MOST radio stations are playing pop music (everything from Britany Spears to Kelly Clarksen). Most pop music uses session players. Most session players have a jazz background. I've already given you a long list of them. I know of not one guy who's known for playing metal that is also known as a regular studio musician. And no, a drummer is not a musician.

Why is the drummer not a musician...Funny, when I played in the high school band, or marched with the Northern Virginia Patriots drum corps, I was reading charts along with everyone else... most session players have a "reading" background which includes languages like "jazz", "big band", "orchestral", etc... We were playing tunes from Chicago, Blood Sweat and tears, hell we even covered Jeff Beck tunes like "Situation" off of "Rough And Ready"....in high school....not just "jazz standards"

and I have met many jazz guys that absolutely cannot play rock, metal, etc.. with any kind of realism
the same as the other way around!!! schooled or unschooled!!!

I resent remarks about drummers not being musicians!!!!

Stick to the post!!!

I think the bottom line is the op is a chicken s--t...he doesn't believe in himself or he would have posted some material, oh, about 5 pages ago....I doubt he is ready for the cut throat business of full time music.....

No disrespect to you, Joe, but wow!!!! There are cats out there who are/were metal doing session work!!!!
I know of many locally...they aren't rich or necessarily famous, but....

They probably aren't happy about it but glad that they are working given the fact that metal is a dying breed in the US!!

But, in Europe, thats a different story!!!!

Phil B.

ORIGINAL: PBLOXAM

And no, a drummer is not a musician.

Why is the drummer not a musician...

Oooh, I missed that one... Them's fightin' words... Who are the real musicians then? The bass player? He only plays one note at a time!

ORIGINAL: PBLOXAM

Why is the drummer not a musician...Funny, when I played in the high school band, or marched with the Northern Virginia Patriots drum corps, I was reading charts along with everyone else... most session players have a "reading" background which includes languages like "jazz", "big band", "orchestral", etc... We were playing tunes from Chicago, Blood Sweat and tears, hell we even covered Jeff Beck tunes like "Situation" off of "Rough And Ready"....in high school....not just "jazz standards"

and I have met many jazz guys that absolutely cannot play rock, metal, etc.. with any kind of realism
the same as the other way around!!! schooled or unschooled!!!

I resent remarks about drummers not being musicians!!!!

Stick to the post!!!

I think the bottom line is the op is a chicken s--t...he doesn't believe in himself or he would have posted some material, oh, about 5 pages ago....I doubt he is ready for the cut throat business of full time music.....

No disrespect to you, Joe, but wow!!!! There are cats out there who are/were metal doing session work!!!!
I know of many locally...they aren't rich or necessarily famous, but....

They probably aren't happy about it but glad that they are working given the fact that metal is a dying breed in the US!!

But, in Europe, thats a different story!!!!

Phil B.

Sorry, no disrespect intended toward drummers. I just mean that they aren't playing or reading musical notes. They're reading timing notes. I wouldn't call that playing music, but playing percussion. I rather enjoy a good drummer. But I've never thought of them as being musicians (unless they play another instrument too).

And I never said that a metal musician couldn't get work playing on other metal projects. I said they wouldn't get calls as session players. A studio musican is typically employed by a record label, a producer, or a studio. Thus RCA, Sony, EMI etc. have all had their own "go-to" guys over the years. It's always been not only common, but the norm for the big studios to employ the same session players regularly. But the bottom line is that a session player will play on hundreds to even thousands of projects throughout their lives. Carol Kaye said she's played on more than 10,000 recordings, and I believe her. She used to be on everything. Here's something from Jay Graydon's website:

Between the late 60s and the late 70s Jay played on practically every "A" list session in Los Angeles, acquiring a glowing reputation as an ace studio guitarist/ solo specialist on numerous albums with Barbara Streisand, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, The Jackson Five, Cheap Trick, Christopher Cross, Ray Charles, Cher, Joe Cocker, Marvin Gaye, Hall & Oates, Olivia Newton-John, and Albert King just to name a few. It is almost easier to enumerate those artists he hasn't played with or produced or written songs for, than those artists whose career he has participated in.

