If you are able to completely discount personal preference, what are your criteria?
My, my … aren’t we being a bit dismissive.
Read this book for starters. It seems to be up your alley.
I’m not saying that all pop music is “intellectually interesting,” but I happen to find the Beatles immensely interesting and innovative in the way they work with pop structure, chord progressions. I’m constantly fascinated by how they manage to work complex time signatures seemlessly into their music. For example, “Here Comes the Sun” has 11/8 and 7/8 in the bridge. Their earlier work features verses of 4/4 ending with 3/4. Not that complex time signatures are a sign of “artistry” or anything, but the way the Beatles naturally intertwine seemingly weird rhythms in “disposable pop” is.
What, and you can’t do this with classical either? “Ooo!! Ooo! Plagal cadence … Gee, I didn’t see that one coming.” or “Alberti bass! My how innovative.”
Well, if you can point me in the right direction, I’m willing to learn.
pulykamell: it’s in the mail. I’ll let you know what I think.
Aphex Twin
Orbital
Kraftwerk
Frank Zappa
Velvet Underground
Autechre
Tricky
That’ll do for starters 
Most of those guys aren’t what I would call “pop,” but okay.
I used to listen to electronic music quite a bit, before I became interested in classical music. The problem with electronic music was that, as much as I enjoyed listening to it, I could never tell how much was attributable to the artists in question, and how much was attributable to the computers they were using. I remember listening to, and enjoying, Aphex Twin, but I was never quite as amazed by it as some people claim to be. Perhaps you’re right, though, and I just need to give him another chance.
An identical objection could be made about Bach or Mozart - how much of what you hear is their own, and how much is inherited/acquired/indoctrinated stylisms and cliches of the time? It’s the manipulation of these features, whether on paper or on computer, that defines the creative process.
Oh, and on ‘true’ pop music - it’s more comparable (in both purpose and quality) to eg. the Strausses than to Beethoven.
That’s very true, but my intent was not to represent electronic music as inferior; I was only explaining why I lost interest in it. How is one to know, without owning an expensive studio with the best equipment available, what is the work of the artist, and what is a preset/filter on the computer software? By comparison, the “stylisms and cliches” of classical music are much easier to grasp, at least for a musician.
I don’t understand what you mean by this. The Strausses together are cheaper, less interesting, and more superficial than Beethoven. Is that your conception of “pop” music?
I was a bit ticked off when I first posted to this thread, mostly at Excalibre, but having cooled a bit, I think I may be able to explain myself better.*
Classical music is not a style or even a genre. The term denotes a range of works of incredible diversity. To say, as Excalibre did, that classical music “doesn’t interest you” is to show complete ignorance of this fact, because it is impossible that nothing within this vast repertoire could significantly interest you. His (or her) generalization that it’s all “simplistic” confirmed this ignorance, and compounded it with vanity.
Now, I don’t care what Excalibre or anyone else listens to. But few things anger me more easily than a person claiming to understand something about which they are entirely ignorant. It’s one of the very worst aspects of human nature, in my view.
That’s all I really wanted to communicate here.
Now I also happen to believe that a love of Bach, Haydn, and Mozart is an inevitable consequence of any respectable amount of musical learning, and to agree with Marpurg’s statement that “to be a good musician and not admire Bach is a contradiction in terms,” for Bach as well as the others. But this is a difficult – no, an impossible point to sell with words alone, so I will cease to defend any statements I may have made to this effect.
I also retract any statements which may have suggested that I consider classical music to be inherently “superior” to all other forms of music. This was stupid of me to suggest because, first of all, the term “classical music” is far too vague to be predicated of so profoundly, but more importantly, I myself have listened to, enjoyed, and respected numerous non-classical musicians in the past, and continue to do so. I do think the popular and reviled notion of a “classical music snob” is completely unfounded, however.
That’s all I have, and had, to say – along with expressing appreciation for the intelligent and constructive responses of pulykamell and GorillaMan. I could, and should, learn something from you two.
*God, I hate these “explanation” posts. I’ve done so many of them, here and elsewhere, that I’m beginning to worry about myself. Why can’t I just be consistent in what I say, like everybody else?
I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m going to come straight out and say it. I think the music I listen to is better than the classical music I hear. I do that without deriding classical music or those that listen to it, but on the basis that music makes a personal, emotional connection, and I like electronic music, hip hop, rock and some pop better than classical. It speaks to me; it says something to me about my life.
