Inventive? Imaginative? Original? Well Written? Uncliched?
Not sure I could put Evanesence into those boxes - ignoring Bjork!
Evanesence
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Inventive? Imaginative? Original? Well Written? Uncliched?
Not sure I could put Evanesence into those boxes - ignoring Bjork!
RacerX is pretty much riff with more riffage over the top, and then Jeff Martin doing some awesome wailing on top of that.
But then, Evanescance are pretty much a backing band for Amy Lee... personally, I quite like them for pop-metal-ish stuff.
I know. Whilst I appreciate Lysander's point about better being subjective, I just cannot fathom why anyone would consider someone as temporary and linear as Amy Lee a great musician. Yes she may be able to sing (on record, but even that is subjective - melodyne anyone?), but in my opinion being a good singer does not make you a great musician. Anyway, each to their own i suppose.
I don't think that Amy Lee is a great musician. However, I do think she has a talent for writing catchy, likeable songs. Whether than makes a good musician is a matter of personal taste and experience, which I don't share in this instance.
Because she is good musician. What she does with voice and piano would defend itself at pretty good standard just about anywhere in music world. Temporary or linear doesn't come into play. Whether it's up to you liking is also irrelevant. Something either is well played and sang or it isn't.
In that case you've just looped over and voided your previous tyrrade. If you take away singer bit as valid pretense to title of musician, that would make Bjork just a girl with funny accent and asthmatic text delivery?
What makes a 'good musician' seems very hard to define. Autumatically taking into account that everyone's taste is different, I'd say it would be a mix between being technically proficient, writing accessible music, and being able to write original songs and play them to a good standard. Any of these three would work, though a mix would be better.
Take ABBA, for instance. Benny and Bjorn - I would say - cover all three bases. They have a very high understanding of the geography of music theory [just look at the score for Chess] but were able to write very popular songs using their knowledge, playing around with different ideas to what pop music had seen up till that point.
Take another end of the scale - a composer like Ligeti or Bartok. A lot of their stuff was considered off the wall and cacophonic, but given their understanding of music theory and originality this would also make them good musicians.
So who isn't a good musician? Quite simply, someone like Britney. Atomic Kitten etc. These people don't write their own music and can hardly sing. They're just results of a manufacturing process.
Now for the difficult one - Lacuna Coil. Would they be considered good musicians? I'd have to argue that they're not. Cristina can't sing [her live vocals are poor and she's hammered with autotune on disc], their song-writing is not original and their 'accessible' songs are not that good [again, personal opinion]. They are very hard-working musicians which is why they've got to where they are.
Arguable, since many people consider Evanescence to be terrible live. As previously said, studio performances are not necessarily valid examples of performance ability.
My comments about bjork were more about her songwriting than her singing. I would say Matt Bellamy's vocals sound more asthmatic though! Perhaps that and his overuse of falsetto are the main reasons why I can't listen to Muse for more than 5 minutes at a time!
Very true.
Though if coming from the 'elitist' perspective, an experienced musician can recognise well written music, even though as you say 'good' is hard to define (and disregarding any question of taste). Like I know nothing about Art and I hate most modern art, but a trained artist can probably recognise the ability of a modern artist by looking closely at what they've done - their experience enables them to derive value from the subtle efforts, even though most people would miss it completely.
By the way, if you think AutoTune is powerful you should look at Melodyne. It is truly scary what can be achieved with that!
I wrote at length about my take on it on previous page, funnily enough, also mentioning Benny. I take you didn't read through the thread? I will always disagree with anyone trying to define good musician by mixing his personal taste to it - good musician is good musician, regardless whether you like what they play. Michael Bolton - pap material, impossible to listen to, excellent workshop. Very good musician. Bob Dylan. Great artist, poet, performer, a true icon. Awful, awful musician. Credit where it's due. It's that easy.
Actually it would make them good or bad composers. Not musicians.
People who don't write their own music can be good musicians. Case and point - Frank Sinatra - 324 singles, 102 albums. Performed well over 3200 songs in his career. Contributed, partial lyrics, to 7 (that's seven) of them. One heck of a musician though. Similarly - the aforementioned Mark Knopfler - can't sing for his life, musician he is, however, of legendary proportions.
As for Christina Scabbia and her live workshop skills, this is truly difficult one to call - I know she is capable of very clean vocals in small audiences, and a lot of musicians fail badly without their own sound engineer at open/festival venues. Personally I think she's excellent, and would do much better without the group of very average musicians behind her in Lacuna Coil. Similarly - a lot of musicians just don't do very well in recording process. Metallica is always better live than on records - the sound is better and has more variations, the playing is always tighter, delivery is more expressive. Another very fine example, and partially on topic as well - Bjork - known to be absolutely impossible to capture adequately in studio due to character of her vocal performances - it took 15 engineers to lay 11 tracks down on her "Debiut" album.
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Though I agree with your ethos, saying someone is a good musician is still subjective and any experience as a musician, producer, critic or manager doesn't make any difference. You may think Bob Dylan is a terrible musician, others will disagree. You could then argue that being a producer enforces your opinion but this still a] makes you sound like nero in his previous post [apart from the fact that your using your empirical knowledge as producer to reinforce your view] and b] proves that it's still an opinion. There is no black and white answer to whether someone is or is not a good musician - because 'good musician' is still a subjective term regardless of one's experience or personal definition.
You're just agreeing with my previous post. Britney would be a good musician if she could sing. Atomic Kitten could be called good musicians if they could sing. But they can't.
Absolutely disagree. Why is it that you guys to overcomplicate what is, after all very simple task. Surely when you see someone draw with a pencil you can tell if they can draw or not. When you taste someone's cooking you can tell if they know what they're doing or not. Or when you read a book, it is obvious to you the author has a good story telling ability. You might not like the tone of the drawing, you might not like the storyline, you might not be a particular fan of garlic or prawns - but surely, you are capable of appreciating someone's skill? It's just the same with music. Personal taste has nothing to do with judging someone's skill as musician, instrumentalist or artist. Ever. Amy Lee plays few chords of Immortal on the piano, starts singing, her diaphragm moves, voice rise to the air. 30 seconds later you might think to yourself "that's self endulging emo crap" but by god - surely you can see the girl can play and sing. If you must have some detachment from musical taste scale then use this - if she was your daughter you would wet yourself silly from happiness watching her play and sing.
I don't think I am agreeing with your post. Britney would be good musician if she could do anything at all. She doesn't have to sing to be good musician. If she at least was good at one musical talent - be it whopping a triangle with a small stick - as long as you could say "that's actually some triangle whooping skill on that girl" she would be just fine as a musician. Unfortunately - as far the world is concerned - she is to music what a massive crack in the floor of Tate Gallery is to Michelangelo scalpturing.
The fact that we're even having this debate shows that it's not as black and white as it should be. Yes - I agree - it should be just a matter of appreciating an artist's skill but some people can't even do that. I've seen people say Opeth are totally untalented morons, I've seen people spit out Gordon Ramsay's food, I've seen people say Kubrick was nothing but an overrated egoist, tossing off onto celluloid.
I'm not trying to be difficult but not everyone is equipped with the same mental circuitry which means they can appreciate an artist's skill. No-one will universally say an painter is skilled and no-one will universally say a musician/chef/whatever is skilled. Why? Because everyone has a different idea of what skill is based on their culture and their own experiences.