[Harp-L] What is crap musican? (was: 99.4%)

["George Leung" <gleung4@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

First off, I still haven't figure out how to make a reply in a mailing list, 
so forgive me if you can not reference.

Anyway, as music is an art, it is highly subjective. As such, by what 
standard do we say "good" or "bad"? No, seriously: by what standard?

If we decide to go for traditional classical music theory, then perhaps we 
harp player are guilty as charged, since afterall, we decided to use blues 
scales instead of the proper diatonic scales, don't we? Also, didn't most of 
us decided to play is positions instead of playing chromatically (especially 
in regard to chromatic harmonica)

But if we do go by this standard, then 99.4% of musicans in the WORLD are 
crap musicans (actually, numebr exagerate for parallelism) Pick any modern 
band in America: they properly will only do melody on vocal, and play chords 
that is even less then what harpist use in twelve bar blues. Pick any 
chinese or japanese classical music, which some people claimed was way too 
alien to be music. Heck, pick any jazz greats, who properly violated 
traditional music theory quite a few times too!

But why do people still listen to it? Reason: it please them. It entertains 
them.

Take rap, for example: some people consider it to be music, some don't. If 
it must be not music, then why the heck do so many kids nowadays listen to 
rap? I mean, even if the marketing is the main force, people must be willing 
to response to the music first before being willing to accept it: many of my 
college friends prefer J-pop, and dislike rap, for example?and there was not 
much marketing for J-pop in North America.

As someone here one posted, playing music is either for yourself, for 
someone else, and for money... and frankly, for money is merely a 
mathematical way to calculate how someone else response to your music, so 
once again it was boiled down to your judgement and their judgement: and 
since music itself is subjective?an irrational matter, it will be fruitless 
to try to prove it like a rational subject: we must merely accept that some 
people will like the music, and some don't.

So does that mean we are completely out of our argument, then?

Not quite. While we properly had escaped the question of playing in exact 
tune (ref: overblow and XB-40 bending), playing in melody only (chromatic), 
riffing only chords, and numerous "problems", one concept, especially in 
terms of modern listeners to music, is the idea of playing chromatically, 
and the willingness to acheive it.

Again, this is subjective, but nonetheless a persistent common concept in 
the mind of many music listenr, that if a musical instrument can onyl play 
diatonically, then it is a toy, and the players rely on diatonic instruments 
because they suck (or lazy)... and this may extend to even blues, that we 
use harmonica because it's easy to play (which is somewhat true). And so 
far, we all know there's no absolute solution... not even Mr. Chmel himself 
can overcome all the obstacles when playing classical music.

But I do believe that we need to reach a middle ground, somewhere. How we 
should do it is unclear (I prefer chrom, but I know many prefer multiple 
harmonica), but in order to prove that harmonica is a genuine music 
instrument, and to show them that we are not crap, we must attempt to 
approach the middle ground, no matter how difficult it is. Adn that's not 
just the musicmanship itself... the music style we play must also reach some 
common ground.

Anyway, these are my two cents, and should not be taken that seriously.

George Leung