Why is amateurism in music a good thing?

Not that it isn't great to listen to the results, of course. I like it in the same way I like seeing people bundled into police vans. I know they're DOING THE BEST THEY CAN in a CRUEL and DIVIDED SOCIETY by FORGING NEW COMMUNITIES with KINDER, EGALITARIAN VALUES and this question has probably been asked 10,000 times but NEVER to my satisfaction

i dont know, dave q, i dont know. it puzzles me. sure there are players that are "too good" and "pompous" about their playing. and surly i understand the hatred for them. (yngwie, elp, etc) but for the most part i look for skilled players with trained ears. not playing well = cred is a reletivly new thing no? everyone is emo = everyone is indie = everyone loves post punk (pop group, gang of 4) = amateurism is trendy (white stripes). its a big circle, soon funky, skilled players will be celebrated again. (andy gill produced the 1st chili peppers album)

so i guess its not a new thing. =P

― chaki, Saturday, 27 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think there's room for both and for individuals to be a mixture of both. Sometimes 'amateurs' fuck about with parameters and methods that 'professionals' disregard.

However there is some truth in what you say. Historically musicians in the UK have always looked to the US for inspiration (ok this was disrupted/interrupted by Punk). Steve Gadd, Nile Rodgers, Stanley Clarke etc. etc. People who are seen as being masters of their craft. And it seems that the general standard of musicianship is still better in the US. I think American musicians must just practice more (perhaps because the overall standard is higher - so they need to be at that standard to get work).

Perhaps the real question - was 'punk' anything but the spastic thrashings of an infantilised, enfeebled population, raging at their impotence at being unable to master even the crudest form of folk art that ever existed (i.e. rawk) and deciding to destroy all of it?

I don't think that theory holds much water since mainstream and prog rock in the UK in the 60s and 70s clearly had mastered the form pretty well as well as being very innovative. Punk however was a godsend to the inept musician who would never have made the grade before. Loads of them got a career that wouldn't otherwise have been possible.

I had a longer answer to this one Dave but the bottom line is that it sounds like this is something personal between you and punk rock (and maybe politics). Punk was a number of things besides what you list, chiefly a social movement rooted in genuine unrest: your response to your initial question suggests that you see this as something of a pose, but I think it's authentic & that the recent cultural tendency to dismiss conviction as affectation is rather unfortunate.

Also in re: your lit example: lots of primitivist writers (& painters) have made careers of it - your example has more to do with the printing craft, which is an inconspicuous consumable art, not a received art form like music drama literature painting (and film but who could care about film). Indeed primitivism has its champions in all arts. It's treated me quite well so obviously I am biased, but there you are.

1) Amateurs are far more likely than skilled professionals to discover a new and interesting way to make art; they are not set in their practice.

2) Remarkably interesting things happen in music when you have formally skilled and unskilled musicians playing together. (11-year-old Denardo Coleman and his classmates making an album together would not be bearable to hear, but Denardo + dad + Charlie Haden = _The Empty Foxhole_ = awesome.)

Because we like to think the brainy ones can't play from the heart.

(I meant to say: the technical adept musicians.)

John D - actually amateurism has treated all of us who ever got any enjoyment or recompense out of music ever well!

If I was to be honest I think the question is more about the political thing. (Trust me, the vast enjoyment I get from listening to [and occasionally creating] staggeringly inept, incoherent or misconceived music is the equal to or exceeding that given to the [equally paradoxical] well- meaning socially conscious sort who listens to a corrupt, amoral and sociopathic art form such as, mmmm, pop music!) Perhaps US amateurs are in that Harry Partch questing tradition, while the punk thing seems too uncomfortably close to deprived communities policing themselves by organising a tim-pot, corrupt hierarchy to keep the underlings in their place, expression-wise? (Or, more likely, the village mentality equivalent of same?)

Anyway, I was thinking more of 'amateurism'=contentment to work in established forms at a low level of skill, as opposed to 'primitivism'=not knowing or caring what 'established' or 'skill' is

(also integrate this thread's line with yr thread on/against costello, dave q?)

i still think EC's failure is his gutlessness wrt prog as a "genre"...

dave youre sounding all ayn rand on this one. i don't think it is wise to discredit the skilled musician and i don't really want to talk about that side of it. i do want to stick up for the unskilled musician. is there nothing valuable about childhood, innocence etc?? punk rock, diy, newer players etc. can bring elements to their music which just won't survive extensive musical training.