His discography is massive and includes both fairly unknown artists as well as mega stars like Air Supply, George Benson, Al Jarreau, DeBarge, El DeBarge, Sheena Easton, Art Garfunkel, Manhattan Transfer, Johnny Mathis, Patti LaBelle, Lou Rawls, Kenny Rogers and Dionne Warwick, just to name a few.

And believe me, that just touches the rim of what all he's played on. But he wasn't even the big gun around town back then guitar-wise. Larry Carlton and Tommy Tedesco were getting the bulk of the calls back in the 70's. I don't know if it's even possible to count all the sessions that Tedesco has done. They certainly number well into the thousands.

Here's a blurb from Wiki on Tedesco:

Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Tedesco made his way to the U.S. West Coast where he became one of the most-sought-after studio guitarists between the 1960s and 1980s. Although Tedesco was primarily a guitar player, he was also qualified on the mandolin, ukulele, and the sitar as well as 28 other stringed instruments (though he played all of them in guitar tuning).

He was described by "Guitar Player" magazine as the most recorded guitarist in history, having played on thousands of recordings. He recorded with most of the top musicians working in the Los Angeles area including the Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, The Association, Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Sam Cooke, Cher, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra.

Tedesco's credits, to name a few, include the themes to television's Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special. He also performed for film soundtracks such as The French Connection, The Godfather, Jaws, The Deer Hunter, Field of Dreams, plus several Elvis Presley films.

Here's a blurb from Lee Ritenour's website:

Starting at the age of 16, Ritenour played his first session with The Mama's and the Papa's. Two years later he was backing Tony Bennett and Lena Horne at L.A.'s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Know as "Captain Fingers," Ritenour became a sought-after session player in the mid-70's. Starting in 1976, at the age of 24, he began his own solo career which now includes over 30 albums and collaborations. Although heavily influenced in his early days by the relaxed styles of Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and Barney Kessel, he now has his own distinctive sound and fluid style. His list of session work is awesome (some 3,000 sessions), but some of his notable performances were with Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Pink Floyd. Since the mid-80's Ritenour has been strongly influenced by Brazilian music.

Larry Carlton estimated that he played on around 500 sessions per year while also playing at least 50 gigs a year. He's literally played on thousands of recordings and more than 100 of them were gold records.

Playing on a few records here and there (especially if they're all the same kind of music) does not a session musician make. If we're regularly employed by a studio, producer, or label to play every week (more like every day) on a diversity of recordings then, and only then, can we hold our heads up as a studio musicians.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

ORIGINAL: droddey

Radio being what it is, a corporate endeavor, I wouldn't expect to find anything other than pretty tame stuff there for the most part, as your list above pretty much proves.

Uh, yeah, that was kind of the point. That metal doesn't sell like it did way back when for these guys who are living in the 80's. If it did then there'd be a ton of radio stations playing it. Radio stations are simply looking to make money. If metal sold they'd be on it.

Also, in the 80's and earlier, many radio (and TV) stations were independently owned and operated. Nowadays, most stations, paritcularly those across the Frequency Mod band, are owned by one of two (or maybe it's three, I don't remember) huge Media conglomerates in the US, which are geared towards making money as you pointed out. So airplay music has become far less diverse and risk-taking is a thing of the past. Now would be a good time for me to lay down a soapbox and start ranting about conspiracies, but something tells me I'd be preaching to the choir.

ORIGINAL: ArrowHead


ORIGINAL: kennywtelejazz


just take the high road
it takes 2 to have an argument

but it only takes one douchebag to make a leisure activity unpleasant.

And I'm too used to being the only douchebag.


Funny, as I recall, you left before because you couldn't get along with people then either. Take your childish attitude and shove it hard and fast.

