a producer now IMO and has been for a while, same with Rick Rubin

ppl just bring them on to make a good press release

Not a drummer, but I'm not sure there was ever much of a culture of people recognizing drummers by the sound of their kits, was there? By their playing, sure.

brian eno loves any band whose songwriting is sketchy enough that he can pump it full of eno-isms

Oh this is a radical thread, some people are hating on Coldplay. What next, Toploader?

Oh, wait...

I don't think Rock music started in any way with relevance/reference to classical music, for or against.

I think people made music to dance to.

I suppose, for the original R&B acts like Big Mama Thornton and Arthur Crudup, that may have been the main point. Whenever rock'n'roll crossed over to the American mainstream in the 50s, however, it was part of a youth rebellion thing from the very beginning. Remember, "Rock Around The Clock" became a hit through being used in a movie about young pupils protesting against a very authorative teacher. So there was an element of a rebellion against anything the grownups were into. Not least the music that grownups were into. But sure, it was probably just as much a rebellion against Tin Pan Alley pop as it was against classical then.

As for Coldplay, their force is the songwriting, not the playing.

making music people can dance to is hardly inimical to music designed to be a generational split

But that's precisely what you sign up for when listening/liking (loving?) Coldplay, that inoffensive, nondescript sound that no one could really love/hate.

I love them because they have great songs with great catchy choruses, and I couldn't give a fuck about the drummer, really. He stays in the background keeping the pulse, just like drummers should.

To be a "rebellion" against something, it has to be seen as an alternative to it.

It's not like the kids were turning to Bill Haley as an alternative to Mozart. Sinatra, probably yes...

good drummers should be seen and not heard

it's too bad phil collins retired, really

Well, that means you can't hear him

this thread really inspired a review i just wrote. thanks!

if modern rock records sounded more like kompakt records or alva noto records or any one of a thousand tiny label avant blip records i hear, i would listen to a lot more modern rock. i just want people to use everything that is out there to create sound. and yeah compressed digital drums/bass/gtr/vox is just deadsville. i don't really listen to radiohead, but they seem to get it more than most. that, you know, there is a lot you can do and why not try it?

but, seriously, again, fuck rock.

I'm not sure compression and digital recording are the big problem, though, Scott.

just swingin in with your yearly reminder that coldplay are terrible songwriters I literally don't know a single songwriter who isn't better than them

"I'm not sure compression and digital recording are the big problem, though, Scott."

okay, then lack of imagination.

so far we've got compression, digital recording, lack of imagination, poor sound choices, shitty drumming.

don't forget terrible songwriters

we're gonna finally figure out what's wrong with rock and how to fix it!

new necro deathmort album sounds GREAT! figures the two dudes who make the music are non-rock people though. so invigorating if you like lovingly recorded music consisting of big fat beats and big fat doom riffs. for fans of: new kingdom, dalek, the bug, black sabbath.

think you can download the whole album from their label for free:

http://www.distractionrecords.com/index.php

Necro Deathmort follow their critically-acclaimed debut album This Beat Is Necrotronic

ok you got me

much handwringing over bands/musicians who can play really well. Even in muso circles, "wanking" musicians are not good, but the degree to which really good musicians are written off critically has always seemed strange to me. No one would do that about a really good writer. Some of it probably is (or has been) a thinly veiled attack on class, as it takes years of studying and practicing to get good -- who has time for that if you're barely getting by?

But most probably reaction to 60s blues guitarists and proggy bands, from 70s punks and ethos of anyone can and should be able to do this, and if what you're doing doesn't work in that frame, then FUCK YOU PRETENSIOUS ASSHOLE.

*If* this has changed, imo it is because now, you can be smart and technically awesome, and still do your thing on an "instrument" that is cheap/free/easy to use. (Plus, technical know-how is just appreciated a lot more in every field these days.)

new album is a lot like the first necro deathmort. but i'm fine with that cuz i loved the first album. i'm one of the people who critically acclaimed it.

x-post

i think, in general, people marvel more now at people who do stuff well. which is weird, but it kinda makes sense. that's why how-to/cooking/building a house reality shows are so big on t.v. because nobody knows how to do anything anymore. i don't know how to do anything. i wouldn't even know how to sew a button on a shirt. i am REALLY good at watching t.v. though.

"No one would do that about a really good writer."

people do this to really good writers all the time! see for example: the '80s.

Digital does kind of dispel '70s studio sounds, though, doesn't it? You might listen to some '70s album on vinyl and think it was about the best sound ever but then hear the same record on CD and think, well, it was great but it was also just another technology from another time.

thing is...i don't know how to read. fuck you pretensious asshole

xp

what can we expect of a female ex rock critic

fuck you prehensile asshole

actually the lit thing is a good example that everything moves in cycles blah de blah. or what's considered passe gets shunted off to the side/drapes itself in some other style to hide itself.

i can't think of a decade in my lifetime as supposedly hostile to virtuosity as the 90s and then there's don cab except they were "indie" and etc etc.

the technology from back then sounds better to me than the "standard" technology employed on run-of-the-mill pop, rock, indie, etc records today for the most part. but, like i said, i think there are electronic/digital music makers making things now that are staggering sonically. and would have totally freaked people out back in the 70's. so, on the one hand, i can play a Living Stereo release from the 50's and go OMG!!! that's amazing!!! but i do that now too with electro releases i hear. its just the vast middle that sucks to me now. or that bores me. and the standard for the vast middle 30 or 40 years ago just seems higher to me. they got amazing sound for people who didn't even deserve it.

xpost

Sometimes in arguments about file-sharing/death of the music industry as we know it I try to raise an argument about the benefits of a professional class of musicians and engineers with lots of time and money to play with. I usually go sort of anti-DIY in such an argument, which is part trolling, because obviously lots of great stuff was recorded in four-tracks in basements by people who didn't take lessons etc. It's not that there's no good music being made in basements, it's just that Steely Dan records will never be made in basements, Led Zeppelin records will never be made in basements, Motown records with string sections will never be made in basements by four guys with demanding dayjobs, etc.

obv there are other problems too, e.g. the overcompression of everything, the design of music for low-quality mp3 files and ringtones, tc.

i agree with that, for the most part, but i'm also continually amazed by what people can get out of "cheap" home recording equipment these days.

plus someone (matos, i think?) did a piece recently on the rise of the "indie session musician" where a lot more people know people who play the trombone or the violin or whatever who can be drafted in for a day or two. i'm not saying the results are going to trounce the royal scam or anything for fluidity but people ARE trying to push the homemade envelope.

I think of the 90s as the time when people started doing crazy stuff again, in a "virtuosic" way. mr bungle, ruins (and ton of other japanese stuff), primus, jellyfish. Both King Crimson and Rush came back with "return to form" type records. Really telling was that you had bands like Melt Banana and Boredoms, who were essentially playing punk music, but you kind of also had to be a weird virtuoso to actually perform.

I think of the 80s as being ground zero for hating on virtuosic bands.

xp

yeah it is sad that people can't afford to make records that sound like those old records. but on the other hand, its amazing what people can do with a computer. so...

x-post

nobody should cry for primitive rock music. It might not be on the charts, or internet/critical favorites, but so what. It's fun to pay $3 at a dive bar and see 3 or 4 young bands let loose. It an experience that needs no historical/critical contextualising.

as far as virtuosity, the only complaint I have is about the songwriting. If you can't write and arrange, being a great player won't help you with pop/rock music.

plus someone (matos, i think?) did a piece recently on the rise of the "indie session musician" where a lot more people know people who play the trombone or the violin or whatever who can be drafted in for a day or two. i'm not saying the results are going to trounce the royal scam or anything for fluidity but people ARE trying to push the homemade envelope.

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Monday, June 20, 2011 11:26 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there are lots of ppl like that, andrew bird comes to mind

i don't know how to do anything.

It's a good thing Nature gave humans a few instincts; otherwise we would just sit there and get eaten by feral dogs at this point.

plus, tim, i could play you old stuff on vinyl that sounded as crystal clear/digital-sounding as a cd. you wouldn't know it was vinyl. jeezus, this andy pratt album right now, holy holy jeebus. thanks to the person on ilm who made me realize that i needed this! the first album from 1973. i only had heard the later albums and i didn't know how great this was! seriously, there is stuff on here, sound-wise, just jaw-dropping.

Digital has a leveling effect for me. If I hear a digital remaster of All Things Must Pass, I'm not thinking as much about a million dollar studio. I'm thinking that these are sounds like any other sounds.

for me, it depends entirely on the job someone did of adapting the recording for cd. some people do a great job. some not so much.

as far as virtuosity, the only complaint I have is about the songwriting. If you can't write and arrange, being a great player won't help you with pop/rock music.

I keep wanting to bring Frank Zappa up in this thread, and this ^^^ may be the way in, but on the other hand I think naaah 'cause there are only 4-5 other people on the board who like him.

Thought http://i54.tinypic.com/11l4yvn.gif was back so you're up to at least 5-6.

Guess not.

It's news to me if he is.

i tend to look at most cd remasters/reissues like after the fact george lucas dvd re-releases. it goes without saying that i am in "the more faithful the better" camp. (big star first two albums twofer on cd kinda my gold standard after all these years i guess. thing sounds so good and i honestly love my copy and i rarely love a cd.)

x-post kinda

In all digital rematering cases good or bad, though, each track on a master tape is converted into a computer wave form that the engineer can manipulate. That's what I mean by old recordings becoming more perceptible as "sounds like any other sounds."

Virtuosos:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qJSdy2mcKTY/TV6aUJ2R6gI/AAAAAAAADSM/FP-Gq1vmQPA/s1600/some-like-it-hot.jpg

tim, do you love this version as much as i do? if i remember correctly they played a gig in new york and then made demos early in the morning before driving back up to mass. live. bash it out. go home. one of those top ten skot is drunk and playing music too loud moments for me.

(not making a point about anything. just love it and tim is around.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzmbvCHCVRU

I think the premise is backwards. From the beginning, rock was never about virtuosity, and there were really only a couple of brief periods of time where certain rock subgenres valued virtuosity.

^^^eh I dunno about that... Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Motown house band, Spector's Wrecking Crew = these dudes were total pros, definitely virtuosic

That's really stretching the definition of virtuosity

I mean, chuck berry riffs are like the first thing you learn on the guitar. Those musicians are all great, but the kind of stuff they played on record was incredibly simple compared to jazz for example.

Scott, I never bought that album! That song sounds incredibly raucous.

xpost Guess it depends on what you mean by virtuosity, because Chet Atkins, James Burton, et al. were total virtuosos.

that seems right. Early rock "chops" were still slumming it by the jazz standards of the day, which I know from that one part in Bird. (xxpost)

this kind of leads down the rong-o path to say that because james brown's bands were forced to restrict themselves to a couple of notes they weren't made up of virtuosos.

virtuoso only always equals "wanking" in rock critic shorthand.

Yeah, Bootsy is a total virtuoso.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how Paul McCartney was the only real virtuoso in that band, yet found a way to be a team-player virtuoso.

discernment, taste, restraint also pretty important attributes of the virtuoso makeup imo

Many of the posts itt read like X-Ray Spex lyrics.

