There is this Facebook group where I and my husband are members. It's a group for guitarists. This group has 36,000+ members. I am not sure if all of the members are actually guitarists or musicians, what I am sure about is that most of those who are active in posting and commenting in this group are obviously musicians, mostly guitarists, on different levels of experiences and caliber as musicians. Some look old but sound young while others look young but sound old. Well, we could not really tell by just looking at their profile pictures.
Anyways, the purpose of this post is to just talk about how I see art (in this case the art of playing a musical instrument). I am not a musician myself, my husband is. Although I am not a musician I know music, I listen to a wide variety of music. I grew up around musicians, most of my family members are musicians so I grew up seeing how music is made, and how music. Now, the Facebook group I was talking about earlier is very active, members are always posting videos of themselves playing music. Most of the posts are cover songs but there are also those who post their original music. But there are also those who post stuff like, "Who is better, Kurt Cobain or Steve Vai.
Well, I find this kinds of posts somewhat ridiculous because it would be impossible to compare Steve Vai and Kurt Cobain, they are two very different musicians. But there are those members in this Facebook group who compare these two musicians and most of them say that Vai is obviously the "real" or the "better" guitarist. They point out that Cobain is not "skilled" enough to be considered "good." I could not agree on what these people say. i have nothing against Steve Vai, in fact he's even one of my favorite guitarists, but I think that it is wrong to judge musicians by technical skills. Vai has impeccable technical skill and it perfectly suits the kind of music he creates. On the other hand, Cobain attack music in a different way. His kind of music does not require the kind of athletic and technical aspect that is needed in Vai's music. this is what most of those who post in that group somewhat miss to see. Art is subjective. What is good for Vai could be bad for Cobain and vice versa. real musicians could easily see this. What is important in making music is not the degree of technical difficulty that is needed to produce the artwork, what is important is the effect of the artwork on the target audience.
Well, that is just my view and I am not even a musician.
