Is Miles Davis overrated?

That is my honest opinion I have formed after having listened to many of his recordings. He was nowhere near the player that Clifford Brown or Baker were. In fact, on top of rather mediocre I find a lot of his playing annoying and not in sync with everyone else around him.

I think his true talent lied in assembling a band as well as composing. The cat could put a band together like no one else on earth, but he couldn't even hang with the people he hired.

Paul Bley had said that that Miles Davis was nothing more than a sit in who turned famous because he was classically trained and could compose well. To my surprise, he said a lot of cats who came up during the same time didn't think an awful lot of him either.

What do you guys think about this? Am I the only one or are there others?

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funny you post that I was watching a youtube of his group with carter shorter hancock williams, playing yesterday. Miles's solo stank.

the band members looked they would rather be anywhere else.

yes, it's definitely uncool to say, but I agree completely.

I don't like his playing, he needed to practice, feeble tone, bad chops, uninventive solos.

listen to some of the recordings with him in Charlie Parker's group, live at the royal roost, and such.

I actually can't listen to those, cause as brilliant as charlie is, as soon as he stops, I have to turn it off, can't stand mile's playing.

I think when people are being honest, they said precisely what you said, that he put a band together.

for technique, tone, everything, lots of trumpet players are/were a lot better than him.

There are some jazz guitar players around right now, that are in the same position, widely loved, but not very good.

there are posters on Sup Forums that are a lot better than some of the big names.

don't understand why this is.

a lot of great albums were published under his name, but what made them great was never his playing, I think that's a fact

>There are some jazz guitar players around right now, that are in the same position, widely loved, but not very good.
who are you talking about?

I'm really curious about this. Do you have any links to articles or interviews about this ?

I checked his wikipedia page but as everybody knows, famous people just buy wiki for it to only show the bright side so...

He had such a long career & varied styles that I guess a good question to ask would be, Which Miles Davis was mediocre?

I think the thread would better be titled "mediocre trumpet player." I think "mediocre" is harsh: he played some great solos and had a flair for making melodies sing. Granted, he played a lot of 'cracked' notes and I never bought the argument that they were all intentional.

Writing tunes is a *huge* gift, though, and Miles wrote a nice chunk of the active repertoire. And he lead more great bands than any one else in jazz history. He also moved jazz in new directions more than once, or twice, or even three times. (I didn't *like* all those directions, but I've got to give the man his due for innovation.)

Miles said, "it's hard to play slow." That said, I prefer Chet Baker.

Miles wasn't a great trumpet player in the sense that John Lennon wasn't a great guitarist nor Jimi Hendrix a great songwriter. That being said, all of them were a force to be reckoned with, the first two as composers and the last as an instrumentalist. All of them were massively influential and all reflected the spirit of their time.

There are plenty of people who can burn through rhythm changes in their PJs (or sometimes worse), film it with a shitty camera, and post it on Youtube. Very few of them will ever change music. It's not always about who has the best chops. Plenty of guys you've never heard of can play circles around plenty of other guys you've never heard of. Most, if not all, you will never know exist.

Miles changed jazz and the way we think about jazz. He was great.

>Baker

Fuck that overrated cunt and fuck his tumblr-tier fanbase consisting of special snowflake cunts who fawn over his looks and not his playing.

Miles is great on Sketches of Spain, right? Or am I deluded?

tips fedora

>And he lead more great bands than any one else in jazz history. He also moved jazz in new directions more than once, or twice, or even three times.
totally agreed
I'm anyway, talking about defining him "mediocre", while I agree it's a bit harsh since he certainly had great solos, I think that others would have done a lot better in contexts where he is the center of attention, for example in Sketches of Spain

What's "mediocre?" His chops? His dexterity? His speed?

Sure. He'd have been the first to tell you.

But he was also brilliant in a lot of areas. Transcribe that solo on "So What." your not going to find many better.

Great technically?

Dizzy Gillespie was great technically for example.