WTF is that?!?!?! Are you ****ed? My name is right there, click it and look at my whooooole post history. Do you pull everything out of your ass? I left the board when my band released our album, and went to go tour. Would you like to see the amazon link with release date? Really, I'm curious to find where you get this notion from, as it never happened.

"You named a drummer, not a musician. And you still haven't named a single metal musician who went on to become an in demand studio musician"

Look at a few of your trans-siberian orchestra albums. Google a few of the names. There's your single example. That's after already mentioning many others in this thread. You just don't want to listen. Why would you, you have no clue what any metal is beyond "basic major and minor chords".

"Liar. Oh but we're still waiting to hear yours aren't we? Tell you what kiddo. Let's both put up our best jazz oriented tune at garageband.com and see who gets the highest ratings. How bout it?"

are you kidding? WTF is wrong with you? Did you miss the part where I play metal? I'm recording and releasing albums, doing tours, and you want to compare garageband demos?

I'm not trying to have a contest, Joe. We could always play "Link the last album you released worldwide", but how does that prove whether or not a metal musician can earn money and find work? You dance around points, and I keep following you.

Geez, I'm going to step back before I get drenched in the resultant spray of testosterone :D.

GG

Hey Joe, how are you doing?

I reepsect you tremendously, but you know you are preaching to the choir!!!!

I grew up during those times...Tommy had a house in lake havasu ....

I lived there briefly playing with a cat named skip....He purchased an L-5s from tommy

We would go to his house...There were guitar shapes everywhere.....

At the time, he even said he was one of the most recorded guitarist in music!!!!

WHen I saw Cobham @ The Birchmere in Alexandria, Va.. he had leland sklar on bass..

we talked afterwards and told me he had been on at least 900 albums!!!!! thats not sessions!!!! WOWWW!!!

And come on now, when you learn to read music in school, I think everyone learns about g-clefs and

doh rey me!!!!!

While reading a drum chart is based off length of notes, I still can tell What note is what on a standard sheet!!!!

The fact that I can't play it they way a guitarist or sax player or bassist or whomever, is because it wasn't the instrument of choice, so I am not as adept!!!! Doesn't mean I am not am musician!!!!

I also play the guitar...know most of the basic scales....but have nowhere near the proficiency of the drums!!!

I believe the minute anyone starts negative comments about styles, what someone plays as to regards to its importance,

you are putting yourself into a position of attack

You are a talented and repected musician, same as I , near the same age, remember, how it goes for the heavy cats out there, they started in jazz, went on to fusion and maybe even metal.... - not all mind you...

Thats understood!!!!

Tony McAlpine, Ingwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Al Dimeola, many clasically trained and many more were quite adept at jazz but wanted to stretch it to the next level... look at guys like Guthrie Govan, Andrea Quatrotone, Mattias Ecklund,
the aren't playing jazz anymore... they gravitated to metal/fusion!!!!!

The one thing I can say, I did the same, but as I got older, I decided to come back to my roots, my foundation, jazz!!!

I think everyone eventually comes back that "started" there....

Doesn't mean I can't or don't want to play fusion/metal, but I am older and its time for the young to carry the spotlight!!

They are all a part of the same....


And Half the musicians I play with only support themselves by music only... just local session work, gigs, students..no day job!!!!! they aren't playing metal either, mostly jingles for radio, movies, etc....

Peace my friend!!!

ORIGINAL: Roflcopter

testosterone... comes only in very minute quantities...

Not when guitar players get to talking jazz vs metal, it doesn't.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

What the hell does having played metal parts in one orchestra have to to do with playing sessions for a living? Absoluetly stupid....

Sigh...you keep babbling on and on about how metal players and alternative rock players have no talent and would never cut it as session players...just look at the Jazz names doing session work...show me a metal player doing session work...yada yada yada.

The people who play metal and alternative or any other kind of rock professionaly don't need to do session work. They have their own bands and record their own work. You act as though the lack of metal session players is a sign that metal is irrellevant, when the fact is that they are doing their own thing, and don't need to make a living suckling at the teet of someone else's success and acting like that's what separates the men from the boys. I've heard of putting a positive spin on a negative, but you're getting ridiculous.

