no more virtuosos in rock music...

Have you noticed that todays rock music sucks? no solos whatsoever and if there is any 
a kid in the kindergarten could play it. Is it because people don't want to practice anymore?
thinking that technology will do everything for them like sequencers, loops etc because life is too short
and all that bulls$it so why waste it on practicing few hours ea day? 
In seventies all was different, do you remember solos of Jimmy Page, Keith Emerson, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore
and many more? damn music is going down ....

Browsing for new music, I get the impression that it isn't well seen to display skills in mainstream music these days. Musicianship is looked down upon.

I often have the feeling that some of those guys blatantly under-play and try to sound sloppy on purpose. I'm actually convinced that a lot of trained musicians are actually faking being illiterate.

A huge part of the population makes very little difference between raw and passionate and sloppy - they mistake sloppy for honest and heartfelt. They call it texture - unfortunately, they can't feel texture unless you push their face against the sandblaster. People don't feel. 

Therefore, you really have to deliberately overdo the sloppiness for them to feel anything. The audience is completely numb.

Singers have 2 options - either they yell at the top of their lungs or they cram in 32 notes per second with excessive vibrato (that r n' b crap). The essence is that none is done with any taste - it has to be over the top all the time. Like, Michael Bay-over the top. I guess it makes up for the fact that they have nothing to say.

There are exceptions. Tool comes to mind - they are decent rock musicians, not relying on flashy gimmicks. But then again, they don't vomit a single every 2 months. They make an album when they have something to say.

There's still many a guitar hero out there. Richard Thompson and Mark Knopfler come to mind right away. I must agree that it's not really what the musicians want to do as much as what the record companies want to sell.

I never shed a tear for the loss of the 10 minute drum solo or some of the other self indulgent stuff spawned in the 70's. I wish some of the self indulgent crap in the world of hip-hop would vanish. Instead of huge solos it's 10 minutes with some home boy telling you how fly he be.

Just remember that in the 80's it looked like all guitars would soon be fitted with keyboards. Thanks to SRV we dodged that bullet, but it's time for another guitar hero to step up and burn.

i do agree that commercial rock (for want of a better word) doesn't feature solos in the way that Free, Queen, BOC, Bon Jovi and GnR did...the likes of Nickleback and Staind seem to prefer vocal breakdowns etc...some of that is maybe the influence of nu-metal, which decryed solos in the same way punk did in the late 70s...and mostly i guess record execs brought up to 80s pop music who don't feel the need for a 30sec solo in a 3 minute pop song! you really have to head to prog-rock/metal to get any flashy stuff these days!

yorolpal


If you mean true virtuosity then...no...not much pops up outside of Nashville anymore.  But if you mean excellent, solid musicianship then I would bet plenty abounds.  Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters come to mind...Muse, maybe...Jimmy Herring...and umpty-leven others.  I'm not sure most folks would know virtuosity from Adam's off ox.

I pretty much agree with this, although there's probaly still plenty of crusty old European conservertoires that would argue the Nashville bit.

I still see plenty of good musicianship around, and certainly much more ability and technical savvy among a wider range of youngsters than when I started out.  People back then just stole, borrowed, got into debt to get some instruments and formed a band.  The idea of learning to play didn't occur until some time afterward.  These days kids go to media colleges and stuff. 

Not only that there are fewer people loving themselves in that unhealthy way where they indulge themselves playing with their own thing for inordinate amounts of time and boring the carp out of everyone gathered.

I'm glad people don't equate that garbage with virtuosity so much anymore.  Sure showboat if you got the chops but keep in the context of the show willya?

Danny Danzi


 As for the country stuff J mentioned....I agree with that completely! To me, that's today's real rock...hooks to die for, some cliche of course, but we can't deny some of the musicianship going on. 
-Danny

well many country music players are for sure a real musicians especially the studio hire guns but
I never actually like country to a point I liked rock of 70ties. Country music is for me too monotonous to be honest.  Anyway I give them that they don't need technology to make music

like today's rock and pop. Acoustic instruments are still welcome and preferred there. 

jbow

Please, don't use the words Keith Urban and Brad Paisley in the same post that has the words Country and music. They don't mix.

Country & Western died around '70, and Country died around '78.

Oh ya,Dream Theater are still putting out cd's and,they have a new drummer.

Country music.....the George Jones, Merle Haggard, style of country is maintained by very few today. Even those folks have retired or jumped genre a bit.  The torch carriers seem to be Alan Jackson, Ricky Scaggs, and Marty Stewart. 

