6 ms·

Hm, yeah in music there aren't any rules, putting a 'real' musician to give her opinion should be considered a just for fun thing.

evo_9 16y ago
Yes and anyone can write poetry too. There are always 'rules' to any real discipline. If you aren't skilled in something then of course we say 'he is a natural'. But if you go up to talk to a 'natural' you always find that they worked at it an incredible amount. Fun read either way though. Her comments on Ozzie were the most surprising to me.
- ufomuffin 16y ago
  That's the thing, anyone can create poetry. But only a group of people of the same taste will appreciate it. There aren't any rules, if you suck at singing, your cd will probably be dead in sales, but that doesn't make it "not music". I've seen there's people for everything in the world, and when people start saying he is not singing right it's usually about the context. If you're gonna sing opera of course you need to sing opera-like, but in general you should be able to experiment in any sense. That's how new styles are born.
  - regularfry 16y ago
    If you suck at singing, you'll wreck your throat and need surgery to fix it. That's a large part of what vocal coaching is for. In that sense, there's definitely a "wrong way" to do it.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      Empirically that doesn't seem to be true for many areas of rock--- there are singers singing "wrong" with no surgery for 30+ years. Note that she incorrectly predicted that Ozzy Osbourne would have a short career based on the way he was singing, when in fact he had an exceptionally long and successful one. From an artistic perspective, in some areas an operatic-style voice is just inappropriate. Operatic vocals on a punk band might be an interesting novelty, for example, but it's not usually what you want; you usually want something more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE (From that perspective, metal was a fairly good choice for this interview, because operatic vocals are often appropriate in metal.)
      - gaius 16y ago
        You have to be really careful when extrapolating like that. For example, you could train as hard as Michael Phelps but you'll never swim like him; you weren't born with his flipper-like feet and extraordinarily long arms. What will probably happen is that you'll just burn out. The people at the top of any field you will find combine hard work with genetic predisposition. They can be an inspiration sure, but imitating them is unlikely to yield the same results.
      - fghfgh 16y ago
        Ozzy's a bit of an exception though, isn't he? He's literally being studied for his ability to survive quantities of drugs that kill most people.
      - regularfry 16y ago
        You're right in that there are clearly people who have been successful this way, but it's a self-selecting group. We don't hear about the ones who are too hard on their larynxes and have to give up early. There's clearly a safety margin in what vocal coaches teach, and I think it's safe to say that Ozzy must be over the margin, but the right side of critical.
        algorias 16y ago
        A classical case of survivor bias.
      - tseabrooks 16y ago
        I think if you look at what she said about Ozzy there is a bit of truth in it. He may not have had a short career but at the end of his career you couldn't understand him at all. Moreover, in that show he did a few years back he is almost completely incomprehensible. Maybe it's from drugs? Maybe alcohol? Maybe he did it on purpose? It always sounded to me like he had a cat in his throat.
      - cynicalkane 16y ago
        Among singers who have damaged themselves singing incorrectly are Freddie Mercury, one of the best rock singers who ever lived. Over time, he lost his range and stamina, and had to schedule tours in such a way that he had ample time to recover in between performances, otherwise he would lose his voice (this happened once). I haven't heard him in a recent live performance, but reportedly Robert Plant has also ruined his voice. One person said that he "sounds like Winnie-the-Pooh".
  - regularfry 16y ago
    I'm going to come back to this because I think it's an interesting point. Without "rules," how do you identify an example as belonging to a set? Rules for inclusion and/or exclusion must exist for the set to be defined. "I know it when I see it" is only really acceptable if you're a supreme court judge :-) Specifically, we're talking not just about "music" here - which has an absurdly broad definition - but "metal," which falls under the category of western vocal-led performance. There are rules to this, and while breaking them might leave you with something that is ostensibly "music," it may well not leave you with "metal," "singing," a "song," or a "performance."
- fletchowns 16y ago
  I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.
  - sharpn 16y ago
    Alexander Pope disagreed: "True ease of writing comes through art, not chance, As he moves best who learns the steps of dance, 'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence, The sound must seem an echo of the sense" Learn the rules, then maybe break them.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.
      - hartror 16y ago
        The same can be said for many professions, certainly my own (programming) you should learn the basics and best practices before you can know when it is okay to break them. And like singing or painting it can come down to personal preference whether the rule breaking works or not. Did I just equate my work to Picasso? . . . I think I did!
      - fletchowns 16y ago
        I don't think you need to master the rules before you can break them, you certainly need to be aware of the rules though! How else would you even know you are breaking them?
        16y ago
studer 16y ago
She's a voice teacher. I'm sure you can find, say, some opera connoisseur who hates all other music as a principle, but she's talking about how these singers are using their "instruments", not about what kind of music they're performing. (the choice of vocalists was a bit pedestrian, though :-)
- jarin 16y ago
  It probably wouldn't be as interesting to as many people if it was vocalists that only true metalheads had heard of.
  - patio11 16y ago
    I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      * Pop culture, you foil me again...* Because Dio and Iron Maiden were top of the pop charts?
    - kscaldef 16y ago
      I don't know the names of the people in most bands I listen to, but have you honestly never heard of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest? I'll give you that Mercyful Fate is a little obscure. (I suppose I should also ask how old you are, given that you label Ozzy as "a guy with a reality TV show".)
      - patio11 16y ago
        If you had said "Heavy metal band, comic book superhero, or TV show" for those three bands I think I might have gotten Iron Maiden right, but if this were Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I'd be asking the audience anyhow.
      - CFriedlander 16y ago

evo_9 16y ago

Yes and anyone can write poetry too. There are always 'rules' to any real discipline. If you aren't skilled in something then of course we say 'he is a natural'. But if you go up to talk to a 'natural' you always find that they worked at it an incredible amount. Fun read either way though. Her comments on Ozzie were the most surprising to me.

ufomuffin 16y ago
That's the thing, anyone can create poetry. But only a group of people of the same taste will appreciate it. There aren't any rules, if you suck at singing, your cd will probably be dead in sales, but that doesn't make it "not music". I've seen there's people for everything in the world, and when people start saying he is not singing right it's usually about the context. If you're gonna sing opera of course you need to sing opera-like, but in general you should be able to experiment in any sense. That's how new styles are born.
- regularfry 16y ago
  If you suck at singing, you'll wreck your throat and need surgery to fix it. That's a large part of what vocal coaching is for. In that sense, there's definitely a "wrong way" to do it.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Empirically that doesn't seem to be true for many areas of rock--- there are singers singing "wrong" with no surgery for 30+ years. Note that she incorrectly predicted that Ozzy Osbourne would have a short career based on the way he was singing, when in fact he had an exceptionally long and successful one. From an artistic perspective, in some areas an operatic-style voice is just inappropriate. Operatic vocals on a punk band might be an interesting novelty, for example, but it's not usually what you want; you usually want something more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGjk1Y_j8QE (From that perspective, metal was a fairly good choice for this interview, because operatic vocals are often appropriate in metal.)
    - gaius 16y ago
      You have to be really careful when extrapolating like that. For example, you could train as hard as Michael Phelps but you'll never swim like him; you weren't born with his flipper-like feet and extraordinarily long arms. What will probably happen is that you'll just burn out. The people at the top of any field you will find combine hard work with genetic predisposition. They can be an inspiration sure, but imitating them is unlikely to yield the same results.
    - fghfgh 16y ago
      Ozzy's a bit of an exception though, isn't he? He's literally being studied for his ability to survive quantities of drugs that kill most people.
    - regularfry 16y ago
      You're right in that there are clearly people who have been successful this way, but it's a self-selecting group. We don't hear about the ones who are too hard on their larynxes and have to give up early. There's clearly a safety margin in what vocal coaches teach, and I think it's safe to say that Ozzy must be over the margin, but the right side of critical.
      - algorias 16y ago
        A classical case of survivor bias.
    - tseabrooks 16y ago
      I think if you look at what she said about Ozzy there is a bit of truth in it. He may not have had a short career but at the end of his career you couldn't understand him at all. Moreover, in that show he did a few years back he is almost completely incomprehensible. Maybe it's from drugs? Maybe alcohol? Maybe he did it on purpose? It always sounded to me like he had a cat in his throat.
    - cynicalkane 16y ago
      Among singers who have damaged themselves singing incorrectly are Freddie Mercury, one of the best rock singers who ever lived. Over time, he lost his range and stamina, and had to schedule tours in such a way that he had ample time to recover in between performances, otherwise he would lose his voice (this happened once). I haven't heard him in a recent live performance, but reportedly Robert Plant has also ruined his voice. One person said that he "sounds like Winnie-the-Pooh".
- regularfry 16y ago
  I'm going to come back to this because I think it's an interesting point. Without "rules," how do you identify an example as belonging to a set? Rules for inclusion and/or exclusion must exist for the set to be defined. "I know it when I see it" is only really acceptable if you're a supreme court judge :-) Specifically, we're talking not just about "music" here - which has an absurdly broad definition - but "metal," which falls under the category of western vocal-led performance. There are rules to this, and while breaking them might leave you with something that is ostensibly "music," it may well not leave you with "metal," "singing," a "song," or a "performance."
fletchowns 16y ago
I feel that technique and skill are secondary to passion though with the arts. Music or poetry, I don't want to subject myself to it if it lacks passion. Passionate musicians and poets just happen to frequently also have the technique and skill down as well, but that's not always the case. Some of the more interesting artists are often the ones that break the "rules" of their discipline.
- sharpn 16y ago
  Alexander Pope disagreed: "True ease of writing comes through art, not chance, As he moves best who learns the steps of dance, 'Tis not enough no harshness cause offence, The sound must seem an echo of the sense" Learn the rules, then maybe break them.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Another famous example is Picasso. Sometimes considered the greatest painter to have ever lived, he was incredibly inventive and broke basically every "rule" in the book. However, if you look at his really early pieces -- he was a fantastic classical painter. He didn't start by breaking the rules, he started by mastering them.
    - hartror 16y ago
      The same can be said for many professions, certainly my own (programming) you should learn the basics and best practices before you can know when it is okay to break them. And like singing or painting it can come down to personal preference whether the rule breaking works or not. Did I just equate my work to Picasso? . . . I think I did!
    - fletchowns 16y ago
      I don't think you need to master the rules before you can break them, you certainly need to be aware of the rules though! How else would you even know you are breaking them?
      - 16y ago

studer 16y ago

She's a voice teacher. I'm sure you can find, say, some opera connoisseur who hates all other music as a principle, but she's talking about how these singers are using their "instruments", not about what kind of music they're performing. (the choice of vocalists was a bit pedestrian, though :-)

jarin 16y ago
It probably wouldn't be as interesting to as many people if it was vocalists that only true metalheads had heard of.
- patio11 16y ago
  I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    * Pop culture, you foil me again...* Because Dio and Iron Maiden were top of the pop charts?
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    I don't know the names of the people in most bands I listen to, but have you honestly never heard of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest? I'll give you that Mercyful Fate is a little obscure. (I suppose I should also ask how old you are, given that you label Ozzy as "a guy with a reality TV show".)
    - patio11 16y ago
      If you had said "Heavy metal band, comic book superhero, or TV show" for those three bands I think I might have gotten Iron Maiden right, but if this were Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I'd be asking the audience anyhow.
    - CFriedlander 16y ago