I see your list of session players as guys who, for one reason or another, couldn't cut it playing in bands and want work. The fact that they all play jazz somehow suggests to you that jazz is in bigger demand. No, it's just that there are few jazz bands making any kind of big money and a ton of jazz players who need work.

If metal went mostly the way of the dinosaur like jazz has (save for mostly the older crowd...not where the money is), there'd be tons of session metal players looking for work too.

But hey, it's your reality, and you're obviously going to percieve it however you want to percieve it.

Edit: I don't have anything against Jazz btw...I even own a few Jazz CDs, mostly old stuff. But even if they teach it in school, it's a niche market. They teach Classical in school too, but I haven't heard of an orchestra member with a bigscreen TV in the bathroom, I've never seen a New York Philharmonic T-shirt and I've never heard of a screaming fan flinging a pair of panties into anyone's Tuba. I guess it all depends on how you measure success. I can appreciate Jazz. I really can. I can also appreciate that alot of Jazz people are like pretentious twits who go to wine and cheese tasting parties and revel in their superior taste.

ORIGINAL: PBLOXAM

If Joe Stump, and Mike Mangini were ever instructors there, they aren't "now as we speak".

http://www.berklee.edu/faculty/detail.php?id=266&type=department&value=PR&skip=%20-%2038k

It's on the Berklee site!!!!

Getting Deep!!!!

Peace!!!!

Here's Joe Stump, self-described "high-tech metal specialist":

http://www.berklee.edu/faculty/detail.php?id=427&type=last_name&value=stump&skip=0

See, now you have a far more modest tone (now you're saying you like Dio?). When you put it consisely and politely like that, it's as though you don't think you're above everyone else, which was hard to think earlier when you were writing things like, for example:

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo
No, they certainly are not, which is why they aren't doing it. You can bet they aren't teaching anything but metal to other idiots.

It was as though you think the metal musician's work has no merit, and of course, any Band's work that sells, regardless of the players' technical capabilities, has merit in that at least the buying public is paying to have something with their names on it.

But I guess I can see your point. Could be a band needs a jazzy solo, could be Kellogs needs a pop/rock guitar piece for a cornflakes commercial, and most metal guitarists probably focus on mastering metal guitar. So a jazz-playing session player is more commercially viable in a typical session environment. I can see that. I don't think the metal guitarists are "idiots" though.

See, now you have a far more modest tone (now you're saying you like Dio?).

Now there are good people posting reasonable things. I like Ronnie's voice. He's not putting on pretenses with it the way so many metal band singers do. He's not pretending to have a deep gruffly voice; that actually is the way his natural voice sounds. Anyway, I enjoyed the work he did with Livgren and I liked "Heaven or Hell" and what few other tracks I heard of that same album on the radio. I've never owned any of his solo records. I doubt if I would like the music on them. But I do like his voice.

Ironically, while I was at work it seems some of the more level headed people are actually GETTING THROUGH to Joe.

Speaking in condescending lies will only make you sound more sissified. If someone wants me to refer to a drummer as a musician I have no problem with it. It's not a mater of being right or wrong. It's a matter of compromise. Everything I've said has been exactly correct. Your whole point of saying Stump taught at Berklee was because you thought that meant he teaches jazz along with the other two you named. None of them teach jazz. None of them are playing sessions for a living. Neither is anyone in that Siberian Orchestra junk. (BTW, is there anyone that doesn't cringe that comes on TV?) When you know of a metal player who's played even a hundred sessions you let me know. And when you know someone at one of the big four record labels, or big-time studios, who's willing to give fulltime work to someone with a metal background, again, I'm all ears. No one's done it yet.

