What is it about virtuosos and their inability to make a beeline for people's hearts?

Mr. Cheese

Paternal Reassurance
Because, you know, an extraterrestrially adept footie-player would never be ignored by the masses no matter his personal shortcomings, while musical virtuosos are doomed to a life in oblivion, plucking away in solitude at some remote subway station, the iPodious passers-by not even susceptible to their beseeching invites. O the iniquity! Have you ever been a virtuoso at anything? Did it do you any good?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Its a bit like the session musician thing isn't it? All these amazing shit-hot players who couldn't write a decent piece of music to save their lives.

Not dissin' em really though. Secretly i'd love to have some super-slinky virtuoso guitar skills
instead of just being (sigh...) average
 

swears

preppy-kei
Because pop music is about ideas and contexts and weird, subtle emotional responses that you can't get just by learning the technical stuff. There's no way to really quantify or predict what makes somebody a "star".
 

Mr. Cheese

Paternal Reassurance
But the same could be said for football, right? Strictly speaking, it's a technical game where you get rewarded for technical excellence. But you also have its supporters going on about how certain players make them feel. So, is it football which is the anomaly? One of few arenas where technical brilliance is all it takes to rouse fervent responses from people of whom you don't know. Whereas, of course, in music, technical brilliance is at best a springboard towards something greater.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
being a virtuoso is way more work than it's worth. especially when you consider how little gratification there is in being just another good-for-nothing technician for whom no one has any aesthetic respect.

i remember wondering when i was a kid how many times i'd have to play hannon (hanon?) exercises before i could really call myself a virtuoso.

turns out i never would.

having perfect pitch makes life (and appreciating music) hard enough sometimes as it is
 

swears

preppy-kei
But the same could be said for football, right? Strictly speaking, it's a technical game where you get rewarded for technical excellence. But you also have its supporters going on about how certain players make them feel. So, is it football which is the anomaly? One of few arenas where technical brilliance is all it takes to rouse fervent responses from people of whom you don't know. Whereas, of course, in music, technical brilliance is at best a springboard towards something greater.

Well, that's because sporting prowess is more easily quantified. Somebody could make a claim that an obscure musician is world class but never got the breaks, you'd have a harder time suggesting that some Nationwide Conference football team could take on Brazil.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
being a virtuoso is way more work than it's worth. especially when you consider how little gratification there is in being just another good-for-nothing technician for whom no one has any aesthetic respect.

i remember wondering when i was a kid how many times i'd have to play hannon (hanon?) exercises before i could really call myself a virtuoso.

turns out i never would.

having perfect pitch makes life (and appreciating music) hard enough sometimes as it is


But there's nothing wrong with practising a lot to get really good at something is there?

I mean Jimi Hendrix obviously had a raw natural talent, but he still had to practise for eight hours a day or whatever to be able to do what he wanted to do.

To make good music, first you need a good imagination. Then you need the chops to realise your ideas. That takes practise...
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
To make good music, first you need a good imagination. Then you need the chops to realise your ideas. That takes practise...

Unfortunately, as an adolescent, dabbling at the piano, I found that the chops tended to obliterate my ideas. Clearly, that was not the case with Hendrix, Prince and a gazillion other expert-yet-imaginative musicians, but I have a hunch it's a pretty wide-spread malady.

I think Swears is wrong in thinking most people don't find that you can gauge musical skills. I think they do. That doesn't mean they prefer the more skilled musician, but it means that they know but don't care. With football, they evidently care. With football, they seemingly never prefer the less skilled player to the club-footed one. Again, why the difference?
 
You can't compare football to music, just can't. I'm sorry, but I'm passionate about Liverpool- always have been- and this doesn't compute in my head. The reason why no-one prefers the dickhead who can't pass or the striker that can't head a ball to save their life is because it's all about success. You want your team to win, player X is shit and will hinder your performance. You therefore dislike them.
It seems weird that I'm even typing that, I don't know how someone couldn't grasp it.

Personally, I think music is based more on the idea/concept of the music or the persona of the artist, you can't necessarily make someone care about someone just because they're shit hot on the guitar etc.
 
No diss, mind. I guess a lot of football is impenetrable to people who don't follow it. My ex used to ask me "Why do you sing at eachother?" literally once a month for the whole time we were together, like it seriously bugged her. Question 1 of 60.

No idea why I just typed that but it stays.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Unfortunately, as an adolescent, dabbling at the piano, I found that the chops tended to obliterate my ideas. Clearly, that was not the case with Hendrix, Prince and a gazillion other expert-yet-imaginative musicians, but I have a hunch it's a pretty wide-spread malady.


Yes, thats because most people are lacking in imagination!;)

Flashy chops are pretty useless on their own, but used as a springboard for your own ideas they're good to have. I mean Vincent Van Gogh spent years making copies of paintings by the masters, then he went and done his own thing. He wouldn't have been able to do this without putting the work in first.
 

sodiumnightlife

Sweet Virginia
that point about painting is actually really valid - it was the standard way to work in art right up until some point in the 20th century. At what point did we start demanding originality right from the very start of every single musicians career?
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
that point about painting is actually really valid - it was the standard way to work in art right up until some point in the 20th century. At what point did we start demanding originality right from the very start of every single musicians career?

'Cos people want their geniuses to drop, fully formed, from the skies?*

*not literally
 

swears

preppy-kei
I think Swears is wrong in thinking most people don't find that you can gauge musical skills. I think they do. That doesn't mean they prefer the more skilled musician, but it means that they know but don't care.

Huh? When did I say this? I was making the point that regardless of technical ability, it isn't easy to pinpoint what makes a musician great in a clear-cut, objective way. And that pop music is never just about the music itself, people get into it for all kinds of reasons that are hard to pin down. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many arguments about why artist X is superior to artist Y. Hardly anyone would bring technical ability into it rather than imagination, originality, the emotional tone, etc...
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
'Cos people want their geniuses to drop, fully formed, from the skies?*

*not literally

Literally, please, like one of the plagues.

The original premis is flawed though, eh? Virtuosos make megabucks playing the Royal Albert Hall and are feted in dinner parties all round the world. Buskers are buskers for all sorts of different reasons.

The masses started wanting modernism about when, erm, modernism started, isn't it? And it was just a joke because Society never wanted that in the first place.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
Well, that's because sporting prowess is more easily quantified. Somebody could make a claim that an obscure musician is world class but never got the breaks, you'd have a harder time suggesting that some Nationwide Conference football team could take on Brazil.

you still get weird anomalies in sport though, like that footballer who can do amazing tricks and stuff - he's in loads of adverts and does special performances before big games (got an ovation from the Brazilian team at the last world cup), but he's not a pro player for some reason.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
indian classical is definitely one of the musical culture that most celebrte the virtuoso... but i think you need ideas too, if you want a place half way up the strict hierarchy.

i remember seeing Zakir Hussein a few years ago... talk about virtuoso. fuck.
 

CHAOTROPIC

on account
The thread title seems to be a perfectly reasonable statement in a discussion about rock music, but talk that way to an opera buff & they'd think you were completely mad.

Of course, this spotlights the strange distinction popular music seems to make between entertainers, who interpret the songs of others & are expected to be technically excellent (Fame Academy?), & artists, who create their own material & are allowed to be 'authentic'. Why every popular singer is expected to be both great performer, great composer & great lyricist is a mystery to me. Did Maria Callas write her own arias? Caruso?

& there are exceptions. Prince was a virtuoso.
 
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