Greatest Musician of All Time

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Can't go wrong with either Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Miles Davis, or Prince as the GOAT musician.

They're all talented and/or prodigies in their own right.
 
I didn't go through the thread because I know every post just says FRANK ZAPPA.

I'm joking. I did go through it and now I'm crying.
 
Classical composer were writing music for multiple instruments so that's some pretty impressive talent. Bach and Mozart made a lot of impressive stuff.

For someone reasonably modern, Miles Davis was a genius. He created new genres of jazz that others copied. The evolution of his musical career sees a wide variety of sounds and styles. Many have mastered a particular sound, but I can't think of anybody more musically creative and innovative as Miles Davis.
 
To me it'd prolly be someone like Jim O'Rourke - someone who really gets a lot of very disparate aspects of music and production of music

a lot of aspects of music werent really in use until like the last 25 years or so

there's like actual performance of music, how well you play or sing

there's arrangement and music theory, how well you can craft and balance different music frequencies and ideas with the frequencies

there's songwriting and lyricism, like the craft and design of a popular song structure, and the words that may be used to lead the song

and then you have like sound design and engineering of sound, which became a much greater aspect of music once electronic production came into play

im very biased towards appreciating the last one, and Jim O'Rourke is someone who's really able to work with all three of these ideas well
 
capitalCORN said:
Steve Reich: Invented electronic music.
For the rest:

Autechre.
Massive Attack.
Leonard Cohen.
Kool Keith.
Elliot Smith.
Click to expand...

Uh.... Pierre Schaefer and Pierre Henry were making electronic music when Reich was a young teenager (1948), and they are arguably not even the first.


Sadsic said:
To me it'd prolly be someone like Jim O'Rourke - someone who really gets a lot of very disparate aspects of music and production of music

a lot of aspects of music werent really in use until like the last 25 years or so

there's like actual performance of music, how well you play or sing

there's arrangement and music theory, how well you can craft and balance different music frequencies and ideas with the frequencies

there's songwriting and lyricism, like the craft and design of a popular song structure, and the words that may be used to lead the song

and then you have like sound design and engineering of sound, which became a much greater aspect of music once electronic production came into play

im very biased towards appreciating the last one, and Jim O'Rourke is someone who's really able to work with all three of these ideas well
Click to expand...

Yeah, for sure, talk about someone covering a lot of bases!

My only somewhat flippant answer is Aphex Twin.
 
I'm sure the greatest musician is someone I've never heard of.

And if you're mostly a vocalist, I don't think you count. (sorry MJ)
 
My first thought is Jimi Hendrix.


That one note in machine gun was genius.


He got me into wanting to be a musician in the first place so I am heavily biased.
 
Jordan Rudess is a fucking god. Fuck i hate/love that guy

"So I just downloaded this cool app" *proceedsto somehow shred piano on a fucking ipad

Fuck you Rudess you cunt



...also Jason Becker had the chance to legitmately become of the best musicians on the planet.
 
Rachmaninov is by far my favourite classical musician. I'd easily put him ahead of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven.

Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist that's ever lived in my opinion so an argument has to be made for him.

I'd also agree with an argument for Bowie/McCartney/Lennon in terms of the influence their music has had on the industry. They were truly groundbreaking artists without which half of my current favourite bands/artists wouldn't exist.
 
Judge on a piece by piece basis:

Beethoven's Op. 130 with the grosse fugue ending is as great as anything Bach wrote. Beethoven's Op. 130 is greater than Bach's Air on a G string. Bach's Goldberg variations is as great as anything Mozart wrote. Bach's Goldberg variations is better than Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is as great as anything Beethoven wrote. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is greater than Beethoven's Fur Elise.

In other words, this question in fucking impossible.
 
Diabelli said:
Judge on a piece by piece basis:

Beethoven's Op. 130 with the grosse fugue ending is as great as anything Bach wrote. Beethoven's Op. 130 is greater than Bach's Air on a G string. Bach's Goldberg variations is as great as anything Mozart wrote. Bach's Goldberg variations is better than Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is as great as anything Beethoven wrote. Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is greater than Beethoven's Fur Elise.

In other words, this question in fucking impossible.
Click to expand...

To be fair, most things are better than Fur Elise.

(I'm listening to the Hammerklavier right now.)
 
I would have to think for a long time to give a definitive answer, but what immediately came to mind was Django Rehnhardt, who was not only a virtuoso player despite physical disability, but also a tremendously talented writer-composer and on the vanguard of Jazz generally.

I briefly considered trolling and answering Skrillex.
 
For me, it's a three-way-tie Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. Having to choose between any of them is like trying to pick a favorite child. The sheer amount of influence on music, even as we hear it today, that the three of them had is kind of incalculable.
 
I guess I'll just agree with the Bach thing.

And then throw in some classic rock artists, Thom Yorke/Jonny Greenwood, Maynard James Keenan and maybe Wayne Coyne.

Probably a guy named Ralf from Kraftwerk as well.
 
I thought about it for a bit and came up with like fifteen answers. Some of them were: Mozart, Paganini, the first guy to make a drum, Fela Kuti, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson, and by the end I'd put Funkadelic in there, too.
 
Musician?
Johnny Marr without hesitation. The end.
Have a guitarist play a Smiths song. The can't. Have a guitarist explain to you how insane he plays and how it really shouldn't be possible.....
 
I'm a particular fan of Strauß Sr. but really only because of the Radetzky March.

I'd feel like a traitor not choosing one of the classics.

Edit: can't really give it to any one person on further thought. Haydn's Surprise is also so great
 
Beethoven

But honorable mention to Lil Uzi Vert for XO Tour Llif3 because it's a top 2 song of all time
 
The Pope said:
Woman getting shunned. Didn't Bach's wife allegedly write a lot of his stuff - or am I mistaken?
Click to expand...

Not that I know of. Fanny Mendelssohn (Felix Mendelssohn's sister) was a very talented composer, so was Clara Schumann (Robert Schumann's wife). I believe there are some compositions commonly attributed to Mendelssohn that were composed by his sister.
 
Voted "Actually, women make music" for the GOAT Yoko Shimomura. I guess the non-western option could've worked too.

I don't know anything about music; I only play videogames. Sue me.
 
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