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

[mms]

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?

this isn't true is it?

pavarotti rip

 

[Sick Boy]

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 completely agree. When I was a teenager I wanted to be in a rock band, but I was also at the time a guitar teacher at a private music school. I taught kids how to read music, improvise in keys etc.

It absolutely destroyed my ability to view the guitar in an imaginative or creative way. I got horrendously bored with the sound of the guitar, put it in the closet and bought turntables

I think this is a pretty simple issue: it just depends on what the standard of criteria is for whatever it is you are judging, i.e. sports, opera, classical, classical painting, cooking etc. are all results based and founded in technical mastery, whereas things like modern art, lots of rock music, and comedy are judged more subjectively and independent of the process.

 

[nomadologist]

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.

ha this is one of the best and most quotable things I've ever read on here

 

[Benny Bunter]

I completely agree. When I was a teenager I wanted to be in a rock band, but I was also at the time a guitar teacher at a private music school. I taught kids how to read music, improvise in keys etc.

It absolutely destroyed my ability to view the guitar in an imaginative or creative way. I got horrendously bored with the sound of the guitar, put it in the closet and bought turntables

I guess if you've gone so far down the road of knowing the instrument that you play so well that you get bored, it takes a creative leap in the imagination to then unlearn what you know, and start over again. One example is Miles Davis instructing John Maclaughlin to play as if he had never played guitar before on In a silent way.

If you're just starting out on an instrument its probably best to learn just enough 'chops' to get going, then just go off on your own path. I've never understood how some people are just content to learn guitar solos note for note from tablature. Booooring....

 

[zhao]

well there are loads of avant jazz practitioners who have unbelievable chops in the traditional sense, but most of the public don't know it because they are only interested in making abrasive walls of sound, strange seemingly unstructured sounds, or barely audible hisses and taps with their instrument.

case in point: Albert Ayler. this man could play standards, ballads, hard bop like the best of them, but no one knows that. everyone thinks all he can do is scream bloody murder.

 

[gek-opel]

Also see Improv:staffed by a curious mixture of virtuosos (tho often non-idiomatically virtusuosic, but try telling me Derek Bailey didn't have chops eh?) and total naifs.

 

[nomadologist]

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...

No there isn't. I agree with you there. It's equally annoying the attitude I sometimes run across in terms of making music where so many of my friends who have no classical training try to claim that there's something more authentic about not knowing what the fuck you're doing. Which is dumb in its own way.

 

[borderpolice]

My position is this: technical ability (not necessarily virtuosity) is a precondition for making music that is original and listenable at the same time. Without ability, a musician will (1) fall into the musical ideoms that are ubiquituous in his/her cultural background, or (2) compose essentially aleatorically -- usually it's a combination of both. Of course there's nothing wrong with either, in fact randomness and reference to established ideoms are probably both neccessary in great music, but only technical ability allows a musician to produce good stuff in a consistent manner.

 

[nomadologist]

brilliantly put