I am guessing he played other instruments but he primarily played the trumpet. So being the musical genius he was he did all sorts of genius stuff to create music focused on his one instrument. And then all sorts of students of miles wanted to play the trumpet like Miles and do all the stuff he did and we got a lot of Trumpet focused music out of it.

And we have that for guitar players, drummers, sax, bass guitars what have you.

Now days we have the Kanye or Dr. Dre Model. Producers who don't really have a background playing instruments. Now these guys are composers like a Beethoven or Mozart and they have the ear to say, "you it would be great to get some trumpets on this track". But they can't create Miles Davis type of trumpeting on a synthesizer. Even when they get big enough to be like Daft Punk to be like, let's get Niles Rogers on this track, is Get Lucky really a Niles Rodgers GUITAR song? IDK. Am I making any sense?

Look, I bet it wouldn't be that hard to find a Julliard Student who is as technically proficient on the guitar as Jimi Hendrix. Heck I bet you can find an Asian kid on youtube who is approaching technically proficient as Hendrix, but that doesn't make them a great musician for the reasons Bopper describes (influence, originating, groundbreaking material, etc). So I don't think technical proficiency is the end all or be all of great artist OR great music for that matter.

So this post really isn't a knock on modern music (and saying things were better back in the day). In fact, I think Prince became less interesting when he seemed to become focused on becoming the best live musician with the best live band as compared to when he was experimenting mostly by himself in the studio with synthesized sounds.

However, someone like Thundercat is an anomaly because his thing is, "Yo I play the bass guitar, and that's the focus of my music" and I wonder how he compares to say, Larry Graham.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"