Ricardo -> RE: This is really weird (Feb. 3 2008 20:50:31)
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Ricardo likes Jimmy Rosenberg and he is well worth checking out though a little glib for my taste. About the gypsy hot jazz guys. Yeah, amazing technique and melody and rhythm and feeling, true virtuosos, each and every one. But lets be honest, the originality of each is so subtle, it is pointless to compare them with artists of other genres. My point is, much like in flamenco, a player is described good or bad by how more or less "flamenco" his playing is, like wise, these hot jazz guys are ALL trying to be as "Django" as possible. The closer to django, the better they are. Right down to their guitar, technique, choice of songs, composing style, and even mustache. But I am not knocking anything about that, it is a cool genre. But within it, when i see guys playing like Birelli, Stochelo, etc, I see guys improvising essentially in a LINEAR fashion. Great, and nice and melodic, and they have speedy patterns like any shredder. But if you listen to Django a lot, you notice how much more "free" he was with improve, stretching out more harmonic, arpegios connecting and things. HArd to describe, but he is not "stuck" in those linear patterns, like you see Stochelo here, up and down. And for me personally, ONLY Rosenburg exhibits that same freedom IMO...he moves up and down harmonically really free, very few picking patterns. Anyway, that is how I see it. About Becker. Yeah Air, and even that Serrana...he has a lot of depth. IN a guitar clinic, sure he is alone and showing his picking techniques and patterns, but when you hear his arrangements, all the counter point and stuff, it is really amazing. Serrana on record was AFTER he lost his ability to play guitar (lou gehrig's disease) and had a piano do those arppegios you see him do, and a whole orchestra doing the counter point in a really beautiful way. Hearing him play guitar on his early records, at 17 years old, it sounds like overkill all the guitars and speedy lines and crazy key changes and odd meters. But when you think that only shortly after he could not even feed himself, it seems appropriate he got so many notes down on tape before it was too late. "Too many notes" like in the mozart movie. Which "few notes" should he have cut out?? OK, no need to go on defending any more shred guys. My point is, there is value even in a seeming musical "exercise". It is all about taste, and not just the player's but the context of the genre AND the listener. What may be musical masturbation to one, could be pure profound genius to another. Ricardo
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