Long-delayed focus on gifted instrumentalists

“Eat Bulaga’s” Music Hero

Daily portions come and go on noontime TV shows, but only a few have what it takes to attract and delight viewers longer than a few weeks or months. One of the “portions to remember” this season is “Eat Bulaga’s” “Music Hero” tilt for solo instrumentalists.

Most local talent competitions focus on singers—an excessively narrow scope that makes them feel and sound predictable.

Generally overlooked are the many student and professional instrumentalists whose musical gifts similarly deserve to be showcased and acclaimed.

So, we welcome “Music Hero’s” successful run on EB, where it should be extended to enable other gifted instrumentalists—pianists, guitarists, violinists, percussion artists, etc.—to prove their worth.

Vetting process

When it started, “Music Hero” went about its vetting process the logical way, inviting solo instrumentalists to submit videos of their performances, with the most promising entrants getting to perform live on the show.

Guitarists were pitted against guitarists, pianists vs pianists, that sort of sensible thing, with the better solo performer for the day being adjudged winner and moving on to the weekly level, etc.

Later, however, we caught a telecast that perplexed us, because the contestants appeared to have been mixed up or “rumbled,” with a violinist competing against a guitarist and pianist.

This bothered us, because it’s very difficult, if not well-nigh impossible, for the skills of solo instrumentalists playing different instruments to be credibly compared, and for jurors to reliably determine which one is the “better” performer.

It’s like comparing apples, oranges and grapes—who can objectively say which is the “tastiest”?

Unfortunately, the “Music Hero” portion’s judges didn’t seem to think that there was a basic difficulty, because they confidently proceeded to compare the instrumentalists’ performances in detail, no problem!

It’s time for us to caution everyone involved that this is not a reliable way to determine superior musical ability.

As music mentors will affirm, each musical instrument has different unique considerations, some of which elude cross-instrument comparison.

People who think that they can credibly declare that this guitarist is better than that violinist, but the pianist is “the best” instrumentalist of them all should be given a hefty serving of humble pie.

Most troubling of all is that members of the viewing public will cluelessly accept cockeyed verdicts, and believe that “musical talent” is a simplistically generic aptitude. Alas, the judging task and issue are much more complicated than that.

The last time we caught the “Music Hero” tilt, it was back to doing it the sensible way, comparing two gifted, young guitarists.