Music Theorem?

Gotta remember when Freebird came out, everybody was playing long solos. Heck, Freebird is a short solo compared to many the Allman Brothers played, they had many solos over 20 minutes long. The thing is, I've never heard anybody like Dicky Betts and Duane Allman who could play such long solos and not sound repetitive.

It is difficult to find videos of the original Allman Brothers, but here is a portion of a live performance. This song probably went on quite long. Everybody thinks of slide guitar with Duane Allman, but he was an awesome lead guitarist too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wISH-tBgN_g

I really believe the Freebird solo was structured to sound like that, if you see a live video it is almost note for note.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsWz-Q7JYQA

This may sound like a dig, not meant to be, but I think people had longer attention spans back then. We could listen intently to solos for long periods and not get bored. Today everything is presented super quick. A Rock video is a collection of a thousand one-second clips. This is what people have become accustomed to. They cannot pay attention as long. Not meant to be insulting, but I believe that is really true today.

I wouldn't have said that about Duane Allman!

And the music I perfer has repetition but also development, you might repeat the rhytmic motif but change the melodic motif, or keep the melodic motif, and change the rhythmic one. Certainly some degree of repetition is necessary, but not to the degree that most rock/blues takes it.

I definetly don't prefer blues, they've been making the same song for 50 years. Everytime I hear someone call a blues singer "the best song writer of all time" I throw up in my mouth a little bit. And people like to say "everything comes from the blues" which might be true, but they act like the blues didn't come from earlier music also.

But, there are still some creative people in the genre. I absolutly love Ray LaMontagne he takes the classic blues/soul sound and always does something fresh in every song. And Led Zepplin you listen to the bassline and a lot of times it is a 12 bar blues, but they take it somewhere new. Most blues artists I find very boring though.

My favorite current artist is Chris Thile, his stuff outside of Nickel Creek (like live duets with Mike Marshall good god) and stuff with his new band "The Tensions Mountain Boys" is great and even the simple songs are taken to new levels as each member gets a try at the melody.

Also lately I am interested in through composed music that totally abandons the verse chorus form to constantly progress to new ideas with every section.

In a sense, Blues is the most difficult music of any style. I am always amazed when a Blues artist can come on stage and play 30 songs, basically all 3 chords, and make each one sound completely different. Now that is difficult. 8)

I agree that the greats like howlin wolf sound awsome every song, but unfortunatly for every one great blues player there are 1000 who play the same song every time and it does sound the same. Unfortunatly I happen to play with someone who does that :cry:

Like I love to play the blues once or twice in a jam but after awhile its like good god lets do something new

Oh, I agree, very few can keep the Blues sounding fresh on every song. I like to go see Blues bands, but usually only make it through one set. It can get old.

I read an article once by some famous Blues player (can't remember who though) who played with Muddy Waters. He said when they would practice they would purposely play a song over and over and try to make it sound different every time. Speed it up, slow it down, alter chords, etc... I thought that sounded like great advice.

So the few players who can pull it off are great.

Maybe he should just play one song, you know, with the attention span of people today, you might as well knock them out with that one song. 30 is a bit much.

I knew that comment about attention span would ruffle some feathers. But in all seriousness, it does seem like a problem today. The term Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) was unheard of when I was young and is a relatively new medical term. I am sure it has always been a problem, but not nearly to the degree as known today.

I'm not saying people today are less intelligent or anything like that. But people have been conditioned to a degee. Like I said, whenever you watch a music video, a thousand scenes are flashed at you, most just fractions of a second long. The whole idea is to grab your attention (but only for a millisecond). If you saw your favorite guitarist, you are going to watch and see if you get a glimpse again. Trust me, this stuff is thought out in advance. Now the music in the 70's was quite different, you were expected to listen intently for a long period of time. And the solos were not boring to us, in fact, quite the opposite. You listened to the little nuances in the music. So you had to pay attention for a long period of time.

Your mind is no different from any muscle. If you never run, you run out of breathe after one block of running. But if you run everyday you may be able to run many miles without getting exhausted. If you pay attention for long periods you can concentrate for long periods. If you do not, you cannot.

