Nuc
Senior Member
Mr. P said:Its funny. In the late sixties my great uncle complained of the current music.
I remember him saying, they only use 2 or 4 cords, thats not music. He hated it.
I found it difficult to understand.
His background? He played with Perry Como. Now I understand.
There's always a generational shift and people can't understand the new generation's music.
It's interesting how music devolved during the course of the twentieth century. It started out with orchestras which had an enormous amount of instruments and performers. Then big band jazz came about with less instruments and variety but still a lot. The next shift was towards small jazz groups, blues and country usually with about 4-7 musicians and starting to emphasize mainly guitars and drums. Then the Beatles and rock took over and it was only guitars and drums. Now the most popular form of music is rap and we don't even have guitars and drums, just drum machines and a couple of guys screaming.
I know that's oversimplification but in broad terms that is a good portrayal of the winnowing of the sound spectrum among the dominant musical forms of the last 100 years or so.
The tragedy to me is that this latest shift is eliminating musicians altogether. It's computer programmers and guys who shout. It may take talent to program a drum machine and a sequencer but it's not a real time process like playing an instrument. It's more like computer work. That's what I think is significant about the most recent generational shift.