The most original musician of all time is....

[blue2blue]

 

stevie ray vaughan

 

 

Deep respect to SRV for his beautiful technique but -- come on, now.

 

I would say he's a "classicist" -- someone who refined and honed the innovations of others. I can't think of any techniques he pioneered, off the top of my head.

 

But a very fine player, nonetheless.

[UstadKhanAli]

Stevie Ray Vaughn is a great guitar player, but hardly the most original. Especially at the discussion at hand, which is one who invented an instrument or device.

[DeathMonkey]

Aside from my snide answer above, does weird for weird's sake = original? Part of the criticism of Outsider art is that since a lot of it lacks context in relating to the real world, it's communicative values are skewed, and relies on more purely aesthetic devices to force the observer to create that emotional link, which may or may not have anything to do with the intent of the artist. Even random or abstract art has a basis in the context of the World, and still is framed with intent.

 

That's why people like Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, and Jeff Beck are more in my mind when it comes to originality, because they worked within the framework of their times and continued to evolve - their originality comes from a restless spirit and a continuing commitment to moving forward, not just developing one specific aesthetic borne from madness, abuse, or sociopathy.

 

Miles wasn't just original once, he redefined Jazz throughout his career, from Bebop, to Cool Jazz, to modal, to fusion, to standards, to Broadway... Jeff Beck has done blues, jazz, fusion, rock, rockabilly, Vietnamese folk music (?!?), techno, shred, and in each catagory, no one sounds like him. Frank Zappa has used every form of Western Music known to construct his ideas - polkas, orchestral music, chants, jazz, rock, metal, punk, experimental, you name it.

 

Taking known elements and consistently making totally new and fresh music with them is an originality I personally find more impressive than developing some from the moon technique or "language" - gimmicks aren't original, not specifically talking about the composers and artists mentioned, but as a general viewpoint.

 

There are artists that combine the two, that transcend their own aesthetic to bring people into their emotional "outside", who create tools that resonate emotionally, that allow them to communicate more effectively - Charlie Hunter, Trey Gunn, and Robert Fripp come to mind.

 

But I am always cautious about weird for weird's sake, and mistaking contrarianism and oddness for originality.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

Today it seems to be hard to be original, but I never had a problem with that, on the contrary, sometimes I wish to be a bit less original

.

[John Sayers]

Here's my suggestion - Stanley Jordan - I first heard him last night and was blown away - about as original as you can get IMO.

his MySpace is here

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=46170186

you can see how he plays here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baDM3_6w8-E

[dparr]

Emmett Chapman would be the most original musician I know of.

How many musicians create a new way of playing a stringed instrument, then a whole new instrument to fit that style.

http://www.emmettchapman.net/

[franknputer]

Interesting question. Every answer is incorrect.

[joel Oporto]

Originality is the ability to hide your source!!

 

There is no truly original music. All music forms and sounds are a development process from previous existing ones. All the great artists built from a source and added their own distinctive flavor and touch to it. Even Science and technology is that way.

 

Bach, no matter how original or symbolic he is to baroque music borrowed heavily from the Italian Vivaldi and brought his "original" ideas to Germany often with even the same motifs.

Same thing with Mozart - copied from bach etal.

Beethoven copied from mozart etal.

Brahms from beethoven.

Often times "original" and "new" styles came out of the desire to break the existing rules and conventions.

As each era decided to break away from:

for example,

gregorian modes, tonality, and time signatures,

song structure,

Harmony and chord progressions, again tonality,

and finally the backbone which is the musical scale rebelled by schoenberg and others.

microtonal, atonal etc. etc.

As cultures mixed globally more and more, so did our music and rythms.

 

In the end, how original it is then depends on the listener

and his abilities to discern the sources or influences of the artist.

For example, to the uninitiated, Paul Simon's graceland might have been quite original, but to an African, it certainly sounds or feels familiar.

Music is communication. And if you came up spontaneously with a totally new "language", no body can understand you and that communication and your music will fail.

