Caliber of musicians today

I'm interested in hearing what people's perceptions are of musicians' general skill level currently.

Do you feel that generally, musicians' skill levels have remained fairly consistent throughout the years?

Or they're better than before?

Or worse?

Or who knows, since we can't tell anymore because of how pop music is so heavily edited?

Or maybe something else?

I think you'll have to narrow that down a tad, Ken..... "musicians today" is a pretty broad bunch- from garage band bangers to pop artists to metalheads to classical-style composers to jazz heads to funk revivalists (i.e. boosh) and also including "the musicians of yesteryear" that are still alive and kicking.

By "skill", do you mean popularity, music theory comprehension/usage, musicianship and ability to play with others?

Or maybe everyone will just kneejerk their "Back in the good ole days...."

I'm at work right now, so I couldn't get real precise, but I actually was interested in a more broad sort of thing. But for now, we'll say popular music (not jazz or classical). And we'll say musicians under the age of, say, 45.

Does that help??

That was a pretty arbitrary age....I don't know if that's gonna help at all...

the question is just so broad - "musicians today" - that it's hard to answer.

It's like when people talk about "kids today..." usually comparing the perceived flaws of the younger generation with the perceived virtues of the older one.

If I had to guess, i'd say that musicians are every bit as wonderful as they ever were, all 3 billion of them or so.

-Peace, Love, and Brittanylips

I remember myself being better.

Also, when is "before" 10 years ago, 50 years ago?

I would say as a whole, musicianship by a strict technical definition has been steadily falling since the early 1900's.

The majority of musicians in that time frame could read music and we were coming out of a time frame where there was no such thing as sound recording so live performance was the only way to experience it.

Even the "popiest" of tunes contained some sort of counterpoint, so I would say from a writing standpoint there was much more knowledge of music theory and complex chord structure.

The invention of TAB for guitarists and MIDI (step recording, piano roll note editing, etc) for keyboardists have definitely allowed people with "less" music knowledge or technique express themselves in a musical way.

But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. We've just invited a few extra people to the party who might not have been able to come previously. Look at the blues, it began as an "uneducated" form of music yet has managed to influence pretty much every modern genre of music and become part of the very fabric of our country.

BTW-Have you noticed how complex some hip hop beats are? Or how orchestration is coming back into fashion on top 40 stuff?

Originally posted by phaeton "musicians today" is a pretty broad bunch- from garage band bangers to pop artists to metalheads to classical-style composers to jazz heads to funk revivalists (i.e. boosh) and also including "the musicians of yesteryear" that are still alive and kicking.

So cool,... I'm gonna use that once....

"Boosh the Funk Revivalist"

No seriously, if you look at just the drummers in many forms of Rock and most Gospel music, then you prolly agree. these cats can play!

Keyboardists for the most part are more laid back, less experimental these days. Blame that on romplers and preset's I dunno. It just seems keyboardists from yester-year were kick as players AND did revolutionary things on recordings. Think of Jan Hammer's rhodes in Snoopy's Search, and George Duke bending notes on a clavinet etc.

It seems to me that the different music styles of the 60's and 70's have more to do with the players evolution that anything else. Look at Jazz-fusion for example. You had to be pretty much be a genious just to record in that medium. You had to play tons of scales, you had to know tons of chords, and had to play as fast as a cheetah on fire.

In rock you had the genious of Hendrix, Paige, and others setting the bar for rock guitar. In funk music you had bassists like Bootsy, Louis Johnson, and Larry Graham setting a bar so high the instrument took an exponential leap forward. Don't even mention Stanley Clarke.

Today by contrast, the music styles dictate more complex layers over musicianship in some music styles.

Some of those layered styles, there is of couse hip-hop/House/Trance/Neo-Soul etc.

Even pop is based around hip hop 'beats' and hooks rather than a great arrangement throughout...ala Motown, Beatles, Bacharach, or Quincy Jones.

Rock is now somewhat based on hip-hop rythms, standard fare guitar work, and less experimentation. Jazz is now music to sleep by.. And great players like Eric Johnson and Steve Vai are mainly considered experimental artists by the mainstream.

Music styles change, so there's hope for the players to get into more playing/experimenting. There's hope for the great arrangements of the past will also come back, but I have my doubts that there will be many fans left who will understand what real music sounds like!!

Well, I've specified the age of the musicians, the genres...basically, sometimes I hear people saying that musicians could play better on records in the '60s and '70s and even before that. So I'm wondering what people's perception is. If that's too vague, then ?

I hate being negative but...

I think the players today are far less understanding of what it means to perform as a group. When I watch Conan O'Brien, who showcases a lot of young bands (kudos to Conan), I'm consistently dissapointed in thier ability to play.

20 years ago you could see young bands on Letterman or SNL and be knocked back into your easy chair. Anyone remember Midnight Special? By and large, those groups played together well.

By and large, the groups today don't.

Has anyone seen Nickle Creek? Now those kids can play. And play together, to create a powerful sound that only comes from players mature enough to listen to each other and respond accordingly.

Another is Switchfoot. Young, alt-rock style but can actually create a blend on stage as opposed to needing someone to mix them into shape. I don't see many up and coming "players".

I'm not talking chops in the wow 'em sense. I mean chops in the Al Cooper, Duck Dunn, Bill Wyman, Malcolm Young sense.