Ha.

yeah there's a difference between the simplicity of material being played and the abilities of the players

this kind of leads down the rong-o path to say that because james brown's bands were forced to restrict themselves to a couple of notes they weren't made up of virtuosos.

maybe it's less about the virtuosity of the musicians and more about how it's displayed within the music. Not that virtuosos aren't welcome or required within rock, but that rock as a form doesn't call for virtuosity, being a kind of minimalistic style.

I guess all types of music have different criteria for virtuosity. In classical music it would be the performance of some particularly difficult passage. In jazz it would have more to do with improvisation. And in rock you might say it's more about the groove and restraint, etc. by which measure people like James Jamerson or Hal Blaine would be considered virtuosos of rock. But they're still not virtuosos by the more traditional classical measure, at least as evidenced on the recordings that made them famous (a lot of those guys were actually jazz players too).

yeah there's a difference between the simplicity of material being played and the abilities of the players

but how are we to judge, other than through the material being played?

yeah but even classical music was/is about groove and restraint to a point. it's not as if every classical composition everywhere is full of 18th steve vais sawing away.

true, but I guess the value of virtuosity in a classical player is that he can play those hard parts when they do come up?

no, i know what yr saying.

It would be interesting to try to find the earliest examples of reviews that specifically celebrate a band's lack of ability. It seems like maybe Lester Bangs did this, didn't he?

pretty much the same situation w/session players and pop music. I actually think some pop producers/artists get distracted by virtuosity, as if the best player money can buy means they are actually the best player for what you want. It's kind of funny looking at the liner notes of a Paul Simon and realizing he's got a whole bunch of major league instrumental virtuosos playing tunes that, really, any college-trained musician could do with ease (and for 1/100 the price...AND I bet I'd find his records more interesting if they were more imperfectly performed. AND see also steely dan)

xp

lester bangs did this all the time, yes.

Me, I still like the Steve Gadd part on "50 ways" and don't want to hear what the anonymous college grad would have played.

ha ha oh dear, i just saw this thread

I think they may have mentioned you once or twice, geeta.

I think maybe the interesting thing about rock is that it requires almost like a virtuosity of composition and arrangement from the players. Kind of a group composition. So a classical composer writes all of the parts and virtuoso players are expected to play them. A jazz player is maybe given some written parts, but then is expected to improvise at a virtuoso level.

But in rock (as well as nashville, blues, pop etc), the players get the chart and are expected to write their own part in a way that serves the song. So the results may be simple to play while being sometimes ingeniously written.

So as a non-bass-player I can pick up an electric bass and easily figure out any bass part by Jamerson, Carol Kaye, or McCartney, but the point is, I never would have thought of those basslines. On the other hand, there's not a chance I could ever play a Mingus solo on an upright bass.

steve gadd! Yes, his feel is a big part of that whole record. But brecker brothers playing long tones that are buried in mix on rhythm of saints seems like a waste of money to me.

So as a non-bass-player I can pick up an electric bass and easily figure out any bass part by Jamerson, Carol Kaye, or McCartney,

"It's kind of funny looking at the liner notes of a Paul Simon and realizing he's got a whole bunch of major league instrumental virtuosos playing tunes that, really, any college-trained musician could do with ease (and for 1/100 the price...AND I bet I'd find his records more interesting if they were more imperfectly performed. AND see also steely dan)"

oh man yeah no i wouldn't want to hear those college paul simon records! those college guys couldn't do it as good no way.

About Colaiuta's ability to play Zappa's notoriously complex music and the complex style of polyrhythms, guitarist Steve Vai told the following story:
He's one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early '80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called "Mo 'N Herb's Vacation." Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like "The Black Page" except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there. Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like "The Black Page." And then the first riff came in, [mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns] with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, ruffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar. It was the sickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing.

You may be able to do that I'll grant you, but I'll bet you'll miss a few of Jamerson's ghost notes or passing tones and play, say, a C when he played a C#.

Which would really just be down to a transcription error though right? I mean, the point being, nothing he played was particularly fast or difficult. It's what he played that was so brilliant, not the fact that it was even possible for a person to physically play it.

(This is of course vastly oversimplifying the idea of virtuosity to make a point, and ignoring factors like feeling, tone, etc.)

Time to link to the story about when Weird Al's bassist auditioned for Zappa:
http://www.stephenjay.com/articles/globalbass200112.html
(xp)

I mean, the point being, nothing he played was particularly fast or difficult.

You may be able to do that I'll grant you, but I'll bet you'll miss a few of Jamerson's ghost notes or passing tones and play, say, a C when he played a C#.

Additionally, it's somewhat unlikely that anyone other than Jamerson could tell the stories the way he did.

I've always loved that Colaiuta story.

That great story of young Jamerson in Edisto plucking a rubber band and trying to make the ants dance, I'm a believer.

Answering the stuff upthread (I'm cooking while posting to ILM, which requires its own particular kind of virtuosity):

she keeps working this dialectic about eno's 'non-musicianship' vs. the hopeless prog rockers

Eno worked with Fripp, starting early on--and he was certainly a virtuoso, and he certainly wasn't hopeless. Eno had Phil Collins playing drums on several tracks on Another Green World. Paul Rudolph, who played on AGW, was associated with Hawkwind for a while (at around the time of AGW). Eno had John Cale playing viola, and Cale had formal training in music. Eno certainly wasn't allergic to the idea of virtuosity, per se. And yeah, Eno continually referred to himself as a 'non-musician', but I think that synthesizers and the studio environment helped bring upon a different concept of what it meant to be a musician.

I'm cooking while posting to ILM, which requires its own particular kind of virtuosity)

Eno also sings regularly in a church choir to keep in touch with that side of things. He could probably argue his way out of anything you tried to pin on him.

The presumption that the rough, untutored expression is somehow more authentic than the virtuosic display is silly though. Gratuitous displays of musicianship are fun to watch - especially in a live setting. It's like watching someone juggle. Why do some people hate fun?

I guess what I mean is that I would probably like to read what Eno himself has to say about these issues, I'm sure he's thought it through.

Brian Eno Interview

the winkies could play. speaking of eno.

wk, please film yourself playing "Bernadette" and then put it on youtube

sigh. I'm not repping for my bass playing chops. I'm just saying that if you think Jamerson is great because of his virtuosity, you're totally missing the point IMO. He's great because of his writing.

A lot of Eno's songs are deceptively simple--take the song 'Here Come the Warm Jets', for instance. The melody itself is almost laughably simple, but the incredible thing about it is the guitar tone--it has the most amazing sound.

jamerson only plucked with one finger i think, that always kinda blew my mind

plus, little known fact, eno was in a prog rock band called roxy music.

yeah those guys opened for national health i think

plus, little known fact, eno was in a prog rock band called roxy music.

I don't think they did any "suites" though, so I don't think they count according to the Hongro International Prog Standards Committee.

damn, I could have almost made that an acronym that spelled hipster.

plus, little known fact, eno was in a prog rock band called roxy music.

I would venture that they got even more prog after Eno left--Eddie Jobson, John Wetton (King Crimson, Uriah Heep, etc) played on Viva, there are some more I'm probably forgetting

Some really silly ideas itt re jazz and virtuosity

phil manzanera was a prog machine. and eno played with him all the time.

i basically get eno records in the store when i go through stacks of prog and/or classical records from private collections.

eno's basically the outlier prog dude that's accessible to prog-fearing indie types right?

yah he's punk enough and he hung out with deadbeats like bowie and iggy.

That great story of young Jamerson in Edisto plucking a rubber band and trying to make the ants dance, I'm a believer.

That is a great story, but I meant telling a story with his playing. Maybe someone else could have written those lines, and other players probably had the technical facility to physically play them, but no one else could have told the stories Jamerson's music told.

new wave people bought him. punk people. art rock people. classical people. classic rock people. glam people cuz he looked like he was a rocky horror cast member.

and roxy kinda invented rocky horror.

That is a great story, but I meant telling a story with his playing.

and other players probably had the technical facility to physically play them, but no one else could have told the stories Jamerson's music told.

The classic "virtuosity is a bad thing" example/related fallacy is when some technically advanced player says "I could have played that part better then the geezer who originally played it." Well, what does better mean in this case exactly? Put more 32nd note fills in there?

all of the people I know who are heavy into '70s prog really like '70s Eno--the fact that he worked so extensively with Fripp is a big point in his favor of course

Robert Wyatt appears under a pseudonym on Before and After Science, as 'Shirley Williams'. Fred Frith is on that album as well, and Jaki Liebezeit from Can--plenty of musicians who made 'challenging' music. oh yeah, and Moebius/Roedelius on 'By this River'. the list of musicians who contributed to that album, in particular, is kind of incredible

first diamond head album has wyatt, eno, and wetton on it. and bill maccormick too from matching mole and 801 and my fave random hold.

Apart from virtuosity, I think the other question is when did mere competence become a bad thing? Like you have this continuum from basic incompetence at the bottom -> through the whole range of various levels of competence -> and then virtuosity up at the high end. I feel like some of the discussion here is actually getting at the fact that basic musical competence became thought of as unseemly at some point (which is maybe why some people are misranking certain players as virtuosos).

I think most of the original punk bands were good players who somehow perpetuated this myth of the non-musician and then spawned generations of bands who were completely incompetent.

And maybe there's a spectrum of tolerance for incompetence with vocals being the place where audiences accept the least competence and drums where we expect the most. So like some bands with tone-deaf warblers as frontmen at least had some kind of moderately competent timekeeper behind the drums.

that was a pretty good post

well i've brought it up on other threads but even a lot of 70's punkers had been in glam/pub/soul cover/rock bands for years before punk. and in general the apprenticeships in bar bands, etc were a lot longer and people learned how to play diverse styles/genres back then. and that just isn't the case now. people may have been in different indie rock bands or different punk bands, but what they were playing in those bands was often quite similar from band to band. people don't grow as much anymore.

since my coworker won
't stop playing RUSH at all times

re: competence, wondering if a lot of this is tied to the whole "artist as spontaneous, influence-less creator". Like, the more thought and/or preparation that went into some work of art = somehow less "authentic" expression. And yeah, if that is the case, then it's all part of a myth (tho hardly seeming fair to blame it on "punks" or any other single group of folks).

Also agreeing on a conflating of basic (traditional?) competence and actual virtuosity. I have to admit at being kind of fascinated with virtuoso performers-- possibly because I am not one myself, but also as kind of a peering into a world so singularly focused, so utterly driven to one thing well, it can't help but be interesting, inspiring. Sometmes, I think of virtuoso musicians as kind of like savant math geniuses, and working with them in any kind of artistic setting coming with similarly complex payoffs and frustrations.