But if a certain amount of familiarity is retained with the "language", then it will catch on and people will understand you.

 

IMHO The right question should be, who is the most innovative musician.....

[deanmass]

Django Reinhardt

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

There is no truly original music. All music forms and sounds are a development process from previous existing ones. All the great artists built from a source and added their own distinctive flavor and touch to it. Even Science and technology is that way. Bach, no matter how original or symbolic he is to baroque music borrowed heavily from the Italian Vivaldi and brought his "original" ideas to Germany often with even the same motifs. Same thing with Mozart - copied from bach etal. Beethoven copied from mozart etal. Brahms from beethoven. Often times "original" and "new" styles came out of the desire to break the existing rules and conventions. As each era decided to break away from: for example, gregorian modes, tonality, and time signatures, song structure, Harmony and chord progressions, again tonality, and finally the backbone which is the musical scale rebelled by schoenberg and others. microtonal, atonal etc. etc. As cultures mixed globally more and more, so did our music and rythms. In the end, how original it is then depends on the listener and his abilities to discern the sources or influences of the artist. For example, to the uninitiated, Paul Simon's graceland might have been quite original, but to an African, it certainly sounds or feels familiar. Music is communication. And if you came up spontaneously with a totally new "language", no body can understand you and that communication and your music will fail. But if a certain amount of familiarity is retained with the "language", then it will catch on and people will understand you. IMHO The right question should be, who is the most innovative musician.....

 

 

.

 

If I understand that right, we are all a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy a copy of a copy, and hiding those facts so the listeners praises our non-originality a tiny bit.

 

Btw, I'm copying Boosh this season!

 

.

[joel Oporto]

Btw, I'm copying Boosh this season!

 

:thu:

[ZigZagWanderer]

I have to second Captain Beefheart. I must say that I prefer his more "mainstream" blues rock periods to Trout Mask and Decals (his two most 'out there' recordings). Trout and Decals sound pretty original to me, though.

[christolattus]

Props to the man and his 200 ton...thingie: Thaddeus Cahill and the Telharmonium.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

:thu:

[dmbisone]

well I'd agree with much of what has been said so far, John Cage is up there on my list with Miles Davis, Hendrix and Igor Stravinsky (when he debuted Petrushka aka The Firebird, there was so much harmonic dissonance in it that there were riots in the streets afterwards, people simply did not know how to react to music that didn't "resolve" like they were used to).

Also, and I don't how everyone in here feels about phish, but Trey Anastasio is incredibly original, listen to some of Phish's extended written out jams and there is amazing stuff in there, i always laugh when people write them off as a grateful dead imitation, the music of those 2 bands is not even remotely similar. gotta give props to my main man Dave Matthews as well, best and most original song writer in the last 20 years and my favorite ever. just my .02

peace

[Super 8]

I don't think I've seen a mention for King Crimson yet.

[fred zappelin]

I think he deserves a mention.
Zep were ahead of everyone else in thier day and Page was the reason for it. Listen to the first Zep album and you`ll know that nothing before it made you feel that way. IMHO

[guitarmonster]

You would have to put Stravinsky pretty high up there.

A lot of Coltrane's stuff comes to mind.

Also Messian, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis.

Andres Segovia. Maybe Django.

[blue2blue]

Lots of great folks in this thread and many of them fairly original in the narrow context of their genres but, really, come on... a lot of these folks are mostly refiners of previous innovations.

 

We're talking the most original here... I don't expect we can all agree on anyone (although the votes for Harry Partch strike me about right) but I should think that many of the artists cited in many posts above are pretty long stretches for the title. I mean, a lot of them aren't even all that original or innovative in the context of mundane, formula pop music.

 

I don't want to get into any particulars but a number of suggestions just made me laugh out loud. I mean... wow.

