I hate fusion. Please proceed knowing that this is all opinion and that most of what I'm arguing is just personal taste regardless of how fervently I argue it. But yes. I hate fusion. The genre that is. Fusion is most often supposed to be what happens when you combine rock and jazz, however it could also be what happens when you combine latin and jazz, or caribbean and jazz. You get the idea. However, in my experience it's a bad thing. Also, one must understand that I don't have a huge musical background in fusion. I don't own any CDs. I guess what I'm really saying is that I remain unimpressed with what I've heard. If you read this and have some musical example that proves me wrong, let me hear it. I'd love to be proved wrong here. But in my experience, fusion ends up being the combination of the two and the result is the worst of both worlds. Actually it often goes beyond that and transcends the worst of both worlds into something that's neither jazz nor rock but rather some smooth jazzy, eighty's rock, cheese inspired genre.

First I must say that this is no insult to fusion musicians. They are all technically amazing. Which is kind of a shame in my eyes. I feel like jazz has lost some of its most amazing musicians to fusion. But one can be technically amazing and still miss the point of music. Fusion ends up being a big game of show off. Musical sensitivity is sacrificed to showing off. Every fusion guitar song has shredding in it. I realize that shredding is just amazing technically and all, but in the scope of your human emotions that you're trying to convey in music, is shredding on every song really truly reflective? There's no depth there. Musicality demands simplicity at times to contrast the complex. However, when musicians are throwing songs into random time signatures just for the hell of it, or just to show that they can, I can't respect that. In the end I think most of the music comes out pretty emotionless.

I'm not arguing that music always has to speak to people accessibly. Sometimes music is a very personal thing that only the writer or musician can understand. But even in the face of these two approaches, I don't find fusion to be reflective of either a populist musical approach or a personal one. Shredding on every song can't truly convey someone's inner emotions. Random time changes. Insane lead lines. You get what I'm trying to say? I just don't get it. The music isn't for the audience. It's not for the expression of the performer. Why is it being played? I don't understand.

My second beef is this: sound quality. I hate the guitar effects found in most fusion music. Most of the pedals are made by Peavey (and most of us musicians know that Peavey is the king of low end gear) or similar style companies. It's just tons of distortion and chorus or flange. To me it's not a naturally expressive tone. It's very 80's most of the time. What happen to nice overdrives or tube distortion? We don't find these nice tone colors often but rather, "gain at 11" distortions with tones of modulation effects over top of it.

Also, nowhere are electronic drums as popular as they are in fusion. I used to get Roland product DVD's all of the time and it's obvious that their big market for their V-drums is to fusion drummers. This is very telling to me. Also, the incorporation of smooth jazz like synth sounds really bugs me. I don't at all think that sounds should only occur naturally or anything like that. I love electronic music. But the smooth jazz element of fusion bugs me a lot. These soundscapes aren't creative sonic adventures but just some "fat" synth with lots of chorus over it. If you're really a talented keyboard player, fill that space with a rhodes or a piano. Why do you need thirty layers of synths on your keyboard sound to fill it out. I think fusion as it is today is driven by keyboard companies who have to put something on their keyboards. So they fill it with cheesy electronic pianos and fat pads. Then they endorse musicians who play this crap and put it on their product videos and there you go. Fusion occurs.

Well, I think that just about covers everything. So, prove me wrong. Play some fusion for me that not only leaves me thinking, "Damn, these guys are good!" but also makes me feel like some art has been expressed to me.  ¶ 3:27 AM