
Originally Posted by
Carlo Borromeo
It's really sad that there are still people who guage the quality of a song or the level of musicianship on how fast a guy can play, how many chord changes there are, how odd-timed the beats are. None of that matters. Music is not a sport, it's not a race, it's not a boxing match.
Speed, dexterity, how high a note a singer can belt how, how fast a drummer can roll, none of that matters. All of these are tools and should be used when necessary, or when the need arises, but should never be the basis of quality.
Music is an artform like literature or film. Do you judge the quality of a book by how many hard-to-understand words you found? The grammar? How many pages it has? The paper that was used? No, you don't. If you did, then you're an idiot. You judge a book by how good the story was. Did it move you? Scare you? Make your laugh? If it worked, then it worked.
Do you judge the quality of a movie by how great the special effects or the sound is? Take note that except for a few exceptions (Lord of the Rings, Titanic), the Best Picture winner at the Oscars and the ones who get the technical awards are a different set of people. I can usually tell how BAD a movie will be when I'm watching their THE-MAKING-OF trailers, and all the people being interviewed can talk about is the art direction, the sound, and the special effects. Don't believe me? Watch THE-MAKING-OF videos of the Star Wars prequels.
Back to music. For me a song works if I can relate to it. If a song is supposed to make me wanna rock out, songs from AC/DC and The Rolling Stones, Audioslave, a few Greenday songs, they always work. I don't worry how easy or difficult the song is.
Do you think an AC/DC song would improve if it were played by Dream Theater? I thought so/didn't think so.
There you go.