[UstadKhanAli]

Lots of great folks in this thread and many of them fairly original in the narrow context of their genres but, really, come on... a lot of these folks are mostly refiners of previous innovations. We're talking the most original here... I don't expect we can all agree on anyone (although the votes for Harry Partch strike me about right) but I should think that many of the artists cited in many posts above are pretty long stretches for the title. I mean, a lot of them aren't even all that original or innovative in the context of mundane, formula pop music. I don't want to get into any particulars but a number of suggestions just made me laugh out loud. I mean... wow.

 

 

A lot of them are just people's favorites.

 

But in the context of the thread - which is someone who is the most original and invented something that had never been heard before - very few of the artists mentioned here would even be appropriate. Harry Partch, maybe Aphex Twin (who builds his own instruments), the couple who did all those B-movie sci-fi soundtracks in the 1950s and built their own instruments, Leon Theremin. Maybe John Cage, maybe Gyorgi Ligeti (who didn't really invent anything but doesn't sound remotely like anyone other composer, but even this is a stretch...). Also, Delia Derbyshire and some of the early electronic pioneers of the 1940s and 1950s should be mentioned here.

 

I know of a lot of super super original sounding stuff in international music. I could go on forever. But the problem there is that I don't know who originally came up with the sounds. I have recordings of Laotian nose-flute players, Chinese people playing grass-flutes, Javenese gamelan with Jews Harp sorts of instruments, Javanese gamelan with Dixieland jazz/brass instruments, pygmy chants from remote field recordings from the 1950s, and a bunch of other strange stuff, but I don't know if this qualifies.

[blue2blue]

Ken, I used to think my tastes were fairly eclectic until I ran into you...

 

 

Dropping back to a sidebar discussion of innovation in pop music, I got a wild hare under my saddle (er?) and mixed some classic Eno into my usual Sunday morning fare of bluegrass and gospel [and bluegrass gospel ]... random drops from Another Green World, Warm Jets, etc, the classic 70s mutant pop stuff -- and I gotta tell you, as influential as it was, it still sounds a world apart from most pop. I can't say I've really warmed up to much of his work for other artists and his mid-90s return to pop really didn't move me much, either, but those four pop albums from the 70s by Brian Eno... wow. Within the framework of pop music, he sure had his moments.

[Rock_and_roll]

Wasn't it Schoenberg who began atonal music? That was a fairly original though painful move

[guitarmonster]

Oh yes, and Les Paul, of course!

[willie the wimp]

Bob Dylan

[UstadKhanAli]

Ken, I used to think my tastes were fairly eclectic until I ran into you...

I don't try to do be eclectic for the sake of it, but you know what it is? You know when you get that "ear-opening" sense of awe when you hear something for the first time that really gives you goose bumps? I'm addicted to that, so I'm always searching out new stuff. I listen to anything from Led Zeppelin to System of a Down, the usual rock stuff, which I grew up loving. But I also really love the music of Madagascar, Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Colombian stuff (I'm obsessed with finding really great stuff like this), and '70s Nigerian funk. Awesome stuff. And Ethiopiques stuff (Ethiopian series of music put out by Buda Musique).

Dropping back to a sidebar discussion of innovation in pop music , I got a wild hare un0der my saddle (er?) and mixed some classic Eno into my usual Sunday morning fare of bluegrass and gospel [and bluegrass gospel ]... random drops from Another Green World, Warm Jets, etc, the classic 70s mutant pop stuff -- and I gotta tell you, as influential as it was, it still sounds a world apart from most pop. I can't say I've really warmed up to much of his work for other artists and his mid-90s return to pop really didn't move me much, either, but those four pop albums from the 70s by Brian Eno... wow. Within the framework of pop music, he sure had his moments.

I'm really curious to hear what his newer production is like. I haven't really loved anything he's done by himself since "Shutov Assembly", an underrated CD, with the exception of the Japanese split CD that he released with a Japanese shakuhachi player somewhere around 2000 or 2001, which was a return to his more ambient stuff.

Since you like bluegrass...are you a Ralph Stanley fan? I've seen him three times since about 2000, and am always utterly enthralled. Here's a photo I took of him at Pappy and Harriet's last year, out in the desert by Joshua Tree: