[Trombone-l] Artistry

[Daniel Pliskin]

OK.  I’m guilty of
lateral thinking, but the Kaplan story got me thinking about pop music and that
got me thinking about an experience I had in the early 70s.

 

I spend a few years doing demos at Fantasy records.  I played guitar at the time, so there was
lots of work.  If I wasn’t laying down
tracks, I would practice in an empty studio.

 

One afternoon, I was sitting in studio A, checking out the
mixing board.  It was different, but not
that different from the one in studio B. 
But studio A was considerably larger and anybody who was anybody wanted
to record there, even though the room sounded bad and the piano was out of tune.  

 

Anyway, I was sitting in the engineer’s chair when this crazed
guy came in and wanted to know who I was and what I was doing there.  I explained that I did a lot of work at demo Fantasy
and was just checking out studio A.

 

At that point he started to go into this, possibly drug
induced, rant about how any pop artist, worth his salt, listened to the top
five pop stations and charted what the most popular tempo, key, chord changes,
subject matter are tunes were.  To “create”
a top pop tune, one needed to incorporate all of the most popular musical
ploys.  

 

I was a little taken back but I couldn’t get a word in
edgewise, so I listened to him go on and on. 
Then I glanced down, to see a Credence Clearwater album sitting on the table.  His picture was on the cover.

/

I guess Frank Zappa kind of agreed with Fogerty, when he
talked about the failure of composers, when they chose to write things that
were completely different, rather than using musical ploys that had been proven
effective.  

 

I suppose there’s a fine line.  Zappa had a reputation for writing things
that were different, but at least he had a reputation.  Imagine all of those composers who went over
the line and no one has ever heard of them. 


/

I suppose Kaplan is guilty of poor execution, poor
technique, while Fogerty is guilty of a lack of artistry.  Giving Kaplan the benefit of the doubt, it’s
interesting to note that without technique artistry goes unnoticed.  

 

As such, I suppose it’s time to stop rambling and get back
to practicing.

 

DanP



_________________________________________________________________
Send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills.
http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_speed_122008