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Originally Posted by David Spearritt Which is also a common refrain from know nothing young people who don't have a frame of reference for standards yet.
Most young things in the music biz these days cannot play their instruments, they have no vocal, instrumental, or compositional technique to think of. All they have on their side is youth. Banking on this alone yields a very short term investment with ordinary returns. |
I'm coming from the opposite side of this. I'm older, have been playing and recording since the early Sixties, and have a pretty experienced perspective.
To be fair, many of the folks in the "good old days" couldn't play or sing very well either, which is why "The Wrecking Crew" and others did most of the playing on almost every Sixties single that was a hit. Even Brian Wilson didn't want his own brothers playing on their records
And they didn't have "Autotune" then, but they did piece together takes and edit the hell out of everything.
All in all, the musicianship (particularly drummers today) is on a higher level than it was in the Sixties because so many young kids have grown up having to learn musical styles that are much more difficult to play (i.e. metal) than a Carole King song. Fortunately, the Carole King song will still BE played a couple decades later
At any rate, I've heard a lot of great acts live ...without their studio help...and the old bands sounded just as bad in many cases (not all) as a new young band would without the studio help.
The main difference between past times and now is that the quality of the songwriting itself has changed, or should I say, what determines a "great song" today, or a "hit song" even, is different than it was. There are few Billy Joel's or Paul Simon's out there now, much less Jim Webbs or Lennon/McCartneys.
JMHO.
TH