Whose the best at:?????

scot

Well, no one is sitting around moping about it. The point is this: if you can play with style and musicality, you don't have to constantly demonstrate perfect technique and blinding speed. People other than guitar players will respond to your music, too. Yes, it's harder to achieve musicality and style - it takes life and experiences and it's not available in books or on the internet. But maybe I am just being old-fashioned...

kungfumonk007

If you want to see the result of the philosophy that separates musicality from technical ability just watch the American Idol reject episodes. The two virtues are mutually beneficial to each other, not opposed to each other or able to exist without the other. There is NO musicality without FIRST having technical ability. When you have speed as well that broadens the musical statements you are capable of making, adds to your toolkit, and is a perfectly valid element of music, not the only element of music, but no one has ever said otherwise.

We're just going to have to disagree.

Teddy Dupont

Speed for speed's sake is ripping the soul out of Gypsy Jazz. :shock: Excellent music can actually be achieved with a limited technique but crap played fast is still crap. No one in their right mind objects to technical brilliance but it should only be used in the service of the music not as the dominant factor.

scot

I never watched a single second of American Idol as I didn't think it had anything to do with what I would call music - so I don't know what you mean.

I've been playing the guitar for over 40 years and of course I worked on my technique that whole time - not that you could tell! I spent most of that time just playing the guitar, usually with other people and in a wide variety of styles, not sitting around with a metronome trying to get my speed up another 2bpm. Of course technique and music are not mutually exclusive - but you can create excellent music without perfect technique or even much technique. There are many examples over the history of recorded music. But technique alone isn't enough to do anything - listen to the many successful melismatic singers in the R+B/C+W music world today. They have incredible vocal technique, yet their recordings are bad beyond words - Mariah Carey is the worst but that's not saying much.

normsfun

I have to laugh when I see polls like this, but since you said it was just for fun I might point out that you forgot to include the most important category of all:

8. Funniest

Jazzaferri

Salvador Dali put it in a very witty reverse way

"Painter, no matter how hard you try to paint very badly, it wil still be evident if you are mediocre."

I think that in part is why I have such an allergic reaction to the "best of" threads.

In truth I believe that any true artist recognizes that while a lack of technique will hold him or her back from more freedom to express, it does not prevent them from expressing themselves.

Some people get caught up in the pursuit of technique for its own sake and impressive as that may be their playing to my ear sounds facile and leaves me feeling I am bearing the brunt of some sort of egotistical, insecure braggadocio. (wow hows that for a judgement . :shock: ..sorry bout that). I don't listen to that for very long before my mind is wandering and my body soon follows. :oops:

The ancient Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy ... the study of relationships between observable permanent external objects and music the study of relationships between invisible internal hidden objects.

I will quote from the end of welcome speech of Karl Paulnack Director of the MUsic Division at Boston Conservatory. The bit about the Greeks is at the beginning of it.

" You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is, you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer; I'm closer to a paramedic, a firefighter a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul. a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist someone who works with our insides to see if the get things to line up, to se if we can come into harmony with ourselves an be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a miliatary force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that is what we do. AS in the concentration camp (Olivier Messiaen writing quartet for the end of time in a camp in 1940 referred to earlier in speech) and the evening of 9/11 (the first organized event other than the physical rescue was a music concert in memoriam) teh artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal invisible lives"

Nuff from me.

kungfumonk007

As far as any of the well known guitarists who play really fast and have brilliant technique - i.e. Joscho, Debarre - they play with loads of musicality. And yet you hear "they are just all flash they have no soul" arguments all the time which I think is just sour grapes and pretentiousness. The idea that musicality and technique can in any way be separated is actually a modern idea as far as I know from my music history. As far as I understand the popularity of this dillema started taking root not until the romantic period and really taking hold in popular culture much much later - it is kind of the Kurt Cobaine argument of music - I can't stand Nirvana's music. Speed is a fundamental element of Gypsy Jazz Guitar - Django employed it all the time, every single well-known GJ player employs it, as far as there being GJ guitarists out there who employ speed for speeds sake they don't exist, that is just a straw man - if you think any of the well known GJ guitarists fit this category which ones specifically?

The idea that musicians are some sort of "elevated priestly class" is also a very modern idea, and really one of the major reasons that modern classical music has fallen into popular oblivion and artistic arbitrariness. Musicians should stop taking them self so seriously and be humble enough to serve their audiences in many facilities - including as entertainers selling the product of entertainment. For me I am happy, even proud to walk into a concert hall, entertain them for an hour and a half, and watch them leave relaxed with big smiles on their faces. I don't expect them to thank me afterwards for saving the planet - I think I should be thanking them profusely for allowing me to live such a charmed life as to be able to make my living playing guitar, and this is one of the major reasons why I can make my living playing guitar when people with superior technique than me can't.

As you can see I definitely take a pre-romantic view towards art and music, I'm far more impressed with Mozart than Wagner in their music as well as personal philosophies, which puts me in the major minority here and everywhere else, but really you'd be surprised at how much easier it is to make a living as a musician if you take a different view of what it means to be a musician, and how you undertake that task.

Not trying to be argumentative or anything but it seems people now a days just assume a romantic philosophy of music with out considering the alternatives, their historical context, and how it affected the music in different time periods.

Jazzaferri

When I listen to Django I hear fast at times but more often not. You obvipusly are entitled to your opinion, but It seems like I don't hear things quite the same way as you do.

Technique over artistry was an issue in Mozart's day, in Bach's day and Beethoven's day, and Franz Liszt's day as it is today. Some feel that Liszt was the first real "rock star" in music. In days before that most musicians except for composers were either employed by the church or in service to a wealthy person.

A quote attributed to Beethoven. To make a make a mistake is understandable...to play without feeling unforgivable.

Hungary was the seat of Bravura technique and the likely source for the high level of technical prowess required to play GJ well. Gypsy violin and Hungarian folk violin is full of flash bravura technique played with feeling.

I wonder if the elevated priestly class has more to do with the music industry and stardom, rather than musicians.

I don't think anything is gained by naming names.

The GJ community recently lost one of the technically adept and wonderfully passionate violin players when Tony Ballog passed. He was born into that Hungarian tradition, and I learned his thoughts on it at DFnW over dinner one night. He expressed similar thoughts on technique for the sake of technique.

kungfumonk007

I still think you are making a false dilemma and a straw man of people learning technique for techniques sake - I don't know who you are talking about and still think these people don't actually exist. My best artistic days are the same days as my best technique days, there is a marriage between the two, not a dilemma. I think we are just going to have to disagree.

noodlenot

FWIW (not much, or nothing at all) my 3 years old son pays no attention to what i hear, but when i´m listening to Tchavolo he stops and says: "TCHAVOLO!", which always brings a smile to my face. i don´t know how he gets it, but he does.

don´t know why i felt like writing this. sorry folks.