In electronic dance music there's undeniably a huge critical bias against the productional virtuoso, maximalist side of things (trance, psy) and towards the simplistic, ascetic and minimalist. Which is in one way understandable (the prog vs punk template) but in another way strange in that it is not how the genre started in the first place, with its almost wide-eyed fascination of the cool things this technology made possible.

minimal vs. maximal (for whatever that may mean) doesn't have a correlation necessarily to virtuosity, when it comes to dance music

basic channel is certainly ascetic, minimalist and maybe 'simplistic', but your average maurizio track shows more technical virtuosity than a lot of contemporary trance

it's weird that this thread is coming up now because honestly lots of the "big" indie bands like arcade fire and decemberists etc are really polished compared to old indie rock

re: competence, wondering if a lot of this is tied to the whole "artist as spontaneous, influence-less creator". Like, the more thought and/or preparation that went into some work of art = somehow less "authentic" expression. And yeah, if that is the case, then it's all part of a myth (tho hardly seeming fair to blame it on "punks" or any other single group of folks).

Also agreeing on a conflating of basic (traditional?) competence and actual virtuosity. I have to admit at being kind of fascinated with virtuoso performers-- possibly because I am not one myself, but also as kind of a peering into a world so singularly focused, so utterly driven to one thing well, it can't help but be interesting, inspiring. Sometmes, I think of virtuoso musicians as kind of like savant math geniuses, and working with them in any kind of artistic setting coming with similarly complex payoffs and frustrations.

― Dominique, Monday, June 20, 2011 4:33 PM Bookmark

Yes, this. Also people like to feel like it *could* be them up there on that stage. I think some bands even play down their competency to play into this, whether consciously or not.

I guess the attitude I always admired most was the musician who achieves a very high level of technical facility but avoids slavery to it. I think Herbie Hancock is a really good example -- a guy who was a prodigy classical pianist and played with national orchestras as a child, but ultimately took a very holistic approach to music, wanted to fuck around with synthesizers, was more envious of Sly and the Family Stone than of pianists who were technically better, often improvised breathtaking solos that didn't even close to push his technical range, etc.

there but for the grace of god goes chick corea

Of course there's a lot of beginner Fruity-Loops-preset trance on Myspace but that's a bit of a strawman. I can easily see the appeal and massive influence of Basic Channel's less-is-more aesthetic, but I think it's an impossible stretch of the definition of virtuosity to include clipped hihats.

A common theme w jazz is that technique simply gives you more freedom, more variety and possibility to say something in different ways; but there are plenty of ppl with great technique who say nothing, and plenty of ppl with less refined technique who say a lot. This is true both before and after free jazz; what changed as the genre mutated were standards of what constitutes "technique", its not like free jazz was about eliminating practicing or something

A common theme w jazz is that technique simply gives you more freedom, more variety and possibility to say something in different ways; but there are plenty of ppl with great technique who say nothing, and plenty of ppl with less refined technique who say a lot. This is true both before and after free jazz; what changed as the genre mutated were standards of what constitutes "technique", its not like free jazz was about eliminating practicing or something

I know next to nothing about the classical music world, but I wonder if this is the main problem with trying to transpose this classical idea of virtuosity onto different forms of music? So l like in classical music there wouldn't be so much a problem of what one does with their technique, because the music is already written. Whereas like in rock you get this whole problem of "empty virtuosity" or whatever that we've been talking about.

it's weird that this thread is coming up now because honestly lots of the "big" indie bands like arcade fire and decemberists etc are really polished compared to old indie rock

Not to get into the "what is indie rock" debate, but do you think this is true as any sort of bigger trend, or is it more likely that bands like the Arcade Fire and Decemberists would have been big major label acts in the '80s and the economics of the music industry have shifted that picture?

i dunno, arcade fire maybe but decemberists started on kill rock stars and are from portland and used to be like some grateful dead style alt country deal

Virtuosity isn't a bad thing and I don't think anyone but ideologues of the amateur fallacy would claim it was. You have plenty of virtuosos in rock music. But rock 'n' roll and soul and r&b are musics made by rhythm-based ensembles, and classical music is also made by a different kind of ensemble. There is plenty of classical music that doesn't depend on virtuosity but rather on technique, which is really what these "non-musician" ideologues are attacking. You have to play a certain way--in tune, first off--to cut it in classical music or in jazz. But neither music really depends on "virtuosity"; rather, it depends on the ability to blend in with ensembles and to keep things idiomatically correct, and jazz improvisers who are good are trying to extrapolate from basic, or sometimes complex, musical ideas, whether they be show tunes or riff-tunes or bop compositions. Punk rock, garage rock, blues and blues-rock, not to mention Eno music, doesn't really extrapolate ideas in the same way--distending a minimal melody over 10 minutes a la Fripp and Eno or rocking out riff tunes a la Can isn't really extrapolation, because you're not working out the implicit musical ideas but just layering things. A long virtuostic solo in rock can definitely extrapolate if it's good enough, but rock is just like Minimalism, it's about the whole Eno thing of "repetition can be change" and all that, which is certainly valid.

when you hear someone like Earl Hines take apart a popular song and wring every nuance out of the chord changes, rhythms and melodies, that virtuosity, but it has a point, and it's intended for sophisticated listeners attuned to the nuances and the audacity of what he's trying to do. This takes training and technique. Very little "rock" does anything comparable; Miles Davis' electric music certainly works more off repetition, groove and texture than it does working out a musical idea to its logical end. And Miles' electric music is probably the most advanced and technically proficient "rock" I know, and it's of course more similar to Eno than it is to bebop or even Sly and the Family Stone. Miles does it better for the most part, and think of the "virtuosity" he could have unleashed upon the world had he not had such a sure sense of what he was going after.

The point is, classical music, a.k.a. European music that is meant to develop themes and motifs over a relatively long period of time and that depends on the psychological rules of musical development that rock alludes to but largely has jettisoned--that's been the standard of music-making for a lot longer than rock has been around, and if you can play it, fine. But the prog-rockers were buying into a class-based way of making music that had very little to do with the actual world around them, and that's just kind of ridiculous.

I love ridiculous performers.

The presumption that the rough, untutored expression is somehow more authentic than the virtuosic display is silly though. Gratuitous displays of musicianship are fun to watch - especially in a live setting. It's like watching someone juggle. Why do some people hate fun?

― o. nate, Monday, 20 June 2011 18:51 (2 hours ago)

The Lawrence Welk show is irresistible when they showcase virtuoso displays purely for the fun of it. Jo Anne Castle the accordianist/pianist is my favourite for this because she gets right into it and crucially makes it look easy. The fact that she's also a babe helps too. Liberace too, who as an amazing pianist and tremendous show-off is unequalled in this area. He had numerous routines designed for this, like one bit where he plays 8 bar blues double speed or when he did the ridiculously complex version of Chopsticks.

One of my favourite Jo Anne Castle routines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tz0B-CebZM

most of the original punk bands were good players who somehow perpetuated this myth

at least had some kind of moderately competent timekeeper behind the drums.

lawrence welk band amazing! myron floren is a freak of nature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqURmXMEGFI

I'd be happier if more virtuosos had the sense of that Homer and Jethro had:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eYIa9ZTCLQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eYIa9ZTCLQ

There are some great routines with both Jo Anne AND Myron:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDaD6BFdx8

But rock 'n' roll and soul and r&b are musics made by rhythm-based ensembles

I can easily see the appeal and massive influence of Basic Channel's less-is-more aesthetic, but I think it's an impossible stretch of the definition of virtuosity to include clipped hihats.

Basic Channel's genius, for me, comes not in the hi-hats but in the low end--the deep, murky, dubby sound of those records. And technical virtuosity in another sense--Dubplates & Mastering, which they originally established to make those records to their exacting standards. I'd write more but I'm posting from my phone, on a moving train...

late to the game cuz I was at work, but...

I think a lot of this thinking permeated the mainstream after metal/hard rock left the mainstream and 'alternative' took over, because of the prevalence of bands who weren't really adept at their instruments. obviously these discussions happened long before that, but it came more front and center, to the point where Guitar magazine wrote an overtly defensive screed about it on their back page editorial in one issue in the late 90's, pleading to the world that people that could play the geetar could also have soul and quality music.

I used to be one of those insufferable music snobs that would get a boner over Children of Bodom's wankiness but that passed. Like I really love listening to someone who can do amazing things with their instrument...as long as they're writing music that someone would want to hear and it isn't for the sake of noodling. Songcraft...it's why a band like Van Halen could have explosive guitar histrionics and still write catchy music.

I don't know that this viewpoint is so prevalent nowadays or taht anybody is like "fuck virtuosity" either.

Just checked: Christgau has pretty nice things to say about Jerry Nolan in Stranded.

i.e., definitely not "moderately competent time-keeper"

it's funny now cuz nirvana supposedly were cavemen and shit but now Dave Grohl is totally in the drum magazine canon

yea but I think Grohl got appreciation back then too*

(*I base this on the fact that Disney Adventures magazine voters voted him their favorite drummer)

Sorry it came out that way, meant that he said that the drummer has to be proficient whereas the others have more room for error

except for on old Sodom records

I think the other question is when did mere competence become a bad thing? Like you have this continuum from basic incompetence at the bottom -> through the whole range of various levels of competence -> and then virtuosity up at the high end. I feel like some of the discussion here is actually getting at the fact that basic musical competence became thought of as unseemly at some point

― Ktulu says, I've come to hate my body (wk), Monday, June 20, 2011 1:04 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

the roots of this kind of thing go way back in american pop, as others have said, probably to the raw, stripped down minimalism of 50s rock and 60s garage bands. not that those artists necessarily saw basic competence as a sin, but their devotees in later years often did seem to take lunkhead/trashcan primitivism as an ultimate rock & roll virtue. the mythology of "raw! wild! unhinged!" caveman stomp was promoted by critics in the 70s & 80s and obviously helped inspire american punk. that romantic vision was hugely influential in the 80s and 90s, went hand in hand with american post-punk's (i.e., nascent indie rock's) anticapitalist, anticommercial stance.

remember writing "without regard for taste or musicianship" on one side of a comp tape i made sometime in the late 80s. featured the likes of big black, venom, suicide, killdozer, drunks with guns, pussy galore, hasil adkins, the sonics, drunk live replacements & alex chilton tracks, selections from nuggets & back from the grave comps, beat happening and shonen knife. felt hipster-proud of this statement and the underlying aesthetics at the time, though it didn't prevent me from also liking peter gabriel, king crimson, prince, ELO, XTC, and lots of other more tasteful and virtuosic acts.

feel like the late 80s and early 90s were the popular/critical apex of this stance and that it's largely died off since. see also: early sebadoh, GBV and sonic youth, new zealand noise, twin infinitives, the killed by death comps, liquorball, unholy swill, art phag, happy flowers, guitar wolf and tons of others. acts like this were often lionized for little more than their shitty recording technology and/or apparent musical incapacity in the pages of your flesh & forced exposure.

was a brief resurgence of this style a few years back, but it faded fast. are we up to shitgaze nostalgia yet?

But the prog-rockers were buying into a class-based way of making music that had very little to do with the actual world around them, and that's just kind of ridiculous.

― ebbjunior, Monday, June 20, 2011 2:44 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

??? unpack?