The comparison to John Lennon as a technician is appropriate.

So are we talking about chops? If you play slowly or not a lot of notes, then you're not technically proficient? It can't be that banal, can it?

Yes. :-D

Doesn't seem to revolve around the concept of soloing & improvisation rather than the ability to swing? Of course we recognize Freddie Green as being a monster, but he's on a very short list of jazzmen who aren't known for their soloing chops.


Again, bad chops means you can't play fast? It can't be that silly & mundane, but maybe it is? Are we just like metal shredders? Make those fingers wiggle and we're impressed!

I'd guess that compositional chops would have to count for something, too. At least, let's hope so

I don't buy this. With all due respect to Paul Bley, I've read tons of interviews with tons of jazz artists, and many of them thought Miles was the shit (not "shit", "THE shit"). I don't want to get into the debate about Miles as a musician (since I'm one of those "Miles is GOD" people)... however, in terms of other famous musicians having poor opinions of Miles, I've never read or heard anything to this effect. I've heard and read of people dismissing his fusion period onwards, but never his entire career as a musician. Charlie Parker dug Miles's playing (according to Miles...however, he was in Parker's band for a number of years, so why should we think otherwise?), Dizzy did as well (and has specifically said so in interviews)...Duke Ellington wanted Miles to join his band at one point...everyone who was ever in Miles' bands from the mid 50s onwards have only GREAT things to say about him (and that list constitutes the majority of big names in jazz since the 50s)...Mingus thought he was great as well...Freddie Hubbard said that Miles could "really play", which was a statement he made in an interview without even being asked about Miles at all... etc. These are just off the top of my head right now, but with some digging I could find some more specific examples.

Duke Ellington wasn't the greatest piano player.

Miles wasn't the greatest trumpet player.

John Lennon wasn't the greatest guitar player.

Metallica weren't the best metal musicians.

But these guys are legends. They had musical talent and stand-out personalities.

These guys were songwriters.

>Are we just like metal shredders? Make those fingers wiggle and we're impressed!
This

These miles bashers read like 12 year old who worship petrucci

And they wrote great tunes, too.

Miles Davis played with a sound that was as close to a human voice as anyone. Like Chet Baker, they both found an individual voice within technical limitations far greater than Clifford Brown. Jim Hall had less physical prowess than Tal Farlow but they both found a way to express themselves within their abilities.What Miles can teach about note placement and use of space is as important as anything but only if you care about such matters. His contributions have helped shape what we think about jazz today. And yes those amazing bands do deserve much credit and praise.

Miles taught me that the space between the notes was just as important as the notes themselves.

What other established jazz god would have hired John McLaughlin?

I dig Miles!

Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana and many others thought highly enough of Miles to appear in the documentary about him. You can have Paul Bley, I'll stick with those cats.

Ain't that the truth!

Of course, nowadays the primary concern is with the space between the notes belonging to this or that mode.

I find his electric works too underestimated. They're often reduced to In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, but Big Fun, Get Up Xuth It and Agharta are as good, if not better.

A+
I suffer from this same delusion. Nice, isn't it?
Yes, there are many horrors out there too. Any candidates for 'perfection'? Which 'god' did not have feet of clay, at any time, throughout their career? I can't think of many.
Listening to 'Sketches', I have trouble remembering that there is no guitar at all in there. Somehow I hear them 'implied'.

>Is Miles Davis overrated?
No, he isn't

The question about "chops" and if they can be reduced to "playing fast": as a former horn player (tuba, to be precise), 'chops' can be summarized as follows:

1. Range: If you can play as fast as lightening but only between middle C and F, no, you DON'T have chops.

2. Tone and Stability: the tonal nature of a sound comes from your pucker, basically, and how you're "buzzing" your lips. Similarly, you need to have a stable, consistent tone throughout the entire note. Lots of folks can play fast but when you make 'em slow down they sound like crap because while they've got okay attack they can't sustain it.

