"This amateurism however, can sometimes be helpful in forging a style; you have to work around your weaknesses"
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Bruford is giving amateurism a backhanded compliment: not as a badge of purity, but as a set of constraints that can accidentally force invention. Coming from a drummer famous for precision and restless complexity (Yes, King Crimson, and his own genre-hopping projects), the line lands as a pragmatic confession. He is not romanticizing incompetence. He is describing how limitation becomes a compositional tool when you stop trying to hide it and start designing around it.
The intent is quietly anti-virtuoso, or at least anti the idea that virtuosity alone produces identity. In rock and jazz-adjacent worlds, technical mastery is often treated like moral authority: the better you play, the more your choices must be right. Bruford flips that hierarchy. If you are too capable, you can default to the expected solutions, the comfortable licks, the well-lit paths. Amateurism interrupts habit. It makes you problem-solve in public.
The subtext is about control and taste. “Work around your weaknesses” is less self-help than craft talk: arrange the parts so your rough edges become the arrangement’s texture. Many signature sounds are really negotiated compromises: a drummer who can’t (or won’t) do something the standard way develops a new pocket; a musician avoids speed and discovers space; someone lacking chops leans into timbre, odd phrasing, or stubborn repetition. Bruford is pointing to a cultural truth in modern music: “style” often begins as a workaround that got repeated until it felt like intention.
The intent is quietly anti-virtuoso, or at least anti the idea that virtuosity alone produces identity. In rock and jazz-adjacent worlds, technical mastery is often treated like moral authority: the better you play, the more your choices must be right. Bruford flips that hierarchy. If you are too capable, you can default to the expected solutions, the comfortable licks, the well-lit paths. Amateurism interrupts habit. It makes you problem-solve in public.
The subtext is about control and taste. “Work around your weaknesses” is less self-help than craft talk: arrange the parts so your rough edges become the arrangement’s texture. Many signature sounds are really negotiated compromises: a drummer who can’t (or won’t) do something the standard way develops a new pocket; a musician avoids speed and discovers space; someone lacking chops leans into timbre, odd phrasing, or stubborn repetition. Bruford is pointing to a cultural truth in modern music: “style” often begins as a workaround that got repeated until it felt like intention.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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