Virtuosity to me is synonymous with total mastery. Regarding Basic Channel (and its offshoots), I don't see how something like, say, "Imprint" by Rhythm & Sound isn't virtuosic in its sound design and composition. Having that kind of a feel for production immediately sets them apart from many of their peers, and you get a sense when listening to their stuff that they are in complete self-assured sculpturely control of their tracks and that they know exactly where they want them to go and what they want them to sound like... That has to be virtuosity in some sense, no?

feel like the late 80s and early 90s were the popular/critical apex of this stance and that it's largely died off since. see also: early sebadoh, GBV and sonic youth, new zealand noise, twin infinitives, the killed by death comps, liquorball, unholy swill, art phag, happy flowers, guitar wolf and tons of others. acts like this were often lionized for little more than their shitty recording technology and/or apparent musical incapacity in the pages of your flesh & forced exposure.

was a brief resurgence of this style a few years back, but it faded fast. are we up to shitgaze nostalgia yet?

What about all of that Woodsist, or Not Not Fun kind of stuff? Is that the brief resurgence you were talking about? Is it dead already? I don't really keep up.

except for on old Sodom records

I don't really get what you mean. I was curious to test the theory and hear a band with worse drums than vox, but I'm not familiar with Sodom. I listened to a couple of things on youtube though and the drummers sounds pretty weak, but the vocals aren't really even singing at all, so I think it kind of proves the point. Not that unpitched growling into the mic isn't a valid style of vocalizing, but I'm struggling to think of what the drumming equivalent would be. Maybe just doing constant rolls on a snare and nothing else?

or say Salem

uh, salem for the first part, not the second part

what I meant about Sodom is that while the general belief is that the drummer has to be more adept than the rest of the band because he has to keep time, the drumming on early Sodom albums is so poor that it can be distracting. like he gets OFF-beat frequently. the rest of the musicianship is pretty poor too.

(yet they're still lauded as classic albums)

later Sodom lineups though were very competent

Virtuosity to me is synonymous with total mastery. Regarding Basic Channel (and its offshoots), I don't see how something like, say, "Imprint" by Rhythm & Sound isn't virtuosic in its sound design and composition. Having that kind of a feel for production immediately sets them apart from many of their peers, and you get a sense when listening to their stuff that they are in complete self-assured sculpturely control of their tracks and that they know exactly where they want them to go and what they want them to sound like... That has to be virtuosity in some sense, no?

― Clarke B., Monday, June 20, 2011 3:37 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i think that this kind of mastery is only comparable to traditional instrumental virtuosity if you can describe the virtuosity at work in extremely specific, technical terms. certain passages of music are enormously difficult to play, and that's why we say that it requires a measure of virtuosity to do so. virtuosity is measurable, quantifiable. even when we're talking about compositional virtuosity, which might seem more subjective, we focus on the complexity of interconnections among written parts and their development over time, all of which have a basis in math.

if we're only talking about the "feel" of a design/composition, then it's down to aesthetics, values, subjectivity. doesn't leave room for traditional virtuosity.

What about all of that Woodsist, or Not Not Fun kind of stuff? Is that the brief resurgence you were talking about? Is it dead already? I don't really keep up.

― Ktulu says, I've come to hate my body (wk), Monday, June 20, 2011 3:43 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, wouldn't say that "primitive = real" values are entirely dead in american indie, but they're nowhere near as dominant as they were in the late 80s & early 90s. imo.

But at least he's attempting to do some kind of recognizable drumming (keeping a beat, doing fills), even if he's failing. The singer doesn't even sound like he's trying to sing notes, which is kind of like a basic level of vocal competence. Which I think kind of proves the point. The non-singing vocals don't bother you but the offbeat drums do.

xpost

i think that this kind of mastery is only comparable to traditional instrumental virtuosity if you can describe the virtuosity at work in extremely specific, technical terms.

yeah, perhaps electronic music "virtuosity" would have to be measured by some very traditional synthesis-as-mimicry criteria. so someone like Wendy Carlos might be considered a synthesizer virtuoso due to her mastery of sound design and mimicry of traditional symphonic instruments on the synth.

well I like growled vocals in general, but like 'sung' vocals that are excessively incompetent bother me often...unless it's like punk rock.

feel like the late 80s and early 90s were the popular/critical apex of this stance and that it's largely died off since. see also: early sebadoh, GBV and sonic youth, new zealand noise, twin infinitives, the killed by death comps, liquorball, unholy swill, art phag, happy flowers, guitar wolf and tons of others. acts like this were often lionized for little more than their shitty recording technology and/or apparent musical incapacity in the pages of your flesh & forced exposure.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HISSSS!

the entire tr00 black metal scene wanted to disown Emperor for the production on Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk even though they were still playing the same high quality music.

to be clear, i LOVED your flesh & forced exposure, wish they were both still publishing.

i think that this kind of mastery is only comparable to traditional instrumental virtuosity if you can describe the virtuosity at work in extremely specific, technical terms. certain passages of music are enormously difficult to play, and that's why we say that it requires a measure of virtuosity to do so. virtuosity is measurable, quantifiable. even when we're talking about compositional virtuosity, which might seem more subjective, we focus on the complexity of interconnections among written parts and their development over time, all of which have a basis in math.

To me, technical virtuosity and manual dexterity are different things. What about the high-level geekiness in constructing interesting synth patches, or in writing complicated code to create music? I have friends who are modular synthesizer virtuosos, for instance. I have a friend who I'd consider to be a C programming language virtuoso--he's working for Bjork right now, I think. "The complexity of interconnections among written parts and their development in time, all of which has a basis in math" definitely applies to lots of things that fall beyond the bounds of music composed with traditional instruments, e.g. computer music. Look at Xenakis' insane code for writing stochastic music in FORTRAN, or Tenney's, back in the early '60s or whatever.

Even without electronic music, I'd say your ideas of 'virtuosity' run into sticky territory with composers like Conlon Nancarrow--was he a virtuoso of the player piano? I'd say so.

I'd say, Geeta, that music is at one level math to begin with. the manipulation of tonal relationships is quantifiable and psychologically consistent, altho there may be a few cultural differences. I recently saw the Eno documentary The Man Who Fell to Earth. I like Eno but feel he has a lot to answer for in his influence over musicians who are disinclined to learn the traditional language of music. Because in Eno's case the more traditional aspects of his music are pretty obvious, and pretty effective, apart from his rather tedious theorizing. Whether or not Eno's musicians were always "virtuosos"--I would shy away from calling Robert Fripp one, just because he's really one good at doing one thing and that one thing is so obviously harmonically derivative of jazz a la Mingus and so forth, and he has very little harmonic flair or imagination, all those flatted fifths and such--he needed good players to realize his vision. As always, I think the average rock 'n' roll savage has read way too much theory and not thought enough about the basics of music, which have not changed and will not change, despite efforts to pretend they have. Chance music is nice, but there's a reason most people find such experiments arid, and that's because music that ignores the psychological aspects of the art leaves out a huge number of very satisfying results. Virtuosos also ignore this aspect and run on at the mouth to the point that most listeners tune out; in other words, it's just boring, like a lot of jazz that's head-solo-solo-solo-solo-solo-head. Prog rock is actually a very conservative music and there are some good things about it, in its generally contentless way. It's just that when you depend on supposedly "classical" musical constructions that actually pretty reductive and simplistic compared to real Euro-tradition theme/variation stuff--and why people hate virtuosos is the crap people like Rick Wakeman or Keith Emerson play over their simplified theme/variation shit--you leave out things like verbal content, humor, accurate observation of human behavior, empathy, and all that stuff that real rock 'n' roll pretty much dispenses with as a matter of pride and of choice.

Does Fripp really only do one thing, one thing "so obviously harmonically derivative of jazz" no less?

To me, technical virtuosity and manual dexterity are different things. What about the high-level geekiness in constructing interesting synth patches, or in writing complicated code to create music? I have friends who are modular synthesizer virtuosos, for instance. I have a friend who I'd consider to be a C programming language virtuoso--he's working for Bjork right now, I think. "The complexity of interconnections among written parts and their development in time, all of which has a basis in math" definitely applies to lots of things that fall beyond the bounds of music composed with traditional instruments, e.g. computer music. Look at Xenakis' insane code for writing stochastic music in FORTRAN, or Tenney's, back in the early '60s or whatever.

Even without electronic music, I'd say your ideas of 'virtuosity' run into sticky territory with composers like Conlon Nancarrow--was he a virtuoso of the player piano? I'd say so.

― geeta, Monday, June 20, 2011 5:17 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, sure. agree w all that and i don't think what i wrote contradicts any of it. my only point was that traditional definitions of musical virtuosity depend on exceptionally advanced technical ability, and that one's subjective sense of the "feel" of a design/composition isn't an indicator of its presence (or absence). i allowed that compositional virtuosity was a different but related concept, and it's simple enough to extend that to programming.

Does Fripp really only do one thing, one thing "so obviously harmonically derivative of jazz" no less?

yeah no

As always, I think the average rock 'n' roll savage has read way too much theory and not thought enough about the basics of music...

...you leave out things like verbal content, humor, accurate observation of human behavior, empathy, and all that stuff that real rock 'n' roll pretty much dispenses with as a matter of pride and of choice.

this is nonsense

acts like this were often lionized for little more than their shitty recording technology and/or apparent musical incapacity in the pages of your flesh & forced exposure.

'Shitty recording technology', I take issue with, because I think at heart if professional-quality musical equipment was available at affordable (for musicians!) prices back in the day, ppl would've been recording the way kids do w garage band now. It's a political act to chose to record yourself, it's about taking total control and total responsibility for the music, and about keeping it unfiltered from outside/corporate influence.

As far as 'musical incapacity' I think it's mostly a myth and a fetish trotted out by writers to sell papers and bands to seem cool. Otherwise there would be many more groups like The Shaggs and Portsmouth Sinfonia, rather than just ppl that namecheck them.

Even without electronic music, I'd say your ideas of 'virtuosity' run into sticky territory with composers like Conlon Nancarrow--was he a virtuoso of the player piano? I'd say so.

I think this is stretching the definition way too far. There are other perfectly good words to use like "master" or "genius." So why try to twist the word virtuoso which traditionally referred to instrumental skill? It's kind of like calling Mozart a great producer or something equally anachronistic.

'Shitty recording technology', I take issue with, because I think at heart if professional-quality musical equipment was available at affordable (for musicians!) prices back in the day, ppl would've been recording the way kids do w garage band now. It's a political act to chose to record yourself, it's about taking total control and total responsibility for the music, and about keeping it unfiltered from outside/corporate influence.

Even in the '70s and '80s you could make decent sounding recordings pretty easily. Bands like GBV were already being way self-consciously and intentionally lo-fi, so it doesn't really have anything to do with computers. Things like distortion and noise have been more aesthetic choice than necessity for a very long time.

eh, there was a lot of deliberately lo-fi music being made in the 80s & 90s. still is today. agree that there's often a political/ethical/philosophical motive behind it. but there are a lot more artists out there operating at a shaggs-like level of instrumental competence - and often receiving accolades for it, if not hits - than you may be aware.

