Have guitarists gotten dumber?

[Karloff]

with the exception of Joe Pass I think we've always been dumb.

[milod]

In ways I think Karloff almost hit the nail perfectly.

 

My biggest problem back in the '50s on forward has been memorizing lyrics to "pop" material. Most of it isn't that hard to figure chords for "by ear." My first "mix up the players" rock/standards band in '62-3 was all by ear except for the piano player who sometimes had a chart in front of him.

 

I used to have a video reference for Mundell Lowe talking on something like a late '50s tv show about guitar and learning to play. His point, and I think it remains valid, is that there are so many ways to look at guitar that there's never been a standard curriculum.

 

Personally, I've always wondered what the conversation would be like among Joe Pass, Segovia, John Lee Hooker, Herb Ellis, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Doc Watson, Django, etc., over a coffee about the guitar and its potential and its differences in usage and teaching.

 

One might note that Segovia was, in effect, himself self-taught although he knew reading and "music." I watch vids of Segovia, Pass, Travis, Kottke and Atkins especially since I'm mostly a fingerpicker nowadays, and I keep being enlightened as to the differences in technique more than the similarities. Some are subtle, some very obvious. Yet each in his own way (Kottke still) a virtuoso who appears to have kept learning and improving - but basically arrived at how to play "self taught" but watching others as they learned.

 

When I started guitar in '63, 3/4 of the dorm rooms where I started college had a guitar, and it seemed that the rest would have a banjo or a mandolin. So there weren't "lessons" per se, but you had a lot of people to watch who did pretty similar material in terms of beginning basic picking. There were even some fingerpickers to watch. You looked at the chord charts in a songbook and you learned basic accompaniment in less than a month if you practiced a bit.

 

Now... I think a lot depends on the individual. Lessons, if there's an accord between the student and teacher, can make up for and should exceed what we were doing in the 20s through the '50s and '60s.

 

On the other hand, as has been noted, there's a potential weakness in "lessons" if the individual doesn't look and "feel" beyond them. Lots of "kids" my age simply thumped away on the Martins their folks bought them and were quite happy with basic chords or hitting a certain performance level. A lot of "lessons" today seem to be aimed in that direction.

 

So I'd say there are a lot of folks taking lessons to reach their goals - but their goals aren't as high as those who want more. Those who want more will still take from many inputs musically, and work hard to get into a higher degree of playing whether they are copying this or that player or not.

 

Clapton and Kottke - both my age plus or minus a month or three - both took stuff they were hearing and put into their own context. I really enjoyed listening to Clapton doing the old 1923 "Down and Out" (Bessie Smith had perhaps the most famous version) I'd been doing since '63 and the "feel" was so similar it was obvious a lot had been picked up from similar sources regardless that he was in England flatpicking and I and most guys I'd run with in '63-4 in the U.S. were mostly fingerpicking.

 

I first heard blues in the late '50s on my big multi-band console radio that had a 50-foot antenna. The one that hit me hard and probably most affected my "acoustic blues concept" was John Lee Hooker's "Tupelo." Then in '61 through '63 I was listening to the Harvard Square folkies at the Club '47 doing similar concept material.

 

For ages I thought digging up old records were the way to learn, and it helped. But where did all those old guys learn?

 

Same way today's "old folks" learned: They were watching other pickers and listening to records/radio. White guys watched black guys play and much of it got called "hillbilly," or "country" or later "rockabilly."

 

Black guys watched white guys and folks like Leadbelly did material you'd have to call "cowboy" ("When I was a cowboy, out on the western plain..."), variants of pieces from the British Isles filtered through the old "mountain music" tradition, and "Little Girl/Black Girl" that's as much a bluegrass standard as anything nowadays. I gotta add listening to Leadbelly brought me to buy my first 12-string (a cheapie Stella/Harmony) late in '63 to go along with my cheap classical. His version of "House of the Rising Sun" ain't anything like the "Animals" rock version except for the lyric; both date way, way back - and were first recorded anyway as "white" tunes. Interesting, I think.

 

"We" filter music through our own brain and sensibilities, whether technique, tunes or concepts. We either are creative or not, skilled or not. A very few combine the talent of creativity with skill to become legends when found at the right time and place.

 

I don't think pickers are dumber... they're just in a different world. Not better or worse. Different. With so many more media, I fear that nobody today, regardless of talent and skill, will become "names" as the guys in my and my parents' generations who arose in a unique time for music and music "business."

 

m

[cody78]

Very well put Milod, I too would love to see a conversation between Pass, Segovia, Ellis, Atkins, etc

The knowledge, opinions and ideas they would share would be fascinating.

