JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Collabs are rampant these days!

It all comes down to taste. Talent? What good is fast hands and a good ear if nobody likes your stuff? Is B.B. King a less talented guitar player than Steve Vai? I guess you could say so. Is Steve Vai better? Because he's faster? Or is talent some innate ability to sound "good?" To whom?

Talent is important to teachers, managers and critics. Love of music is important to musicians. The ability to communicate feeling is important to listeners.

If you want to be a critic, then learn to discern who is "talented" and who is not. Who is "shallow" and who is not. Bud don't be surprised if others disagree with you. Then you should make some sort of educated pronouncement.

"The Beatles were a guitar band, something that was waning in the middle sixties, with an approach to harmony that was somewhat of a throwback to the late fifties amalgamation of pop and rockabilly. Their meteoric success, brought on by the shrewd business maneuvering of their manager, Brian Epstein, put them in a position where they could either imitate their successful pop rock ditties, or try to expand their audience by synthesizing styles.

So they turned to their producer, Sir George Martin, whose knowledge of Classical music and the English Music Hall gave some structure to their excesses of composition, fueled by drugs and the immature megalomania of the superstar."

So, I just wrote that. Well, I don't believe it, but I'll bet it would sound compelling to a lot of folks. Instead of pronouncements, I'd rather see critics write: I did or didn't like that song...and here's why. Heck, the very reasons why so and so doesn't like something may be exactly the reason why I do!

The truth is, people will look for all kinds of reasons to make excuses for their own taste. But in the end, what difference does it make? If you like it, listen to it. If you don't like it, and you're not studying it, then leave it alone. But don't call it a "value" judgement to anyone but yourself. It's not. It's a matter of taste.

That is, by the way, what I consider to be the genius of Brian's rules for the judges of the JPF Music Award Contest. Brian tells the judges: Does it move you? ....and that's it. Those are the judges' instructions. Not, "Listen for recording flaws. Are the songs harmonized correctly? Do the lyrics make sense? Does the chorus have a lift? Is there a four line bridge? and on and on." That stuff is for teachers and students. People who are learning are often (not always) best served by developing skills in creating things that are structured similarly to things that have worked in the past. When Picasso studied art, he learned to copy the masters, then went off into his own thing. But then, the critics held him to the rules of the student, not recognizing the value of the free, unrestricted creator. And it is ever so.