I assume that's an xpost to adam right? if so, I agree

yeah

Yeah, me too! I totally agree with those posts.

I still think you have to factor in economic variables tho. For instance buying a really nice mic vs. a shitty SM-57 or whatever you can get at Radioshack. Maybe the musician is trying his best to make it sound good, but because he hasn't spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for a real studio, anything he records is labelled 'shitty technique'.

When I hear The Shaggs (or Y. Bhekhirst -- link below), it sounds like the main thing is they are just rhythm deficient. They can play the right chords, they all have patterns they are playing, they even sometimes write what should really be a very standard pop song, but they are playing it all out of harmony. Rhythmic disharmony is probably the biggest, most visceral demonstration of musical skill deficiency. Probably this is why when you think of 'virtuoso' you think of someone doing something insanely complicated rhythmically.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/07/hot_in_the_airp.html

Telephoneface: Agree with you, but the Portsmouth Sinfonia had trained musicians too. The concept of the Sinfonia being all untrained musicians is entirely believable, judging by their recorded output, but they had some proper trained musicians too. so did the Scratch Orchestra.

Contenderizer: I think that "feel" isn't entirely subjective; I think it is quantifiable. The murky, amorphous quality of the word "feel" is more the fault of critics who use the word than it is of the people making the music. Instead of a really complex melody line, like say a ripping guitar solo, "feel" is more about stuff like timbre and texture; those things can be subjected to analysis

ebbjunior: I disagree here; I think you're drastically underrating Fripp's abilities. He is hardly a one-trick pony

This thread is my entertainment on the four-hour journey from NYC to Boston--we still appear to be in the dark depths of Connecticut with another two hours to go, so thank you ILM!

Yeah, the shaggs are a good example of a band where the drums are worse than the vocals. She pronounces things in a weird way, but she keeps roughly on pitch. It's interesting to me then that people consider them so terrible and yet can happily listen to someone like Ian Curtis.

Has anyone mentioned the Theremin yet, which was supposed to free the musician from the tyranny of the instrument, but turned out to be so hard to play that the first and almost only virtuoso on it was a frustrated violinist with a withered arm who couldn't hold her violin anymore, the awesomely named Clara Rockmore?

Yeah, I've played theremin for about 10 years. It's an instrument where you're a virtuoso if you can put together a half-recognizable melody cos it's so damn hard to play at all!

Contenderizer: I think that "feel" isn't entirely subjective; I think it is quantifiable. The murky, amorphous quality of the word "feel" is more the fault of critics who use the word than it is of the people making the music. Instead of a really complex melody line, like say a ripping guitar solo, "feel" is more about stuff like timbre and texture; those things can be subjected to analysis

i'd certainly agree that we can analyze "feel". just saying that a vague, open-ended term like that probably isn't the best place to begin a discussion of/search for virtuosity in electronic music. timbral and textural complexity might make better sense (?), but that's not something i've read or thought a great deal about.

geeta your book was really great, by the way! very thought-provoking. safe travels

ebbjunior: I disagree here; I think you're drastically underrating Fripp's abilities. He is hardly a one-trick pony

For certain!

Was really hoping this thread would be about the movie.

haha I had that same thought.

"Game ovah!"

I think Eddie Van Halen being so good in a way set the whole rock guitar hero up to end. The guy was a phenomenal player and very soulful who could play quite funky rhthym guitar, but many in his wake got obessed with the speed of it all and the finger tapping etc. EVH's box of tricks was more than that, but the speed and the tapping became the thing and it lead to tons of wanking off style playing, which in the end wasn't that cool and led to the whole thing of 'we don't have solos'. Van Halen was like the end, because in the end you really couldn't get any faster and yet have it really be that musical and not just be some douchebag with a guitar with two necks tapping like mad.

Now it definitely wasn't all hard rock metal that went that way, the thrash stuff was using speed in a different way just as divergent from the bad hair metal guitar as say the grunge thing, but even with the thrash metal there was an aesthetic where it was more about the riff than the solo per say. Either way, the spell of the rock guitar god was kind of crushed and hasn't come back for the most part.

that's true. there were many metalhead peers of mine who viewed metal bands without solos pejoratively because as they explained 'metal is known for its solos'.

I say fuck both sides. there are some great bands without solos, but solos can really elevate a song, ie AC/DC.

Thing is in the age of alternative/grunge there was virtuosity, it just moved to other instruments. The bass was kind of the thing for a while (and that led to tons of groups with shite slap bass).

I'd say Protools and all of the editing software has been a game changer though as you only have to do something once and then you can copy and paste it as much as you like. Even metal for loving the speed etc there seems to be a big thing on hyper editing things to pieces. Even electronic music kind of chin stroked it's chin getting more and more obsessed with doing crazy synthesis or editing, that they forgot to be funky (or at least the whole Warp IDM contengency went that way).

Then again that is the same mindset that turned jazz into something that started partying in whore houses and now is only held in ivory towers by learned men.

I'd say Protools and all of the editing software has been a game changer though as you only have to do something once and then you can copy and paste it as much as you like

I just read some of a new interview w McCartney about making McCartney II and he talks about how if he wanted tambourine in a song he had to stand there for 5 minutes straight playing it instead of just copy & paste.

Of course, you can be a virtuoso editor as well. Cornelius is my example of virtuoso editing.

to be honest the cutting and pasting is good for consistency's sake, and also prevents extreme fatigue. I used to do it all the time. on vocals for choruses at least, I mean.

I just read some of a new interview w McCartney about making McCartney II and he talks about how if he wanted tambourine in a song he had to stand there for 5 minutes straight playing it instead of just copy & paste.

Errr...what about using tape loops? Or samplers? Copy and paste wasn't invented with software!

When we talk about virtuosity, are we really talking about technical facility? Or are we talking about a musician expanding the vocabulary of an instrument? I mean, Neil Peart has facility on the drums, but Sunny Murray is a virtuoso (imho).

When did bad become a virtuosity thing?

The Fairlight was only first out when McCartney made that record. And playing a tambourine for five minutes would have been more expedient than creating a rhythm track by editing tape!

Mentioned on the thread for that album how much I like the live drums on it.

like there's just some parts that are a bore to play over and over for 5 minutes. like when I recorded a studio cover of "Planet Caravan" I did it with a live feel rather than looping and man was that boring. at least in a live concert setting you have people around cheering you making it fun.

cuz it was one riff over and over for 5 mins

But this is late 70s McCartney, so imagine playing tambourine for 5 mins......on weed!

(More expedient for adding rhythm tracks, anyway. If the songs were built around tape loop rhythms to begin with, that's different.)

"why do I have to record it again, that was perfect?"

'you never actually hit the tamborine once, Paul, you just stared at it for 5 minutes'

For certain!

I mean, compare Red to Discipline to Evening Star to Scary Monsters... There are Crimson fans who can't stand Frippertronics (or even the more 'out' KC stuff).

Even in the '70s and '80s you could make decent sounding recordings pretty easily. Bands like GBV were already being way self-consciously and intentionally lo-fi, so it doesn't really have anything to do with computers. Things like distortion and noise have been more aesthetic choice than necessity for a very long time.

― Ktulu says, I've come to hate my body (wk), Monday, June 20, 2011 9:21 PM (2 hours ago)

as somebody who recorded in small studios in the late 80s I have to disagree. if you didn't find the right engineer you could make some horrible recordings very easily (and expensively).

as somebody who recorded in small studios in the late 80s I have to disagree. if you didn't find the right engineer you could make some horrible recordings very easily (and expensively)

definitely. when the 1979 band i was in recorded we went to the cheapest place we knew but the engineer / owner couldn't have cared less about the quality so the final result was fairly substandard. compare to all of those early pere ubu records where they were living on the smell of an oily rag but luckily found ken hamann who made their music breath on record.

in terms of the muso/non-muso discussion - i bought a synth purely because eno played one in roxy music but i'd never played music before, just yearned to. i listened to all sorts of prog bands and loved the muso aspect especially when it was someone young - like the drummer in 801 - he was like 18 or something and had great, silky skills. skills that i would never have.

but when punk arrived the thing i loved most was bands who had members who played beyond their abilities. they took their vague skills, married them with experimentation and exploration and found something new and invigorating.

best example - this heat: one good muso, one almost virtuoso and one non-musician. without gareth williams they would have been as dull as quiet sun.

"Even electronic music kind of chin stroked it's chin getting more and more obsessed with doing crazy synthesis or editing, that they forgot to be funky (or at least the whole Warp IDM contengency went that way)."

this, like many posts itt, seems like a huge leap

if you didn't find the right engineer you could make some horrible recordings very easily (and expensively).

― the manarchist cookbook (Edward III), Monday, June 20, 2011 8:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah, but that's missing the point, i think? the "shitty" quality that characterizes lo-fi aesthetics != lousy recording. it's a choice. the horrible recordings you're talking about were likely at least clean sounding, not walls of barely-differentiated hiss with constant spikes deep into the red.

When we talk about virtuosity, are we really talking about technical facility? Or are we talking about a musician expanding the vocabulary of an instrument? I mean, Neil Peart has facility on the drums, but Sunny Murray is a virtuoso (imho).

― shake it, shake it, sugary pee (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, June 20, 2011 8:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i'd say that a measurable, athletic sort of extreme technical facility is the basic entry requirement, after which there are less easily quantifiable add-ons, like invention, musicality, "soul" or whatever.

""it's a choice. the horrible recordings you're talking about were likely at least clean sounding, not walls of barely-differentiated hiss with constant spikes deep into the red.""

Have you considered that some people just like the sound of something with a lot of dirt and 'in the red' noise, with all the random, spacey spots of blood this entails? Is it possible that this aesthetic is attractive to some people? Yes it is. Those old Pavement sides you were raving about recently wouldn't be the same recorded by Butch Vig. I would feel uncomfortable in an antiseptically clean house- like a bit of mess etc...

pretty sure that's exactly what contenderizer was saying too

Oh Ok apologies then. Too many posts too read all at once.

pretty sure that's exactly what contenderizer was saying too

^ yeah, this. i'm a long-time fan of lo-fi noise.

"virtuosity" substitutes for interesting songwriting, soundscapes, etc.

These things are all orthogonal and not correlated. If someone's a bad songwriter or arranger etc. that's their own fault and not connected to how good or bad they are on a specific instrument. Manual dexterity won't help your ears, but it won't ruin your ears either.

"classically-trained,"

One of my least favourite phrases. Akin to talking about a writer and saying "this person learned English! in a classroom! from a teacher!".

some people treat playing their instrument like an olympic sport

This doesn't sound so bad! I mean, in sport you have to train to keep your skill level up, and you have a coach who points out your flaws and makes you work on them etc. Come to think of it I think there's a bit of an anti-sport/anti-competitive streak in (American) (indie) rock?

plus someone (matos, i think?) did a piece recently on the rise of the "indie session musician" where a lot more people know people who play the trombone or the violin or whatever who can be drafted in for a day or two. i'm not saying the results are going to trounce the royal scam or anything for fluidity but people ARE trying to push the homemade envelope.

