cnewshadow
Favorite Answer
It depends.
If they're just flat out terrible, sure. Anyone with ears can tell that.
On the other hand, if you want to sit there and say someone like Steve Vai can't play, you'd better be able to show some serious chops yourself if you want to be taken at all seriously.
To counter the "5 star chef" arguments. If the meal sucks, sure you can say so.
If it actually was cooked by a 5 star chef and you're the only one who has a problem with it, you're going to need some credibility before you criticize it.
Russell E
NO.
Anyone who criticizes a musician and doesn't know how to play an instrument themselves is a poser and an ignorant fool.
As are those who criticize other people's musical tastes because they, themselves, don't like it.
AND the idiots who call bands "sell outs" because they decided to make their music a little more radio friendly and make millions of dollars.
It's easy to criticize when you don't know dick about being a musician and how hard it actually is to make a living at it, much less be a successful artist.
If someone doesn't play an instrument, then shut the F*** up, nobody asked for their ignorant opinions.
?
To some extent, yes definitely. When someones obviously not that good, its easy to tell without playing the instrument and easy to criticize. But if you're trying to criticize someone who is good just not professional good, then I think you'd need some bit of experience to be able to help them get better. Sometimes at that point its not about how it sounds but more technical things that could help them improve.
And it always helps to have some knowledge of the instrument because constructive criticizing is a lot more helpful than just anything else. Even if they're not good at all. Seriously, I hate when people tell me that can't be right then don't say anything to help me improve.
Chief Whachusa
Yes, just like when the President is criticized by voters or when professional fighters are called bums. A musician may not like nor want this criticism but fans and music listeners love to give it.
If I were to have said that Led Zeppelin was the worst live band in 1977, would I be criticizing? Would my having knowledge of how to play an instrument change my criticism? We criticize because there is a dislike for something.
In the area of sell outs, when the Beatles began they played in German bars wore they blue jeans and leather jackets, they swore and smoked on stage. Is that the image of the Beatles as known by tens of millions of fans for five or six decades?
Would Richard Pryor be a sellout if he had stopped swearing and using drug jokes on stage to make a millions of dollars more over air T.V.
I know nothing about music or how it is played yet I can and do criticize musicians among many other things. Does that make me a fool? Only if I say or make myself better than those I criticize.
Now I have fixed an air conditioner in a insulated attic on a 90 degree day. Few in the home realizes how hard and unconformable it is working in the enclosed space to provide cool air to your home. But when the job is finished there is always that one criticism about how long it took or my not being aware of "how hot it is".
If you want to see what not being able to sing well, play good or even sell out gets, (in part)
"Sex Pistols"
"The Sex Pistols were an English punk band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians. Although their initial career lasted just two-and-a-half years and produced only four singles and one studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, they are regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music.".....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols
Sex Pistols Biography
Rock and roll was never the same after the Sex Pistols. They ignited the punk-rock revolution in Britain, and the reverberations carried to all corners of the rock and roll world. Expressing the cynical, restive mood of youthful Britons, the Sex Pistols restored a sense of danger to rock music. This wasn’t the theatrical danger of Alice Cooper’s onstage guillotine but the very real possibility of injury to the body and a jolt to the senses. At Sex Pistols concerts during their two-year British heyday - from their first show on November 6, 1975, through the end of 1977 - there was gobbing (spitting), fistfights, flying bottles and insults hurled in both directions.
http://rockhall.com/inductees/sex-pistols/bio/
Sometimes being good with the right persons around you makes you look great all by yourself. The way I see it the musician is on stage because he wants to know how great he is. It is thinking themselves "a rock star" when they do not care or ask for "ignorant opinions".
James
You don't have to know how to play an instrument to be able to hear when a note is off.