Several country songs have lamented the death of that main stream genre over the years.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny3K9irFC5k

I agree with the comments that solo's have pretty much disappeared from popular music. 

I think it's more of an executive decision rather then a lack of talent. It could also reflect the changing nature of songwriting and how this new generation looks at songs.  And very likely a combination of all of it. 
Back in the 60's the mantra was  2:30 to 3 minutes max for the song if you wanted radio play. That started to change and songs became longer  as bands began to gain some creative control.... remember Hey Jude? That one was over 7 minutes long. 

As far as where the hot players are.... Nashville comes to mind. I do believe the pickers there are amazingly talented and I have to agree also that what we called rock in the 70's is alive and well in country music today.  Beautiful melody & harmony, hot, hot players, nice lyrical writing and super hooks. 

Some of the best guitar playing on the radio these days is the "country" artists.... Chesney has a hot picker in his band.... amazing player with tone to die for.  Urban & Paisley can hold their own in a guitar battle, and who could forget Vince Gill's amazing chops?  

And Ricky Skaggs.... this guy is multi instrumet talented. He used to play guitar but kinda jumped to bluegrass and now is often seen on mandolin, but has on occasion picked up a guitar just to show that he can still play. 

Highway 40 Blues .... same song, 2 different nights, one has Ricky playing the guitar solo, the next has Paisley playing the solo.... you decide. 
Ricky solos>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ve5Hr_M6E
Paisley solos>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWcIFRzqHVY


Country studio cats... there are just too many to name who have cops all over the country acts of days gone by. 

Rock still has it's champions too and lots of new ones are coming along.... soon,  one or two new young guitar slingers will emerge on the stage to take their places among the greats. 

Steven - I do remember Ritchie Kotzen (I'm sure others do too). I know Japan is different - Yngwie is still some sort of god over there. And of course there are probably other places.

I think Bub is right. A large part of the music we hear is "put together" by engineers, rather than performed. 

On the other hand, the opposite tends to bug me just as much - session players often mean a generic performance and the lack of chemistry. This is particularly obvious in smaller markets - where I come from, for a while, a lot of singers putting out records more or less all had the same backing band. They were good, but, it still had that karaoke element.

Incidentally, that was the case for my fiancée's first album. The performances were all fine, but it's obvious that it isn't a band playing, just a bunch of guns for hire. 

I'm trying to reverse that for the next - though this means me letting go, and bringing others into the creative process, and I have a hard time doing just that. But we want that good old feeling happening. A real rock album. 

Ol Pal mentioned Muse - they are indeed solid musicians, even though they don't come across as virtuosos in the traditional sense. Nevertheless, judging by the stuff they "quote" in their own music, it seems obvious that these guys aren't just garage musicians. Saw them last year in Quebec - terrific performance.  

Rain


 On the other hand, the opposite tends to bug me just as much - session players often mean a generic performance and the lack of chemistry. This is particularly obvious in smaller markets - where I come from, for a while, a lot of singers putting out records more or less all had the same backing band. They were good, but, it still had that karaoke element.

Completely true, sessions players are excellent and perfect but soul-less...
At least most of the time.  The question is if regular listener can tell that just by listening to?

kc2ine

StevenMikel


Oh ya,Dream Theater are still putting out cd's and,they have a new drummer.

ok Jordan Rudess is keyboard virtuoso, I agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZhiYff7nM

  What about JohnPetrucci? He's a killer guiatrist and,does a good job keeping up with Jordan Rudess' keyboard playing.

kc2ine

Completely true, sessions players are excellent and perfect but soul-less...
At least most of the time.  The question is if regular listener can tell that just by listening to?

They can't really pinpoint it, but I think they want that "happening energy". Which brings us back to something I've mentioned above - faking it.


Make it relatively sloppy, make it retro-sounding, and you'll fool them. They get the form, not the essence.

  Rain and kc2ine I feel the same way about session players.I think the chemistry of a band lends its self to a better performance and depending on the band, better musicianship.

I also think that alot of and too much of what we hear on the radio is controled by executives.

SteveStrummerUK

StevenMikel


Heres a few videos of the bands I metioned earlier............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIufByVnBzM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgFj_S4MIE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhCqEfkKa5s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kplKHOaLQps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLImCmCeFg0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3pysFV_Hvk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4pRK7IMKR0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjK9SBDx5M&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjK9SBDx5M&feature=related

 
Some really good stuff there Steven.

I'm glad you liked it.Glenn Tipton is very under rated.I'm a fan of Dragonforce too.Another band you might like is,Grand Magus,to me they sound like a cross between Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.