3. Tonguing: This is one of the two parts of "speed"; you need to be able to move your tongue to play multiple notes. As a tuba player, I couldn't tongue for crap, but that's okay because I was mostly playing "oom-pah". That said, the ability to play a triplet passage with triple-tounging is an impressive skill.

4. Fingering: the other part of playing fast- while you can't play a fast passage if you can't tongue the notes so they're clearly articulated, you're even worse off if you can't move your fingers fast enough to get the notes in the first place.

Of these, I'd say that Miles had a real strength in his fingerings- he could play pretty much any note in about 5 different ways, from everything I've read. I don't think his tonguing was particularly great, and I think his tone-and-sustain might have been a bit off, but he managed to make that a musical trademark of his. And his range was perfectly sufficient for what he played.

All in all: technically, I don't think Miles was the shit in the same way Bird or Dizzy were. But he still played good music.

>The comparison to John Lennon as a technician is appropriate.
I disagree. Miles knew a lot more about music than John Lennon did. (No offense to Lennon.) Miles was a better trumpet player than Lennon was a guitar player.

For example, Miles was 25 years old in 1951. You ought to compare his playing on recordings of that period with what Lennon was doing at the same age (in 1965). Lennon was playing I Wanna Hold Your Hand while leaving George Harrison to play all solos. That's not even a fair comparison. Mile'ss "So What" solo is a great one. When he came into his own, he soloed like a composer, which is no bad thing. I think it says a lot about Miles that he surrounded himself with *better* players and let them shine.

>all these people shitting on one of the most influential artists of our time
yeah he wasn't the most virtuoso player, so what? He gave cool popolarity, he gave modal popolarity, he gave ""fusion"" popolarity. all this while finding new talented musicians.

he was a great director

And Tal, one of the fastest players ever, plays "fast" differently than ANYONE I've ever heard play fast. It's so specific and identifiable to him. It was born from the fact that Red Norvo hired him for his harmonic and melodic sense, not for his speed, but then Talmage very quickly figured out that Red liked to push the tempo and realized he would be embarrassed if he couldn't keep up. So he learned to play very fast in his own sort of organic way, some of it on the bandstand, and some in which you can hear him struggling on early recordings. And Tal Farlow has more chops than a butcher. The musicality came first. I read that Mingus also said he became a much faster player with Norvo. He too was always MUSICAL. All three are in my top list of favorites.

Jim Hall of course was outstanding and musical and I've heard him burn too:

>Miles Davis played with a sound that was as close to a human voice as anyone
This is the most surprising comment (to me) on this whole thread. I speak as owner of at least two dozen Miles' recordings (and I've heard lots of others that I don't own). He had a unique voice on the trumpet but I never thought of it as being "close to a human voice," ESPECIALLY for jazz. I thought his horn sound was UN-natural. (Beginning with no vibrato.) Also, his feel was very cool, more analytic than emotional.

That's not said in criticism. I like Miles. I just never thought I'd hear anyone say his sound was the closest a horn ever got to the human voice. Hell, I think Louis Armstrong would be a better vote for that award, as would Lester Young (his duets with Billie Holliday are staggeringly good). I think *Coltrane* blew more human emotion through a horn than Miles ever thought about conveying. Again, this isn't a dig at Miles. I'm just very surprised to hear Miles singled out as getting a more human voice out of a horn than anyone else. Is it just me????

It depends on what you think makes a jazz cat "great." If it's chops, then Miles ain't the guy for you. Personally, I hate flashy "chops" players - to my ear it gets boring after a while. I listen to Miles for his subtlety, his musicality, his taste, his phrasing, his sense of composition, etc.

I guess it really depends on what quality you're judging him on. If you've defined someone like Brown as the archetype, then yeah, Miles is going to pale in comparison. But I think that there are other ways to judge a player. To my ear there are better ways to judge a player.

youtube.com/watch?v=vsb-lXec76w

and a quote from the comments ...........
I feel like Miles was one of those artists that brought humanity a little bit closer to the divine. This essence transcends all egos, erases all faults, and lets one float and exist between the realms of the natural and that which has no end. Thank you Miles.

t. people don't care about chops

nah m8 miles is a fantastic player. way more versatile and unique than clifford. Also Miles is pretty much as influential as Dizzy

Also who the fuck is Paul Bley? Just some jealousy white guy.

