# Ugly music... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 28, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799 "2014-10-28T22:16:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/61 "2014-10-30T19:22:44Z")
**Bo** - cool, thanks for the breakdown. “Sounds ordered in time” - okay, I appreciate Zappa’s definition and how it fits for you. And, to a certain extent, I like that definition, too - and some harsher sounds that are ordered in time in an interesting way can be really cool. I enjoy experiencing metal, composers like Penderecki, etc. - although not necessarily as part of a Sunday morning 😉 For my definition of music, I tend to add the concept of “sounds that trigger our evolutionary need for pattern recognition” - or something like that. I have always assumed that music is a cool byproduct of our senses evolving for survival - and hearing melodic and harmonic and rhythmic patterns emerged out of that need. Kind of like we evolved a taste for sugar and fat way back when that stuff was scarce (still the case in vast areas of the world today). Candy, or fat-laden foods are an over-the-top triggering of that need. Music, is an aural equivalent…again, as I noodle it. Now, as for AC/DC - well, the vocals are screechy, no question. I get how that could put folks off. But the guitars? The tone of their guitars on their first albums leading up to Back in Black are just wonderful - guitar geeks study their rigs in the hopes to get a tone as good. Big and crunchy, but easy on the ears - no ice-pickiness or harsh wolf-tones… ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/62 "2014-10-30T19:45:10Z")
Some of Bela Bartok’s pieces are deliberately jarring, even ugly. Some of it is good in SPITE of that. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/63 "2014-10-30T22:04:46Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Some of Bela Bartok’s pieces are deliberately jarring, even ugly. > > Some of it is good in SPITE of that. Excellent point. (And thanks, Bo, for that thoughtful and eloquent post). The first few times I heard Bartok’s six string quartets, I knew they were brilliant on an intellectual level, but I couldn’t enjoy them. Now, they are beautiful to me. I notice Hungarian folk dance styles in parts, so that’s more approachable, but even the angular, dissonant, harsh passages are beginning to speak to me. Listen to a Bartok string quartet and a late Beethoven string quartet on the same day, and you’ll be struck by how the century between them – the entire Romantic period, essentially – evolved such that things came full circle, yet ended up in a different place. Beethoven can be surprisingly ugly/beautiful, too. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/64 "2014-10-30T22:40:13Z")
Inspired by this thread, I put on Bartok’s exquisite Sonata for Solo Violin. My wife walked in and said, “Perfect music to walk to a bridge and commit suicide by jumping off!” To each his/her own – though there could be even a kind of beauty in jumping off a bridge (though I don’t recommend it). ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/65 "2014-10-31T00:50:44Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > **Bo** - cool, thanks for the breakdown. “Sounds ordered in time” - okay, I appreciate Zappa’s definition and how it fits for you. And, to a certain extent, I like that definition, too - and some harsher sounds that are ordered in time in an interesting way can be really cool. I enjoy experiencing metal, composers like Penderecki, etc. - although not necessarily as part of a Sunday morning 😉 Well, yeah, I don’t always want to listen to everything. Sometimes a mood is already set and the music fits it, sometimes the music is setting the mood, for example. And as I said, just because I recognize something as music doesn’t mean I like it. > [@WordMan](#): > > For my definition of music, I tend to add the concept of “sounds that trigger our evolutionary need for pattern recognition” - or something like that. I have always assumed that music is a cool byproduct of our senses evolving for survival - and hearing melodic and harmonic and rhythmic patterns emerged out of that need. From my point of view, what you just described isn’t a different definition of music, it’s just a description of a preference. Just to add to my horrible awful noise music street cred (like that’s something that’s gonna help me out or impress anyone :rolleyes:), I wanted to mention that today I received the February and March 2014 issues of a UK magazine called **The Wire**. I had to special order these from the publisher as I missed their publication earlier this year. I think it cost me like $28 for both of them. And why did I have to have these months-old magazines from a foreign country thousands of miles away? They contain the first face-to-face public interview ever with Jandek. 🙂 They even did a photo session around Minneapolis! ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799/66 "2014-10-31T05:07:41Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > 🙂 Must…not…make…lame…joke…about…throwing…ugly…stuff…into…ugly…gash…in…the…landscape… 😉 I know you’re wondering, and yeah, this did. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ugly-music/702799.md?page=3)