Not sure what this has to do with virtuosity, generally the violin playing friend is competent at best, generally playing quite simple stuff, which ties into...

it's weird that this thread is coming up now because honestly lots of the "big" indie bands like arcade fire and decemberists etc are really polished compared to old indie rock

Again, 'polish' here is just basic competence. Arcade Fire songs are arranged with simple, hooky parts shadowing the vocal melody etc. Works very well, but certainly not people ushing the boundaries of their instruments.

Apart from virtuosity, I think the other question is when did mere competence become a bad thing? Like you have this continuum from basic incompetence at the bottom -> through the whole range of various levels of competence -> and then virtuosity up at the high end. I feel like some of the discussion here is actually getting at the fact that basic musical competence became thought of as unseemly at some point (which is maybe why some people are misranking certain players as virtuosos).

This! I suppose there's been a stready moving of the goalposts re: competence.

The Lawrence Welk show is irresistible when they showcase virtuoso displays purely for the fun of it.

It blows my mind when I look for Buddy Rich videos on YouTube and find all these clips of him on big TV shows back in the day, doing crazy solos just for the hell of it.

I'm pretty sympathetic towards virtuosity in general. The "anyone can just get up and play" attitude is all well and good, but it's thrilling to hear someone like Buddy Rich or Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane come along and completely destroy boundaries of what was thought possible. I enjoy playing soccer, hurling, etc., but when I go to a match, I want to see people a lot better than me.

is it an attitude thing? my feelings towards people who play with virtuosity are bounded by how they react when they play. are they self-satisfied? or do they play for everyone in the room?

Does anyone think that applying the templates of classical music to what is essentially rhythm and blues is kind of racist?

Still don't see that 'virtuoisity' needs to be there for magic. Is it something to do with the indefinable specialness of being in a great band or different people working togethor? Although the players may be individually average a combination of personalities/ time and place produces something sublime. Although none of the players on there own may be 'better than you', togethor they produce something which is beyond your conception, and adds up to beautiful music. Not well explained.

Also yes attitude comes into it. Those virtuoso players who don't work seem like they are showing off. Look how much better I am than you. Is Ornette Coleman a virtuoso? I love him but never feel like he is looking down at his audience unlike say.. MIles Davis who seems to ooze smug arrogance.

Live Evil gets a pass though...maybe On The Corner. I'm sure he'll be pleased to know.

Does anyone think that applying the templates of classical music to what is essentially rhythm and blues is kind of racist?

― Fog Fucking Hat (u s steel), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:07 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

no, not necessarily. it depends on what you mean. so, umm, what do you mean?

Still don't see that 'virtuoisity' needs to be there for magic.

...Also yes attitude comes into it. Those virtuoso players who don't work seem like they are showing off. Look how much better I am than you.

― Hinklepicker, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:13 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

think everyone in the thread agrees with that first point.

and smug is annoying, sure, but that has little to do with virtuosity, right? lots of smug assholes out there who can barely play...

Is leaving yourself open to criticism and wanting to reach a broad audience "arrogant"?

Miles Davis who seems to ooze smug arrogance.

Again, not sure what this has to do with virtuosity? Miles Davis was very much a non-virtuoso who made it in jazz both by recruitment of virtuoso sidemen, and having a way better ear and being way cleverer than anyone else.

Ok seems I am repeatng a lot of what has already been said.

Anyhow My point about smugness was just that a smug person is more likely to not connect with his or her audience- more likely to come across to me as showing off. That is the connection to virtuosity. People who show off are more likely to be trying to impress people with their chops- which is ugly to me. If it is in service of the song then fine but if not then no thank you. Song is king.

"classically-trained,"

One of my least favourite phrases. Akin to talking about a writer and saying "this person learned English! in a classroom! from a teacher!".

― B-Boy Bualadh Bos (ecuador_with_a_c), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:02 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

ecuador generally OTM, but i wonder abt this. "classically trained" suggests time spent in a conservatory, right? that seems to be rarer in contemporary pop than classroom schooling or even advanced degrees are in literature (maybe not, though, it's not like i've got statistics at hand). agree that it's annoying when used defensively, to justify an artist's supposed specialness or quality.

Anyhow My point about smugness was just that a smug person is more likely to not connect with his or her audience- more likely to come across to me as showing off. That is the connection to virtuosity. People who show off are more likely to be trying to impress people with their chops- which is ugly to me. If it is in service of the song then fine but if not then no thank you. Song is king.

― Hinklepicker, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 1:25 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, but smugness is largely a perceptual artifact. it exists less in the concrete things that people clearly do than in the observer's values and sense of what those things mean or imply. and again, you don't have to be a technical whiz to seem insufferably smug to someone. same goes for "showing off." not saying that people don't like to strut their stuff, but what we take to be the objectionable sort of off-showing says more about us than the musicians we're judging.

i mean, songs are great, but so is music, so are the things that one can accomplish with highly developed technical skills. i love jazz, bluegrass, metal and classical music, all of which place a premium on chops and don't tend to frown on a little showboating.

Well I've def seen reviews calling say, Dan The Automator classically trained just because he did Suzuki method violin for a while when he was a kid.

yeah, that's just ridiculous

Apologies if this has been said upthread but there's maybe a bit of conflation going on between 'being able to play your instruments' and 'virtuosity'. Also between 'virtuosos' and 'virtuosity' (one is what you are, the other is what you display). So James Brown's band may have been incredible at playing their instruments but you couldn't really say there was much virtuosity at work in that particular context.

Thing about the classical/rock divide is that it's being overstated here. In classical music you can play all the difficult bits note-perfect but if you can't convey any emotion when things slow down then you're never going to be rated as a musician. It's the same in rock, really - except at the very top of classical music, both are more tolerant of technical limitations than people think if there are other musical instincts at work.

I had to take a phone call.

""i love jazz, bluegrass, metal and classical music, all of which place a premium on chops and don't tend to frown on a little showboating.""

Fair point I like those genres as well and when i think about it there are some performers who do come across as smug and showoffy but I like them anyways. Mainly singers I suppose. It seems to be part of the job description for a certain type of singer to show off etc but it is usually charming or funny - Iggy for example. Trying to think of musicians/ band members who might come off as arrogant/smug that I like.

Anyhow I'm moving away from the topic now. I might go and make a cup of tea.

I think Eddie Van Halen being so good in a way set the whole rock guitar hero up to end. ...Van Halen was like the end, because in the end you really couldn't get any faster and yet have it really be that musical and not just be some douchebag with a guitar with two necks tapping like mad.

― earlnash, Monday, June 20, 2011 7:22 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

earnash on eddie van halen's matchless speed and musicianship as the final stake through rock guitar virtuosity's heart. it's a fascinating idea, and one that i've never before encountered. not sure what to make of it though. it might be true, or eddie could have simply been the last/best champion of a form that was fated to expire anyway. hard to say.

in my mind, the de-emphasis of classic rock guitar heroics in american pop was a product of the generational shift between the 60s/70s and 80s/90s. rock in the 60s and 70s was interested in formal expansion, symphonic grandeur, the pursuit of the possible (and the seemingly impossible) without much apparent worry about how ridiculous the over-earnest pursuit of that sort of grandeur can look. excess of ambition and the shameless flaunting of technical ability seem not to have been viewed as cardinal sins.

but in the 80s, american pop turned away from such excesses. pop music was to be compact, efficient, functional and self-satirizing. the hip alternative offered by indie rock was even less welcoming of instrumental pyrotechnics. indie in the 80s and early 90s was still beholden to punk values and frequently prized raw primitivism as a legitimate end in itself.

listening to 70s jamrock in that context was extremely dispiriting. i completely bought into those 80s-era values and remember loathing nothing so much as the endless guitar noodling offered by the likes of the allman brothers, stevie ray vaughan, the grateful dead and b.b. king. that kind of stuff drove me up the wall (and frequently still does). suspect that this sort of reactionary aversion to the worship of blues-based guitar jamming did a lot to kill the mandatory solo.

In classical music you can play all the difficult bits note-perfect but if you can't convey any emotion when things slow down then you're never going to be rated as a musician.

I guess this is a matter of whether you are a soloist or just a member of an ensamble. Surely all the most famous classical instrumentalists are solists, and they are of course capable of this. However, if you are a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic, then surely you are also rated rather highly as a musician, and being a member of the Berlin Philharmonic requires first and foremost skills, not that much emotion.

I think Eddie Van Halen being so good in a way set the whole rock guitar hero up to end. ...Van Halen was like the end, because in the end you really couldn't get any faster and yet have it really be that musical and not just be some douchebag with a guitar with two necks tapping like mad.

Err..... Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai...??

(But sure you could claim they are actually just douchebags tapping like mad)

(I think that was what he was meaning)

But arguably, Eddie Van Halen was just about as fast as a metal solo guitarist could possibly be, so the more recent history of metal has been more about drummers and rhythm guitarists being just as fast.

However, if you are a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic, then surely you are also rated rather highly as a musician, and being a member of the Berlin Philharmonic requires first and foremost skills, not that much emotion.

If you can't do both you don't get in the Berline Philarmonic in the first place.

Plus, if you can't do 'emotion' as part of a string section (for instance), then there's no difference between the Berlin Phil and any other orchestra with all parties having achieved the required qualifications...

Apologies if this has been said upthread but there's maybe a bit of conflation going on between 'being able to play your instruments' and 'virtuosity'. Also between 'virtuosos' and 'virtuosity' (one is what you are, the other is what you display)...

Thing about the classical/rock divide is that it's being overstated here. In classical music you can play all the difficult bits note-perfect but if you can't convey any emotion when things slow down then you're never going to be rated as a musician. It's the same in rock, really - except at the very top of classical music, both are more tolerant of technical limitations than people think if there are other musical instincts at work.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, June 21, 2011 2:22 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, that's fair. i was concentrating on the "being able to play your instruments [really fucking well]" aspect of virtuosity because A) it's an indispensable part of any sensible definition of the term, and B) it's more or less measurable. which is nice simply because it allows us to speak clearly without too much semantic hashing-out, prevents the conversational slide into opinions regarding subjective quality.

would say, though, that rock is generally much more forgiving of severe technical limitations than classical music, especially once you factor in punk, noise, etc.

It's just that I'm a little suspicious of so-called academic "musicians" who complain that this or that rock musician "can't play". If they can't, neither can most of the folk canon on which rock is based. Which makes you kind of ignorant and unqualified, but colleges hire people like this all of the time! People with no respect at all for authentic American history!

But that's not what this debate is about, even when we are talking about classical music.

xpost: that was in response to my question about the racism of, "applying the templates of classical music to what is essentially rhythm and blues?"

okay, i get where you're coming from. not sure that it's functionally racist so much as evidence of differing spheres of concern. and, yeah, blinkered thinking.

Robert Wyatt appears under a pseudonym on Before and After Science, as 'Shirley Williams'.

What??!?!? How have I missed this before? What track(s) is he on? Should explain to my American friends, that there's a double irony at work here, firstly in calling Wyatt, a Marxist, Shirley Williams and in the fact that Eno is now famously a Liberal Democrat supporter!

