Music Discussion

[aperson]

Re: Music Discussion

Some songs are better than others for very simple reasons: Complexity, polyphony, depth of the melodies, etc.

A song with 3 catchy riffs written with fifths and with only one voice at the time is quite objectively less good than a song with many parts that overlap, along with polyphonic interactions between the voices and actual research in the melodies. Compare a song written for Britney Spears or Celine Dion to a song written by Biago Marini or Beethoven and you'll understand my point.

So uhh, how are we going to compare a Beethoven sonata to a rearranged field recording of a slowly dying heating unit (Sleep Research Facility - Dead Weather Machine). I absolutely love both, but I am not about to start drawing comparisons between these. There's way too many songs I love that hardly have what you could even call a melody in the conventional sense, nor polyphony. I think you are making way too many assumptions about what music is, which kind of demonstrates devonin's point that you can only objectively evaluate music on subjective criteria

[dore]

Re: Music Discussion

I would also like to note that there is a clear difference between reading something and hearing something. To read is to recollect definitions of words that have their meaning predestined in your mind. The act of listening asks the brain to define what it is hearing for itself. If you hear something you have never heard before, you feel strange, you wonder what it is and you try and synthesize a meaning to the sound. If you see a word that you haven't seen before, you look it up in a dictionary and allow culture to tell you what it means.

I know that, I use that situation only as an example to relate my opinion on one topic to another. It's persuasion

My point is that a four-year-old has similar experience with books as the general public has with music. They both have had continual contact with their respective mediums, and are able to discern very basic ideas, but have had little training in that subject. They both are distracted by excess details (song lyrics for music and illustrations for books, for example) and are unable to find deeper meanings and make critical interpretations.

[sleeplessdragn]

Re: Music Discussion

All well and good, but you are still making an assumption that these deeper meanings and critical interpretations are required for good music. The point I'm trying to make is that if I played a sine wave at your face and somehow convinced you that this was the definition of good music by forcing association with everything you relate goodness to, you would be convinced that it was good music. It wouldn't matter to you that the science behind it was stupid, you would probably find the song catchy, or you would feel a tingling in a special part of your body. Again, this is cultural influence.

EDIT:

try running tomorrow and listen to the rhythm your body creates, the flanging of the sounds around you as your head bobs up and down, the aleatoric timbre your feet create as they constantly hit the ground. When that 'music' makes you ecstatic, you might change how you view all this stuff you've tossed aside.

Holy ****, YES.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Music Discussion

Now, onto the load of pretentious crap.

You know, I had the impression I would get a response from you on this as soon as I posted. So good job following convention.

Twelve-tone is an interesting, although kind of limited-in-scope idea which makes it interesting for a few songs, but I don't think it should be expanded out into a whole scene of music.

I agree. A few songs, however, is not a collective body of work.

Bartok is another composer which I find really, really legitimately good Why? I can't say.

Ok, bye.

I like music that doesn't make assumptions about what music is.

Oh. Well I guess you changed your mind in the course of a sentence. What does this statement actually mean? That you like music which doesn't follow convention? Or that you like music which is novel, perhaps? Although, funny thing, even this:

At its most basic level, music is nothing more than organized sound.

Is an assumption about what music is. So I'm really not sure what you're getting at.

If you take this perspective of music and open your mind and awareness to accept it, you'll find lots of beauty in the dissonance, the timbres, pitches and sounds.

This doesn't follow. No one is arguing that music isn't organized sound, there just doesn't seem to be a reason to consider all organized sound (and equivalently, all music) beautiful. Hence some organized sound (music) can be called ugly.

When your standard reference points for what defines what is good are pulled away from you, you might open up and find lots of good buried elsewhere as well.

You haven't offered any new reference points, moron. Congratulations on your profound revelation that music is organized sound.

When that 'music' makes you ecstatic, you might change how you view all this stuff you've tossed aside.

Or maybe I'll just remember that you used to make stepcharts which were decent, then you descended into a stream of failed avant-garde bull**** fueled by a general philosophy on life designed to give you permission to be incoherent.

Oh, also music is organized sound.

[Verruckter]

Re: Music Discussion

So uhh, how are we going to compare a Beethoven sonata to a rearranged field recording of a slowly dying heating unit (Sleep Research Facility - Dead Weather Machine). I absolutely love both, but I am not about to start drawing comparisons between these. There's way too many songs I love that hardly have what you could even call a melody in the conventional sense, nor polyphony. I think you are making way too many assumptions about what music is, which kind of demonstrates devonin's point that you can only objectively evaluate music on subjective criteria

I haven't heard that song but I think that all in all, wether the melody is composed of sampled sounds with various pitches or a single instrument, it can all translate to a scorable, conventionnal melody and that's what you have to analyze when you compare both pieces.

I don't think the definition of music is subjective and as I've said, you can make compromises on the actual form of the song to obtain comparable material.

[devonin]

Re: Music Discussion

I think I'm going to just abort this entire second page like the unwanted and perplexing pile of strangeness that it is. Let's pick up from the post before "Let's sticky this"

[Quit]

Re: Music Discussion

When music is judged subjectively, a person's individual preferences and what the listener relates the sounds to deem the piece good or bad. However, when examined objectively, a musical piece is judged by the way it uses techniques and if it accomplishes any goals the author had in mind.
in both cases, a song can be improved; subjectively by what the listener wanted to hear and objectively how techniques could have been applied better to make the piece sound more pleasing (and what defines pleasing goes into the science of the brain) thus, songs quality can be improved.

[jewpinthethird]

Re: Music Discussion

Do all songs serve the same purpose?

No.

Pop music is designed to be catchy, and simple. It is designed to get people to dance, or make money. It's designed to be mindless and fun.

Art music is designed to push musical boundaries and musical virtuosity. It is the exploration, and understanding of the elements of sound.

Folk music is a sort of hybrid of Art and Pop music. It is a medium for cultural or individual expression of the human experience. It, typically, goes hand-in-hand with poetry, though not necessarily. There is also an element of virtuosity, but it is usually accompanied by an individual's self exploration of their instrument. One needn't understand the various components that make up a song to utilize them.

Of course, this is very simplified view of the three music worlds, and, while distinctly different, they are not isolated from each other. The three worlds of music do overlap and they borrow elements from each other.

The point is: not all songs serve the same purpose. For example, John Cage's 4'33" was designed to challenge one's understanding of what is music. To the lay-person, it is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. To someone who has an understanding of the art music world, and the history of music, it is a revolutionary experimentation with sound that is on par with many Eastern schools of thought. It's not so radical when placed in the context of the artistic movements that preceded it (for example: dadaism), or when placed in the historical context of a post-war conformist society. It was a response to what was happening in the world. It's not the song itself that is deserving of praise, but the thought that went behind it.

It's important to ask what the intention of the artist was and how well he or she accomplished the task.

Can music be judged objectively? Yes, it can. But, ultimately with the arts, subjectivity trumps objectivity.