I’m not concerned about the technical skill required. Music is not about technical skill. Music is about the other elements, the passion, the investment of the creator in the work, and however many tricks you can point to in a Mozart, I can do nothing but point out that a single Clash track moves me more than Mozart’s entire output. Sure, what he did took talent, but he didn’t spit out the vocals the way Joe Strummer did, he didn’t come up with that devestatingly taught guitar riff and he didn’t make the drums kick in just so in a way that makes your jaw drop.
And I reference this in reply to rkts. Aphex Twin is only dependent on his computer to the extent that a classical composer is dependent on his orchestra. a computer and an orchestra can only be as good as the creative force behind them. If Aphex Twin gets his computer to make good music, it’s because he has good ideas. Asking whether a filter is the creative force behind an electronic artists composition is like asking whether a violin is the creative force behind a work produced by a classical composer.
Oh, and I know Simon Frith, for one, has written many books analysing popular music.
Basically, yes. Populist music - writing what was wanted to be heard, not necessarily being artistically creative or adventurous. Pretty much sums up the top 40.
I’ve got a ‘respectable’ amount of music learning, and I hate Haydn. I think it’s reasonable to argue that a love of some composers will result from an in-depth understanding of their style - but it could be Machaut, or Brahms, or Scarlatti, or late Stravinsky, or … To find the ones you like can be an arduous task, and I do have sympathy with people who have been played Mozart and Bach, dislike both, and have been discouraged from exploring further.
And I also dispute that ‘learning’ is necessary. Just familiarity, however gained.
Quite right. Virtuosity is a side-issue, it shouldn’t be used as an argument for the music’s quality. Anybody who does so is missing the point.
Damned hamsters ate my first, well-thought-out post 15 minutes into writing it.
:mad:
Starting again. Regarding the question in the thread title, may I pipe up with an opinion, please? I don’t intend to offend anyone, and I promise not to make any sweeping generalizations or put anyone or their favorite music down. I will be talking about my taste in it, which applies only to me.
I have been captivated by music as long as I can remember. I wanted my first record in 1961, at the age of three. Over the next 30 years, I amassed more than 30,000 records. If not for five separate incidences of theft, I’d have at least 50,000 of them now. Currently, there are over 12,000 78s, 45s, LPs and CDs. Every one of these has at least one song that I heard and liked enough to go out and buy.
I’m firmly entrenched in middle age now, and just like the comment by John Lennon, I have become my parents. I have my period and I’m sticking with it. I’m not incapable of liking great music. It’s just that I haven’t heard any of it in something like 15 years. (Don’t kill me yet, I’m not finished.) I don’t own a piece of music newer than 1989, except for recent-past albums by artists who are still working from the old days, because I still like them. For me, something fundamentally changed about music in the early '80s. It didn’t appeal to me anymore. I think it started with minimalist synth-pop bands. There was what seems now to have been a last-gasp surge of the kind of music I was used to between 1984 and 1987, but it was run outta town by emerging grunge and rap music. Neither appealed to me. Please do not misunderstand what I said here. I didn’t say they suck, or that you shouldn’t like it. This music just did not speak to my experience, so I tuned it out. For someone who spent most of his life in record stores, it’s a pretty disheartening thing to say that I haven’t heard one song by anybody since the late '80s that made me want to rush out and get a copy.
But you know what? That’s not my fault, and it’s not music’s fault. It’s life. And it’s marketing. I’m 45 years old. Today’s popular music is not being marketed to me. It’s being marketed to people who are in their teens and twenties, who have all the disposable income and who are soaking up music like sponges, the same way I did. And that’s a good thing. Music that means something to people is still being made, and people are still making money off of it. I have simply grown out of the demographic. That’s OK. The problem is, the artists I like are either dead or approaching senility, and are all but incapable of making the kind of impact they used to. The other day I heard a new song by Paul McCartney that he’s playing on his current tour. It sucked. It sucked hardcore. He lost it a long time ago, and he isn’t ever getting it back.
I refuse to do like other people I know who are even younger than me, and get into Yanni and John Tesh and pretend it’s riveting and entertaining. I still have taste, it just isn’t being appealed to. And as I said, that’s OK. In the time I have left, barring any tragic accidents, I can probably listen to my record collection once. It’s sad for me that music had this steep drop-off as far as I’m concerned. I wish I could like what’s current, but nothing I hear does anything for me. What’s really a shame is the 40+ years I put into learning to play instruments and write songs well enough to go be part of what I love so much. Now that I’m competent at it, there is no market for the music I write. No radio format to expose it. No audience for it except people my age who have a similar taste to mine, but there are no radio formats for us. We’re the people they’re putting Led Zeppelin on Cadillac commercials for.
