GuitarBizarre

Inspired by a debate in another thread about 'virtuosity vs songwriting'.

Now bear with me here, this could go one of two ways. Either I piss off a lot of people, or nobody cares. I'm hoping for the first.

Firstly: EVERYTHING that can be done on an instrument has musical, emotional, and artistic value. and by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. Burning it, smashing it, playing it with bows, hammers, sticks, fingers, Playing the same chord for 3 years EVERYTHING.


Now, a lot of you are probably thinking one of 2 things right now. The first is that I'm a pretentious ****, in which case I take your views onboard and completely ignore them. The second viewpoint is more interesting, and its probably some variation on 'Well yeah, different sounds/things are cool!', so, I add another element to that mix. Extremely difficult playing. By the logic presented above, its another sound, another technique. It has value equal to that of any other technique.

But then again...a lot of music has the 'DIY ethic'. Thats cool too. I like a lot of it.

A lot of other music has the 'let the computer do it' ethic, particularly in trance or techno styles of music. Thats cool too. Unless you're the kind of total **** who thinks anything reproduced by a computer has no soul.

Now, both of the things I just mentioned have pretty big audiences. Punk and techno are HUGE.

But music with a great deal of virtuosity generally isn't. Why?

And there lies the crux of this thread. I believe virtuosity is no less valid than ANY other musical theory, ethic or idea. Its lack of mainstream acceptance is largely cultural in my opinion, since the DIY ethic is strong in rock music, and virtuosity has largely fallen by the wayside in favour of songs that are easy to sing or hum along to, rather than songs intended to convey emotion, setting, circumstance, or philosophy.

And I'm challenging anyone who wants to debate with me, to try and raise a valid argument or example for virtuosity being ANY less of a valid tool than any other. I know a lot of people will see a lot of different sides to this. I know I'm going to get replies that say 'virtuosity isn't the problem, is excessive virtuosity'. Those replies are fine. But I want you to QUALIFY what you think. I want to know how much virtuosity is too much and WHY. I want answers, reasons, theories, DEBATE.

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Now playing on Winamp: Vibrasphere - Forever Imaginary
via FoxyTunes

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