I completely understand that may not be part of your measuring stick of how good a band is, and complexity/technical proficiency by itself can be sterile and boring as hell. However, the more complexity/proficiency you can incorporate successfully expands exponentially the odds that you are actually creating something more unique.
There is zero chance that any single musician is creating stuff that is just as complex as that of the great, technically proficient bands. For those bands, each performance was different because they wouldn't play it the same way every time. One guy does something a bit different, another guy reacts to that by doing something slightly different, etc.. That's why fans of great bands prize different live performances of the same song so much -- the variations and inventiveness of the moment cannot be duplicated by a single guy making a recording at a computer.
Sia is a fantastic writer, diplo has mastered a littamy of different music styles, Corrigan wrote most of smashing pumkins stuff, Matt Bellamy writes muses, skrillex is fantastically innovative and his bands were trash and his solo music is incredibly difficult to write and produce
For actual
bands, the "writing" very rarely includes telling each other guy in the band exactly which notes to play and when, or how to play the drums for the song, etc.. Stairway to Heaven was written by Page and Plant, but the drumming is based on what
John Bonham chose to do when presented with their composition. Neither Sia -- who does write some beautiful songs -- nor any other musician - ever -- could sit down at a computer and stand up with the complete sound of "Won't Get Fooled Again". Sure, Townsend "wrote the song", but what Entwhistle and Moon added -- the sheer inventiveness they showed on bass and drums -- was a key part of that song. And no one person has done that.
What you get with someone like Sia is they write the melody and the words, and the rest of the instrumentation is just keeping time/backing.
Anyway, what music individual people prefer is actually a different question. But if the issue is "why is rock dying", I'd say it's because there simply are not enough people willing to put in that kind of work, who also are willing to work with people in a band as more or less peers.[/QUOTE]
Did Mozart play woodwind instruments? Did he compose some of the most complex music we've heard? Surely more than the who.
Producers program all instruments, and synth. Those instruments play all the same notes. A deep understanding of each instrument really just means they understand the same notes played on a different instrument - which, in the name, is a dead give away of what it's capacity is. Knowing them individually really doesn't mean much.
What if I showed you a dozen modern day bands/ musicians that created just as complex music as the bands you are listing?
Have you heard of Imogen heap? Not using Her as The Example, but you have to give that woman some credit for what she does.
Not really into noodling, can't stand jazz and I'm not partial to how good someone is at their instrument as I am the feeling I get from what they write and how well the work manifests. But if that's your thing cool, all subjective. there just are some people that do mind boggling things with computers.
I play every instrument. I used to write music. If I write again I would use a computer. I'm not the only one to follow that path. The interface is different, the instrument is different, but it doesn't necessarily mean much else. Contemporary musicians compose symphonies, just differently. Some traditional sounding and some contemporary