“Been a long time since I rock-and-rolled” indeed.
Check out satellite radio - you’d be surprised how many obscure formats are out there, now that they can broadcast to a national audience instead of a local audience.
(bolding mine)
I can see how someone would think that, but I completely disagree. Escaflowne shows bits of what I like about Yoko Kanno, but it’s not the best example. The great majority of the stuff on there is fairly traditional and uninspired orchestral work; it’s fine to set the mood for the show, but is pretty boring overall. Still, if you listen to all of the music composed for the series (there are multiple soundtrack albums), you begin to get a sense of Kanno’s scope, diversity, and experimentation. Buried in the traditional, somewhat overblown, orchestral pieces are bits of middle eastern music, J-pop, and techno (the track called “Machine Soldier” is amazing). Same for Macross – most of it is fairly predictable stuff, but then there are tracks like “Jade” that sound like nothing else.
Her “masterpiece,” IMO, is her music for Cowboy Bebop – all three of the “official” soundtrack albums, plus the soundtrack for the movie. I made a point to distinguish between the individual tracks and the work as a whole, because that’s where the genius is. The individual tracks are fairly short, usually with one or two simple ideas repeated throughout, and few rise up above “catchy” on their own. (Although they are extremely catchy; I’ve still got “The Egg and I” stuck in my head and it’s never going to leave).
But the entire work is one big “musical essay” on a particular thematic idea, and that’s exactly why it’s so remarkable. The theme of the music – and the series itself – is jazz. The series isn’t just “sci-fi western,” it’s anime jazz, taking inspiration from all kinds of pop culture – science fiction, giant robots, hot chicks in skimpy outfits, westerns, dystopian futures, Lupin the 3rd, detective series, horror movies – and throwing them all together to come up with something new. The soundtrack does the same thing; it’s all over the place and it all repeats the same theme: a new interpretation of something familiar.
When John Coltrane released “My Favorite Things,” why was it significant? Because he chose to use catchy songs? Because he and the other musicians were “master craftsmen?” Or because of the idea behind it, the idea of taking familiar tunes and re-inventing them?
The music does the same thing. It would’ve been simple just to say, “okay, jazz is the theme, we’ll use American jazz throughout.” It’s much more impressive to look at what jazz is, the idea behind it, and do that again with all the types of music we have available, all the types of music at which Kanno is a “master craftsman.” The theme song “Tank!” is straight-ahead, balls-out jazz to set the mood. And there are traditional pieces throughout, but a majority of the music straddles at least two genres – pop, jazz, blues, country, funk, metal, electronica, bluegrass, marching band, or traditional “ethnic” music.
Best tracks to hear this stuff going on: “Piano Black,” “American Money,” “Autumn in Ganymede,” “Time to Know - Be Waltz,” “Wo Qui Non Coin,” and “What Planet Is This?”
You could say that just being eclectic isn’t enough to qualify as real “genius,” but I think that it’s a phenomenal achievement. Listen to any two or three of the songs and you’d be hard-pressed to identify them all as being by the same person. But they all stand on their own, and even better, they all work exactly in the context of the series.
“Classical music”, meaning perhaps “orchestral music, much of it from much later than the classical period, but excluding things like movie soundtracks” is indeed a broad area, and Ishouldn’t have said I don’t listen to it at all; I indeed enjoy much of the work of Bach and a few other composers as well.
I don’t understand why you are willing to accept your own generalization that non-classical music is simplistic, but unwilling to accept the reverse. I was hoping to demonstrate something about your style of communication.
Are you really completely unaware that you committed the same damnable sin in your dismissal of essentially all non-classical music? Your dismissal of everything that’s not classical (or orchestral, or what-have-you) is just as untenable as a blanket dismissal of classical music!
Furthermore, I can say that orchestral music is inherently less appealing to me than many other forms of music, and I have no problem admitting that my ignorance of it has left me unaware of things I would probably like. So what? Why should I apologize to you for that?
Honestly, I can claim no acquaintance whatsoever with Haydn. However, I can certainly claim a liking for the other two. I don’t see how you could possibly claim that anyone who understands music would love any particular example of it.
