I've heard some technically competent players who were completely uninspired - blah - meh.

And I've heard some musicians who made some errors or had intonation problems that really moved me.

If I were judge, which would I pick?

I'd pick the latter, and some of my fellow judges would have picked the first.

That's the problem.

It's easy to judge technical competence, but difficult to judge artistic merit. And to add to that, artistic merit is subjective and has no standard measurement.

To explain that point...

In the last half of the 20th century, two tenor saxophonists consistently made the top of all the jazz polls. Both are generally acknowledged as musical geniuses, but had very different tone and styles.

Me? I would vote for Stan Getz every time because his sense of melody speaks to me. Others would prefer the more angular melodies of John Coltrane. They were both technically fantastic, and they were both innovators in different ways. There is no way to judge which was better, only which one you liked better.

So how do you measure one band against another? I don't want to be the judge.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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