ShortScale.org

Fran wrote:This sounds backward but you can have too much knowledge, there comes a point people cannot think outside the box because they've been schooled to do things how they should be done. If anything, players know more than they need to now, especially considering EVERYTHING is on the net.

I don't know about that. It's like vocabulary. Some people have small vocabularies, some have large vocabularies. But just because you have a large vocabulary doesn't mean you know anything about diction, and you might be a worse communicator than someone who has a lesser vocabulary but a good sense of what words to use. Nobody likes people who feel like they have to use the biggest words possible, but the fact remains, sometimes, you need THAT word to describe exactly what you're thinking, and you might struggle with expressing yourself unless you have the benefit of a larger vocabulary.

I've had classical training since the age of 4, some years of jazz lessons, and it makes music so easy to decipher and comprehend. Music is easier than talking for me. Listening to it, understanding it, it's just so simple. Even when I hear supposedly really complicated stuff, it breaks down pretty easily for me. So when I'm actually writing a song or whatever, I feel like I don't restrict myself to what I can do, I just choose what seems appropriate to me. And 90% of the time, it's the simple and obvious choice that's right for me, but it's that 10% of the time when I feel that I do things that untrained/self-taught players wouldn't do because they just haven't been exposed to it.

I think there are multiple phases to musical knowledge for most people. At first, you do whatever, and you have a very unique and unusual style as a result. After a while, you develop some patterns, and you realize that there are some basic rules, and you follow them, but you don't know what they are. After that, you eventually learn how to express these things, like don't sing a minor third in a major key. Eventually, though, you come full circle and realize that all rules are meant to be broken and you should trust your instincts because at that point, you know what's right and wrong for you in that context. I feel like most guitarists are stuck in Phase 2. They'd be better off in Phase 1. And yeah, Phase 3 is not a good place to be, but ideally, you want to be in that last phase when you know every rule you're breaking and you're doing it anyway.

Fran wrote:This sounds backward but you can have too much knowledge, there comes a point people cannot think outside the box because they've been schooled to do things how they should be done. If anything, players know more than they need to now, especially considering EVERYTHING is on the net.

Totally disagree with this, I mean I can see where you're coming from but I feel its very much dependent on the knowledge one holds to do with theory, the depth at which they understand at and the possibilities that even the most bland of chord sequences can lead to some incredible explorations through the use of substitution, minorising and augment harmony.

Before I began developing my theoretical knowledge, I felt as if the only way to come up with original ideas was to experiment and try and find things that I wouldn't necessarily try before. However the problem with this approach is that you can often be lead into atonal territory, through the use of chromaticism rather than having a more pleasant key to resolve to. My original development as a guitarist came from the basis of playing as many notes as possible in as short amount of time, and using different pedals and what not to try and make up for what my lack of knowledge could produce.

Now through developing my musical knowledge I'm not only able to play in far more styles, I can begin to experiment with the basic formula that contemporary music tends to follow. With a good understanding of extending chords and the melody lines which could be used over them I am able to evoke music that with a lack of theoretical understanding one could assume that it was through experimentation as the relationship may be more complex than could be first observed, and this is what I feel it boils down to.

Many players such as Johnny Marr openly admit to finding their style through messing with different chords and what not. I remember reading an interview in which Marr stated that he knew all these complex inversions of chords, yet had no knowledge of what he was actually playing, referring to certain chords as 'that jazzy chord'. There is only so much that can be done without any knowledge, before you will stumble across ideas that have already been presented. Similarly up until yesterday a large part of my soloing style in a blues and rock context still remained a mystery to me, I knew the basis of what I was doing - adding the major 3rd of a V chord to a simple pentatonic, but I didn't know I was actually just performing a dominant pentatonic. This is much of what I am studying at the moment, in order to develop new and original ideas, one must understand the theoretical basis of what is already established in order to develop something new.

Sorry for a bit of a rant, its just that you should never think you can know too much, as this would be detrimental to the evolution of music, and I feel that its a dire consequence of much of the musical developments in popular culture having evolved from the pretense that theory isn't for guitarists and doesn't have its place in music such as indie and rock.

honeyiscool wrote:At first, you do whatever, and you have a very unique and unusual style as a result.

This is the point i was getting at. I am talking in the context of pop music of course.
But your right in what you are saying and well said.

Its a poor example but locally, out of all the guys i have known over the past twenty years on the music scene, the ones with the technical skill or large vocabulary have ended up in Wedding, Tribute or Covers bands. None of them have written anything inspiring themselves yet they appear to have the tools to do so. They just become obsessed with a particular artist and equipment usually.

Fran wrote: Its a poor example but locally, out of all the guys i have known over the past twenty years on the music scene, the ones with the technical skill or large vocabulary have ended up in Wedding, Tribute or Covers bands. None of them have written anything inspiring themselves yet they appear to have the tools to do so. They just become obsessed with a particular artist and equipment usually.

Musical Asperger's.

