Times like this, I don't envy you those free CDs, Derek.

I used to hear Matt from time to time in New York when we were on the same bill and though we are very different, I thought he was a pretty great technician at least. I haven't heard this recording, but maybe he isn't going at his full potential (not that technique is the only measure of musical potential).

Technique is overvalued.

Until you don't have the technique you need...
It is like air and sex, it is only problem when you don't have any.

What if you didn't recognize that there was technique you "needed," and as an artist were thus forced (as a matter of course, so it wouldn't feel like you were limited or being forced) to make a meaningful statement using the technique at hand? In other words, using your intellectual mind instead of your reflexes... ? Would that be outside the definition of a succesful artist?

That is: technique is not the answer to every musical problem. Thank heavens.

After 4'33 and Rauschenberg's blank canvas, other artworks require a technique of somekind. The reason it is still compelling to hear Axel Döner blow air through his trumpet is because he has refined that idea and uncovered a rich language in those sounds.
Also, his basic mastery of the trumpet make it possible to project those sounds and make them more useful.

Being a double bass player, I can get into hearing double bass players with chops playing the shit out of music I don't find compelling.
I still value hard work and discipline, and being able to play an instrument well is still too rare.

De-valuing technque and discipline is not a productive thing for the arts at this point. There may have been a period where that needed to happen, but that has passed.
I think redefining technical mastery is a more productive route.

I play a pretty mean set of Tupperware™ bongos.

In other words, I'm basically on the same page as Damon on this one. Though wanker does shoot the fish in the barrel w/ his/her observation that "technique is not the answer to every musical problem".

There are consequences from a systematic ossification of technical supremacy in a pedagogical framework: hear the current state of the American jazz establishment.

Who was it noted that Thelonious Monk would never be allowed to participate in the Thelonious Monk Piano Competition today?

I'm not urging that any artist stop working on their art, however that work is constituted. Technique is certainly part of that. Duh. In that sense I'm in agreement with you guys. I'm concerned more with the forces that gather around the artists, who find cash and self-advancement in promoting music as a kind of athletic event, privileging muscular reflexes over ideas.

The over-valuing of technique in the arts is a (possibly unavoidable) stream in the ageing of a culture, where professionalism triumphs over diversity, and "diversity" itself has become co-opted by a professional cult of scholarly pallbearers.

BWA HA HA ha haaaaaa!

"After 4'33 and Rauschenberg's blank canvas, other artworks require a technique of somekind."

As if art didn't require it beforehand. Give me a break - those are just your personal touchstones damon.

I love it when personal canonization assumes an identity of universal accord (the origins of so many of the squabbles on here incidentally)

I was pointing out two of the very few ideas that do not require technique and both are unrepeatable. Unless we are all going to sit around and do nothing, technique of somekind is necessity.

a necessity.

As the ever-astute Dan Warburton observed elsewhere: squabbles seem to sell the most pixels.

I'm concerned more with the forces that gather around the artists, who find cash and self-advancement in promoting music as a kind of athletic event, privileging muscular reflexes over ideas.

wanker, would you mind naming some names in this regard, I'd some on-the-ground examples.

Derek:

I don't pay attention to mainstream jazz festivals anymore, so citing those would just be a strong hunch on my part. Certainly I'd include some jazz radio stations and deejays. Bookers for larger clubs. And institutions like North Texas State, Berkeley High School, Berklee, etc, etc.

Perhaps they'd all say they're simply providing what the market demands -- or what audiences want, as Chet Baker observed years ago? (i.e. [paraphrasing], "Most people are only interested in how high you can play, how fast you can play, and how loud you can play.")

Quibble: 4"33" may not require any technique, but as a performance it can certainly benefit from the abilities of a seasoned performer. Stage presence is technique, too, yes?

Do you really have to hide behind the name "wanker"? Sure, it's not as shocking as "cunt", "fuckface", "shithead" or "cocksucker", but it's about on a par with dickhead, and what you have to say isn't dickhead-ish at all. (So reveal yourself, you.. erm, wanker!)
Not so sure about "ever-astute" (I'll settle for "partially conscious"), but I'll sit on the fence on this one (to quote John Barbirolli, "I've sat on the fence so long my arse is like a hot cross bun" - but the truth, I suspect, is perched right there). I agree with Damon that technique is crucial, and remain convinced that the best free improvisers are those cats who know how the play the shit out of the instrument to start with. The list is long.. Derek and Evan, Barry Guy etc etc - but also includes, as you mention, Axel Dörner, Greg Kelley, Peter Evans (all trumpeters, and that's significant: you can't fuck around and "pretend" to play trumpet.. any fool including me can blow some damp airy blasts through a metal tube, but you try and replicate Axel Dörner and you'll have a hard time)
On the other hand, a bit of untutored inspiration. Sure, Giuseppi Logan, Frank Wright, Arthur Doyle, Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich couldn't hold a candle to Benny Golson in a bop blowout, but what they did (have done) is unique and couldn't be taught by rote at places like Berklee.

Where's that Barbirolli quote from Dan? did he really say that?

Where's that Barbirolli quote from Dan? did he really say that?

Sorry - not excited just bad delay on this connection.

