The Role of Virtuosity in Progressive Music

 

He is in no way the fastest guitarist in the world. Wherever this information was printed ...Guitar Player magazine or any other publication? They are not musicians but journalists and even if they were musicians who became journalists or judges on "American Idol" ..they are beyond questionable. Not that a guitarist playing at impeccable speed should logically give any journalist/music fan/record company a quest for comparison to others. Pat Metheny, George Benson, Pat Martino, John McLaughlin, can easily play at the speed of Al DiMeola. They don't choose to because they design their music differently. There are plenty of guitarists that hail from Mexico and Spain who could play just as fast or even faster ..but with their fingertips instead of a pick. Guitarists from the "Swing era played faster than the speed of light. ...so to speak...because seriously these votes are contrived and when they are not..they usually remain to be  totally wrong from every stand point of so called intellectual observation. Whether it's a musician whose getting paid to say something false so that the industry can wave Eric Clapton under everyone's nose or a so called judge who uses fancy college words ...yet when it comes down to music...they know nothing of it and are role playing a host position like a moron who wants money and has no other alternative but to be ignorant about the art in music.

I don't disagree that a somewhat flawed kind of musicianship can also be virtuoso.  I was responding to Exithelemming's comment about Howe vis a vis a Verlaine.  It seems to me that Howe is taken as representative of virtuoso guitarwork in prog and that need not be the case.  How about Dave Bainbridge who has great technique and also plays very emotional solos.  And by the way, it is not as if Howe loves to be flashy all the time.  In what way is Turn of the Century much inferior to the great aching guitar solos of rock, like Comfortably Numb and all that?  

Interesting that none of these definitions necessarily suggest a propensity to show off.  

Also, I forgot to address this the previous day:

 

Guldbamsen I will differ to disagree with you here, astrophysics is too predictable for virtuosity I would say retrograde compared to astrophysics.

aldri7

Since I'm not as proficient as you in responding to quotes individually (darn computers...:))....I'll just give a blanket reply.

I guess your first reply is perplexing to me because I don't necessarily connect fast or multiple notes with entertainment vs real music. Pianos in particular do not lend themselves to playing single notes that sustain for over four bars! So you can't necessarily trim all those notes - you may have to play them over and over again or they will die out and you will just be left with silence (not resonance)

OK, I know you know that. :) Anyway, I think I understand the point you are trying to make, but if the bottom line is projecting an emotion and you feel that a single note will do so why use multiple notes. I say  - why NOT use multiple notes if in doing so you inject motion, excitement, rhythm, the urge to dance maybe. I don't know. I mean who can say what purpose a given piece of music has, what its role is. It is more than just about stripping it down to its barest essence though and only playing as many notes as you need to get the emotional message across. Do we have to pace ourselves for fear of wearing our fingers out? 

BUt yeah, we've drifted off topic. The topic was virtuosity and I guess, whether virtuosity if it comes in the form of lots of notes (too many maybe, you say) is a good thing. I myself said it wasn't necessarily a good thing, and that fewer notes (a la Weather Report and Wayne Shorter) is often advised. So I tend to agree with you in spirit a lot of times, just not in how you connect all of this with what seems like some sort of an litmus test that music must pass in order that it be considered emotionally valid and not "just" entertainment. In China, they had that one child only policy. Makes sense, but I wouldn't want to live in a society where it is required. :)  And I also like chilling out to pure resonance sometimes, but as a keyboardist I know you have to resort to repetition sometimes in order to keep the sound alive!

aldri7