No, I agree with that observation. I think some of that has to do with some people cannot create, but still want to participate in music. If you practice hard and you work at it every day, eventually you will have ridiculous chops. No creativity, but a lot of chops. So what can you do at that point? It's hard to play in a band that plays original songs if someone has to create all the riffs for you, so you end up doing cover bands. I do think, though, that this isn't a result of too much training, but that they never had that creative bent in the first place. You just notice these guys more because had they never developed chops, they'd just be "talentless hacks" that can't write music, and those are not even worth noticing.

But it's also true, that virtuosos seem to produce some of the most boring music ever. How many guitar and bass shredders do you see on youtube and how many of them have written a song that would actually be worth listening to in the car for an average person? I've been pondering that question for a long time because it does interest me as a student of music. Why is it that the fastest and most difficult music for piano and violin (Rachmaninoff, Paganini, etc.) is some of the most beloved, popular, and accessible, yet the same is not the case for electric guitar and bass? The whole "popular music" context goes out of the window because at the time of writing, piano and violin were intended for the masses.

I think a lot of it has to do with tone. You see, a piano and violin are both quite pleasant sounding instruments, and as you master these instruments, you learn to transfer that tone into increasingly faster notes, but you still learn to shape your scales, arpeggios, etc. When you play a four-octave arpeggio on piano, you accent the important notes, build crescendos with others, and then you build dynamics and suspense and all that good stuff. The same with violin. A good violin concerto is exciting and captivating to listen to because there's just so much drama in the hands of an expert violinist, and each note is still very pretty.

Now, guitar shredders and bass shredders all seem to use exactly the same tone. Bassists use that active Jazz Bass sound, you know what I mean, and guitarists use the face melting distortion. Now, every note sounds the same. There are no dynamics, and in fact, a lot of shredding takes absolutely no care in getting any sort of dynamics from note to note, and distortion covers up the minute differences. Even the best guitarists mess up a lot as well, certainly at a higher rate than piano and violin, and I think this is just due to guitar being more of a chording instrument than piano and violin, which are clearly designed to allow very fast playing. In addition to having no dynamics, only certain intervals are really physically possible, so all your arpeggios and scales start following certain predetermined patterns because that's really all that's possible on guitar. So there just isn't enough variety in shredding music to be very interesting for a long period of time, and there is certainly very little melodic possibility when every note is just as loud as every other. And how can tapping produce dynamics or pleasing tone? It really can't. So really, it's neither pleasant nor varied. Imagine if you had to listen to a pipe organ do arpeggios for 2 minutes on one setting. You'd get extremely sick of it pretty fast, too. So I think shredders really need to lose that shredder tone in order to have any interesting sounds for the average listener.

As I get better at guitar, I would really like to try to create styles of technically difficult guitar that are still fun to listen to. I think Adrian Belew is an example of somebody who has done that well. His "Born Under Punches" solo from Remain in Light (and all of his work with Talking Heads, really) is my standard example of how an amazing guitarist can make a devilishly difficult guitar solo that works perfectly within the context of a song. And in another time, people like Django also made very pleasing music that was highly technical. It's a little sad that such examples are so far and few in between.

mrperson wrote:Sorry for a bit of a rant, its just that you should never think you can know too much, as this would be detrimental to the evolution of music, and I feel that its a dire consequence of much of the musical developments in popular culture having evolved from the pretense that theory isn't for guitarists and doesn't have its place in music such as indie and rock.

Its cool to hear your opinion, rant away
The theory issue is not exclusive to guitar players, how many drummers do you know that can read a score?

I just dont analyze stuff anymore, some stuff we write is possibly Phrygian Mode based, none of us really know other than it sounds good which is all that matters to me and the listener. I spent a lot of years learning stuff, modes, extended chords, inversions, different styles but i just trust my ears now like i did in the beginning. No saying i dont know it all, far from it but perhaps i had to make that journey to come to this conclusion. Pleased to hear the theory is unlocking some secrets for you though.

fuck, this thread got TL; DR all of a sudden.

johnnyseven wrote:

Mages wrote:yes, the guitarist uses the gliding chord technique on a few songs on that album. but tell me one song that sounds like a MBV song. there isn't one. they did their own thing. I sympathize with the fact that you guys have to be exposed to the ridiculously hyperbolic british music press (NME, et al.) that constantly heap unnecessary praise on bands but the truth is, it's a good album. I don't need to kickback against anything, it went almost completely unnoticed in the US, I probably wouldn't have ever listened to it if benecol hadn't pointed it out.

furthermore, please point me in the direction of an artist who is completely original. there is no way you can avoid "robbing" someone. so you might as well take from good bands. I think it has more to do with that that technique is heavily identified with that band and hasn't been used widely otherwise. more widely adopted techniques that people use ubiquitously like string bending, palm muting, power chords, drop tuning, etc., etc., etc. no one ever complains that anyone "robbed" those techniques from BB King or the Ramones or whoever. the difference between a technique being robbed or a technique being traditional is merely a case of how many people are doing it.

