"Rape" implies that Fritter was not totally asking for it.

QFT +2

But you were fighting it. A naked bimbo wouldn't be fighting it because she is expecting it haha.

Fair enough because even if I was an attractive, mentally deficient, and naked woman, that would not justify someone having uninvited sex with me......

for anyone looking at this, I deleted the post about the naked bimbo without knowing other people had already referred to it or noticed it. but I did say it, I just deleted it because I wanted to keep the discussion on technicality in music and not on me and my ignorant statements. And by that bimbo comparison I meant it was justified I got raped. so yeah back to the discussion topic.

Personally, I don't honestly think this is always the case. If you give a man or woman a noise making machine for long enough, and he or she has the right heart for it, and time, he or she will produce something that you can call music. Sometimes, with time, and experience, technical itself can be redefined. There are plenty of brilliant self taught musicians who don't play things by the book.

In fact, we wouldn't have the blues a good majority of modern American music genres are created from if we didn't have slaves freed who didn't need have access to knowledge of the white world of music, and needed to create something new with their spirit. Sure, with the communal value eventually a rule set was built, yet in the end, it was created simply from experimentation.

Furthermore, Tons of musicians learn to play simply from taking their instrument and imitating things. Eddie Van Halen used to sit at home all day with his guitar trying to play along with what he heard on the radio. Some could say that's learning your technical chops in a way but really, it's more getting a feel of your instrument to ear.

I mean, to this day, Van Halen is pretty much considered one of the most influential guitarists ever, and when you think about it, his technique is incredibly improper and incorrect compared to ten or twenty years before him.

Fact of the matter is, proper technique helps, but no matter how you chose to learn, they're all just roads to the same place.

Ahh Christ I love "Khatru" and this is the best closing statement I've seen in this thread. Probably the best post, too, since it summarizes pretty much everything correct about this situation.

In short: you don't need technical skill to make excellent music, stuff that has meaning or cultural value etc. Having a large amount of skill can help and hurt. It all depends on what you do with your skillset, what you're good at, what you're striving for and so on.

I think this is a pretty excellent statement, too. There are countless self-taught musicians with a great deal of technical skill, just like there are "classically trained" musicians who are great as well. Then you have the so-called-good out of there, people who create excellent music that actually has some sort of worth.

from the top, you could also keep throwing poop at the wall all day every day and eventually someone might walk by an proclaim that it looks exactly like La Guernica. that doesn't mean you've somehow channeled Picasso or accomplished anything more substantial than the average 2 year old.

Blues comes from Gospel, who do you think forced the slaves to worship their Gods? it also wasn't created from experimentation it was created from the need for expression.

Furthermore, sitting on the edge of your bed trying to play along to everything you hear on the radio is the EPITOME of polishing your technical chops. it's all about mimicry. EVH's influence extends through every single poofy haired cheeseball that we all had the benefit of having to suffer through in the 80s. thanks. to say his technique was considered 'improper and incorrect' prior to him denies people like Jimmy Page, Chuck Berry, and JIMI FREAKING HENDRIX their rightful places as actual innovators who eschewed tradition once it ceased to benefit them.

what EVH brought to the table was speed and.... wait for it... TECHNICAL virtuosity within the confines of popular music. he does deserve credit for that, but he didn't break a single rule, he just leaned on the line for his whole career.

I don't believe it's necessary for a good song, but it like having better tools. It allows you to do a better job, but it doesn't mean you will do a better job. On top of this, I find hearing immense technical skill in a song has its own charm. For example, if I hear an amazing guitar solo I always have that extra feeling of awe at the skills involved, which adds to enjoyment of the song. However, I also know many songs which I love but aren't technically difficult. Often great songwriting can make up for a lack of technical skill; and occasionally vice versa.

Blues is an incredibly different beast than gospel. It may have been based of Gospel but you cannot say they are all that similar. The biggest thing is Blues came from the fact that African Americans were introduced to a new variety of instrumentation that they've never seen before, and had to make up new rules for it. They may have loosely based it off the gospel/African tribal music but there's no way you can simply shift that to guitar without completely rewriting the book.

Hendrix is another good example of somebody who learned entirely outside the confines of traditional rule(Where as Page being an experienced studio guitarist is the opposite. Even if he did opt to break the rules when he had the opportunity). However, there are a few things Van Halen did differently. He had that little finger tapping thing. As for people influenced by him, couldn't give a ****. I myself believe that Van Halen as a band was extremely hit and miss. However, I think he was well more an inventive guitarist than you give him credit for. I mean, the way he introduced speed in itself I would say is creative.

