asshat

I'm going to take the ******* route and say that playing an instrument has fortified my appreciation and love of music. There's nothing quite like the feeling of creating your own music..no matter how terrible it might be. I can listen to an album like black flags damaged and say "it sounds like those guys are hurting themselves playing their instruments", and I sort of feel the vicarious rush that these guys felt in making this music.

Before I learned to play music I'd marvel at guys like eddie van halen...then when having to practice with evh's I found out how boring it must be play with a guitar wanker, and how a solid rythym section was sacrificed at the hands of countless wankers.

.....In my personal experience, playing an instrument has made the process of listening to music more vivid and enjoyable...but that's just me and I don't think there's any way of measuring how shallow or how deep your listening to music is.....and if you wanna learn an instrument it's never too late.

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5-Track

playing music got horribly in the way of my appreciation of music for years ... I have either solved the problem or found a way to live with it or else I am hopelessly deluded ... But I DO enjoy music again

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NumberNineDream

it does give you the feeling of being an alien to the subject. i think it's greater to experience it from within.
well i'm 18 too and love listening to music but don't play any instrument, and it does bother me. like i love to hear it but i can't create anything like it. i feel so paralyzed sometimes.
it's been a week trying to learn the guitar. I've had 2 years of learning the piano when i was a kid, but felt obliged to do it so i began skipping classes. and now i do regret not continuing with it.

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Shrar

i get the same with most things; playing instruments, writing songs/stories, painting/sketching.... i always hate whatever i produce so it feels kinda insulting to the relative consept to even try

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Dr.Tchock

It won't hurt...unless you become a Dream Theater fan. Pretty big risk if you ask me.

someonecompletelyrandom

Not al all. Making music doesn't really alter my perception of other people's music. I just do it because I love music and it's a great feeling to bring something forth that previously wasn't there.

Just don't take playing an instrument too seriously. I know alot of guys who are full of themselves and refuse to listen to any music where "the guitar part is too easy". So basically if you go about it in a humble way you won't have any problems. At least from my perspective.

Dr.Tchock

Also, be aware that there is a world of difference between playing a Mozart piece flawlessly and actually composing something as good as Mozart.

Most "virtuosos" fail to grasp that.

mr dave

heck. most guitar players in general fail to grasp that in regards to nirvana...

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GuitarBizarre

I'm going to throw my hat in the ring here and say one thing -

All you people throwing your two penneth in to say that [insert technically proficient musician here] is awful because they go off on one and dont compose good songs like [x] are being judgemental pricks.

You don't like it. Fair enough. I don't like a lot of it either. Primus is awful. Tiago Della Vega is absolutely nothing that I would enjoy listening to outside of for the sake of technical appreciation.

Then again, I take note that a lot of people who trot out lines like 'Wankers like Steve Vai', are fans of 'Soulful' players, like say, Hendrix.

Except...Have any of you even ****ing HEARD any Hendrix outside of the studio albums? There are HUNDREDS of hours of footage where hendrix is just stood on stage going off on some mad ****ing unmusical noise explosion playing as fast as he can without any real attention paid to the rythm section. There are videos made by fans on beaches where they go 'artistic' and start filming the ocean in a stoned daze, and you'd swear the sound was just some sloppy shredder ****ing around trying to outdo 'Eruption'.

There are plenty of examples of FANTASTIC writing by the exact same people you call 'soulless shredders'. Just because you don't appreciate it or don't know about it and haven't taken the time to educate yourselves on the genre due to some pathetic preconception that it must ALL be worthless based on the few artists you've heard and disliked, isn't the problem of that musics fans. There could be a whole host of reasons why you don't appreciate it. I find very few punk fans who appreciate popular music 'these days' when really they don't have a damned clue and are just following a prejudice before they've listened and thought.

"For the love of god" is THE archetypal Steve Vai song and frankly, from a musical standpoint its FANTASTIC. The chord progressions and shapes and use of articulation in the passages is awesome, and its done with a sense of tact, finesse, and dedication that is rarely seen anywhere else. It takes jazz influences, throws them into a rock structure and applies innovative use of technology and articulation to create a sound that is unique in its own right.

As for dream theater, sure, they're not the greatest example in the world of a band where everything is gut wrenching soulful stories of the heart or even stories of real life, but they make some fantastic sounds and they work together as a cohesive unit as a band. They have a lot of skill, and they LOVE music more than practically anyone on these boards ever will. They work musical metaphors and jokes and reference and all kinds of things into their albums to the extent it takes a TEN PAGE WEBSITE OF MUSICAL ANALYSIS just to find them all, let alone debate on their musical worth and practical effect.

Guthrie Govan is an UNBELIEVABLE guitarist and he works frequently in a whole raft of genres. He toured and played with the young punx and the CROWDS ****ING LOVED HIM, SHREDDING AND ALL.

Michael Romeo shreds like a crazy man on speed but the fact is he chooses what fits the song and mood and it WORKS. His music is enjoyable to listen to and its incredibly engaging. Dragonforce shred wank their tits off EVERY SONG but the core of their fanbase isn't even guitar players, its people who appreciate a band who are just extreme for the sake of it. Glam metal was BUILT around things far more frivolous and inconsequential than most shred, and it was HUGE.

And as for complex music being worthless, why don't some of you go and listen to some classical sometime? Holst's the planets is a MONUMENT to complex composition and it takes full advantage at every turn of an even WIDER range of stylistic flourishes than even the most insane shredding, in the lead parts alone. Wagner's Prelude to Tristan und isolde was a MONUMENT to avant garde composition and can be analysed for months on end with you STILL discovering something new, like the half diminished 4th in second inversion being one of the worlds most prominent examples of idee fixe, or the lingering elements oftraditional german classical composition that are evident in his use of heavily inverted plagal cadences, disguised expertly but still following rules of baroque harmony established by Bach. How About the skill required to effectively convey a performance of Rachmaninoff? Or Chopin? How about the way, in terms of song structure, the lead part, chorus, lead, bridge chorus structure of many popular 'shred' songs or artists conveys a similar feel to a violin concerto by vivaldi in its use of seperate sections developing from each other, tied to a common theme, and where interim pieces are dominated by virtuosic playing of a single lead instrument in varying guises? Listen to Autumns Allegro from the Four Seasons and you'll notice that is there in FORCE with the diminuitive stature of the solo violin (Lead guitar) being bolstered by the other instruments in unison to convey a greater sense of power? (Chorus, or refrain sections from many shred pieces)

I am FULLY aware that I'm railing agains the majority here, but I am SICK of seeing technically accomplished music being derided for using some of the EXACT SAME ASPECTS that have made popular classical music so enjoyable to listen to, while adding in contemporary influences and remaining progressive in terms of musical conglomeration. Its all bolstered by ego, and perceptions of proficient players as a formula following caste who put themselves above other members of the band just to shred all the time.

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Jsung

I don't feel like anyones done a decent job of explaining but heres in a nutshell:

You don't have to play music to be a music lover, but when you learn an instrument, you can appreciate it better and unless you are obssessed - you very rarely become a bitch about the music you listen to, and if you do pick out the crappy technicalities, its fairly easy to overlook it or just change songs if you just don't like it. Orchestral pieces, more compositional pieces and music in general has a different (in my case more appealing) sound to it after you learn an instrument or 3.