yr comparisons to other forms are not valid. writing is a completely different matter. I don't own much artwork made by others, but one of my favorites is a painting by some 6 yr old that i got at the thrift shop. I think John is OTM that this has to do with yr feelings abt punk. Obvoiusly some forms of music are best played by the highly skilled, like jazz and classical. other forms (ie punk) ar best left to the passionate novices. witness some of the shit that was created when the jazzoids in the 70's went a little too far down the rock/soul path. It started off fine in the 60's but eventually it devolved into disco. blah blah

There was a band around here called Willard that billed themselves as 'the sound of Fuck' now, if a listener wants to hear 'the sound of Fuck' are they really gonna get it from a Juilliard grad? (there are exceptions, of course) So if your question amounts to 'why do people like what they like?' well, then.... and i dare say that most music crit doesn't amount to much more than whether they like it or not. (no offense music writers, keep striving)

also stop picking on meg white, y'all

don't the brazen hussies do a covah of "forming" by the germs?

It's OK because I'm not as good as Pat Smear

'It started off fine in the 60's but eventually it devolved into disco'

I'm going to assume that anybody else who disagrees with me agrees with the above statement! Heh heh

I do think though that somebody whose muse is so fragile that it 'won't survive musical training' will sometimes produce worse stuff than somebody who never got trained in the first place. (It might be 'worse' in a more 'listenable'[i.e. have more to offer a wider range of people in that the musical cues will be more identifiable/audible] way)

Or, how is it that a muse is able to withstand a daily tsunami of 'oppression' but be crushed by a tiny bit of discipline?

I like skilled players much of the time, but I often have no problem with the "amateur". Music is for everyone, not just those who spend a jillion hours polishing their craft. (Tar me as a folkie, c'mon.) Celebration of purposeful amateurism while repudiating technique of any kind is just dumb, though. There's a place for both.

Well but I mean Nietzsche is the person to ask about this: he would say (and I personally think N. is in the end pretty juvenile but his Dionysus vs. Apollo schtick is pretty compelling), or might, that no muse survives discipline: that all discipline cheapens the muse: that if an artist subjects the muse to discipline and makes good work, it's a sign of the muse's great power, not of the merits of the discipline: and who can say that the unchecked amateur/primitive version of the disciplined performer might not have gone on to greater heights without discipline? No one can say, since you can't un-do the effects of reining yourself in.

Mind you I don't take one position on this: I'm a big Steely Dan fan, prefer later Pavement to earlier, etc. But I think you're going down the wrong road when you say a little discipline can't hurt anything: it can, and then it can't be fixed.

i dont think that muse is what i was getting at, but naïveté, or in other words, i think you can tell the difference between a child and an adult trying to use all their experience to imitate a child

also read my 'disco' statement not as a dismissal of disco, but more to try to offer an example of areas where musicos should not dare to tread. I'm not looking for disco FITE. but maybe im not understanding yr comment correctly. staunch defenders of musical training are prob not big disco fans??

(erm not to start this argt here but is that really what nietzsche argues? or the opposite?)

i want dave q to talk abt costello!!

who can say that the unchecked amateur/primitive version of the disciplined performer might not have gone on to greater heights without discipline? No one can say, since you can't un-do the effects of reining yourself in.

But see, I just don't buy your implicit value-system here at all. Acquiring technical understanding isn't tantamount to "reining yourself in"; on the contrary, it's giving yourself access to possibilities that are otherwise beyond your reach. As a musician and as a teacher, my experience has been that when you give people access to technical understanding in a constructive and self-directed way, the outcome is uniformly, unilaterally positive, both from their own point of view and the results in their own music: they feel good, they feel like they're better able to say what they want, and as artists and creative agents, they feel more, not less, free. I have never had a student who regretted learning something and felt it killed their muse, nor have I ever had that experience myself. If anything, a lot of the music I play takes more chances than it ever would have had I remained musically illiterate, because I feel more able to integrate those moments with a context that makes sense -- in other words, I can take gestures that on their own might seem incomprehensible, and place them in a narrative that makes them articulate musical statements -- which is part of technical understanding. You don't lose access to these techniques associated with "primitivism" or what-have-you. Technical understanding isn't equivalent to becoming a prog fiend, or Boulez, or Christian McBride.

For the greater part of my musical life I've largely been an autodidact, and for me the experience of learning these things has unequivocally been positive; perhaps part of that is due to the fact that it's often been self-motivated and self-governed. I think most of the negative things that people associate with technical understanding are more correctly blamed on dogmatic teaching styles, and the S&M element in the conservatory environment. Technical understanding isn't proscriptive, full stop, whether or not there are those who teach it as though it were.