Man, I'm throwing you examples and you just puff them away. What gives? Fighting just to fight now? Your experience in the music industry ended over a decade ago, you admit it yourself. You talk about stupid crap like "The big four music labels". It WAS 6, Joe. That entire industry is crumbling. When they built that internet thingy back when you started growing your mustache (I can't get over that fetid beaver corpse you hang under your nose), things changed a lot. The RIAA is currently suing it's own customer base, labels are depending on fewer releases and artists to turn profit, and one man disposable pop, hip hop, and rap is far more marketable and profitable. There are not regular session gigs like you claim. Maybe jazz cats playing in jazz sessions, but look at producers like Bob Rock and Mutt Lange who realize that most pop and rock is so simple they can just record the parts themselves. The money gigs, alas, don't need a "Jazz guy".

"Everything I've said has been exactly correct. Your whole point of saying Stump taught at Berklee was because you thought that meant he teaches jazz along with the other two you named. None of them teach jazz."

See, here's the funny thing: I know these guys. I know their students. I see them working drop 2 inversions, coloring, odd times, add and suss chords, and I see them all working on exercises out of their real books. You looked up a few class names on a website, so here you win, right? These guys are teaching jazz technique to their students. They may specialize in rock, or metal, but they build up a solid jazz foundation in their students. Again, a few quick google search will show you that Berklee is one of the TOP jazz schools in the country. As the jazz man himself, I'm positively shocked you don't know the origin of the Real Books, and so many of your favorite jazz musicians. Pretty bad form, Joe.

"None of them are playing sessions for a living. Neither is anyone in that Siberian Orchestra junk."

Is that up there with "you left this board because you couldn't get along with people"? You just make **** up. You have no IDEA if any of these guys are doing regular sessions. You don't look, you don't listen, you don't even acknowledge metal at all. Then you make assanine statements about a genre you obviously know NOTHING about.

"When you know of a metal player who's played even a hundred sessions you let me know. And when you know someone at one of the big four record labels, or big-time studios, who's willing to give fulltime work to someone with a metal background, again, I'm all ears. No one's done it yet."

I do. You would never listen though. You're like that. How about, "When you know a jazz musician under 25 without an established 30 year career who can actually make a living on studio session work alone, I'm all ears."

The industry is changed, I can't say it enough. You take your 40 year old record collection and try to use it as a real world example of current day.

You want examples, examples, examples, examples. Why should I keep bothering?

It's simple joe, regardless of how many useless and stubborn tangents you drag me on:
I think that what you have to ask yourself is, are you playing some kind of fad music, [like] speed metal; or are you truly a great musician who can play anything, read well, write well, sing great etc.

If you're the latter there's always gonna be room for you in this business. If the former, you'll have to get lucky."

You cannot grasp that a LOT of people playing metal ARE truly great musicians who can play anything, read well, write well, sing great, etc.

You're a closed minded fool, and fail to recognize an entire GENRE filled with more talent than you can shake a stick at. It's sad.

To cut talent and musicianship apart with such blind boundaries, why would you ever do that?

Meanwhile, I can listen to a slayer album from 25 years ago, or a slayer album from 1 year ago, and still pop in "Secret Story" and veg out to some pat methaney and Pygmy chanting. While you're still feeling the elephant's trunk, and proclaiming "It's JAZZ! An elephant is made of JAZZ!" I'm sitting 30 feet back, trying as hard as I can to take in the whole picture.

Again Joe, it's your turn to explain. How can you justify you're original statement? Give me a good example of metal musicians needing to "get lucky" to find room in the industry. You can't, and you will never be able to. Metal is NOT a fad, and very few besides yourself would ever consider it one.

Bartlett

Xfusion, I hope this thread has been a valuable lesson in what happens to people who take music too seriously.

Music should be fun, and rejuvenating, and if you come from work and are too tired and stressed to do music, then I have to say I doubt if it's really your thing. I think the people who are destined to really "make it" in the world of music are exactly the kind of people who can't NOT do it, they can't HELP doing it.

I think a lot of people are really into the *idea* of being a musician, but that's a totally different thing than a real commitment to/obsession with the music itself.

I still think if you're not doing it now, you're not gonna do it when you quit work. What do you do on the weekends? How many hours a day do you work?