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[deleted] OP t1_j6nf1z8 wrote

Reply to comment by blay12 in Top 5 Most Intelligent Musicians? by [deleted]

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blay12 t1_j6nkf6d wrote

So what, you're limiting your pool of "musicians" to modern musicians you've heard give interviews? No classical/broadway/film composers? No jazz or classical instrumentalists? No dead musicians?

At the very least go listen to some interviews of modern greats like Sondheim or Bernstein talking music theory/composition/conducting/etc, because they definitely don't come across as unintelligent lol.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nm5zf wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nphiu wrote

It honestly just feels like you've got a pretty limited view of "musicians" and are just running off of an assumption you've made based on the music you listen to specifically (and interviews with those artists), rather than the wider world of music as a whole.

I can keep listing intelligent musicians for you (hell, take literally anyone from the album I'm currently listening to and they'll all tick that "intelligent" box, as well as articulate, which is apparently more important to you - album is Goat Rodeo Sessions with Chris Thile, Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan), but reading your other comments it seems like it would be an exercise in futility.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nqgws wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nrjjl wrote

I am literally a musician and production engineer with multiple degrees in the field and over a decade of professional experience, don't default to such a lazy assumption about how much music I listen to in order to start a useless pissing contest to try to change the subject.

I'm sure next you'll just say that a decade of working in the field is nothing, and that because you're far older than me I don't really understand music like your generation does and still ignore the point that literally all of this is based on assumptions you've made.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6num7h wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nvim5 wrote

Lmao this coming from a guy that probably doesn't even know who Pearl Jam is. Get on my level sweetheart.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6ny7mx wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nyf6j wrote

probably don't even know the words to their famous song "smells like toon sprite"

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nzebc wrote

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blay12 t1_j6o2ot5 wrote

Probably the same way I memorized the full score of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique or performed Escamillo in Carmen or arranged/composed 100+ songs for various jazz/vocal/rock/indie/etc ensembles lol - with a bit of time and effort. I'm very happy for you that you're so proud of yourself for having an eclectic musical knowledge, but you're far from the only person in this world (or even on this website) who does.

I hate to break it to you, but there are thousands (likely more) of people out there in this world with a deeper and more complete knowledge of music and musicians than you'll ever have. Maybe I'm one of them, maybe I'm not, but the fact that you haven't met someone like that is in no way proof that you never will, nor is it proof that they don't exist and you're the king of musical knowledge.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6o4xpl wrote

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blay12 t1_j6o8op1 wrote

Well if I've learned one thing from living in the world of professional musicians and musical scholars, there's always someone who's put in more work, is more naturally talented, or a combination of both. In this particular example of "random music knowledge", I know at least two people with an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every piece of recorded music in the past century - one is a production professor with 40 years of experience touring, running live sound, and producing albums for everyone from Dave Matthews to the Tallis Scholars, the other is a music historian and jazz pianist who makes it a habit to listen to every version of a piece he's going to play (along with the full discography of that artist just so he can have an "informed background" on why they did it that way) while keeping up to date with everything from post-hardcore prog rock to alt-pop and hip hop because "you never know what'll help."

If you haven't met anyone yet who can challenge your knowledge, just go out and meet more people - you'll find them eventually.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nsglj wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nu85u wrote

Oh yeah I totally believe you, internet stranger with no proof of their habits and no compelling evidence other than "well I'm telling you that none of the people I know has spent as much time as I have not working and consuming media, so obviously you couldn't have either".

Like I said, this is an exercise in futility lol. Thanks for proving me right!

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nvjt2 wrote

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blay12 t1_j6nvp0d wrote

THERE'S the age remark haha, knew it was only a matter of time. When you're done pushing conversations off track with fallacious arguments maybe we can talk, but you seem like an absolute headache so probably not.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6njx2s wrote

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nkfvz wrote

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[deleted] OP t1_j6nknrd wrote

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InkBlotSam t1_j6no1j0 wrote

Tell me what the "most" intelligent of the arts is so I can cherry-pick a bunch of dumbshits in that arena as well.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6ntsz4 wrote

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InkBlotSam t1_j6o6qim wrote

Woody Harrelson, Charlie Sheen, Janice Dickinson, Tommy Wiseau, Anna Nicole Smith, Andy Dick, Dustin Diamond, David Hasselhoff, John Travolta, Alana Thompson, Amanda Bynes, Jaden Smith, Tara Reid, Randy Quaid, Kevin Sorbo, Denise Richards, Pauly Shore, Gary Busey, Rob Schneider, Pamela Anderson, off the top of my head.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6o7pbx wrote

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InkBlotSam t1_j6oa1b3 wrote

And also intelligent ones. Classical musicians tend to be incredibly smart. Ignoring the geniuses of the past, current performers like Yo Yo Ma, Josh Bell, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Duamel, Itzhak Perlman, Bright Sheng etc, - a small fraction of the literal geniuses in the field - matter of fact you'd have to work real hard to make a list of dumb classical performers. Same with Jazz, really: from older guys like Herbie Hancock to up-and-coming geniuses like Jacob Collier there's a big difference between true musicians who have spent years or decades mastering the complex theory of their craft and some YouTube "finds" dropping computerized beats in Fruity Loops.

I don't actually get the point of your generalization or thread, really. There are lots of geniuses and lots of dumbshits in all the arts, just like every other facet of society. For every Oscar-winning drama with brilliant writing and performances by masters of their craft, there's 500 straight-to-video or streaming garbage loaded with dumbshit actors.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6oblt9 wrote

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InkBlotSam t1_j6of7m2 wrote

It's not consistent with what you're saying at all. Your post called music (not any particular genre) the least intelligent of the arts, and that doesn't check out. Cherry-picking certain genres is also of no use to you, because it's just as easy to cherry-pick movie/film genres. Reality TV? Porn? Instructional videos? Straight-to-video-comedies? Kid shows? B movies? Old horror flicks? I could make an endless list of movie genres certainly not know for their "geniuses" just like you could with music.

That said, there are lots of highly intelligent musicians in every genre. I just didn't want to cover ground already covered in this thread. From Madonna and Shakira (both members of Mensa), to Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray, or Neal Peart, Tom Scholz of Boston, Prince, Dexter Holland of Offspring, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer Jeff Baxter of Steely Dan, Leonard Cohen, Weird Al, Ke$ha, Childish Gambino, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Lupe Fiasco, Bjork, Greg Graffin - tons of metal performers (like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden or Dan Spitz of Anthrax), for the same reason as the classical musicians. As for Michael Stipe, he's not even the smartest person in R.E.M. That would be Peter Buck.

It doesn't sound like you really want a list of smart musicians at all, you're trying to make some point that you're not making well.

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[deleted] OP t1_j6ofxox wrote

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InkBlotSam t1_j6ohyvh wrote

Also with all due respect, but you're over here nominating Billy Corgan as your representative for the smartest musicians, and have been shitting on lists of actual geniuses all over the thread, so I don't know how much credibility you actually have here, lol.

Your general dismissal of musicians as of low intellect is so absurd and naive that most of the joy in this thread isn't identifying brilliant musicians, it's watching you twisted up your back trying to simultaneously shit on all musicians, create strawmen arguments about how now you're only talking about "certain genres" (while ignoring brilliant musicians in those genres), and shit on brilliant musicians with glib, "nope" kinds of comments, as though you're the arbitator of who is, and is not, intelligent. I haven't found a thread more worthy of cross-posting to r/gatekeeping in a long time, tbh.

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