A Random Rant about Music
I finally got around to reading the Rolling Stone issue with Fergie on the cover. In the feature story about her (which you'll have to buy at a newsstand to read the whole thing), Will.i.am. reflects on the first time he asked her to the recording studio:
Will remembered her pitching her solo album to him and invited her up to the studio. "She sang, and I was like, 'Wow, that was dope. You wanna put a harmony on it?' She was like, 'You want a third or a fifth?' I was like, 'Whoa! You know that knowledge shit! Why don't you put a third on it and we'll put the fifth on it later, 'cause that'll make it sound dissonant.' She said, 'Well, I could put the fifth on bar two, and on bar three I could go in unison.' I was like, 'Wow! I'm fuckin' wit' you!'"
Excuse me, but this really bothers me. It exemplifies all that's wrong with modern music. Why should he be so surprised that Fergie knows about harmonizing? God forbid current musicians should take the time to learn music theory. In a world in which shows like American Idol make stars out of people who don't need to play instruments or write their own songs, and who have computers to fix their pitch problems, quite frankly I give lots of credit to Fergie for at least knowing what she's doing (albeit I wish she could use that knowledge to write better songs).
We should stop calling people "musicians" and "artists" and call them what they really are: singers, nothing more. And oftentimes, even that's a stretch.