Not a new arguement but an interesting take

[Christian Miller]

Hate to be a contrarian

no you don’t hahahaha

[Alter]

If anything, musicians today sound more diverse than previously, with all the decades of inspiration and styles to choose from. Especially on guitar, with the modern sounds and effects into the genre, everyone sounds different.

But even straight ahead archtop players, say, Peter Bernstein, Jesse Van Ruller, Kreisberg, etc. You can tell who's playing in a few seconds if you've listened to them enough, same as the old guys, they are not less diverse than the early generation. And if we move into Moreno, Lage Lund, Rosenwinkel, Scofield,Mike Stern, Metheny etc, endless sounds!

It's the same with contemporary Flamenco. Listen to 100 albums and everyone sounds the same. Then listen to 1000 and everyone sounds different!

But another thing is the stage and evolvement of every individuals playing. Most young people are of course going to be about chops and burning. Then later, they will develop further and play differently, better.

[Christian Miller]

you understand that this is not some random youtuber but the winner of the most prestigious jazz competition on the planet? and you're saying not even the undergrads can be arsed? i rest my case

Rest what case?

The Proposal is: jazz guitarists now sound more similar than before

I don’t see how this either refutes or proves the proposal.

seems to me people can’t help but widen out the scope of the question on these threads. But the statement as I see it is quite narrow - do all contemporary players sound alike? And the answer as I think you’ve already admitted is no.

The younger ones may be more similar, I’ll admit but I’m not 100% this wasn’t always the case. It’s kind of a phase? Dexter and Bird went through a phase of sounding like Prez.

Other related questions I may have a different opinion on. I’m not sure if the current jazz scene would produce a Monk or a Horace Silver for instance. There is a high importance placed on chops, as everyone has noted.

Should there be more diversity of approach in jazz edu? Maybe. I think there’s also fashion and group think too. Everyone now seems to be into Barry Harris for instance, while 15 years ago no one in London seemed to know who he was aside from his circle of students…. which I don’t think is down to jazz professors so much.

I remember professors saying ‘if I hear Kurt bloody ronsenwinkels name again…….’ Haha. So it’s not that either. Now it’s Pasquale bloody Grasso maybe.

If the question is whether or not I or anyone else should give a shit about jazz competitions, I would say I don’t think they are all that, and I don’t know how important they are to young players except if they enter them. IIRC Dan Wilson placed 4th or 5th the same year Pasquale won it. I don’t need to tell you the proving ground is the bandstand yada yada. The NYC community, for example, obviously has an emphasis on people developing their own sound - more so I think than other scenes - and it seems to work.

That said I’m sure young players would check out performances of hot new players, but they would be less interested by the sounds of it in tutorials.

otoh Neither do I want to criticise young players who have their whole careers ahead them and are already playing at a high level regardless of whether or not I like their playing, because I just think that comes across as a bit bitter from me and I’ve done too much of that in my life. Some players are more generic than others for sure.

[JCat]

There is a saying that junior focus on technique whereas senior focus on tone. There's some truth to this, it's kind of reasonable, but most obvious is that seasoned players tend to focus on the music. So, if everyone sounds the same, this would suggest that we all play the same music...confirmed! We play Jazz, mostly the standard repertoire.
If you want to break new ground, you'll have to write new material, like the old giants did. But those guys wrote pop music, we are writing in a genre that is supposed to be dead since the '60s.
When I write a song that will immediately be recognized as Jazz, I promise you'll believe you've heard it before. If you don't recognize it, chances are that someone is going to question if this really is "jazz".

[Litterick]

Back in the day, jazz was not a genre an aspiring musician could learn from a book or at a college. It was a living community, the members of which strove to be innovative. Jazz was modern. Now it is codified, one of many styles of music that can be learned. The aspiring musician is more likely to want to imitate the greats of the glory days than to create new music. But at least innovators still practice and have their imitators: in 2108, Mary Halvorson told The Wire: "You know, when you go to jazz school, you hear three or four Pat Methenys, and a couple of Bill Frisells, and it’s interesting to see, these days, I feel like there’s a lot of Kurt Rosenwinkels."

