Practice

Adam wrote:
>> Gee, Neil, that's a pretty mean thing to say. I like your tape and
>> appreciate your good guitar skills, but to condemn music as being lousy
>> because it doesn't "groove" or doesn't fit your _opinion_ of what "good"
>> music is closed-minded and, if I may speak freely, a very limiting attitude
>> which is mostly shaped by commercialism and arrogance.
>
Gary replied:
> I suspect that that's a misinterpretation of Neil's appeal. In
>particular, I
>don't see that he's advocating any particular style of music over any other.
>Here's what I think he's pointing out, and I believe quite accurately and
>appropriately: Technical, improvisational, and compositional skill of the sort
>that comes only with untold hours and hours of practice, has a VERY big effect
>upon the excitement of the music that comes of it.
>
> And that, I believe quite firmly, is true of ALMOST every style of music.
>...
> Now I say that virtuosity is valuable to "almost" every style of music,
>because I suppose that if you actually WANT to express a feeling of
>rigidity and
>clumsiness, then I guess you would actually benefit from lack of virtuosity.
>But rigidity and clumsiness are certainly a very limited realm of expression.

I think what Adam is pointing out is that a composer's instrumental chops
(which, I believe is what Neil focussed on in his post) are much more
fundamental to certain types of music than others. Neil's focus in his
post, while I may be slightly more sympathetic to it than Adam, still
betrays a bias towards certain styles.

Not every composer of good music has been a virtuoso, or even good,
performer. In these days of sequencing and computer composition, there are
certain styles in which the composer does not have to be a performer at
all. Perhaps you don't like music written this way, but I've heard a lot of
good CDs that included no live performance.

It's possible I misread Neil's post, and, as Gary implies, it should be
extended to include "compositional virtuosity," not just instrumental. But
if that's the case, then his post amounts to little more than "Why don't
you people write better music?" Hardly a helpful way to spend bandwidth.

Bill

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^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
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