You don't get the play with CHARLIE PARKER and DIZZY and COLEMAN HAWKINS when you're 18 unless you're hot shit. Also even Duke wanted Miles in his band. Miles was the hottest shit and influenced pretty much everybody. Music would sound different without him so stfu you clueless idiots.

>Chet Baker.
literally no 1 miles imposter

>t. people don't care about chops
Excuse me? A whole lot of people DO very much care about chops. I've lost count of how many players have been glorified solely because they can play 450 bpm but had absolutely no feel to their playing.

Especially edgy teens-20 year olds who are easily impressed by le ebic shredding, but even some older, more mature guys who should have more taste than that still get suckered by this kind of thing.

I'd say that there are far too many people obsessed with chops. After a certain point it's just genetics and time in the woodshed. But musicality? Soul? Subtlety? That's where it's at.

but what the fuck are chops?

If Miles would have been mediocre we wouldn't be discussing him here. Other people took care of answering that question for us a long time ago.

read

I don't know enough about it to really comment but his playing on the 70s albums is lousy.

Also what the fuck is this MEME about miles not having chops?

youtube.com/watch?v=zZKjHX7Y7lg
youtube.com/watch?v=QHk9Cgqa3yI

Maybe it was true when he started but Miles had excellent chops.

fuck I love dr jackle

this
also what the heck are these "chords" you're all kids talking about? is this the new hype bad meme?

Good analogy, but I think I have a better one. I personally am not enamored of John Lennon's skills as a singer, guitarist, or songwriter, but that's beside the point. His fame to a large extent came about due to his activity in the political side of the 60s and as a counterculture figure.

Now after hearing people complain about Miles's tone, I have a better analogy.

Miles wasn't an amazing trumpetist much like Bob Dylan wasn't a great vocalist, but Dylan could express things with his voice like no one else. Miles and Dylan were both masters of phrasing/feels. John Lennon was more important as a sociopolitical figure than a musician.

Google "john lennon bagism" for examples of some truly strange ideas I'm pretty sure neither of the other two guys did.

You saying John Lennon wasn't one of the seminal musicians of the 20th century?

Nice post man I learned a lot from this

Miles didn't have the chops of Dizzy maybe, but he still didn't have bad chops.

Miles found his own sound on the trumpet, distanced himself from bebop, put together several of the best bands in jazz history and released a catalog of albums that is second to none. Plus he is the only jazz musician I can think of who owned a Ferrari.

I like his playing on a lot of his early stuff but I think once he started playing with Hancock, Williams and Carter he got left behind somewhat. He never tried to restrain them though and he did not mind being outshone by the other guys in the band and his albums are all the better for it.

So how many people here read his autobiography?

Didn't say that, only that I personally didn't care for Lennon as a musician just as not everyone likes Miles or Bob Dylan but they all did something unique. I'm saying Lennon was not much of a singer or a guitarist, he was better as a lyricist. Like Dylan, he was mostly about the message rather than the music, but although a lot of people will say Lennon's voice was easier on the ears than Dylan's, he couldn't phrase nearly as well.

I recently started transcribing Miles' recording of "It Could Happen To You". I checked out about ten versions looking for a way to approach learning the tune and Miles' version had some intangible thing the others didn't. When I started transcribing the head I was amazed. Unless my ears are deceiving me, almosts every phrase I've transcribed so far is placed in a rhythmically different way from the other phrases in the head. Whether Miles did this consciously or not who knows, but to my mind that counts as "chops".

BTW, my uncle saw Miles in (I think it was) 1981 when he had Scofield and Stern in the band. Said it was the best concert he's ever attended.

