Music

[Alex K]

Why do the 'oldies' always think the old stuff was the best and that newer music is rubbish. It got me thinking.... it reminds me of religious belief. When these musical preferences are formed in the brain, they become fixed neurological pathways that are difficult (if not impossible) to break from and new musical forms probably just sound like beating white noise. The brain just doesn't have the ground work done to make any sense of, or to appreciate. The brain just resorts to what it knows and what it likes, what it understands and it assumes its just better music.

People tend to prefer the music that was prevalent when they came of age and first started enjoying music as such.

No doubt we cling to other views we also developed in our formative years.

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I'm kind of a music fanatic in my own way. The soundtrack of my teens was shitty 90s dancefloor music. I reacted by becoming a death metal and classical music enthusiast. But I kind of make a point now of being a music enthusiast and think about each piece I hear individually in terms of whether I can find something interesting in it. That doesn't change the fact that the music I will actively seek out is almost always from my favorite genres.
In ninth grade my music teacher asked us to put on music we liked in class, and the first guy put on some punk rock thing, after which our teacher went off on a rant about how this was inferior music. I wasn't a fan of that type of music at all back then but I remember that the teacher's reaction annoyed me a lot. Thinking back, today I believe that if you sit in your ivory tower where only certain sophiaticated classics even count for anything and everything else is not worthy of consideration, you don't really get music and what it's all about, the different roles it plays and purposes it serves in people's lives. So the ideal I aspire to is being not like that music teacher of mine, may she rest in peace. A GOOD musician will listen to a Beyoncé song and tell you what musical tricks and harmonies they employed to create the effect that they got, and understand why that makes it a successful pop song. Raising an eyebrow because it's not Mozart doesn't require any effort, it's faux sophistication in my eyes.

I was having this discussion last night with a dear friend after I came offstage from a 7-song, 30-minute set on solo acoustic. He was arguing that there is music that is objectively better, and I was arguing that it depends on what you want from it.

I get that some musics are technically more accomplished and in that sense I can say that jazz is better than punk -- it requires more technique and musical understanding to both play it and enjoy it. But the real point of music is to add enjoyment to our lives, so if it's three-chord punk that gets your motor revving, that's the best music for you at that particular moment.

It took me a while to get where you're talking about, where I listen to each song as it is without imposing my own tastes on it. I can find something interesting about any song I hear, although that might sometimes take some real searching. But it's a good place to be, as a musician, because through that active listening, I open up my musical world to a wider variety of influences that help me grow artistically ... even if it's "only" three-chord pop.

Wow that's quite an accomplishment, nice!

Not too long ago I watched a performance on YT by some prog metal supergroup, and they have very complex arrangements, jazz elements, polyrhythms, they are all world class virtuosos on their instruments, and studied at Berklee or whatever.

All I got from this musical tour de force was a weird feeling of emptiness and pointlessness. It's hard to put into words, it's like...if there's no meaning, no heartfelt communication of something, the greatest techical achievement in performance and composition just falls flat without a lasting effect. Is that music better than some two chord punk rock? If you go by my music theory book, there's no competition. But in reality, it's just the other way around.

That's why I am a J.S.Bach admirer - having both technical perfection and deep humanity at once is rare.

[bennyboy]

I've had a similar experience with myself and a friend. I have a music degree, and I can put together a 4-part harmony in my sleep. I can have neat little themes that slip in and out in ways that I think are clever. My friend is a street musician with a great voice and moderate guitar skills, but he's halfway in a trance sometimes when he really gets into it.

We both have a real respect for each other. We sometimes joke that we are yin to each other's yang or whatever. In the end, I think it's that balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian that gives music life.

I'd definitely rather listen to good 3-cord punk than Yngwie Malmsteen. That being said, I probably wouldn't want to listen to multiple albums of 3-chord punk, either, because it all starts to sound the same to me. But get something technical with real passion, like Beethoven, and I'm down. Or get something with real feeling and at least a little complexity to grab the brain, like a lot of 60s rock bands (I'm thinking Rolling Stones) and I'm down.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wow that's quite an accomplishment, nice!

Not too long ago I watched a performance on YT by some prog metal supergroup, and they have very complex arrangements, jazz elements, polyrhythms, they are all world class virtuosos on their instruments, and studied at Berklee or whatever.

All I got from this musical tour de force was a weird feeling of emptiness and pointlessness. It's hard to put into words, it's like...if there's no meaning, no heartfelt communication of something, the greatest technical achievement in performance and composition just falls flat without a lasting effect. Is that music better than some two chord punk rock? If you go by my music theory book, there's no competition. But in reality, it's just the other way around.

That's why I am a J.S.Bach admirer - having both technical perfection and deep humanity at once is rare.

This is how I feel about music, and other forms of art: it might be judged technically better, but the most important aspect is the emotional effect, because art in its many forms lives in the conversation that happens between the artist and the audience. If your words, or pictures, or music do not communicate to others, what sort of conversation can there be?

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We both have a real respect for each other.  We sometimes joke that we are yin to each other's yang or whatever.  In the end, I think it's that balance between the Apollonian and Dionysian that gives music life.

That apposition between the cerebral and the emotional is what drives my taste in any art. And of course the line dividing the two sways back and forth as the moment demands -- sometimes I want intellectual satisfaction, other times I want gutbucket stank. And from my own view, that tension between the two makes up my own part in the communication that happens between artist and audience. Sitting in both chairs, myself.

I'd definitely rather listen to good 3-cord punk than Yngwie Malmsteen.  That being said, I probably wouldn't want to listen to multiple albums of 3-chord punk, either, because it all starts to sound the same to me.  But get something technical with real passion, like Beethoven, and I'm down.  Or get something with real feeling and at least a little complexity to grab the brain, like a lot of 60s rock bands (I'm thinking Rolling Stones) and I'm down.

Man cannot live on bread alone ... and art is food for the mind.