[Marshall Paul]

I thought is was supposed to be the drummers that were the dumb ones.

[Karloff]

I thought is was supposed to be the drummers that were the dumb ones.

 

They're not supposed to be. It just turns out that way . Lol

[stein]

I thought is was supposed to be the drummers that were the dumb ones.

If you go by that philosophy that would make BASS PLAYERS the "smart ones".

[stein]

Personally, I've always wondered what the conversation would be like among Joe Pass, Segovia, John Lee Hooker, Herb Ellis, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Doc Watson, Django, etc., over a coffee about the guitar and its potential and its differences in usage and teaching.

 

 

 

m

 

 

Very well put Milod, I too would love to see a conversation between Pass, Segovia, Ellis, Atkins, etc

The knowledge, opinions and ideas they would share would be fascinating.

I think this is exactly what we are doing here.

 

Different names obviously, but I kinda think there is talent on this board that's as good as these guys, based on some of what has been posted that I've heard through the..... .

[jdgm]

With so many more media, I fear that nobody today, regardless of talent and skill, will become "names" as the guys in my and my parents' generations who arose in a unique time for music and music "business."

m

 

I very much agree with this. The level of technical skill I see in YouTube vids is just completely jaw-dropping, unbelievable - and it's invariably some guy or kid I've never heard of.

But you have to have the complete package these days and being an astoundingly proficient guitar player still isn't enough on its own.

People generally may have become less resourceful than in the past but that's debatable too.

[charlie brown]

And, let's not forget "overload," of the amount of "bands," the generally shorter attention spans, and patience

of the audience, themselves, these days. The '50's, especially the '60's, and early 70's, was a unique time!

There was what some might call a "nuclear explosion" of music and creativity, at that time that eventually led

to where we are now. There's no "going back," either. But, great players, singer/songwriters will always be

admired, and appreciated, "famous" or not. The trick is, not to do TOO MUCH over comparison, to the past!

That only invites discord, and missed opportunity....IMHO.

 

CB

[milod]

CB...

 

Back in the '20s through the '40s a lotta musicians became "known" thanks to radio, then movie "shorts" or even parts in movies. Heck, they were still playing some Cab Calloway and other "swing" shorts on the Saturday afternoon kids' matinee movies in the '50s before they got into the serial (often from the '30s), the cartoon and the B western or whatever at the time.

 

Add television in the late '40s into the '60s and you had three major U.S. networks plus radio (regardless with some payola), and names ranging from Chuck Berry to the Beatles became rapidly well known. Ditto the kids killed in that plane crash in Iowa that I remember only too well myself in '59. (Do you remember "Your Hit Parade" on early/mid '50s TV? with a stock group of singers doing the top pop hits of the day? I do. <grin>)

 

Yeah, I listen to some of these folks on Youtube in awe. But in some ways, they're really evolutionary.

 

As I see it, the splintering of audience and the huge increase of electronic media available means that unlike the audiences for Presley in '56. I remember listening/watching on Sullivan along with doggone nearly 83 percent of the entire U.S. television audience at the time as I later learned. Whether anybody "liked" Elvis or not, everybody knew who the guy was and basically the music he was performing.

 

Kinda ditto in '63 with the Beatles on Sullivan.

 

Now? Even the 50-somethings here are mentioning pickers' names I've never heard of, and that's less than 20 years younger than I am, although technically I'd be old enough to be papa to a 50-52 year old. But my grandparents knew about Presley and saw him on TV; ditto the Beatles for my grandmothers.

 

I just can't imagine any current artist having that degree of exposure not just of name but also of their music, not because of lack of ability, but splintering of media and audience.

 

m

[charlie brown]

Evolutionary, indeed! That's what I was referring to, when I said "led us to where we are, now," etc.

As to "dumber?" NO, not at all...IMHO. If anything, they're smarter, in that they work "smarter,"

instead of harder. More opportunities in WAYS to learn, for sure! As to ANY of this turning into

better music? Who knows? I'd say the percentage, compared to the amount put out, is about the same.

But, that's merely a guess, on my part. I have no "Hard Facts," either way.

 

CB

[Marshall Paul]

If you go by that philosophy that would make BASS PLAYERS the "smart ones".

Oh my God! that means Darwin was right then...

[Kaiser Bill]

Yes...I have yet to hear any of the "new agers" play a solo other than flogging their guitars. Its a sad commentary on today's music. Let's hope that the age of a decent guitar solo isn't gone. JMHO

[Marshall Paul]

It's OK mate, I'll play you one if you like.