Good analogy, but Miles unlike Lennon was a professionally trained musician. He attended Julliard and did know composition and music theory.

As far as his 70s playing being iffy, I can believe he probably didn't practice much by this point in his career and wasn't as consistent as he'd been back in the 50s. There's a lot of cracked notes on the 70s stuff, too many to think he was doing them on purpose, but the suggestion that he never could play and so developed a style that called for nothing much from his horn is well wide of the mark.

I havent read the thread but it's all
G O O D
A N A L O G Y

I would actually say that.

The Beatles had a ton of great songs and albums (in rock, the fine line between good songs and good albums is less well-defined than in jazz or classical). Lennon was a genius at lyrics and coming up with melodies/harmonies, but an instrumentalist he was not. Nobody ever praises him for his skills on the guitar or piano.

Gershwin wrote great songs AND played a mean piano, but no one called Irving Berlin a great piano player (or musician) because he wrote so many great songs, or Duke Ellington either. (Though one does hear people say Duke was 'better than most people realized.' But people didn't go to hear Duke's band to hear *him* take solos, even though he played a few choice ones.)

As for the digs at "chops," am I the only one here who appreciates the album Joe Pass (with bassist Neils-Henning Orsted Petersen) put out under that name? Or his "Virtuoso" recordings?

Or, hum, "The INCREDIBLE Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery"?

One doesn't do Miles any favors by attacking chops.

Miles solos are some of my favorites and are my favorite trumpet solos. He was inovative, he had his own voice, he was a great band leader, and a great soloist.

To me that makes him one of the greatest trumpet players. If the OP thinks he was mediocre, then he has a very different idea of what is musically important than I do.

This is a shit thread

delete this

Miles's career spanned just under 50 years between his start in the 40s and his death in the early 90s. There were times during that run when his technical skills were amazing and he had speed, power, expressiveness, tone, everything. If you listened to enough of his records, you'd know when he was hot and when he wasn't. When he was playing something he truly wanted to be playing and enjoyed, he could be amazing. Instead, he developed a very personal voice, and he said just as much as anyone, but with less notes. Like many great artists, he was willing to expose his vulnerability. The bottom line is, among other trumpet players, he is the most influential of all. The fact that he was even better as a composer, bandleader, and businessman makes him a legend.

As for Jim Hall, well, Jack Wilkins once had a story that the two met in a bar and Hall bemoaned his inability to shred at 250 bpm. Wilkins's point was that although Hall was a great player as he was, he was human and he believed he had to play fast to prove his manhood.

But Miles did play fast in the 50s and the recordings exist to prove it. This shouldn't be up for debate.

miles has nothing to prove...he played with the best and the best played with him...and they wanted to..

if miles called and asked anyone to play with him...who would reply...sorry man your chops are down...yeah right...

kind of blue is still the best selling jazz album...there is a reason for that..

Well heck, lots of great musicians aren't speed burners. Tony Iommi became a legend for playing 70 bpm songs. Guys like Kirk Hammett who just ride scales at a high rate of speed are the definition of unnatural and plastic-feeling to me.

I'm a firm believer in all things being relative. Miles is a mediocre player relative to the group of players he played with, perhaps. But I mean if someone ever said I was mediocre vis a vis Charlie Parker or Django I'd consider that a compliment. Now if they said I was mediocre vis a vis John Lennon, I'd be putting some guitars on Ebay.

This track alone proves your point wrong.
youtube.com/watch?v=-Np8PJDGq_A
He always had different groups because he wanted to do new things.
I'm not going to say Miles wasn't an asshole or full of shit at times, because he was. It's well documented. To say he is overrated though is fucking ridiculous.

I see where you're coming from but I said Miles and Lennon were icons in _spite_ of their playing skills. Most guitarfags on Sup Forums can probably outplay John Lennon. The point is, both still pushed the envelope in their day.