Also first wanker said:
Quibble: 4"33" may not require any technique, but as a performance it can certainly benefit from the abilities of a seasoned performer. Stage presence is technique, too, yes?

Maybe we could get Weasel Walter's comments on this.

Re: the Barbirolli quote, I'll ask my dad and see if he remembers. JB was the principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester for years, and my father saw him conduct about a zillion times (I never did: he died when I was 7), bought all his records and read everything he could about him. In any case, I'm pretty sure the quotation's genuine.. I make up a lot of shit but I'm sure I didn't invent something as juicy as that myself.
I look forward to a reply from "yet another wanker"!

Do you kiss your wife with that mouth, Dan? Keep it up & a bar of Lifebouy is going right in your kisser.

I can’t keep all these wankers straight, but appreciate the semi-particulars WR. Railing against evils of the establishment valuing technique over creativity seems a bit like spitting off a cliff to me: No real effect other than emptying the saliva supply. I read recently on an online discussion board about Wynton’s take last year from his Artistic Director gig @ Jazz at Lincoln Center: a cool $1,069,336 (that’s over 3x the salary of the CEO). Proof that positioning and chops can translate into exorbitant cash sums even in music with a lower single digit market share.

Dan Warburton:

"...you can't fuck around and 'pretend' to play trumpet..."

I have done something that could be described as just that for about ten years. I don't know the notes and may never learn them. That said, techniques develop with playing, unavoidably. If I keep playing, eventually I'll be good at something...

Chiming in with my agreement with Damon + Dan on the technique issue, even though I have a fondness for some folks who have just what they need to get by and/or express their own unique visions (some of the ones Dan mentioned, but also lots of blues players, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, good garage bands, etc.) - But then a lot of those folks do have a certain type of technical adeptness of their own, like Robert Pete Williams and Fred McDowell who are both really proficient on the guitar...

Dan's especially right-on about the trumpet players - it's a hard instrument to even play badly, let alone play well, and the players he cites are top-notch. Guitarists, of which I am one, can sometimes do o.k. with limited technique if there's good ideas and sonic choices being used. Could have something to do with the relative young age of the electric guitar and all that's available to us in terms of pickup-amp-effects choices these days. But even with that, there are times when I meet head-on with my limitations and can see that it's time to sit down at home and practice some basics on the acoustic.

As to examples of over-valued technique monsters, I'll name a few names = Charlie Hunter (incredible ability/yucky music), Al DiMeola, John Pattitucci, most fusion electric bass players (too many to list), and drummer-wise I chafe at the super-chop dudes (cobham, neil peart, simon phillips, even Pheeoran sometimes) even though some here can probably cite music they've done of interest. So once again it can come down to a taste issue, cuz I still have a fondness for some of the Holdsworth/Bruford stuff I listened to in my late metal teens. There's even players in the improvised/creative music realm who just leave me cold, even though I'm sure they probably are exciting to other listeners - for instance I'll listen to Doyle or Wright any day over Tim Berne, even though that's no slight on Berne.

"spitting off a cliff": Derek, how'd you know that's the major part of my practice regimen?

Wanker's Dream Band:
Ornette Coleman, trumpet
Don Van Vliet, soprano sax
Junior Kimbrough, vocals
Ernie Kovacks, vibes
Jah Wobble: bass
Baby Dodds, drums

I think a new definition of viruosity can be control of your chosen palette. In certain way, Frank Wright, Pollock and Monk were virtuoso technicians.
Rather than looking at them as artists who got by despite limitations, it is more productive to look at how they refined the techniques they found relavent to their work.

*Gulp*

I know the end is near, when Damon starts sounding like the voice of reason and restraint!

The term "technique" is used in several different ways in this discussion. The result is Babel to me.

My man (the king of anti-professionalism) Samuel Butler has a nice discussion of the dangers of art schools somewhere.

It's not "technique" (whatever that is) that's the problem IMHO, it's pedagogy (whether self- or standard).

It’s part of my preternatural ability to tap into the psyche of the wanker hive mind. I dig the dream band, but find it a bit weird there isn’t a wanker in the bunch. ;)

Mine own (today) would be:

Joe Gordon, tpt; Sonny Criss, as; Jimmy Giuffre, cl, bari s; Pat Patrick, bari s; Lucky Thompson, ss; Jerry Dodgion, b flt; Bob Brookmeyer, vl tb; Joe Cinderella, gtr; Wilbur Ware, b; Frank Butler, d.

Good points, Rob & Damon. I have a hard time with this stuff because much of it seems like such a given. I mean, calling somebody like Monk technically challenged seems to miss the point of his music entirely.

I think people define virtuosity as being able to play anything. Where in real life, the term is applied to those who can do a lot with what they are working with.
Could Heifetz do what Billy Bang and Philipp Wachsmann do and vice-versa?
Where it can get problematic is when someone puts Bang in the context of playing a Xenakis score and then tries to pass it off as accurate (similar things actually happen!).
It still does not make his own work any less refined and virutostic.

It seems to little old me that virtuosity (non-cynically) simply means that you have the wherewithal to be able to play whatever you want to play. So it inevitably comes down to ... what do you want to play?