I never said that they sounded like MBV and I also never said that they weren't doing something original, it was just an observation. I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. I really like this record and think it's nice to hear a trendy UK indie band doing something interesting, whether it was borrowed, robbed or just influenced by doesn't really matter to me.

yeah sorry, I got a little caught up in trying to make my point. didn't mean to sound as if I was digging into you!

No probs Mages.

On the other argument about musical knowledge or ability. How many bands can you name that made great first albums while they couldn't really play and as they played more gigs/tours or whatever improved their playing to the detriment of their music and their records became gradually less and less interesting?

johnnyseven wrote:No probs Mages.

On the other argument about musical knowledge or ability. How many bands can you name that made great first albums while they couldn't really play and as they played more gigs/tours or whatever improved their playing to the detriment of their music and their records became gradually less and less interesting?

Kings of Leon.

This is all.

Really? I think Aha Shake Heartbreak is superior to Youth and Young Manhood. Though that was still before they were mega stars. Another band: The Clash. After London Calling they declined big time.

George wrote:Really? I think Aha Shake Heartbreak is superior to Youth and Young Manhood. Though that was still before they were mega stars. Another band: The Clash. After London Calling they declined big time.

No, I like Aha Shake Heartbreak, more so than Youth & Young Manhood. But ASH is a natural progression whereas everything that followed that album was a pretty intetentional step in the direction of writing 'anthems' That's when I went right off them. The Bucket and King of the Rodeo are two of my favourite songs by KoL...

I'm trying to think of some more bands that have took a decline as they've become more accomplished.

I can think of plenty that have got worse as they've gathered more fame and fortune.

Simon wrote:

johnnyseven wrote:No probs Mages.

On the other argument about musical knowledge or ability. How many bands can you name that made great first albums while they couldn't really play and as they played more gigs/tours or whatever improved their playing to the detriment of their music and their records became gradually less and less interesting?

Kings of Leon.

This is all.

Surely it can't be all? Ride, Oasis & The Stone Roses are others that immediately spring to mind.

johnnyseven wrote:

Simon wrote:

johnnyseven wrote:No probs Mages.

On the other argument about musical knowledge or ability. How many bands can you name that made great first albums while they couldn't really play and as they played more gigs/tours or whatever improved their playing to the detriment of their music and their records became gradually less and less interesting?

Kings of Leon.

This is all.

Surely it can't be all? Ride, Oasis & The Stone Roses are others that immediately spring to mind.

I was going to say Oasis but they don't really count because Noel sacked all the crap musicians.

I don't really agree with Stone Roses - Surely they were already a fairly talented bunch when they first came out? Sure, The Second Coming was a load of poo(with the exception of one or two songs) but I wouldn't say they'd exactly grown in musical prowess by the time they released it.

All I meant was that Kings of Leon are a perfect example of what happens when you get a little better as musicians. Saying that, the drummer has always been fairly awesome. The bass player couldn't actually play when they first asked him to join. Not that it was ever going to be difficult for him with the songs they were writing at the time.

Simon wrote: I don't really agree with Stone Roses - Surely they were already a fairly talented bunch when they first came out? Sure, The Second Coming was a load of poo(with the exception of one or two songs) but I wouldn't say they'd exactly grown in musical prowess by the time they released it.

I agree that they were all talented when the were first around but what I meant was that the large space of time between records gave John Squire more time to learn to play like Jimmy Page rather than himself. Hence the guitar playing on the 2nd Coming was less like that on their debut.

johnnyseven wrote:

Simon wrote: I don't really agree with Stone Roses - Surely they were already a fairly talented bunch when they first came out? Sure, The Second Coming was a load of poo(with the exception of one or two songs) but I wouldn't say they'd exactly grown in musical prowess by the time they released it.

I agree that they were all talented when the were first around but what I meant was that the large space of time between records gave John Squire more time to learn to play like Jimmy Page rather than himself. Hence the guitar playing on the 2nd Coming was less like that on their debut.

also a huge amount of cocaine helped with turning some of the songs into self indulgant drival

johnnyseven wrote:

Simon wrote: I don't really agree with Stone Roses - Surely they were already a fairly talented bunch when they first came out? Sure, The Second Coming was a load of poo(with the exception of one or two songs) but I wouldn't say they'd exactly grown in musical prowess by the time they released it.

I agree that they were all talented when the were first around but what I meant was that the large space of time between records gave John Squire more time to learn to play like Jimmy Page rather than himself. Hence the guitar playing on the 2nd Coming was less like that on their debut.

Fair play. I hear where you're coming from. Still... The Seahorses had some canny tunes!

johnnyseven wrote:How many bands can you name that made great first albums while they couldn't really play and as they played more gigs/tours or whatever improved their playing to the detriment of their music and their records became gradually less and less interesting?

How long you got?

+1 on Squire turning into Page as well.

I really respect Page for being able to do that sort of stuff while being drunk the whole time.