Dumbing Down Guitar Tracks

Magic Tempos

This is an interesting article at Premier Guitar.It is written by John Bohlinger,he is a Nashville guitar slinger who has recorded and toured with over 30 major label artists. His songs and playing can be heard in several major motion pictures, major label releases and literally hundreds of television drops... johnbohlinger.com
He talks about having to dumb down tracks for movie and commercial tv purposes.This is the "hook" approach to me.I've always known about the ol' saying...Create the melody so that one can "hum" to,otherwords simple!Of course this bewilders the mind of an advanced guitarist :-).It really is all about the song and commercialism.Your smooth jazz artist have caught on well to this analogy!Make the melody simple/hook,and then on the vamp you can stretch out more progressively!Anyway,it can become a problem when the song/groove/audio byte needs to appeal to the masses and you are trying to "burn down the house"!
... "Perhaps it’s all part of the decline of Western civilization, but complicated melodies don’t seem to work today. You can literally play your way out of a gig if you go too cerebral. Go online and listen to television themes from the past like, Family Feud, The Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune. They have real melodies you can sing, usually played by horns. Now compare today’s competition, shows like Idol. Modern television music doesn’t use songs, but riffs. Maybe our brains have atrophied to the point that we can’t process anything complicated, or maybe the shift in music stems from the hypnotic effect of big dumb riffs. The listeners don’t have to think to process the information. Instead, they absorb it unthinkingly into their central nervous system, which reacts by sending more oxygen to their muscles, pumping out some endorphins and generally getting the audience pumped to watch some mindless programming. The vast majority of modern television tracks strive to do one of two things: 1) http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2009/Aug/The_Art_of_the_Dumb_Guitar.aspx