I've seen it on forums over and over where retards ask "Hey, I can play 250 bpm why am I not famous? I heard X Thelonious Monk recording that was under 100 bpm and it's not fair that they became legends while I'm playing le epic shredder solos at the local pizzeria and nobody gives a shit."

Because it's not the late 1940s, Applebee's is not the Three Deuces Club, and these guys were there at the creation of something, or better yet, they were instrumental (no pun intended) in its creation. I actually once read a question on a forum where a guy asked why his piano teacher, who played much faster than Monk, wasn't well known. Fucking hilarious. The guy wasn't even a jazz musician.

That was my point, and from a musical standpoint the Dylan analogy is better.

Think about it, who has inspired more people to pick up a guitar than John Lennon?

He didn't inspire me. That actually does seem like a strange thing to say. Did people actually try guitar becuase of Lennon?

elvis

I'm still a beginner when it comes to jazz, but Miles' style has always been one of my favorites. But I think I have more of a blues mindset than a jazz mindset when it comes to soloing. His playing on Bitches Brew really blows me away.

I wanna hear this too

composing is more important (at least for the kind of jazz he was known for making) so it doesn't matter.

delete this thread

Duh? Let's start with Chuck Berry and then go down the list of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen, Dimebag Darrell, etc. I mean, come on. John Lennon was a great songwriter and arranger, but nobody anywhere associates him with guitar playing. George Harrison played lead guitar in the Beatles and he's not nearly as appreciated. Everyone knows what Miles Davis's trumpet sounds like or EVH's guitar, but who'd even be able to pick Lennon's guitar out of a montage of guitar sound clips? Lennon and McCartney were a fantastic songwriting team with a god-level sense of melody, but neither of them were renowned as guitarists, while Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie Van Halen did inspire thousands of kids to play a guitar.

>arranger
when the hell did lennon arrange anything?

Goerge Martin did all the hard work

Really? You can do more with a guitar then Lennon was able to?

With a guitar? Fuck yeah

No I got your analogy I wasn't contradicting anything you said. Just saying that technically, Miles Davis was a sound player. The people he is mediocre to are geniuses of music. Most people would chop their hand off to be considered mediocre vis a vis Charlie Parker. But I agree Miles's Influence and legacy will be in his compositional contributions.

Ditto Django and of course Jimmy Page!

Lennon and Macca's greatness is as lyrical writers, their musical compositions are very vanilla, which makes sense, as their main influence songwriting was Tin Pan Alley. So many early Beatles tunes are in AABA. I'm surprised more of their tunes haven't found their way into the jazz standard vocab.

Just what is that you think Lennon did on the guitar? Are you even drawing a distinction on *Beatles records* between his playing and George's (and Paul's: he played guitar too)?

He was a great songwriter; that doesn't make him a great guitar player. Even back in the 60s-70s, nobody talked about Lennon as a guitarist, the big names in those days were Clapton, Hendrix, Iommi, Page, and Blackmore.

Paul is a better guitarist than is often realized. In the early days he just imitated Scotty Moore and Carl Perkins, but on every Beatles record he gets better and tries something different. Finally by the time the Beatles broke up, he was a fully fledged, standalone artist able to pursue a solo career. Lennon himself was very upfront about his limitations, in many ways he played a role of leader of the Beatles his personality was much more important to their success than his talents. That said, I don't want to give the impression that I think playing rhythm guitar in a rock n roll band is an easy job.

I think and perhaps this also speaks to Miles' success, that sometimes if not always force of personality can overcome limitations of talent.
Let's be frank I'm sure Miles's and John's abilities to frankly make asses of themselves in interviews had a lot to do with their success...one can never underestimate the power of good copy. If you give good copy the press will forgive your faults, cover your biggest mistakes, and always give you good reviews.

>I'd say that there are far too many people obsessed with chops. After a certain point it's just genetics
I agree. Some people just don't have the physical ability to play fast while guys like Dave Mustaine could do it effortlessly. It depends on how good your muscle twitch fibers are.