It's a touchy subject for me.

Edit: Boy, ya got me started! I have an idea. Buy all your musician friends a metronome for Christmas. Add in a copy of Louis Bellson's Studies in 4/4. The world will be a better place for it. 10 minutes a day and they'll be able to turn down the crap preamp distortion that's covering up their horrible time. Then we can go back to actually hearing notes!

and I honestly think that I'm playing better today than at any point since my accident

You are playing through an injury too? Can I ask what happened?

Ken-

Sorry man.. i didn't mean to try to derail your whole topic on the first reply. Fortunately it looks like I had little impact

Let me weigh in with the haze or perspective of too many years...

I think the young bands on Conan, or SNL, or wherever you hear them these days, represent -- for better or worse -- Pop music.

There was a time (a very short time in the 60s, 70s) when a genre of rock was defined by where it got airplay. The underground, or progressive (or whatever) radio stations tended to play stuff that focused more on musicianship, better lyrics, etc. than the Top 40 stations.

We now have media formats that are so researched, formatted and homogenized that you can't make generalizations about any style or segment. What you can expect is that a lot of the bands that may have the LOOK of actual musicians could just be some posers with a good stylist.

{censored}, it happened back then, too. For every Cream, Hendrix and Floyd, there ten like the Seeds, Fugs, MC5, etc. that hardly knew which end of the guitar to hold. And I'm just talking about the counter-culture stuff.

Really bad music was alive and well on Top 40 then as now, and the only time it displayed musicianship was when the producers had the good sense to higher studio players.

Originally posted by phaeton Ken- Sorry man.. i didn't mean to try to derail your whole topic on the first reply. Fortunately it looks like I had little impact

No problem at all. I was just curious about this in general because I often hear people asserting that the level of musicianship is taking a big dive.

And if one simply listens to the music that's out there, it'd be easy to make that assumption.

But what I'm wondering is whether it's a stylistic thing or it's largely being done in by how easy it is to edit or drum machines from the late '70s/early '80s or what.

However, I keep running into musicians that I think are incredible players, a bit contrary to the above.

So that's kinda what prompted this whole thread for me. I was simply curious.

But while writing it, I ran out of time (I post a lot from work) suddenly and figured I'd just let it fly instead of putting too many "qualifications" on it.

Phil: Ooooooouuuuch!!!! And that's a long drop, too.

When did that happen?

Phil...you and I are in the same boat,..err...sort of.

My parents put me through piano, guitar, and drum lessons when I was younger.

When I hit 16, I found snowboarding and tried to make a career of it by moving out here (Whistler B.C. Canada).

Being young and cocky, I thought I was invincible and through myself off the biggest cliff I could see (40ft),..in front of a long lift line of fellow snow-goers.

I ended up ringing my head off of my knee so hard that it compacted the teeth on the entire right side of my mouth, and gave me a cerebral internal hemorage. I was airlifted to Vancouver and was told that if I had gotten there an hour later,..it might have been to late.

Anyways,..getting to the point,...I lost all skills on all instruments, among other things, and have since been relearning everything. (Since 1996).

Like you,...I'm not sure if its easier to learn now that I'm older,..or if this is something I've already learnt and am starting to remember.

In any event, the more I play,..the more I remember...and vice versa. Now,..having started engineering in 2001, I think my thirst for learning has increased dramatically.

-LIMiT

Phil..

WOW.. and Holymuffuginsheeit....!!!1

I'm floored. If only you knew some of the stuff I say about you behind your back. Ask anyone... it goes like this:

Them:Yeah, but just a fair warning, if you ever call Phil he will completely talk your head off. He's fun to listen to though

Me:I'd dig nothing more.... Phil is such a smart and knowledgeable guy. He seems to know about a lot of stuff, technical and geeky stuff, and not just superficially like me, but in great depth. I can tell that he holds back a lot because he's probably dogpiled people a bunch in the past with an 18 hour discussion of how the Universe works when all they asked was why lightbulbs thread clockwise into the socket. Me, I'd just pull up a chair and listen.

I know you're not after sympathy- you're too busy accomplishing good things .

Not to go all giddy and fanboy on you, but damn... you're inspiring. To be able to overcome a near-death or near-vegetative experience like that and still be the helluva guy you are probably took more than most other people have.

>

Would once upon a time happen to be, oh, a few seconds ago?!? That would seem accurate.

As to Ken's question, well, that's tricky. Technically, I was a somewhat better guitarist a few decades ago. Musically, I was not as good a guitarist. I've spent less time on practicing technique and more on practicing musicianship, and as a result, I think my music has improved considerably. Vocally, though, I'm waaaaay better. I attribute that totally to multitrack recording, as listening back to my vocals is a form of "biofeedback" that lets me improve my parts.

But to the larger question, I think it's like this: There are a lot more musicians these days. So I think the number of truly technically proficient musicians probably hasn't changed all that much, but the percentage based on the total number of musicians probably has.

BTW -- this thread kind of goes to show that often, vague questions elicit the most interesting sets of responses, as people can interpret the question as they like.

Phil,

I'm really glad you turned out the way you did instead of being some boring ole lawyer...

Oh yeah... Sorry to hijack the thread (again) Ken...