Miles Davis was very much a non-virtuoso who made it in jazz both by recruitment of virtuoso sidemen, and having a way better ear and being way cleverer than anyone else.

― B-Boy Bualadh Bos (ecuador_with_a_c), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 4:23 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

He also had a sound and an approach to the trumpet that no one else had. No, he couldn't play with Dizzy's speed or at the top of the horn's range like Dizzy, but surely Miles' approach was a form of virtuosity?

I think at this point what would be useful is if we decided on the three or four most important orthogonal contributing factors constituting musicianship, construct a heat map color cube or tesseract based on this breakdown and then place various musicians inside the cube in the appropriate spot based on a component analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.

Some very dumb posts itt. And some narrow definitions of "virtuosity"

rockist, one might say

if you didn't find the right engineer you could make some horrible recordings very easily (and expensively).

― the manarchist cookbook (Edward III), Monday, June 20, 2011 8:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah, but that's missing the point, i think? the "shitty" quality that characterizes lo-fi aesthetics != lousy recording. it's a choice. the horrible recordings you're talking about were likely at least clean sounding, not walls of barely-differentiated hiss with constant spikes deep into the red.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 3:19 AM (5 hours ago)

I was responding to wk's point that it was easy for underground musicians to make quality studio recordings in the 70s and 80s. my response is, no, it was not easy, it was very difficult to find engineers who understood and/or gave a shit about what you were doing, so it was much more satisfying to record yourself, even if it ended up lo-fi. clean sounding != good recording.

Just because we lack the linguistic precision to describe precisely the ways in which certain pieces of electronic music are virtuosic doesn't mean there isn't something to the claim that they are. The word "feel" is dubious and inexact, sure, but it relates to a sense that we, as listeners trusting our ears and instincts and comparing a piece of music or a performance to others like it that we've heard, realize something special and different and "next-level" is going on. I want to second Geeta's earlier assertion that there's a difference between virtuosity and manual dexterity. Two people can both play a complex passage for guitar "correctly" (i.e. hitting the right notes on the page, etc), but if one comes across dry and flat and the other comes across resonant and feeling "right" we wouldn't say that both were equally virtuosic, would we?

people have said a lot of interesting things on this thread, it turned out much better than one might have expected

threads for threads' sake

thread's too noodly for me

Noodly Vague

noodle noir

I think really the only thing I want to add to this thread is "lol @ Geir"

I also agree that there's something of a conflation of "precision" with "virtuosity" in this discussion. (apologies if this convo already happened) A virtuoso's palette is much wider than just precision; to me, anyway, the term means that the person can play or sing ANYTHING. You're talking clean, messy, complicated, simple, overwrought, cold... the person you're talking about can play or sing any of those styles/moods and is, if not equally excellent at them all, well beyond credible in them all.

"Some very dumb posts itt. And some narrow definitions of "virtuosity""

"this, like many posts itt, seems like a huge leap"

you are like a virtuoso when it comes to not contributing. were you classically trained or are you self-taught?

lol

Two people can both play a complex passage for guitar "correctly" (i.e. hitting the right notes on the page, etc), but if one comes across dry and flat and the other comes across resonant and feeling "right" we wouldn't say that both were equally virtuosic, would we?

A lot of people might do - the dictionary definition of virtuosity is great technical skill. What the second person's doing is something above and beyond virtuosity - it's musicality, phrasing, interpretation, feeling, whatever. Technique comes into all that, but there's something else above technique, the musician's got to feel the music basically.

A virtuoso's palette is much wider than just precision; to me, anyway, the term means that the person can play or sing ANYTHING. You're talking clean, messy, complicated, simple, overwrought, cold... the person you're talking about can play or sing any of those styles/moods and is, if not equally excellent at them all, well beyond credible in them all.

You think, really? I'm not sure a virtuoso classical musician could necessarily play great jazz on the same instrument, regardless of whether they can do so technically.

I'm certain they can't!

I wouldn't call that person a virtuoso. That's not a term I would bestow very often, if at all.

A bunch of people are going to disagree with me but I think Wynton Marsalis is probably the best example of what I'm talking about. (You could argue Yo-Yo Ma as well but there isn't really all that much call for jazz or pop cello, lol.)

(Renee Fleming is trying so hard to be a voice virtuoso, poor thing)

Hah, so basically no one in non-jazz popular music since the 60s then?

Dudes come on, you don't have to be magically proficient at every cultural idiom of an instrument to be a "virtuoso"

I agree that there's conflation of "thoroughly fluent" and "mind-bending greatness" here (the latter is what I'd call a virtuoso)

xp: Basically, now that I think about it, although part of that comes from the vast majority of people being know for one "thing" and making most of their money off of that (it's even worse in the classical/opera realm, where people make entire careers off of like 3 or 4 specific roles)

To me, "virtuoso" means "master of your instrument" moreso than "master of your style"; that distinction does offer up the interesting question of "what about people like Prince or Dave Grohl, who seem to be able to float around to a bunch of different instruments in a specific style of music?" though.

You could argue Yo-Yo Ma as well but there isn't really all that much call for jazz or pop cello, lol.

Actually is there anyone out there who plays the cello like it was a fiddle?* I don't think I've heard anyone play that instrument with that type of tone before, or if it's even possible.

* not literally, although seeing that would be lol

Check over on the Riding Giantess thread.

Sorry, indie rock dude who plays drums and guitar and perhaps some ukelele or mandolin still might not add up to virtuoso.

also virtuoso != dabbling multi-instrumentalist != true multi-instrumentalist

yes, that's all expressed in my original argument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrWHxgoHiT8

^^^^ yeah that's hot

this is cool too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuAiuWyrYjI

http://www.chipboaz.com/blog/2007/08/16/mario-rivera-the-true-multi-instrumentalist/

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15354

For simplicity's sake, you can call Robinson a "saxophonist" or "multi-instrumentalist," but that only scratches the surface. A collector of antique instruments, Robinson proudly also plays a variety of reeds and brass family horns that would otherwise be relegated to museums. Echo cornet, double bell euphonium, c-melody sax, ophicleide and the imposing contrabass sax are just are sampling of his collection.

hmmm if anything free jazz was seen as anti-virtuosic - crude,untutored, r'n'b-derived etc - when compared to the chops of more traditional jazz players

You could probably make a case for Prince as a virtuoso based on the sheer number of instruments he can play technically well and the rhythmic precision of his multi-tracked, solo arrangements.

might buy that

I just wanna clarify in my ill-thought-out example upthread that if we could do font sizes to imply emphasis/appropriateness, "Dave Grohl" would be in 4pt and "Prince" would be in 40000000pt

I was gonna say that in namechecking Dave Grohl you'd moved your previously absurdly high bar for virtosity to the opposite extreme.

Flip flop Perry

(sorry)

I've heard that back in the day, it was expected of reed players that they double on other instruments just to get the gig, so the bar was set a little higher and nobody oohed and oohed "he can play TWO instruments!" Also, in Latin music, in their efforts to understand the rhythm and the clave, a lot of people play various percussion instruments and get pretty good at them. Best of all, it is a lot of fun when they put down their instruments to sing in the coro, with bonus points if they sound like a ninety-year old Boricua from the hills.

James Redd, I guess I'm basing that comment abt free jazz you just quoted partly on the reaction that greeted Ornette Coleman when he first started playing in NYC - there's a gd sampling of dumbass reactions (even from ppl like monk) in the 'Beauty is a Rare Thing' box set.

Yeah, sure. I remember reading that there were fistfights breaking out, or threatening to break out. There is a book called This Is Our Music by Iain Anderson that has a good discussion about this.

thing i always think is different about free jazz dudes compared to say like noise rock dudes (this is a bit of a generalization i know) is that you know dudes could rock a set of cool jazz classics note for note if they wanted to

A perfect example of that is Charlie Haden who, just to keep up with Ornette, had to have amazing ears which he got from, guess what, singing country music as a child. And who might not catch the attention of the average virtuoso-seeking concertgoer, since he doesn't play very fast at all, but is someone who just gets an incredible sound out of his instrument.

In Music in the Western civilization by Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin, we find the following definition of virtuoso:[2]

"...a virtuoso was, originally, a highly accomplished musician, but by the nineteenth century the term had become restricted to performers, both vocal and instrumental, whose technical accomplishments were so pronounced as to dazzle the public."

The defining element of virtuosity is the performance ability of the musician in question, who is capable of displaying feats of skill well above the average performer. Musicians focused on virtuosity are commonly [vague] criticized for overlooking substance and emotion in favor of raw technical prowess. Despite the mechanical aspects of virtuosity, many virtuosi successfully avoid such labels [vague]. Once [vague] more commonly applied in the context of the fine arts, the term has since evolved [citation needed] and can now also simply mean a 'master' or 'ace' who excels technically within a particular field or area of human knowledge—anyone especially or dazzlingly skilled at what they do.[1]

so, to sum up this thread [vague] [vague] [vague] [citation needed]

^in this post we sum up the thread so you don't need to read it

no, no, that definition is far too restrictive. we need to expand it so that any german dude making generic bleep and bloop music gets to be called a virtuoso too.

all these rules

don't point your plastic finger at me

just my noodle

seriously though, part of what's great about electronic music for example is the freedom from all of the restrictions, limitations, and traditions of physical instruments. I can't understand the desire to shoehorn old classical notions of instrumental technique onto something that's an entirely different practice. It seems... rockist to me (classicist? I dunno). but then maybe I've bought into this whole "virtuosity as a bad thing" sentiment too much in relation to certain modern styles of music.

but surely Miles' approach [to the trumpet] was a form of virtuosity?

― shake it, shake it, sugary pee (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 4:49 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

i don't know why we'd need to make this claim on miles' behalf. i honestly don't know whether or not his playing was extraordinarily adept from a technical perspective. we have plenty of words with which to praise musicians we admire without turning "virtuoso" into some basically meaningless all-purpose honorific like "genius".

You could probably make a case for Prince as a virtuoso based on the sheer number of instruments he can play technically well and the rhythmic precision of his multi-tracked, solo arrangements.

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 8:05 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

this seems reasonable, same with the claim that he was a virtuoso master of the recording studio, though that stretches the definition quite a bit.

I also agree that there's something of a conflation of "precision" with "virtuosity" in this discussion. (apologies if this convo already happened) A virtuoso's palette is much wider than just precision; to me, anyway, the term means that the person can play or sing ANYTHING. You're talking clean, messy, complicated, simple, overwrought, cold... the person you're talking about can play or sing any of those styles/moods and is, if not equally excellent at them all, well beyond credible in them all.

― chupacabra - a delicious burrito (DJP), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 7:03 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i don't know about this. many celebrated instrumental virtuosos (glenn gould, jascha heifetz) worked within a fairly narrow range of musical approaches. within that range, they were capable of enormous variety, but that's not to say that they could or would want to play absolutely anything. hard to say though, because virtuosity generally means you get to play what you want the way you want in a context that suits you.

i don't know why we'd need to make this claim on miles' behalf. i honestly don't know whether or not his playing was extraordinarily adept from a technical perspective. we have plenty of words with which to praise musicians we admire without turning "virtuoso" into some basically meaningless all-purpose honorific like "genius".