You know, I hadn’t had that “popular and reviled notion” before - quite frankly, it had never occured to me. I don’t see how you hoped to dispell it, though, with what you said.
Whether or not you intended to, you made it quite clear that you feel that classical music is superior to all other types of music. It is high art, and everything else is low art. Perhaps you wish to retract that; I can’t tell. You clearly do feel that personal preferences are irrelevant - presumably, by which you mean the preferences of other people, since you haven’t even questioned your own.
I like jazz more than any other single genre of music; I would never claim, however, that anyone who didn’t like it was ignorant of it. Certainly, ignorance of a style of music can underlie dislike, and the reverse is also true (who would bother to acquant themselves with Ornette Coleman if they had never found a jazz album they liked?)
The fact that jazz appeals to me more than any other type of music is just a personal preference. I can’t claim that it’s superior to any other form of music, because I acknowledge that people have different opinions, and those opinions are valid. And as with all types of music, there is jazz that really is high art, and jazz that’s low art. There’s “pop” music that is quite complex as well (although most of it, ironically, is extremely unpopular) and there’s certainly musically challenging and interesting rock.
If you feel that there’s some objective standard by which music can be judged, and that classical music is inherently better than other music, then you must be ignorant. If you’re a snob, it’s a sad, pathetic form of snobbishness. If you simply like classical music a lot, that’s cool, and I wish you would acknowledge that others can reasonably disagree, or prefer other forms of music. But if you won’t, like I said, it indicates something about you, not about music.
I have never, ever heard the term “classical music” used to mean “orchestral music.”
Well, what the hell else could I have meant by “I also retract any statements which may have suggested that I consider classical music to be inherently ‘superior’ to all other forms of music”?
I think you’re just looking for an argument, and are disappointed to find that I’m more reasonable than I first appeared.
Rely on mass-marketing to inform you of new developments in music? Rock-and-roll indeed…
You cannot expect mainstrem media to take risks and let you know about creative music that you may like (or may dislike). They are serving up what they know will sell. Maybe your younger self was keener, or better-positioned, to go out and find things that weren’t being thrust into his/her face? If I’m doing the maths right, you were about 18 when punk became a huge success in spite of being denied access to huge sections of the media?
Excellent points, GorillaMan.
My primary exposure to popular music was via the radio. The Top 40. In the late '60s, there were no FM rock outlets where I lived. Music came to us on 45s played on AM stations. My collection started as singles. I have more of them than all of the other formats combined. As I grew older and had broader experiences, I learned about music that wasn’t on AM radio, and my tastes broadened as a result. I still like lots of music that has probably never been on the radio.
Of course alternative musics survive without mainstream exposure. In 2004, with music creation software available to anyone with a computer and the desire to learn, there is so much music available that it’s logistically impossible for all of it to be marketed to anyone. With free downloading on musicians’ websites and file sharing and Napster.com, there is no way anyone could hope to be reliably informed about “what’s out there” because there is so much of it. And as you say about what music gets on the radio, crap floats. That makes it nigh impossible for all but the most exceptionally talented or connected people to make a dent. Even then, they will have to be picked up by a major record company to get any kind of promotion. Relying on the net to sell your homemade albums for a living is no way to make a living.
I don’t doubt that there is music being played right now that I would love. But it ain’t gonna come spilling out of my radio. With the millions of choices of music sources on the net, how do you choose?
Well, I know I am. I was all set to come back in this thread and tear you a new asshole, and you’re acting like this! Spoilsport.
My simple answer is Radio FIP, from France. It’s like the weather in Boston - if you don’t like it, wait five minutes.
You don’t find this paragraph just a little bit suggestive of a certain prejudice? Perhaps it’s my own fault for reading too much into your writing - maybe it’s only to me that the end bit carries a certain implication. “Even I have been known to indulge in other forms of music on occasion.” That’s just what I get out of it.
Then again, perhaps I didn’t find your weakly worded retraction quite convincing. After all, “If this thread were about art, I don’t think we would have anybody saying, ‘My six-year-old niece’s scribblings are the most poignant thing I’ve ever seen. Some people may prefer Renoir, and that’s fine, but really, it’s just a matter of personal preference’” implies that the trash the rest of us listen to is equivalent to a six-year-old’s scribblings. After a statement like that, “I retract any statements which may have suggested” comes across a lot like Nixon’s famous line, “Mistakes were made.”