aaron peacock -> RE: What's up with this newfangled culture of "interpreting" others intrepretations? (Dec. 13 2020 13:13:21)
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Ok, here I attempt a series of strawmen, ermmm a summary: Me: "what's up with verbatim copies of Paco de Lucia pieces on Youtube" Internet: "clearly you need to attempt a verbatim copy of a Paco de Lucia piece in order to understand it" Me: "ok, but what if I just get the general gist of it and elaborate it my own way?" Internet: "no good. Must be verbatim." Me: "Can I use my smallest finger?" Internet: "No. also, your thumb is too short." (ok, the last part didn't occur, i'll admit) Internet: "Look, if you want to understand Paco de Lucias music, just learn how to play it, the experience will teach you" Me: "Ok, sounds true! but I wasn't actually asking for anyone to explain the mysteries of Paco de Lucias music, but I certainly appreciate learning about it, although I'm not going to learn his pieces for fear of infecting what is otherwise a clean stupid mind full of my own ideas, due to the fact that I don't want to accidentally spit out PDL falsetas in MY bulerias, and me being incapable of internalizing it beyond a first pass without actually emitting it from time to time, because, unlike certain assertions, I DO consider Flamenco a partially improvisatory music, even at odds with PDL's own statements on the fact, that I think come from "own-house-shame" because jazz has as much structural ties as flamenco and everything besides key harmonic structures and the essential notes of a melody is simply baroque ornamentation, elaboration on a theme, and flamencos do it all the time, even if the individual phrases being assembled are pre-made, and herein lies the danger of verbatim learning for ME, in particular, as I won't be able to resist the pull" Internet: "Sounds like a personal problem. Better just stick to acting like a humble worm and practice Pacos licks" Me: "So, if you worship this guy precisely because of the new interesting approaches he took that still managed to capture essences of flamenco harmony and traditions, yet it's not ok to be original because what if my original stuff isn't as good as Pacos, or maybe not even as good as his throwaway pile? " Internet: "Security!" Me: "Wait a minute, who runs this scene?" Internet: "This theory disproves your ability to do things, therefore you aren't actually doing them. I'm also a perfectionist and therefore any attempts you make at creativity will be shot down" Me: "I sense that this is more about primate posturing and TBH guitar-players are the people most interested in guitar-solo material, none of these odd attitudes I've seen expressed here are reflected in the actual Flamenco musical events I've been to, and I live right next door and pre-covid hopped over for a weekend, it's just a few hours drive...it's really more about people, song, dance, feeling. Sure there's essential structural stuff you need to know if you want to play it. I can hear and see just fine, thank you." Mark Indigo: What, no Ruben Diaz videos? (I sweat just watching him sweat.) I agree that Paco de Lucia was an amazing meteoric player and explorer. Having original pieces that vary from a faithful rendition of a given palo and are actually fusions = something to cover. I'm saying that the English Speaking World takes it to another level. It's part and parcel to a set of attitudes I've noticed, as in places where folks there know more technical details about a particular Japanese cooking technique or Vietnamese herb cultivars etc than the folks in the place of origin! The difference is that it's disconnected from it's context, all intellectual. In Italy, fresh tomatoes are dirt cheap or come from a family member, so you aren't being extravagant if you cook with them in lieu of sauce. In Iberia, many meat recipes call for litres and litres of wine, and this is not extravagant in a place where every farmer has a few barrels fermenting under his house. Flamenco music is not ABOUT light-speed picados, which can certainly be present where called-for and well-done, but ultimately the rhythm and compas dominates and plows ahead. Tomatito or even Paco de Lucia can certainly play well, but if he's accompanying he's not going to noodle-doodle around. But i can see where both new guitar students and old appreciators of Paco de Lucia can agree upon his greatness, as a player and as a composer and as an interpreter. I'm not criticizing Paco de Lucia, of course. I'm not criticizing Samuelito, or Grisha (who is a musical sponge and librarian and interpreter that is so connected to his genius that he just ends up amazingly good, and I'll pretty much put him on a pedestal simply from watching him elegantly change tunings!? in the middle of show, that string stretchy thing, and 1-2-3 he's back in action and in-tune!!) I'm definitely critical of the psychology and attitudes I'm seeing on display here, and I'll admit to partially trying to draw these out to illustrate this back to anyone who cares to see it, FWIW. I'm pretty sure that even on the "hot rod guitar player path" (which I am not on, I'm more on the "old hound dog plays with feeling" path) most athletic coaches and trainers of any worth these days, most teachers and child development specialists, etc will give short shrift to self-limiting ideologies. People whose job is to bring out the excellence in others will find more success in removing all the mental baggage and directly apprehending the core kernel of the issue. I'm learning about metalurgy, and the carbon-iron phase diagram is sufficient basis to begin to play with and learn about the characteristics, and you will, of course, find lifetimes to discover and many clever clever blacksmiths, but it all starts with that understanding of the various crystal structures iron can form with carbon (and other things) and the role that temperature and time play in that. Cold quenching to create martensite was only discovered about 2k years ago, or so. Obviously the principles guide, but the blacksmith also intuitively knows from years of experience the different colors, temperatures, his forge, the places in the forge to find a reducing heat vs oxidizing heat, etc. Programming computers: once you know what Fetch Decode Execute means, what memory addresses are, you can basically understand that programming computers involves manipulating memory addresses (registers are a kind of memory too, lol). You can run with this info. If you play around with microcontrollers or low-level code at all (old DOS or Unix C programmers, whatever) you can understand principles that no shiny "new" techno-babble can baffle or boggle. You can apply these principles like a map. If you have a map you don't need to drive around aimlessly, even if it looks like you are just going right,left,right,left, if you know the map in your head you can go where you wish to and always know where you are in relation to it, given some stars/moon/coastline, orientation (compass bearing...)
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