by Stu Beef » 29 Oct 2013 22:28
No no, I wanna answer this one seriously.
Honestly, like most things it almost takes a bit of effort to truly be BAD at them, rather than just ok/whatever/meh (though to many artists "ok" is essentially THE WORST POSSIBLE THING TO BE). Plenty of people ( I do this too) like to do the thing where they barely try at something and their immediate reaction is "OH I'M SO TERRIBLE I DON'T WANNA DO THIS". I mean, yeah, of course whatever you do is gonna be shit because you aren't even really doing the thing you're trying to do. It's like dipping your toe into a pool and instantly shooting back and declaring, "oh yeah, yep, I'm an awful swimmer."
I suppose we aren't really talking about that though, we're talking about people we believe to be making some misguided effort only to end up with an OBVIOUSLY terrible product. Y'all seem to be fixated on the production side, offering up silly techniques that you probably consider tasteless, trite, etc. I'm not here to declare those unwarranted, but I think being a bad MUSICIAN is a lot more than trying to copy Skrillex (or something I guess? is that the universal objective quality for bad? I just kinda skimmed through).
I'm gonna talk about tonality, because even though it's "dead" I'm sure if you tuned into a pop station and heard some 12-tone/serialist shit you'd lose your gourd (not necessarily because you don't "get" it, but why the fuck would they play this). According to one of my theory professors, some asshole once described music as "unseen matter". If you think about it, music is probably the most abstract medium of art we've got. There isn't a whole lot of tangible stuff to go on, yet everyone seems to know when they hear it what good music is, or even what that music is trying to communicate!
Obviously it's not a god damn accident; "good" musicians are often incredibly consistent in their production of "good" music, and these days professionals are EXPECTED to be able to handle and excel in many different genres. So what makes the kid in their bedroom worse than these guys; bad even? Well, s/he's probably lacking in experience, education, resources, time, and much much more! Does that make them a bad musician...well...they are certainly probably making bad music! I'm not implying that JUST because they're young or JUST because they're not properly educated is what is causing the badness. I was certainly young and ignorant for most of my life (pretty much still am), and hell, even though I choose to listen to mostly metal and hip-hop, I can still jam out in the orchestra.
The reason that this kid doesn't know any better is because they don't know how to listen! It has nothing to do with preference of a certain style because, y'know what, the differences between most genres are almost completely negligible in a macro sense. This person hasn't built up a substantial library in their head that allows them to understand just how this shit works. And when I say listen I do mean physically with the ears and your "inner ear". How else are you supposed to read a passage and know how to play it the first time? Beethoven was pretty much deaf by the end of his life (and I mean, yeah, some of his latest works weren't the greatest) but damn, you think you could out write him? If you put this collection of sounds in the context of a piece or a key or a phrase, you have to realize that the context that they exist in dictates where they GO. In nearly all styles it's about motion/direction. If you have no understanding about what your writing is telling you (and I don't just mean do you have complete technical, descriptive knowledge of the factors that are driving your work. A lot of what I do is deliberated yes, but in a very innate/visceral way) then how could you possibly write something worthwhile?
Music should speak to you, and I don't mean in some abstract/spiritual kind of way. If you are versed in the music of whatever culture you come from, music works in pretty specific ways. I'm not gonna elaborate on that, because I don't really find it necessary for this discussion, but that is basically my point. If you can't "hear" what you're writing; if you can't in anyway understand how it works, then you are a bad musician. If you wanna sit on a shitty loop for a minute because it sounds bangin' to you, then you go off and fuck with something else well, I guess it depends how that actually ends up working out, I mean, some may call you tasteless, but if you can justify it I dunno if I could call you a bad musician (though I'd probably be inclined to call your music bad).
Now I'm worried that I made it seem like it's easy to be a good musician. No, you're still probably shitty ok. Being able to hear things is the BASIS of being a musician. People will say "yeah, fuckin duh, you listen to music asshole" but now that I'm done being super general I will say the next step (pretty much the first step) is differentiating the certain subtleties that I glossed over earlier. Ex. I have a melody here, how do I approach it, what notes are emphasized and how, if it's going to be put into the context of a certain style what am I gonna specifically do to reflect that. That's just one element, but you get the idea.
e. It's not entirely clear, but the reason I bring up tonality is because if you are in the key of Buttholeflat and you play a major buttholeflat chord and then play the dominant of that, I bet you're gonna wanna go right back to butthole because your EAR is telling you. That kind of harmonic direction is still present, even in extreme genres like metal.