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The Tal Wilkenfeld Thread

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#168
WJGreer said:
Is she even cute, really? My sense is that if you put Tal in the food court at the mall, she lands in the bottom of the middle of the pack at best. She is just such a contrast to the majority of the people [guys] we see playing our instrument that we notice. It's like the one girl in the engineering class in college, that I mentioned about 50 posts ago.

Tal is a good player, and she's getting some great exposure at a young age. Good for her. I do not think it bad for her to take advantage of that in whatever way she feels is beneficial - including leveraging her femininity. We all have a long hard battle to fight in life, we use whatever weapons we have at our disposal!

Happy New Year everyone.
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Well, after all its a matter of taste, personally the curly hair does it for me ;) I don't think she's cute cause she plays bass though.

FL Knifemaker said:
I guess a bunch of people here were passed over for the Jeff Beck tour :p
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My thoughts exactly ;)

Peter Parker said:
I think you guys are confusing hate with opinion. Nobody hates Tal or thinks she's a bad player.
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Remember how everybody hated spiderman at the beginning? :)

JHL said:
I must admit I'm also puzzled by this statement
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Then maybe its time to open your ears. I'm by no means a great player (yet) but I know what to listen for and I can tell when someone is great. She most definitely is amongst the great, and the fact that she got there at her age and after only a few years of playing tells us all that in 10 years time, all the Jazz-worshiping haters will bow down, I can bet you a new bass on that one too :)
 
#169
Dr. Cheese said:
I really feel bad for any young female bassist who reads this thread. It would be enough to make some folks quit.:scowl:
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I see why you say that, but to me, this is the interesting and most debatable point in the thread - whether it is appropriate, inappropriate, sad, expected, enthusiastically received, decried, etc, etc. for an attractive person to use their looks to their professional advantage.

The moral position would probably lean towards negative, especially when the person in question is young like Tal is. Empirically, though, we can see many examples of young, attractive people leveraging their appearances in addition to their undeniable talent to make the most of their opportunity.

Two examples - Danica Patrick, an Indy car driver, states that she understands and encourages the attention she gets because of her appearance, so long as it results in more exposure for her sport overall.

Last night I watched an MTV-HD presentation of a live unplugged concert that Alicia Keys did. She also is a relatively young woman who is absolutely burning up with talent, who is not at all hard on the eyes. She looked great in the concert, and when the guy from Maroon 5 did a guest appearance the first thing he mentioned was how great she looked (and sounded). It's never been my opinion that she avoids being perceived as beautiful, nor presenting herself thus.

I'm not necessarily taking a position, just providing a few data points.
 
#171
morf, if you truly believe Tal is revolutionizing anything you need to listen to more players. Again, she's a good player but so are a lot of players her age, past and present. This is not a remarkable feat as it's been done many times before. I believe the normal reaction to Tal would go something like this: Play her CD to someone that has never heard it before without telling them who it is. I think most would say that sounds good, nice playing. Then tell them the player happens to be a girl in her early 20's. Really!?? That's incredible! I can't believe how good she is. The point is that the perception of most people totally changes when you bring in the fact that she is a young girl, that when they first heard it it was good but now they know it's a girl it sounds incredible. Take away the fact that she's a young girl and just look at the music, she is good, not revolutionary, just good. And that's OK. Maybe one day she'll be one of the greats but we are a looooong way from that.
 
#172
Peter Parker said:
morf, if you truly believe Tal is revolutionizing anything you need to listen to more players. Again, she's a good player but so are a lot of players her age, past and present. This is not a remarkable feat as it's been done many times before. I believe the normal reaction to Tal would go something like this: Play her CD to someone that has never heard it before without telling them who it is. I think most would say that sounds good, nice playing. Then tell them the player happens to be a girl in her early 20's. Really!?? That's incredible! I can't believe how good she is. The point is that the perception of most people totally changes when you bring in the fact that she is a young girl, that when they first heard it it was good but now they know it's a girl it sounds incredible. Take away the fact that she's a young girl and just look at the music, she is good, not revolutionary, just good. And that's OK. Maybe one day she'll be one of the greats but we are a looooong way from that.
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+ 3 hams and 1 Christmas goose.

Her age and chromosome affiliation cause blinded discussion.
 
#173
Peter Parker said:
morf, if you truly believe Tal is revolutionizing anything you need to listen to more players. Again, she's a good player but so are a lot of players her age, past and present. This is not a remarkable feat as it's been done many times before. I believe the normal reaction to Tal would go something like this: Play her CD to someone that has never heard it before without telling them who it is. I think most would say that sounds good, nice playing. Then tell them the player happens to be a girl in her early 20's. Really!?? That's incredible! I can't believe how good she is. The point is that the perception of most people totally changes when you bring in the fact that she is a young girl, that when they first heard it it was good but now they know it's a girl it sounds incredible. Take away the fact that she's a young girl and just look at the music, she is good, not revolutionary, just good. And that's OK. Maybe one day she'll be one of the greats but we are a looooong way from that.
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Yeah, thank you for this extremely patronizing post, but again, IMHO, you have no clue what you're talking about. The fact that she's a she has nothing to do with my opinion, in fact the first time I heard her play I had no idea it was a girl playing, and my opinion of her playing came from that time on.

If you dont think she's that good its your opinion, but dont diminish my own or twist my words. Again, IMO, she blows most bassists straight out of the water. You may not think so (read: realize it yet) but it doesn't make it any different. Assuming that my opinion comes from the fact she's female is not only insulting to me as a musician, but adding to that the "you need to listen to more players" is just downright laughable considering you have absolutely no clue on how much music I do in fact listen to :)

If she indeed was simply "good" it would be ok, but she's not just "good" and it's sad to see people so sour about it they'd go to such length to hide their shame.

You almost had me... not.
 
#176
I think it's pretty amazing to see some of you people's opinions about this girl, and even more so that you actually think the fact she's a she has an effect on a musician's judgment of her musical abilities.

But maybe Jeff Beck has no clue what he's doing and you guys have it all figured out.

Sour grapes indeed.
 
#180
I'll preface my comments by saying:
1. She can run circles around me as a musician so I'm not comparing my musical ability to hers at all! (before the "lets see how you play" comments start to fly)
2. I dont care what she looks like or what gender she is
3. I dont care how old she is
4. I dont care how long she has been playing..

She is an amazing bass player BUT, when I've heard her stuff on youtube, sound clips online, or anywhere else, I can't help to think to myself "How is this any different than other excellent bass players"? Maybe I'm just missing it but I'm not hearing anything revolutionary or anything that is making me shat my pants. Ive heard a couple grooves that may me bob my hear, but thats about it. Maybe if she was on the scene 20-30 years ago, then I would consider what she is doing revolutionary to bass playing. This may very well be attributed to me not liking the style of music she is playing which I kind of equate to "Sunday Morning Jazz" (again, just my opinion!). I'm not saying she doesn't have the potential do something revolutionary in the future because she just might. But I'm not hearing it right now.

Again, she is light years beyond what I am (and may ever be) as a musician but I may have missed the boat here. What am I missing??
 
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