No, I am sorry if I've offended anyone. But look at the music today, the solo has almost disappeared. Now the record companies want to cram a song in 3 minutes or less.

But that is not why they make videos like that in my opinion. I think (I have no proof) that the idea is to create tension, which is a strong sensation. I wouldn't call it enjoyment though. But these scenes are flashing before you like a strob. You are trying to grab hold of them, but you can't. This causes tension. Like I said, you may see a quick scene that grabs your attention and want to see more. So you anxiously wait to catch a glimpse again. This created tension creates excitement. You can almost become addicted to this tension and excitement. But I do not think it is very enjoyable, quite the opposite.

It is the same with movies. I like the real old movies because they have a plot and storyline. You had to pay attention. I think most people today would find the old movies very boring. Today's movies are much like the music videos. You are subjected to thousands of very quick scenes. There are no long conversations in the movie. Every scene has to be an action scene where something is blowing up or somebody is getting killed. It is the same effect, it creates tension and excitement.

Video games are the same, everything moves in fast motion. There is no time to really think, just react.

Maybe you don't see what I'm getting at. :D

Maybe you should get into modern bluegrass, the solo is not only still there, but hearing all of the great musicians each interpret the melody differently is half the fun! And it definetly doesn't sound like the "crap" most people think of in their head when they think of bluegrass.

I agree with your argument that could basically be boiled down to "kids today" but there are also kids today who are in my opinion making some of the most interesting music ever written. And "The Good Shepard" movie just came out that is about as subtle as you can get. And RPG's are basically just one big story to click through.

I'm just saying that your post like my opinion of the blue's is an over generalization.

Check out Bela Fleck, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer (well he definetly isn't a kid) good music is alive and well.

And there is a Chris Thile video that does that flash thing your talkin about, it annoys the heck outta me id much rather it just show the band playing, I guess thats why they have youtube...for now...

And I totally agree about kids today (and im only 21) my little sister just graduated highschool, now her class is small but literally out of the 30 some odd kids in the class she is virutally the only one that is not medicated.

You know sometimes I am reading and I get bored and want to do something else, but I concentrate and make myself do it. Sometimes I feel sad, sometimes I feel nervous in social situations, but you know what you deal with it. A pill is not the solution to every problem. And instead of putting everyone in therapy how about talking to your friend, oh ya hes drugged and depressed also...I mean thinking about is makin me depressed haha

This is so far off topic but whatever haha

This may sound like a dig, not meant to be, but I think people had longer attention spans back then. We could listen intently to solos for long periods and not get bored. Today everything is presented super quick. A Rock video is a collection of a thousand one-second clips. This is what people have become accustomed to. They cannot pay attention as long. Not meant to be insulting, but I believe that is really true today.

Or maybe the younger generations can just process info a whole lot faster. To me it isn't super quick and I have no problem getting all the info out of a 'super-quick' shot. My parents do, they get confused. It's not that they have longer attention spans, I can listen to the blues or a nice opera no problem. They just can't deal with higher speeds. Same with movies: show very basic movies like 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels'. Very, very nice dialogues and amazingly intertwined scripts. Yet it is shot in such a way that older people usually just get confused and disorientated and think it is just about the action. Which it is not.

Same as with videogames: with the progress of technology more and more money becomes availlable, which means that nowadays game producers get the help of authors, artists, composers and you name it. That didn't happen in the old days at all.
The term Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) was unheard of when I was young and is a relatively new medical term. I am sure it has always been a problem, but not nearly to the degree as known today.

And outside the US it still isn't a problem. Call me sarcastic but ADD is not a disorder like other medical conditions, and the only reason it gets diagnosed so often is that quiet a few companies own a crapload of money on it. Take the profit out of it and suddenly doctors see no reason to diagnose it at all. Not a single proper scientific research project found any evidence younger generations can not focus or keep their attention as well. The only people I hear say that are old people who base it on their own dislike of modern media. That's fine, but you don't have to blame that on assumed deficiencies of other people.

