Todays musicians just trying too hard

By: Sunil Noronha
Friday, March 17, 2006

Most of the music that you hear these days is far from orignal. It is a fact that even statistically at a given point in time there are many more new bands than before. And the range of the first "bursts" onto the scene is quite easily categorizable. You have the boy/girl bands-portraying the Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and Westlife look in their videos (with their sudden turns away from the camera when it closes in on them in their videos). Then you've got the wanna-be-rockers who intend on showing that their music is indeed guitar riff based and full of gut wrenching solos but their songs show that they just don't have that touch to re create that kind of music. What would otherwise be full-fledged riffs are plain chords played vigorously over and over again and guitar solos are replaced by one-note breaks in the song where one note is what is considered to be the solo. Then you have the bands, which have no idea whether they should be a pop/boy band or a rock band and flirt with both.

Rock music has always been about real stuff, reality-dealing with real deep emotions that can very easily cause one anguish. That is why a true rock fan would consider pop music at a level lower. Pop music, R&B and the like has always been love songs, love songs and love songs. But for the true fan of music, he who really appreciates soul in music (honesty being the key here), there is hope. There is a category that some of today's musicians fall under that will satisfy his longing. There are bands that are really worth listening to.

There is no set formula to make the right kind of music. The only formula is (that has always been) is to let it come straight from the heart. Somehow today's musicians who intend on emulating their heroes don't seem to get that right. They got the techniques on the tip of their fingers and they have advanced the level of this ages music, which is appreciable, but the point is that advancement (more aptly called technical advancement) doesn't really cut the stuff. The intention never was or should be to make it complicated. The great breakthrough musicians who brought forth changes in music didn't decide to before changing the music scene of their time. They just did. Now the musicians of our time are trying so hard to make a breakthrough-they are trying just too hard. If it is there in them, it will show in the music. Music wasn't all about breakthroughs anyways. Breakthroughs just happened and even if they didn't, the cycle would go on-man would find a way to bring out their inner emotion on to the music hence enriching it.