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What is Musicality?

Hello fellow music lovers,

I am upgrading my system like a lot of us who follow Audiogon. I read a lot about musicality on Audiogon as though the search for musicality can ultimately end by acquiring the perfect music system -- or the best system that one can afford. I really appreciate the sonic improvements that new components, cables, plugs and tweaks are bringing to my own system. But ultimately a lot of musicality comes from within and not from without. I probably appreciated my Rocket Radio and my first transistor radio in the 1950s as much I do my high-end system in 2010. Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are. Most people appreciate good music but some people are born more musical than others and appreciate singing in the shower as much as they do listening to a high-end system or playing a musical instrument or attending a concert. Music begins in the soul. It is not only a function of how good a system you have.

Sabai
sabai
frogman
7,358 posts
 
Schubert, you're exactly right. And what a great example of what you talk about! Ray Still was one of, perhaps THE, defining voice of that orchestra; aside from the brass section, of course. Anyone interested in what you talk about should listen to their recording of Rossini Overtures on RCA; Ray Still was a monster player. In the jazz world a great example is Sonny Rollins, a player with such a strong musical stamp that the rhythm section always seemed to be subservient to HIS rhythmic core.
uberdine
100 posts
 
It doesn't matter how technically proficient a musician is, if their soul isn't intertwined with what they're doing there is no “musicality”, which is also why recording music is such a challenge in the first place, i.e. getting musicians to reproduce the magic after twenty five takes caused by technical issues, and by which time they're bored and hungry and officially over it, or if there was no soul-intertwining possible from the outset, as is the case with, say, The Dave Matthews Band, who have an extremely high level of technical proficiency but are impossible to listen to without intuiting that they'd rather be at home cleaning out their golf bags because that's the only place their lost sweater could possibly be. Assuming there's musicality in the source, then, the next challenge is to reproduce that through a stereo in such a way that there is involuntary toe-tapping, head/torso-swaying etc, symptomatic of musicality in both live and recorded music, and the reproduction of which probably has something to do with a fast attack and a slow decay, a lively but lush sound that doesn't skimp on the mid-bass rhythm section and is so crucial to an amplifier that it's dumbfounding why so many high end products don't possess them. Are they doing it on purpose? It's possible that the nimble, bone dry sound of a fast attack/fast decay is necessary for the spec sheet, or is a sound that some people associate (incorrectly) with neutrality.
schubert
7,386 posts
 
Uberdine, very insightfull about the mid-bass rhythm.
My Van Alstine Synergy 450 amp has that in spades, first
time in 40 years I'm not looking for a different amp.
Its just as important for Classical Music .
sabai OP
2,027 posts
 
Detlof and Frogman,

I don't think that Thelonious Monk was at a level of "technical perfection" -- which is what Oscar Peterson alludes to in his comments about Monk. Nevertheless, I feel Monk was a very great artist. He was technically good whereas Peterson was technically great. Which did not make Peterson a greater artist than Monk, in my books. They were both great in their own individual ways. IMHO.
frogman
7,358 posts
 
Couldn't agree more. Any piano teacher would cringe watching Monk play with his "wrong" finger position and lack of conventional technique. And yet....
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