[mr. beaumont]

Maybe we hear more imitators today because we flat out hear more players today.

I mean, a nobody like me has over 1000 YouTube subscribers. So there's a 1000 people who know what I sound like.

Would anybody have any idea what I sounded like if I lived in 1957? I'm guessing not.

[djg]

Rest what case?

The Proposal is: jazz guitarists now sound more similar than before

i think the proposal was something like:

cootie williams says "all guys after bird sound the same"
you say "i cant tell apart this or that bop guitarist from the 50s"
i say " i cant tell apart this or that contemporary guitarist"
you say "surely you can tell apart bernstein from grasso"
i say " surely you can tell apart chuck wayne from kenny burrell"

my case: cootie williams is wrong from a historic perspective. of course, as kenny napper once pointed out, there was so much bad bebop in those days that did not survive history. so from a historic perspective i'm probably wrong as well, since i predict that not much music from the current crop of jazz guitar will stand the test of time.

[Christian Miller]

There is a saying that junior focus on technique whereas senior focus on tone. There's some truth to this, it's kind of reasonable, but most obvious is that seasoned players tend to focus on the music. So, if everyone sounds the same, this would suggest that we all play the same music...confirmed! We play Jazz, mostly the standard repertoire.
If you want to break new ground, you'll have to write new material, like the old giants did. But those guys wrote pop music, we are writing in a genre that is supposed to be dead since the '60s.
When I write a song that will immediately be recognized as Jazz, I promise you'll believe you've heard it before. If you don't recognize it, chances are that someone is going to question if this really is "jazz".

I don’t think that stands up. Here’s three versions of darn that dream, for instance

they sound pretty different

otoh contemporary jazz compositions can often be quite samey.

in general some people have an original approach, most do not.

[Christian Miller]

i think the proposal was something like:

cootie williams says "all guys after bird sound the same"
you say "i cant tell apart this or that bop guitarist from the 50s"
i say " i cant tell apart this or that contemporary guitarist"

well sometimes I struggle!

you say "surely you can tell apart bernstein from grasso"
i say " surely you can tell apart chuck wayne from kenny burrell"

yes I could tell the difference between those two lol

my case: cootie williams is wrong from a historic perspective. of course, as kenny napper once pointed out, there was so much bad bebop in those days that did not survive history.

well my point is more that it may not even have been that bad, just very generic.

so from a historic perspective i'm probably wrong as well, since i predict that not much music from the current crop of jazz guitar will stand the test of time.

well that’s what I’m saying - we are in a privileged position regarding the past. Maybe we’d all be like Cootie had we been about 70 or 80 years ago …

tbh current jazz guitar is almost entirety listened to by jazz guitarists. Not even other guitarists! This wasn’t always the case - Jimi loved Kenny, Wes etc for example. And the organ trios were popular in the 60s… so who knows?

But then everyone thought Old Bach was a bit out there in his own day, a vulgar technician given to convoluted and impenetrable complexity, if undoubtedly gifted, and now we think he’s the King of Music. On the other hand his son CPE was the toast of Europe, tremendously influential on the likes of Mozart, and now basically he’s known for one piece.

so who knows?

[JCat]

they sound pretty different.

My wife says they sound all the same

[Christian Miller]

My wife says they sound all the same

she thinks Benny Goodman sounds like Kurt Rosenwinkel?

ok

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Back in the day, jazz was not a genre an aspiring musician could learn from a book or at a college. It was a living community, the members of which strove to be innovative. Jazz was modern. Now it is codified, one of many styles of music that can be learned. The aspiring musician is more likely to want to imitate the greats of the glory days than to create new music. But at least innovators still practice and have their imitators: in 2108, Mary Halvorson told The Wire: "You know, when you go to jazz school, you hear three or four Pat Methenys, and a couple of Bill Frisells, and it’s interesting to see, these days, I feel like there’s a lot of Kurt Rosenwinkels."

