What do you think of Peter Hamill's(VDGG)singing?

rogerthat wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: rogerthat wrote: Horizons wrote: rogerthat wrote: Horizons wrote: dr wu23 wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: He may very well be the greatest rock singer of all time.     He's in my Top 5 Singers of all time. Better than most is close enough  Well, greatness has to be about more than just personal tastes, I guess.   For sheer influence or sheer ability, I could name at least a few rock singers whose names would reasonably precede Hammill's.  Plant, Daltrey, Gillian, Mercury for the former or Patton, Tim Buckley, Ronnie James Dio for the latter.  Among others.  I'd put Hammill above Buckley, Dio and Patton lol Can't argue about influence though, seeing VdGG never made it "big" "Above" for what?  Your personal preference or technical ability?   There's no way Hammill can sing over Patton's range and  I have never heard anybody barring Ray Gillen who could match Dio's middle register.    Whether or not technical skills are everything is a different issue, but I presume the question of who is the greatest has to be based on relatively less subjective considerations than personal preferences. "The greatest" is an almost completely subjective title; the more specific a value judgement about music, the more subjective it is, and "greatest" is quite a specific and lofty value judgement to make about any musician's work.  Calling any musician the greatest, then, has to be based on subjective considerations; technical ability doesn't even come close to determining the quality of a vocalist's work. That's why I qualified my statement with "may very well be," in order to emphasize the uncertainty and subjectivity inherent in such a claim.  Austin's "better than most" is probably more accurate.  How does it not even come close to determining the quality of a singer's work?  Without skills, he is not going to be able to do what he does on record.  How much ever people may like to filter everything through the prism of personal tastes, the fact is Hammill has to be very talented to be able to, for instance, use his falsetto.  Even honing a great diction, learning to sing over the backbeat is skill.  So it is the backbone of vocal greatness, albeit in conjunction with interpretation.  But you cannot produce the interpretation you desire on record if you don't have the ability to do so, in the first place.

Because technique is only a tool to accomplish what you want to accomplish and to convey what you want to convey with your music.  A singer who has decent technique but conveys something emotionally profound with his music is far superior to a technically gifted singer who is completely soulless.  Of course, you can't have terrible technique and still be a great singer; it's necessary to attain a certain level of technical proficiency in order to convey emotion with your singing.  But  when it comes down to it, technique is only a tool, and only one part of what makes a singer or any other musician great.

And no, I don't think Hammill is "objectively" the greatest rock singer ever.  Didn't mean to say that, and hope I didn't come across that way.  But I don't think it's fair to place him lower on the rung because he wasn't as great technically as some others, because he got so much out of what technical ability he possessed.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Because technique is only a tool to accomplish what you want to accomplish and to convey what you want to convey with your music.  A singer who has decent technique but conveys something emotionally profound with his music is far superior to a technically gifted singer who is completely soulless.  Of course, you can't have terrible technique and still be a great singer; it's necessary to attain a certain level of technical proficiency in order to convey emotion with your singing.  But  when it comes down to it, technique is only a tool, and only one part of what makes a singer or any other musician great. And no, I don't think Hammill is "objectively" the greatest rock singer ever.  Didn't mean to say that, and hope I didn't come across that way.  But I don't think it's fair to place him lower on the rung because he wasn't as great technically as some others, because he got so much out of what technical ability he possessed.

And there you are confusing songwriting with singing, as most people do.  I am not saying songwriting is unimportant but when we rate a singer, we should consider his singing alone and not the benefits of great songwriting.  If a singer has only decent technique, it would be very difficult for him to stand out in a merely decent song.  A technically gifted singer is equipped to make something more out of a decent song.  It may be a tool (and its optimum utilization depends on the singer's interpretation) but it is the most important tool.  You can claim to be more emotionally cognitive than Dio as much as you like but if you can't sing a powerful tenor C, you can't, period.  That is then an edge he has over you.  You can claim Stevie Wonder's riffs are excessive but try executing the one at the end of You and I - that is skill and that is greatness.    

I also didn't say technical ability has to be the only criterion to judge the greatness of singers.  I offered another one: influence.  There may be other such criteria but they have to be spelt out when making such a claim.   It would also be unfair to derive the corollary that other singers did not necessarily get as much out of their talent as Hammill did as we have no way of verifying this.   We only hear what is on a recording and ignore the long years of hard work that go behind honing a great voice.  Anybody whose technique is robust enough to survive two or more decades of being on the road and in recording studios must have worked very hard to acquire it in the first place.  Maybe his dramatic style of singing can persuade people that Hammill worked the hardest of all but somebody who sounds effortless and smooth would have struggled to acquire that quality, it doesn't come naturally for most people save freaks like Michael Jackson.

Lastly, I also didn't say greatness is something to be evaluated objectively.  I said it should be less subjective than personal taste.  Rating greatness based on personal taste is meaningless when you could simply say instead that said singer was your favourite.


Edited by rogerthat - June 17 2013 at 20:40

Dellinger wrote: I rather think he really had a potential technical ability he didn't really use...

Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices...

Dellinger wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: rogerthat wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: rogerthat wrote: Horizons wrote: rogerthat wrote: Horizons wrote: dr wu23 wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: He may very well be the greatest rock singer of all time.     He's in my Top 5 Singers of all time. Better than most is close enough  Well, greatness has to be about more than just personal tastes, I guess.   For sheer influence or sheer ability, I could name at least a few rock singers whose names would reasonably precede Hammill's.  Plant, Daltrey, Gillian, Mercury for the former or Patton, Tim Buckley, Ronnie James Dio for the latter.  Among others.  I'd put Hammill above Buckley, Dio and Patton lol Can't argue about influence though, seeing VdGG never made it "big" "Above" for what?  Your personal preference or technical ability?   There's no way Hammill can sing over Patton's range and  I have never heard anybody barring Ray Gillen who could match Dio's middle register.    Whether or not technical skills are everything is a different issue, but I presume the question of who is the greatest has to be based on relatively less subjective considerations than personal preferences. "The greatest" is an almost completely subjective title; the more specific a value judgement about music, the more subjective it is, and "greatest" is quite a specific and lofty value judgement to make about any musician's work.  Calling any musician the greatest, then, has to be based on subjective considerations; technical ability doesn't even come close to determining the quality of a vocalist's work.That's why I qualified my statement with "may very well be," in order to emphasize the uncertainty and subjectivity inherent in such a claim.  Austin's "better than most" is probably more accurate.  <div id="LCS_FE1DEEEA_DB6D_44b8_83F0_34FC0F9D1052_communicationDiv"> How does it not even come close to determining the quality of a singer's work?  Without skills, he is not going to be able to do what he does on record.  How much ever people may like to filter everything through the prism of personal tastes, the fact is Hammill has to be very talented to be able to, for instance, use his falsetto.  Even honing a great diction, learning to sing over the backbeat is skill.  So it is the backbone of vocal greatness, albeit in conjunction with interpretation.  But you cannot produce the interpretation you desire on record if you don't have the ability to do so, in the first place.   Because technique is only a tool to accomplish what you want to accomplish and to convey what you want to convey with your music.  A singer who has decent technique but conveys something emotionally profound with his music is far superior to a technically gifted singer who is completely soulless.  Of course, you can't have terrible technique and still be a great singer; it's necessary to attain a certain level of technical proficiency in order to convey emotion with your singing.  But  when it comes down to it, technique is only a tool, and only one part of what makes a singer or any other musician great.And no, I don't think Hammill is "objectively" the greatest rock singer ever.  Didn't mean to say that, and hope I didn't come across that way.  But I don't think it's fair to place him lower on the rung because he wasn't as great technically as some others, because he got so much out of what technical ability he possessed. I rather think he really had a potential technical ability he didn't really use... to me, he sounds like he could have done more "technically" with his voice than what he actually did, as if he chose to experiment with his voice as much as he could instead of search for technical proficiency. Still, he achieved many gems because of this aproach. He was one step of going into growling before anyone else (and though I don't like growling, I do like his harsh singing very much - as in "Sleepwalkers" and "La Rossa").

I gotta admit. All of you guys have got me siked up to explore Van der Graf Generator with this, vocal banter you have going on. :) I'm thinking Goldbluff and Pawn Hearts to start. Hearing good things.
The soft Machine is another band I've not yet had the previlage to explore yet.
Oh and FYI, that Ronnie James Dio is a tough guy to top in my vocal world. God, that guy can sing.
Love Holy Diver and his Rainbow work.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I don't think technique is the most important aspect of a singer's voice.  You can have great emotion and feel, and great groove and rhythm, without having great technique, and all of those things are more important than technique, imo.  Kurt Cobain wasn't the most technically gifted singer in the world, but I still would consider him quite a good singer because of what he managed to convey with his voice.  Of course, you have to have better technique than Cobain to be in a "greatest singers" conversation, but I think Hammill has plenty of enough technical proficiency to be in that conversation.

And how exactly does emotion, feel, groove or rhythm come about without technique?  People think technique is something hi fi to be learnt in conservatories but vocal technique is simply whatever method the singer uses to exploit the full repertoire of his voice.   Aside from other things, you can't even have a good tone to begin with if you don't have good technique.  You cannot convey great groove without the ability to apply accent at the right places and that is also technique.  It's not as if anybody who is not always singing over some four octave range is a less gifted singer; more likely that he has different priorities.   A mediocre singer is basically going to sound very flat and monotonous on a recording and would need the band to cover up for him.  And if we are really going to talk about groove, then Hammill cannot hold a candle to out and out rock singers like Dave Lee Roth or Michael Hutchence; he is far more comfortable in the confines of theater rock.  Not that that alone makes them better but I would posit that Hammill in fact attempts to appeal through technical accomplishment in terms of range and versatility rather than charisma.  

I alway forget how crazy things are so sometimes it catches me off my guard...