Handruin said:
Merc, what about people like Buddy Rich who couldn't read music? I know it's not the same as your "Pro Tools" example...just curious.
Pro Tools is a very common Mac-based mixing/looping/sampling program. For a DJ or amateur performaner, it's a gift from the gods. It's REALLY easy to use and you can work miracles with it.
But, because it's really easy to use, there's no effort involved. It's very much a case of "throw shit on a wall and see what sticks". If there was a real musical instrument involved, there would at least be a barrier to entry - someone needs at least some minimal level of skill before real music is possible. Such is no longer the case.
In jazz and blues circles, formal training is often considered a hinderance; the emphasis is on improvisation after mastery of the instrument has been attained. This, again, is something that has to cultivated; jazz improvisation does NOT come naturally, but through practice and careful listening, musicians develop an ear for the rules that are formalized in classical music. They end up in the same place.
I'm not going to knock the guy who spent 20 years playing blues licks or the 10 year old whose Suzuki training lets him rip through a violin showpiece with technical perfection, but I have no problem at all condemning the moron who says "I think I'll drag this 10-second sample I stole from"Don't Fear the Reaper"
here."
What's the difference between the rest of us and that guy? We don't have a copy of Pro Tools.
Pop music is all about lowest common denominator. In a way it always has been, but its even more true today than it was 20 years ago. Now, record companies seek to maximize profits in ways they didn't know or understand in 1980, media companies get to decide what's popular, and potentially interesting or at least different music is lost to everyone.
Not only that, but with the sound processing technology that's available in a modern studio, it DOES NOT MATTER if you can perform. In a studio, ANYONE can be made to sound good. You guys already know that. Literally, if there's a warm body in front of a mic, someone in the booth can make a servicable recording. So why not put the prettiest people in there? Think someone like, um, Justin Timberlake or Shania Twain will ever record an all-acoustic album?
I know there are real musicians in the pop world. Guys who really work and perfect their craft. But for every one of those guys, there's probably 20 guys you'd NEVER want to hear singing or playing without the adornment of amplification, who are creations of their producers in the studios, and the record labels they signed with.
A band like "Green Day" is a special case, as I understand things (ie not well, probably). IIRC Grunge music was a reaction to an earlier period of bubblegum, over-produced pop, where "original" grunge acts purposefully played mistuned, overamplified music and sang about subject matter as far as possible from whatever mainstream pop was doing at the time.
Which, from my perspective, is pretty much exactly what punk rock was 15 years earlier. The style was eventually co-opted into the mainstream and the musicians really lost any validity as artists or innovators as the 90s wore on. From the point of view of the early artists in that school, it might be said that knowing how to play instruments too well might've been detrimental to the message of their music.
And as far as things, go, I'd rather hear lousy music from someone attempting to be a musician than something assembled by committee in a studio.