Not getting the point. Is that a way of implying that "in the old days everybody was original", because that's simply not true. There were copiers of Satchmo, Parker, Billie, Charlie, and on and on. Everybody's human and that's the way it goes.

Then after a while somebody makes a push forward and everybody jumps on their bandwagon. (Parker then Coltrane, as an obvious example)

If "copiers of Metheny" implies that he is an original, fine, but just remember what he did when he was coming up - cloning Wes. And Wes cloned Charlie, at least for a while. And so it goes.

[mr. beaumont]

she thinks Benny Goodman sounds like Kurt Rosenwinkel?

ok

Particularly that phase where he sang along with the guitar that had some kind of ring modulated effect on it. Very clarinet-like.

[JCat]

Particularly that phase where he sang along with the guitar that had some kind of ring modulated effect on it. Very clarinet-like.

These days, I feel like there’s a lot of Kurt Rosenwinkels...but the ring modulator is cool, horn like.

[JCat]

Here's the real Kurt on a Les Paul plugged into a Fender combo, tilt back. (It appears the LP can be used for Jazz) playing a "minor Blues" he wrote himself. Metheny-esque, very nice.

[Christian Miller]

Not getting the point. Is that a way of implying that "in the old days everybody was original", because that's simply not true. There were copiers of Satchmo, Parker, Billie, Charlie, and on and on. Everybody's human and that's the way it goes.

Then after a while somebody makes a push forward and everybody jumps on their bandwagon. (Parker then Coltrane, as an obvious example)

If "copiers of Metheny" implies that he is an original, fine, but just remember what he did when he was coming up - cloning Wes. And Wes cloned Charlie, at least for a while. And so it goes.

tbh early Metheny sounds a lot like Mick Goodrick to me

[Christian Miller]

Nb: sometimes players aren’t so much original as copying someone less well known. I’m sure a lot of people thought Clapton was highly original.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

tbh early Metheny sounds a lot like Mick Goodrick to me

That was after his high school years and self proclaimed “mercy graduation “. Surely you know the story, his older band mates told him to stop aping Wes and find his own voice etc.

Yes, Goodrick cast a long shadow at Berklee.

[DawgBone]

Back in the day, jazz was not a genre an aspiring musician could learn from a book or at a college. It was a living community, the members of which strove to be innovative. Jazz was modern.

Blues and gospel used to inform a big part of American music now most college jazzers can't play blues or think it is beneath them. Many of them also aren't into the church or gospel music. So good luck getting any soul in it. Most of it sounds like soulless meandering bullshit spawned by some self absorbed spoiled college kid the rest sounds like music you ignore while you sip overpriced drinks at a bar with a fancy decor.

[mr. beaumont]

Blues and gospel used to inform a big part of American music now most college jazzers can't play blues or think it is beneath them. Many of them also aren't into the church or gospel music. So good luck getting any soul in it. Most of it sounds like soulless meandering bullshit spawned by some self absorbed spoiled college kid the rest sounds like music you ignore while you sip overpriced drinks at a bar with a fancy decor.

Yeah, they kind of teach the European-influenced part of jazz and leave out the African American part. Maybe that's ok. Gospel still has a real, beautiful, apprenticeship quality to the way it's learned. To see that shoe-horned into a curriculum would be sad.

[John A.]

I watched the original video. It boils down to "everybody sounds the same because of the internet".
I watched the follow up. It boils down to "people's counter-argument to my point is that I'm cherry-picking examples of diversity in the past and sameness in the present, but in fact there was imitation in the past and diversity today. That's true, but ... the internet."

TL;DR: it's a shallow, trivial point based on narrow subjective sampling.

My narrow and subjective view is that nearly all players then were and now are imitators. Truly innovative and individualistic musicians are rare in all times and across all genres. But back in the day, the imitators mostly didn't get record deals so we've never heard them, whereas today anybody can upload to youtube. It may well be the case that social media are changing the balance between imitation and individuality or in some way(s) altering the way jazz is learned and perceived. But just stating the hypothesis doesn't establish the hypothesis. Only much deeper and more rigorous investigation would do that. Clickbait videos don't meet my standard for that.