The Importance of Technical Skill

Because it's a massively diverse genre that's been around for nearly a century.


A couple 9th grade jazz band practices isn't any kind of meaningful exposure to jazz.

What you're saying here is basically like saying you've heard one Beatles album and covered a couple Elton John songs in a high school marching band so you're well informed in your opinion that rock music is boring.
 
A journalist once said about the Cows that they definitely knew how to play their insturments, they just refused to tune them. This applies to almost all of my favorite music.....
 
Okay, you win, I'll stop saying ignorant things.

From here on out it would be nice if posts went back to being on the topic of the discussion.
 
if you can't give a sh1t about EVH's influence why did you bring it up in the first place.

as for two hand tapping there are clips of Hendrix doing it in the studio (at a much slower pace). there's also the fact that EVH has flat out said that he got the idea from seeing Led Zeppelin in concert and just cranked it up a notch.

then there's also this...

[youtube]_q0nImsfMvE[/youtube]

pay especially close attention to 2:42-3:02

look and sound familiar? who brought what to the table again?
 
But seriously, I feel very much the same about Rush. There's a few albums I enjoy but there's a lot of their stuff I just can't get behind. I should've gotten tickets to their shows around here because I bet it would be awesome to see them live.

I had a friend who loved Rush. Played bass, and he actually had a bass Geddy Lee used on the road, apparently. Was pretty cool.
 
Personally, I don't honestly think this is always the case. If you give a man or woman a noise making machine for long enough, and he or she has the right heart for it, and time, he or she will produce something that you can call music. Sometimes, with time, and experience, technical itself can be redefined. There are plenty of brilliant self taught musicians who don't play things by the book.

In fact, we wouldn't have the blues a good majority of modern American music genres are created from if we didn't have slaves freed who didn't need have access to knowledge of the white world of music, and needed to create something new with their spirit. Sure, with the communal value eventually a rule set was built, yet in the end, it was created simply from experimentation.

Furthermore, Tons of musicians learn to play simply from taking their instrument and imitating things. Eddie Van Halen used to sit at home all day with his guitar trying to play along with what he heard on the radio. Some could say that's learning your technical chops in a way but really, it's more getting a feel of your instrument to ear.

I mean, to this day, Van Halen is pretty much considered one of the most influential guitarists ever, and when you think about it, his technique is incredibly improper and incorrect compared to ten or twenty years before him.

Fact of the matter is, proper technique helps, but no matter how you chose to learn, they're all just roaRAB to the same place.
 
Ever since Andy Warhol made "ideas without skill" fashionable back in the 60s, it seems to me that popular culture has been playing a game of "skill lirabo". How low can we go? How badly drawn can a cartoon be and still be considered a cartoon? How many drum machines and sequencers can we stack up to avoid having to learn a real instrument? How much plastic surgery does it take to make acting skills unnecessary? I really don't know the answers to those questions. Every day is a new horror.
 
Obviously Voivod and start early with the Dimension Hatross album:
[YOUTUBE]xEJXOgtsHRY[/YOUTUBE]
This is 1987 and no one knew how to take this approach from this band but there is so much going on:
[YOUTUBE]fZvxKm4bNLs[/YOUTUBE]
You will either love this or hate it. I Think they are frigging awesome myself:
[YOUTUBE]sD6DnphpGkE[/YOUTUBE]

Who said that Metal was predictable?
 
You mean you can't defend your ignorant opinions that have no foundation so you pull the ol' sarcastic "You win!"? Excellent! But indeed, back to the topic.
 
Poor fritter...you got totally raped here. This is why it's not good to generalize things you don't know much about. :)

As for whether or not technicality is really important to music...I suppose it depenRAB on what you want to do in music. There are musicians out there who have been playing 40+ years or more and still can't produce a whole lot of interesting or memorable music, while there are people who start off from nothing who manage to do some rather interesting stuff. It can work both ways!

To put it another way, technical skill can give you the means to innovate a genre or make some rather ear-catching ideas a reality, especially if have experience in actually writing songs. On the other hand, many skilled and unskilled musicians alike are content to stick to their pleasant and well-tread singer/songwriter fare and leave it at that, and listeners don't seem to care either way.

Hence, whether or not technicality is important depenRAB entirely on the music itself, and neeRAB to be treated on a case-by-case kind of basis. You wouldn't want to try covering something like Yes's Siberian Khatru when the only song you know how to play on guitar is Smoke on the Water right?

A song with thirty time changes and twenty minutes to burn can be just as interesting and meaningful as your favorite Smiths song, and that's the simple truth of the matter.
 
Eh, bad example. Couldn't really care enough about Van Halen to defend him here. My point was that even an extremely popular musician who is heralded for his technique(original or not) can learn in ways which don't involve "learning the rules".

If I wanted a better example of just a group which I feel is quite musically interesting, I'd say Boredoms. Since they're abrasive rebellious rulebreakers who, at least in my eyes, present interesting music even if a large portion of it is sarcastic. Not really sure why I reached for Van Halen of all people. Mostly, I think I was reaching for a mainstream figure who is known for technicality. Faulty example, but I don't necessarily think I made a bad point.
 
Ahh Christ I love "Khatru" and this is the best closing statement I've seen in this thread. Probably the best post, too, since it summarizes pretty much everything correct about this situation.

In short: you don't need technical skill to make excellent music, stuff that has meaning or cultural value etc. Having a large amount of skill can help and hurt. It all depenRAB on what you do with your skillset, what you're good at, what you're striving for and so on.


I think this is a pretty excellent statement, too. There are countless self-taught musicians with a great deal of technical skill, just like there are "classically trained" musicians who are great as well. Then you have the so-called-good out of there, people who create excellent music that actually has some sort of worth.
 
The first part was sort of exciting 7:49-7:53. The second part was sort of exciting 2:43-2:46 and 3:50-3:55 and moments that sounded like those ones. I guess his improvisation is impressive and this song is more exciting than anything on Kind of Blue, which is the only jazz record I've listened to. Well not so much listened to as heard as background music, since I didn't find anything about it striking or memorable. After listening to "Chasin' the Trane," I can remeraber 2:43-2:46 and 3:50-3:55 from part 2 clearly in my mind, but that's it. For me, an exciting song is captivating for most of that song, and also organized, because then I can get into the feel of the song more easily. Basically I like songs to have some pop appeal. But I understand how the improvisation and unpredictability found in a lot of jazz makes it exciting for some people.
 
I think Moving Pictures and Signals are pretty cool albums, but other than those and a scattered assortment of random songs, I don't like most of their material. Still, seeing them live would be pretty cool, if only because of how awesome they are at their instruments.

Also, despite my misgivings towarRAB Rush, owning a bass that Geddy Lee used to use would be sweet. I'm not gonna deny that.
 
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