My point is, he learned his technical chops but not be necessarily learning the rules. Suppose the phrase "You have to learn the rules before you break them" can't be taken too literally. But If eel it's kind of too easy of a phrase for elitist instrumentalists to toss onto self taught instrumentalists. The fact that Technical virtuosity was brought to the table is kind of enforcing my point that they're all roads to the same place. That you can break the rules very well before you learn them, or that you can very well break the rules entirely and make up your own.

Van Halen might not have been the best example but he's really the only mainstream figure I could think up to where I know how he developed his technique and how unconventional it was. Hendrix probably would have been a better example because he was very much an incredibly rule defying self taught musician.

A lot of music I listen to the guitarists aren't really that great (Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain ect.). However I'm really into prog rock at the moment and technical skill is a must for that genre (Robert Fripp, David Gilmour ect.)

Talent is talent. It depends how you display talent and what your ascetic is for talent. The Michel Angelo Batio example was a good one to show an over the top display of talent. I like extremely talented musicians that are reserved in showing it. Lyrics are an example of talent that isn't exactly about how complex and fast you can make the words. And overall songwriting ability is what draws me in. Talent is important but it is not music in itself.

if you can't give a sh1t about EVH's influence why did you bring it up in the first place.

as for two hand tapping there are clips of Hendrix doing it in the studio (at a much slower pace). there's also the fact that EVH has flat out said that he got the idea from seeing Led Zeppelin in concert and just cranked it up a notch.

then there's also this...



pay especially close attention to 2:42-3:02

look and sound familiar? who brought what to the table again?

Eh, bad example. Couldn't really care enough about Van Halen to defend him here. My point was that even an extremely popular musician who is heralded for his technique(original or not) can learn in ways which don't involve "learning the rules".

If I wanted a better example of just a group which I feel is quite musically interesting, I'd say Boredoms. Since they're abrasive rebellious rulebreakers who, at least in my eyes, present interesting music even if a large portion of it is sarcastic. Not really sure why I reached for Van Halen of all people. Mostly, I think I was reaching for a mainstream figure who is known for technicality. Faulty example, but I don't necessarily think I made a bad point.

Keep in mind this is getting a little off topic. Technical skill of the musicians on an album has nothing to do with how you're trained... Self taught or trained , you can be just as good a musician either way. Also, in my opinion, as far as technicality works there's the ability to play your instrument well but also technical skill in terms of understanding sound and how it works and how to make it with your instrument (like Thurston Moore). To answer the question, both are important to me, but I think I can listen to a lack of technical skill much easier than a lack of good songwriting. A lot of punk and hardcore musicians would be a good example.

this is what you're not understanding from my comment - needing to learn the rules before you can break the rules is a figure of speech.

even the Boredoms clearly learned the rules of how to play their instruments the proper way. it's clear by the fact that they use normal traditional chords, they use normal traditional licks, beats, riffs, and fills. BUT they break those rules in the way they arrange those pieces and present them to the listener.

do you get it yet? or are there other rules out there besides chord shapes, scales, modes, traditional rhythms and chord progressions? how would practicing along to the radio not be the same as teaching yourself these fundamentals? just because you don't know that crazy lick you just figured out from that song is part of the phrygian scale in D doesn't mean you didn't learn part of a scale.

the more technique (rules) you learn, the more ammunition you have in your arsenal if/when you finally get bored enough with connecting dots to crack the mold and head out there.

the ONLY way it's possible to learn an instrument without learning the rules of that instrument at the same time is to get something completely foreign to you and refusing to listen to any piece of music that features that instrument or getting any sort of instruction on how to use it.

dearest mr dave... i like the way you think and am wondering if you have some music of your own that i could find somewhere on the net.

this is for fritter, the poor bastard.

all i've got for the intermasses is in the link below these words. horrible HORRIBLE quality but it's what you get when you record a live band off the floor straight into a laptop without so much as a mixer or anything besides the built-in mic. i'm seeing myself very slowly moving into a new direction though, not sure if i'm going to try going the bedroom producer route or just save up for a battery powered amp and see how many weird looks i can get while busking once the snow goes away.


also - Dolphy is THE man in my book :yeah: