“Skill does not write a good song”

RocknRollDave

Liked this quote I saw today:

"Skill does not write a good song. Louie Louie is better than any song Joe Satriani’s written, but the more skillful you are, the easier it is to execute your vision"

(Taken from here:
https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-van-pelt-artisans-and-merchants)


I agree. Do you?

monquixote

No because it conflates songwriting skill with technical ability.

Joe Satriani is known for instrumental prowess rather than being a great composer.

DefaultM

I dunno, people seem to like that Coldplay song that Satch wrote.

viz

If Satriani had written Louie Louie it would be one of his worst songs. 

soma1975

The idea that learning your craft is detrimental to your craft is a myth perpetuated by fucking idiots. 

Gassage

Having listened to his track on that interview it appears he's fucked on both fronts.

Dominic

There's a difference between a song and a piece of music
Bach ,Beethoven , Chopin etc wrote incredible music
Paul Mc Cartney /John Lennon wrote great songs 
neither could have done the other's job
I know 2 phenomenal classical pianists .......they are almost like machines that turn busy staves into music but I doubt either of them could actually improvise a decent version of Happy Birthday at a first shot without written music
You would have to look hard to better Cole Porter ,Irving Berlin etc as songwriters

Cranky

It looks to me like two obviously true statements surrounding one obviously subjective statement.  Like it’s trying to trick you into agreeing with latter by sandwiching it between the former.

And “Louie Louie” is a horrible example to use here for anyone who wasn’t an all-consuming youth during that specific era.

Overall I don’t like it.  It just mashes up too many things about music-making and music-listening that are complex and interesting and nuanced into something so needlessly singular.  It appeals to the base anti-intellectual in us.

roberty

The instruments are just tools for realising a vision. No instrumental prowess can magic a vision into being, it has to be the other way around

TheBigDipper

roberty said:

The instruments are just tools for realising a vision. No instrumental prowess can magic a vision into being, it has to be the other way around

Have a wis. And sometimes it's not even a vision, just a happy unplanned accident that you grasp and hold onto for dear life, just grateful that it dropped on you from somewhere... 

fretmeister

It's a terrible quote.

"Playing skill does not..." is accurate.

but

"Compositional skill does not..." would not be accurate.

DannyP

Bit disingenuous to chop off the second half of his sentence:

Skill does not write a good song. Louie Louie is a better song than any song Joe Satriani’s written, but in the same breath, the more skillful you are, the easier it is for you to execute your vision.

viz

I 99% agree with the sentiment that head and heart come before hands, but I would also add that every now and then a skillful player will come across a little gem or inspiration that comes directly from technique. And it’s also possibly more likely that someone versed in theory will be less likely to reinvent something obvious or hackneyed like a 1564 progression, at least not unknowingly. 

hollywoodrox

Summer song ,Surfing with the alien & Always with me always with you  easily stand against Louie Louie 

axisus

Louie Louie - Meh, it's OK but it's just a song.
Always with me, Always with you - The defining instrumental of a decade. 

The statement is a fail for me. Besides, it's apples and oranges ain't it.

thecolourbox

In other news, Michelin star chefs don't necessarily make great cocktails, and Salvador Dali was a terrible political cartoonist

CaseOfAce

It was a cheap throwaway line from a bloke in a doubtless achingly too cool for school hip New York indie rock band that nobody has ever heard of, that has generated a nice little bit of clickbait traffic for the Guitar World website (which I am of course adding to here ;-)).

It's a shame cos the band has possibly made some interesting music but stuff like that is a turn-off to potential listeners.

Ddigger

I can see where Dominic is coming from - I have met some seriously good piano and violin players that only appear to be able to play with paper in from of them.  And I know some fiddle players who make music with pretty much nothing to go on and fit in with whoever turns up, playing whatever instrument they bring with them.

I am not really a fan of instrumental electric guitar, but some Paco de Lucia - yes please, blistering technique, fabulous musicianship and thumping tunes.

Lets face it, Neil Young doesn't get to record music for his guitar playing or singing abilities - he gets to record music because he writes songs.

stickyfiddle

axisus said:

Always with me, Always with you - The defining instrumental of a decade. 

That's not even the defining instrumental of the record it's on...!?! 

Sporky

I'd make some sort of point about sweeping generalisations and edge cases, but someone will only reply saying that a drunk in a gutter made a more poignant observation at some point. 

Blueingreen

It's true.

Take Paul McCartney, arguably one of the greatest songwriters of the past century.  For a few years he wrote masterpiece after masterpiece.  Yet almost everything his reputation rests on was written when he was a very young man.

Is that because he became less skilful once he passed 30?  Obviously not.  I doubt he lost anything, as a skilful musician.

He somehow, for reasons I don't think anybody fully understands, lost inspiration.  And in that he is hihgly typical: you could compile a long list of great artists who lived reasonably long lives but who'd done everything that was really special by a young age.  Artists who keep producing outstanding work into middle and old age also exist but there are probably fewer of them.  Their skills were still intact, their creative inspiration had gone.

Whether Louie Louie is a great song or not is debatable, but it's irrelevant, the principle still holds.  You can have very, very high levels of skill and never create anything of note.  You can have fairly modest skill levels and create a body of great work, as people like Dylan, Lennon and Richards demonstrate.  You can have both, as the great classical composers and jazz musicians tend to.  But even in jazz, for example, many technical wizards created nothing particularly memorable while (relatively speaking) technically limited players like Monk and Ellington were creating great work.

Great songs need inspiration.  High levels of skill are not enough, and not necessarily essential (although you could put the argument that having written a great song is, of itself, evidence that you must be a skilled songwriter).