Your last point was OTM. And I'm not necessarily saying that Miles' reputation as a player was particularly embattled (although he's far better on his recordings with Parker than the one-fluffed-session and sticky notions of youthful ineptitude would suggest) and needs to be defended. I guess I'm saying that Miles was a virtuoso at being Miles: as much facility as Wynton has, he can't approach Miles' sound, no matter how hard he tries.

(And I'd go as far as saying the Shaggs were virtuosi at being the Shaggs. Though I can see how continuing down that road might make things, um, problematic.)

Though I can see how continuing down that road might make things, um, problematic.

It sure would. I think stuff like "Miles was a virtuoso at being Miles" is counterproductive in this thread.

ha yes, thank you

It's nice to be nice to the nice

Just because we lack the linguistic precision to describe precisely the ways in which certain pieces of electronic music are virtuosic doesn't mean there isn't something to the claim that they are. The word "feel" is dubious and inexact, sure, but it relates to a sense that we, as listeners trusting our ears and instincts and comparing a piece of music or a performance to others like it that we've heard, realize something special and different and "next-level" is going on. I want to second Geeta's earlier assertion that there's a difference between virtuosity and manual dexterity. Two people can both play a complex passage for guitar "correctly" (i.e. hitting the right notes on the page, etc), but if one comes across dry and flat and the other comes across resonant and feeling "right" we wouldn't say that both were equally virtuosic, would we?

― Clarke B., Tuesday, June 21, 2011 6:52 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

last one. would agree that one might make a case for the virtuosity of certain pieces of electronic music ― from a compositional standpoint. though "virtuoso composer" might be a metaphorical stretch, it's something of a commonplace and makes sense to me. certain pieces of classical music are clearly the product of prodigious skill. they work extremely complex musical/mathematical ideas out with almost superhuman precision and elegance. if we can say the same thing, or something similar, about a piece of electronic music, then it might be reasonable to call its composer a virtuoso.

but virtuosity isn't something we perceive intuitively, at the gut level. if we reduce it to that, there's no need for the term, we might as well just say "genius" or "greatness" or something equally vague. music can seem "next-level" to us without there being any sort of virtuosity being involved in the performance or composition.

as for the last question, relating to the difference between manual dexterity and virtuosic skill, i don't think there's a clear answer. first, "manual dexterity" isn't the same thing as instrumental skill. one can be dextrous without being able to play an instrument, and one could probably fight an innate clumsiness to achieve some level of instrumental mastery. what we call virtuosity seems generally to result from a combination of innate dexterity, diligent training, deep fascination and some neurological/psychological X-factor. if someone were to possess staggering technical skills but no apparent "feel" for music's emotional significance, we might call them a "technical virtuoso" (or some such), but would qualify this by noting their deficiencies in other areas.

extra "being" in paragraph 2, dag

when did it become a bad thing for Miles to be a virtuoso at being Miles? lol

This might be a dumb thought, but does the concept of the virtuoso only make sense within the context of a canon? That would explain why the concept doesn't really translate to something like electronic music, and why it doesn't quite make sense to expect a virtuoso's skills to cross over to another totally separate musical style. And also it would explain why the concept does seem to make a sort of sense within jazz (how fast can you play over the Cherokee changes, or what kind of new interpretation can you bring to How High the Moon).

And the period of time where rock music valued technical mastery might also correspond to the emergence and then disappearance of a type of canon. (starting with maybe "what can you do with Hey Joe" and culminating in "how fast can you play Eruption").

I"M THE OPERATOR WITH MY POCKET CALCULATOR

Irving Berlin was a virtuoso at being Irving Berlin.

Nothing nothings.

I wish I was a virtuoso at being myself

guys, miles is a terrible example of a virtuoso, especially next to a trumpet player like, say, clifford brown. he's the ultimate example of using your technical weaknesses to create a unique style, and concept trumping, well, virtuosity.

btw this is such an old school ilm thread, i feel like it's 2002.

(not a bad thing!)

You forgot Maynard Ferguson, Jordan.

That was a good point, wk. You need a general consensus of a body of experts to decide where a performer is placed on the spectrum of virtuosity. And the way an instrument is played in one style might sound wrong or bad judged by another style- for example Broadway singing style vs. operatic singing or jazz swing time vs. rock straight eighths.

right, maynard would be the yngwie of trumpet, if you want to go the opposite end of the spectrum.

``He's got bad intonation, bad technique. He's trying new things, but he hasn't mastered his instrument yet.'' - Maynard Ferguson on Ornette Coleman!

"I'd listened to him all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby." - Roy Eldridge on same.

Did you know anybody that played in the Maynard Ferguson band, Jordan?

Bill Dixon used to talk about "all those people that laughed at Ornette, and then had to learn how to play like him."

half agree that virtuosity demands a canon, or at least a shared baseline reference for what constitutes excellence, but also disagree. the point's been made countless times in this thread, but instrumental virtuosity is much like athleticism ― the skills involved are self-evident and easily cross cultural boundaries. for this reason, virtuosi are often celebrated internationally, far outside the cultural context in which their abilities would supposedly make the most sense. while not everyone likes or even understands the same sorts of music, the ability to play with blinding speed, dexterity, subtlety and grace is something of a universal language.

And the period of time where rock music valued technical mastery might also correspond to the emergence and then disappearance of a type of canon. (starting with maybe "what can you do with Hey Joe" and culminating in "how fast can you play Eruption").

― Ktulu says, I've come to hate my body (wk), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 12:45 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno. one could argue for the existence of a contemporary alt/art rock canon built around the likes of the velvet underground, joy division, sonic youth, the pixies, my bloody valentine, and radiohead. it's a canon that shuns ostentatious instrumental virtuosity, but it's no less a canon.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, contenderizer...

"music can seem "next-level" to us without there being any sort of virtuosity being involved in the performance or composition."

Right, but I meant that it seeming "next-level" is a necessary but not sufficient condition of virtuosity.

"what we call virtuosity seems generally to result from a combination of innate dexterity, diligent training, deep fascination and some neurological/psychological X-factor."

This elusive X-factor is exactly what I mean by "next-level," but I'm super-hesitant to discuss it as something instantiated in the brain, something neurologically/psychologically encoded (that gets into REALLY murky waters). Why not just leave it as something that comes across in the execution, something that we can perceive as spectators but can't articulate adequately? On a different note, it's hard for me to process the notion of "hedged virtuoso"--i.e. a virtuoso who can, I dunno, play real fast but has no sense for drama or tension/release. There's no such thing as perfection (well, nothing provable as such), but when I say someone's a virtuoso I mean that I can't imagine them playing in any way differently that would make their playing better.

guys, miles is a terrible example of a virtuoso, especially next to a trumpet player like, say, clifford brown. he's the ultimate example of using your technical weaknesses to create a unique style, and concept trumping, well, virtuosity.

^^^OTM. Miles being cited in this thread is very strange

I think they were actually referring to Mies, Mies van der Rohe, who was an architectural virtuoso.

"empty virtuosity" About 6,200 results

People's aversion to musical virtuosity

I gave up on Maynard Ferguson years ago when I saw him in the Kenton band lying on his back kicking his feet in the air while playing nonsense in his ultra high routine. Sounded for all the world like air escaping from a balloon.

I was basically trying to pin down a definition of virtuosity. Some were limiting it to technical facility, and some said an emotional component should figure in. My thinking was, Miles had a technical mastery of certain things that other more technically proficient trumpeters (by the generally-accepted standards) could not approach, technically or otherwise.

xxp

James Redd/Blecchs deserves a laugh for his "Some Like It Hot" photo

like what? to me, it still sounds like you're talking about making smart musical choices.

My thinking was, Miles had a technical mastery of certain things that other more technically proficient trumpeters (by the generally-accepted standards) could not approach, technically or otherwise.

― shake it, shake it, sugary pee (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

not sure the first "technical" belongs in there? most seem to think that miles wasn't the world's most adept or versatile instrumental technician. his mastery lay in his: clever deployment of his abilities and inabilities, development of a personal style, emotional expression, skill as a composer and arranger, and ability to recognize and cultivate ability in others.

Thanks, MVB. I like that picture so much thought about reposting it further downthread.

Miles' greatest strength was as a bandleader, right? Which also seems like a weird thing to try to apply the label "virtuoso" to.

btw this is such an old school ilm thread, i feel like it's 2002.

lol, true. "when did actually talking about music earnestly become a bad thing?"

i dunno. one could argue for the existence of a contemporary alt/art rock canon built around the likes of the velvet underground, joy division, sonic youth, the pixies, my bloody valentine, and radiohead. it's a canon that shuns ostentatious instrumental virtuosity, but it's no less a canon.

Yeah true. I guess I was thinking of, not so much a critical canon, but something more like a shared canon of "standards" among musicians. There's no indie rock fake book that you're expected to memorize. I doubt that somebody auditioning for a Sonic Youth type band would be expected to play a Thurston Moore solo squeal for squeal. Whereas I think that kind of was the case with metal (eruption, etc).

half agree that virtuosity demands a canon, or at least a shared baseline reference for what constitutes excellence, but also disagree. the point's been made countless times in this thread, but instrumental virtuosity is much like athleticism ― the skills involved are self-evident and easily cross cultural boundaries. for this reason, virtuosi are often celebrated internationally, far outside the cultural context in which their abilities would supposedly make the most sense. while not everyone likes or even understands the same sorts of music, the ability to play with blinding speed, dexterity, subtlety and grace is something of a universal language.

Yes, that's also true. I guess I was thinking more of the process by which musicians actually get their technique to a high level like that though. So a generation of guitarists who grew up trying to copy EVH developed serious chops, while a slightly younger generation who grew up wanting to be Kurt Cobain didn't. Which I guess goes back to as you were saying, there is a canon, but it's just not one that requires much in the way of instrumental technique.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI4NzI2NDM1NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDIxNDI2._V1._SX450_SY306_.jpg

not sure the first "technical" belongs in there? most seem to think that miles wasn't the world's most adept or versatile instrumental technician. his mastery lay in his: clever deployment of his abilities and inabilities, development of a personal style, emotional expression, skill as a composer and arranger, and ability to recognize and cultivate ability in others.

― And the piano, it sounds like a carnivore (contenderizer), Tuesday, June 21, 2011 5:26 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

All of that is certainly true, but the reason I noted his technical mastery was because of the distinctiveness of his sound, one which marked something of a turning point in the sound of the instrument. Even symphony players have said that, over time, Miles' sound changed the way classical trumpeters approach their instruments.

which brings up the difference between influence and virtuosity. i mean, kurt cobain was one of the most influential male pop/rock singers of the late 20th century, but i'm not sure that this was a product of his technical mastery. suppose that gets into subjective criteria for "mastery"...

creativity does not = virtuosity

Sorry, forgot to add the caption Cannon to my last post

Surprising that the discussion of multi-instrumentalism made no mention of these guys

lol

or this one ~ mccartney ii is sick

recorded the whole thing himself