Sounding Off: What We Like vs. What Is Good

This picture says it all.

Just about anyone not completely hypnotized by the current allure of the modern music scene would probably agree that the quality of popular music has recently taken a very precipitous tumble in a very short span of time. A blog about music that happens to be written by a musician should jump at the chance to discuss music in whatever context it can get its grubby little hands on, so, here we are.

Welcome to a new series of blog posts entitled, Sounding Off. Think of it as a sort-of State Of The Union discussion oriented around music: what went wrong and how we can get the wonder back. Don't worry. I won't take too much of your time: I'll write this stuff somewhat episodically so as not to bore anyone. So, here we go.

It seems to me that one of the most pressing issues restricting the discussion & advancement of great music (and all kinds of great art, for that matter) is the confusion of personal taste with artistic excellence. In short, what I mean is that too many people today view their own subjective likes and dislikes as the absolute standard of what is good and bad. Call it narcissism or self-involvement, (perhaps it's the result of over-emphasis on the idea of relative truth for the past couple of decades), but most people walk around thinking that their own ideas of what's cool are the perfect examples of what's artistically great, whether or not they know the first thing about what makes something great in the first place.

This kind of thinking plays out like this: a person thinks or says (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously), "If I like it, it's good. If I don't like it, it sucks." It is my hypothesis that this kind of thought process is not only doing nothing good for the cause of great art in our culture; it's actually hurting it.

When people's only standard for excellence or beauty is what they themselves instinctively deem to be beautiful or excellent, they insulate themselves from an expansion of their understanding and consciousness of art. They have effectively made themselves the center of their own artistic universe and cannot be bothered to step outside of it. A diversity of artistic expressions is as valuable to a culture as a diversity of heritage or viewpoints, and people should require themselves to be humble and honest enough to admit that they don't know all that there is to know about anything, let alone the massively diverse and varied world of music and art.

I'll give you an example from my own catalog of preferences: I love AC/DC. I own their albums and have seen them on tour. I love cranking their tunes when I'm driving or working out or just feeling the need to get a little testosterone flowing. But I am fully aware that AC/DC is a band that has essentially built a 30+ year career out of one song. They play one kind of riff with one kind of drum beat and typically don't vary it a whole lot from one track to the next. And what's more is that this one thing that AC/DC does (arguably better than anyone else, I'll admit) is not the most musically exacting. They have capitalized on a musically simple and straight-forward idea (usually a recipe for a very short-lived and brief career). They are not a band that I would necessarily recommend for up-and-coming musicians to emulate or learn from; there are much better artists and groups form which to take your leads and lessons. That all being admitted, I still love them, and probably always will.

On the flip side of the coin, Dream Theater, an amazingly talented group of musicians, has never really appealed to me. Their musicianship is obvious & ubiquitous throughout their music and they can do things that many other professional musicians will never be able to execute. But their stuff has never really spoken to me. The tuning fork that goes off in my soul when I hear an AC/DC riff is never activated when I hear Dream Theater. And that's ok.

What would not be ok is for me to conclude that Dream Theater is comprised of worse musicians than AC/DC simply because I like one and not the other. My preferences are my preferences and in no way an ultimate objective standard of what is good or what is bad. I fully admit that I listen to AC/DC and not Dream Theater, but I also admit that the guys in Dream Theater are greater players than the guys in AC/DC will probably ever be. My subjective valuing of one over the other does not equate to an objective ruling of the same.

I believe this to be an important lesson for all music and art lovers in our culture to learn. If we insist that what we like is artistically good simply because we like it (whether or not we know the first thing about how to make something good), the appreciation of the creative process will no longer be celebrated unless it serves to stroke our own egos through our own personal preferences.

The solution is simple. All we need to learn how to do is say two things:

1) "Band X may not be the most talented group of musicians on the planet, but I dig their stuff. I admit they're not the best, but they speak to me."

2) "Band Y is amazing. It's obvious that they know what they're doing and are incredible at it. I just don't dig it. And no, they don't suck just because I don't like them. Props to them for being awesome, it's just not for me."

It's not hard, folks. It just takes admitting that we're not the center of the universe.

Long Live The Players

They are the unsung heroes of the music universe. You may see them in the unfocused background of the videos or on the darker parts of the stage, but without them, music does not happen. The “musicians” we celebrate are nothing without them and the true artists will be the first to admit it.

They are the players. They are the wizards who breathe life into the songs that will forever be credited to somebody else, even though it is their creativity, their skill, and their passion that make the songs worth listening to. They are the ones that bring colors to the palette and flavors to the dish. They are poets without words, speaking through their instruments so that somebody else’s voice is heard more clearly, more distinctly, more beautifully.

And most of us don’t even know their names.

While the people on the album covers get the interviews, the awards, and the lucrative record deals, it is the ones whose faces you hardly ever see that truly make the music. It is their beats that you dance to, their grooves that you feel, and their guitar solos that you belt at the top of your lungs. Without them, the vast majority of modern artists are nothing more than a few chords, shallow lyrics, and a moderately catchy melody… if they’re lucky. Without them, most of music as we know and hear it would simply not exist.

Indeed, part of the beauty of music is the many parts of the whole; the group speaking with one voice. This is not to say that solo music cannot be beautiful; far from it. But there is certainly a unique power that is created by several different people on several different instruments simultaneously painting the same picture. There is a unique intensity to it; the telling of the same story with many different voices all speaking at the same time. The band creates a sort of community that no single person can, in and of themselves, accomplish. Even musical geniuses and prodigies cannot do it all, and supposing they could, they couldn’t do it all at once. Thusly, we buy albums and go to concerts based on one person’s name, but we are more-often-than-not exposed to a band of players; a group of musicians whose efforts are no less important, no less valuable, and, most times, much more difficult. We may pay more attention to the one underneath the spotlight at the front of the stage, but make no mistake: what we feel, what we hear, what we experience and what we love is largely the creation of people we wouldn’t recognize if we bumped into them walking down the street.

It’s true that modern technology has attempted to reduce the need for the great players, but the real appreciators of music will always know the difference. Drum grooves that come from a box and the robotic corrections of ProTools will never be able to replace the human touch of the live musician. In art, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and no computer will ever make music as beautiful, as real, or as genuine as is made by a person.

So, long live the players. Long live the music makers. Long live those whose passion is the performance and not the fame. Long live those whose talents and abilities are bigger than mere commercialism. Long live those who love music and not trend. Long live the perpetual students and the self-denying masters. Long live innovation and not derivation.

Long live the players.

Clapton's Final Paragraph

"The music scene as I look at it today is little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95% rubbish, 5% pure. However, the systems of marketing and distribution are in the middle of a huge shift, and by the end of this decade I think it's unlikely that any of the existing record companies will still be in business. With the greatest respect to all involved, that would be no great loss. Music will always find its way to us... Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance. It has always found me, and with God's blessing and permission, it always will."

- Eric Clapton, The Autobiography

(Courtesy: askmen.com)

How True It Is

NBAwesome.

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Touche, Eppic. Touche.