But I still love you. :P

Ahh, Arjen saves the day for our generation.

People try to put us d-down (talkin bout my generation).

In all seriousness, I agree much with Wes. However, its not our fault. I will blame TV and internet for it. We want everything at the speed of broadband. :lol:

Well Wes, I won't disagree with you about attention spans that may be rue, but I think the demise of the solo had more to do with the record exec's than anything else.

Somewhere along the line they decided long solo's didn't cut in 3 minute songs so the songs that were getting airplay didn't have any, and it just kinda of fed on itself.

But everything that goes around comes around so sooner or later some band will come out with some awesoms solo's, they'll make a ton of money and suddenly solo's will be IN again.

Long solos never got airplay, whatever the instrument - when did you ever hear Cream's "Toad" on the radio? or Ron Carter's "Seguaro"? or "Inna Godda da Vida"? Each of those was a whole album side - about 17 minutes a piece.

But back in the day, they still got recorded. That's because they sold, with or without airplay - through word of mouth. Heck, Grand Funk Railroad managed to keep making gold records despite the fact that radio stations didn't play their tunes!

I don't think it has to do with attention span as much as presentation. We used to walk over to each other's houses and spin our favorite albums for each other... now my kids IM links to YouTube.

Albums were auditory experiences, and today's word of mouth trades are visual ones as well. In my opinion, MTV changed the length of tunes far more than any other factor... long solos just aren't visual. If they WERE visual, I think they'd be having the same "viral marketing" success they did in the 60s and 70s - back when the "virus" was a pair of Keds or a banana-seat Schwinn.

Or maybe the younger generations can just process info a whole lot faster.
Younger generations are always capable of processing data faster than older people. The difference is in the conditioning. We were conditioned to things that were much closer to the real world as one person saw it. Modern video is much more removed from reality - a single person cannot see 2 seconds of action from 10 different places in 1/10th second slices, like a video can.
Same as with videogames: with the progress of technology more and more money becomes availlable, which means that nowadays game producers get the help of authors, artists, composers and you name it. That didn't happen in the old days at all.
In the old days there were no video games - reality hadn't joined the list of endangered species
The term Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) was unheard of when I was young and is a relatively new medical term. I am sure it has always been a problem, but not nearly to the degree as known today.
And outside the US it still isn't a problem. Call me sarcastic but ADD is not a disorder like other medical conditions, and the only reason it gets diagnosed so often is that quiet a few companies own a crapload of money on it.
Sorry if I don't agree with you. ADD is a result of changes in society, just as cancer is (cancer was, by comparison to today, almost unknown at the turn of the 20th century). I suspect that many such nervous reactions could be linked to the incessant flashing of images - i would be interested to find out how close the rapid changes in films and videos are to the frequency that causes epilepsy.
Not a single proper scientific research project found any evidence younger generations can not focus or keep their attention as well.
It doesn't make the whole thing a non issue. There are many things that appear to be on the increase (e.g. OCD), but much of that is down to the wider avilability of information, not necessarily a sudden increase in occurrence.
The only people I hear say that are old people who base it on their own dislike of modern media.
Maybe, just maybe, it's people who have a somewhat wider range of experience and actually know what they're talking about. Oh, sorry, I forget - the youth of today are born wise and only get stupid as they get older.

Maybe, just maybe, it's people who have a somewhat wider range of experience and actually know what they're talking about. Oh, sorry, I forget - the youth of today are born wise and only get stupid as they get older.

Ah yes! I remember when I knew everything. If only I knew as little then as I do now. I fear that my 12 year old daughter will soon be telling me how it is. I with my limited capacity will be sure to have a difficult time trying to help her comprehend that having been a teenager at one time gives me some sort of understanding as to what it means to be a teen.

Anyway, back to the topic. Some truly creative blues based bands: Cream, Bluesbreakers, James Gang, 10 Years after, The Stones, Jeff Beck Group and of course Led Zeppelin to name a few.

Unfortunately, too many blues bands have yet to break out of the twelve bar cage.