Miles isn't mediocre compared to ANYONE. He plays with more emotion than any other horn player I've ever heard, and his solos are lyrical and very compositional. True, he doesn't quite have the chops of Dizzy or Clifford Brown... but if you think that he can't play fast runs then clearly you're not very familiar with his catalog. He just chooses not to do so most of the time. And again, chops aren't nearly as important as you're making them out to be. I can't see this discussion going any further...either you "get" Miles or you don't. But most of the great jazz musicians thought Miles was a great player, Paul Bley excluded.

>cats
stopped reading

I disagree genetics are the only reason because Youtube is full of teenage guitarists who can do 200 bpm shredding. I say it's the easy availability of learning materials and the "faster=better" mentality.

>his solos are lyrical and very compositional
Agreed, but I think quite a few people had more emotion in their solos.

yeah but at 15 you're still growing and have a soft, rubbery kid body plus all the free time in the world when you're not in school.

who?

Yesterday being the biggest one, but shit, at least 40% of the Beatles' catalog feels like jazz. Eleanor Rigby? Totally jazz all the way. Most of them have great melodies and for whatever beatles were, they did try a few interesting harmonic ideas...the modulation and picard third in 'And I love her.' Great tunes. I like Wes Montgomery's stabs at their catalogue.

Who had more emotion? I always thought Thelonious Monk had a huge amoount of emotion in his solos, as did Sonny Rollins

>It's a Sup Forums acts edgy and contrarian thread

Jesus Christ, for the last time, I'm NOT putting chops on a pedestal. My claim to Miles being mediocre wasn't due to his lack of chops alone, but tone, vibrato, and just being a trumpet player in general.

I said it before and here it goes again, I was better off having said that Miles Davis was a mediocre TRUMPET player.

And yes, I can easily see The Beatles' tunes considered as standards. Grant Green did a wonderful rendition of "A Day In The Life".

It's always the guitar players huh?

Meh I don't like monk as a soloist he just does the same stuff all the time

My wife's son thinks that most Coltrane solos sound like a goose being picked up by the legs and swung around over your head. Miles is still the coolest to me,not the best maybe.There's not much any better than Miles and Coltrane together, only Wes.

I think its probably the conotations of 'mediocre' more than anything thats causing the misunderstanding. That's why I said relative, yea relative to musical geniuses on the trumpet he may be mediocre, but he's certainly not mediocre in the general sense, as in he's certainly not a 'run of the mill' trumpet player.


I think Wes did a version of that one too. I'm gonna sit down with my Mark Levine and some Beatles sheets and do some reharms this weekend and see what I can do!

surprise surprise, analyzing music is completely subjective

Except it kind of does. You can practice, exercise, and make the most out of your natural genetic potential, but if you don't have enough fast twitch muscle fibers, you'll never be able to play as fast as Kerry King. He just got lucky at the genetic lottery.

I read somewhere that John Coltrane was over-blowing through most all of his solos toward the end of his musical career, & this was attributed to the influence of Pharaoh Sanders.

We live in this "everyone is equal" world and like to think that everyone is born with the same innate abilities and the same potential. Perhaps everyone is born with some potential for something. I was never as good at video games as my brother is. It's just a fact of life - we aren't all born with the same physiological make-up. It may not be fair but it is life.

He was a trumpet player among other things. He composed, arranged, conceptualized the sounds he wanted to hear and then put together the band that could turn it into a reality, inspired his musicians to get the sound he was after, acted very cool and somehow turned himself into an icon that somehow fed itself back into the music, provoked people in a way that drew them toward him instead of away, constantly evolved musically in a way that few others could, etc., etc.

If you just isolate his technique as a trumpet player, sure you'll get lots of opinions, but as a whole musician, Miles is kind of hard to argue against.

I agree. Like it or not, some of you will never be able to play Raining Blood at the same tempo as the record, some of you will never have what it takes to be an NFL quarterback, and some of you will never have what it takes to paint a watercolor landscape.