Because it's exciting, dave.

Oh, and...

The daily tsunami of opression IS the muse, surely?

But see, I just don't buy your implicit value-system here at all Whoa whoa whoa: not mine, not mine. Just proposing something. As it happens I agree with you for the most part, although I'd still say that it's impossible to unlearn, and consequently there is certainly a downside to technical expertise. Evidence for this: go see a band who's never toured, then go see a band who's toured seven times. The former will fuck up a lot, but is the latter is less likely to generate excitement, because they're less likely to feel thrilled & dumbfounded & just generally lucky to find themselves on a stage in front of a bunch of people.

Just saying that experience/expertise comes at a cost. I think I have Blake on my side on this one. (Who admittedly could not have written Songs of Innocence and Experience without choosing the latter over the former)

Re 'oppression being the muse' - if it is, that's a shame because then EVERYBODY will have the same 'muse', and considering punk, are any of them oppressed by anything except hangovers? (then AND now)

About that Costello thread - I have no idea what I think about EC, give us a link and remind us?

John: glad that what I thought you believed isn't what you actually believed.

I still think, though, that you're confusing two different things, which is perhaps why Blake didn't call it Songs of Amateurism and Expertise! For instance, the pre-teen Mozart vs. the Sex Pistols reunion tour -- how does that fit into your equation? The real force you're getting at, I think, is the combination of the power of newness/novelty and the human tendency to become jaded and/or conservative as one grows older. My stance, personally, is that the former is somewhat overrated (or at least overemphasized), and the latter is overcomable -- indeed, that in music, one of the most reliable ways to stave off jadedness is to acquire technical expertise, since it allows access to new and articulate forms of creation, and gives one the power to understand things that seemed opaque before.

considering punk, are any of them oppressed by anything except hangovers yes

I pretty much agree with Phil. I've heard tons of examples of musicians describing what they do or teach others to do as first mastering your instrument, then trying to 'forget' everything and approach your instrument in a new way while still having all the benefits of being an experienced musician (which cannot be overestimated I think).

I'm counting down the minutes until the Shaggs are mentioned on this thread...oops, I guess they just were.

Mystery in music makes it interesting, and if some human mind has it all planned out (eliminating all chance), then it is less likely to be mysterious, but if someone who is not sure what they are doing (or lets chance play a role), then it would be different than what someone can plan out, and expand the bounderies of what music is. I think we have John Cage to thank for this. He wanted to not let his mind get in the way of what could be done. Art is there to be expanded, and this is done by being "attacked by people dismissing the very fundamentals." But this is all for modern art. There is also classical art where you embrace the fundementals, and of course many people combine these two to some degree.

Another concept that I thing is important in relation to what you are saying, A Nairn, is that all the training is only to prepare the musician so that he can 'get out of the way' of the music, let things happen without having to worry about the technical aspects.

I'm coming at most of this from an improvised music perspective, but I think it's pretty universal.

watching
the
detectives

dylan bvs costello = [?what?] vs "mere" technique and learning???

Obvious answer, but it depends on what you think "skill" and "dedication" are. Why does skill = technical chops? I won't buy your argument until you prove to me these can be equated (even equated for the purpose of argument). To draw a caricature of punk like you have done is also unfair, I think. Also, no offense intended, but, on a somewhat tangential note, sometimes it seems like you don't believe anyone is *really* oppressed. (I've gotten this feeling from you before in other threads, but I have no recollection of which ones.)

Many years ago, i witnessed the "spastic thrashings" of a punk band by the name of Rampant Scabies, and, far from "raging at their impotence...", they were just HAVING FUN. (How come no-one has mentioned the word FUN?) My immediate reaction was "If they can do that, so can I!!", and, days later, i bought a guitar. Surely I'm not the only one who started off with an experience like this, and moved on to more technically challenging stuff.

Perhaps the real question - was 'punk' anything but the spastic thrashings of an infantilised, enfeebled population, raging at their impotence at being unable to master even the crudest form of folk art that ever existed (i.e. rawk) and deciding to destroy all of it?

Hmmmm. Sounds like you've already made up your mind about it, no?

Personally I have nothing against skilled musicians, but I still think the Slits rocked harder than Aerosmith could ever dream of, and them learning to play their instruments like virtuosos would have resulted in a completely different band. I think you overestimate the serious-minded 'community' side of punk, too - that was more of an abstract thing, at least in 76-78.