MUSIC: the official thread.

:: Cool. Good taste.

 

Why was the video banned?

 

Wonderfully simplistic and catchy makes for a great pop song!?

 

People seem to love it for sure. Off the top of my head, the only bonafide smash hit pop songs I've liked in recent(ish) years were LadyGaga's first two big hits.

 

People are ignorant and deaf, for the most part

 

I reckon music evolves to suit its context and taken out its context it never makes total sense. Even 'shit' pop music serves a particular purpose and does it well....the (mostly) shit they played in the club i worked worked in that context and fit the behaviour people wanted to engage in in that setting. 99% of 'blues based' stuff I find boring as shit on record but when you see a live band perform it starts making more sense. Crappy modern rap/dubstep was probably made to be heard on subwoofers in pimped up cars or small semi-legal club settings. It's pretty ignorant to just dismiss the whole human race as ignorant, i think in my mind. If you dont understand a type of music thats on you (/me/whoever).

 

I understand it perfectly... Disliking something doesn't mean you "don't understand" it... It is precisely because I understand it that I don't like it

The vast majority of people not only do not understand music on any technical level, but they make no effort to do so... Furthermore, the fucking VAST MAJORITY of people base their musical decisions on fucking non-musical criteria such as whatever clothes are being worn by the performer, whatever some person they wish to be associated with listens to, if the performer is cute or not, etc., etc.

Most people are profoundly ignorant about how music is created, the elements of it, the nuts and bolts... This can not be argued with... it simply is

 

Imagine a chef saying 'people don't like this food because they're ignorant of the ingredients in it!'. Come on.

All music's 100% influenced by 'non-musical factors' thats the whole point. The first african banging on a drum, music for medieval cathedrals....there's a purpose and an intended context. Some of its meant to be performed by a live band appreciated for their musicianship (the stuff you like), somes meant to be listened to on expensive headphones or to score a film/paired with images, some's meant to be mixed together by a dj in a certain setting, some of its meant for couples to dance to formally, some's meant to be played through subwoofers to a group of guys getting stoned in basement, somes meant for drunk students to party to

Calling the whole world wrong is just kinda insane.

 

1st off... This statement is complete Bullshit

ALL MUSIC is influenced by MUSICAL things... The vast majority of people are completely ignorant of those things... Therefore, the statement that the vast majority of people are ignorant about music is fucking TRUE

The food analogy is a poor one, IMO

 

I'll go further - there's basically no such thing as liking or disliking music - there's only liking, disliking or not understanding the 'non-musical' factors you associate with the music. I don't not-like classical music because it isn't 'good music' im ambivalent towards it because the setting its meant for, the behaviour its designed to facilitate, the culture its a part of. Ditto allot of modern black music. Im not from that culture, i dont really understand it, i dont listen to music through the media or in the settings those guys listen to it so the music doesn't speak to me. However itd be presumptious of me to call guys from brixton who are into the dubstep scene (or whatever thats evolved into these days) 'ignorant' of something i understand any more than the reverse is true.

 

You keep talking about scenes, motivations attached to sounds (not necessarily by the artist... Mozart didn't design his music so people could put it in a museum or listen only while wearing a tux) and all and sundry external factors that have fuck all to do with SOUNDS and the arrangement of same... I am talking about music, not scenes... Most people wouldn't know sharp from flat, 3/4 from 5/4, Major from Minor, Timbre from Pitch, that is an undeniable fact and if you think it doesn't influence listening choices, you must be crazy

I stand by what I said... For the most part, people are absolutely fucking IGNORANT about music and how it is created, executed, etc., etc.

 

I hate stuffy, pretentious, rich people... Many stuffy, pretentious, rich people have Beethoven playing in their mansion for many reasons, most of them having nothing to do with the music itself... I love Beethoven and I'm not from that class of people, have no desire to associate with that class of people... I listen because I love his melodies, his dynamics, his voicings, the chords he chose, the way the music makes me feel when I hear it... I wasn't alive in the 18th century, and in the 20th and 21st centuries I have grown up working-class, it's got fuck-all to do with scene

 

Would tribes people who play polyrhythmic drum music while they dance around a fire in an open field and take hallucinogens add complex vocal harmony like baroque cathedral composers if they were educated in it? Would the baroque cathedral composed have stuck a 5 man percussion section next to the choir singers in their cavernous cathedral if they were educated in complex polyrhythms? Would traditional irish or Scottish ceilidh music be better in its setting if the players were less 'ignorant' of jazz phrasing?

The 'scene' creates the music. Even mozart. And we all got into music in a social/cultural setting. You got into it through one that led you to appreciate musicianship as an end in itself, in most settings playing like the guys you admire would be inappropriate. Ridiculous even. That isn't a function of mass 'ignorance', music just has different purposes

 

This is a ridiculous, insulting assumption that you have made ad infinitum with me forever

I would put the diversity of my musical interests up against anybody on Earth

Every single one of the musical examples you came up with (the tribes, the Irish, the Baroque period) are forms with rules, boundaries, etc... In order to execute any of them, ONE MUST FIRST UNDERSTAND HOW TO DO SO AND WHY... People don't just pick up the fucking Harp and compose and play "Morgan Magan" out of their assholes... A lot of technical musical advances, experimentation, etc. has to happen before things like that get composed and performed on the instrument... As for whether those forms would be altered if the people became hip to another, different form would be moved to incorporate the new forms into their own, you seem to be implying that this is ridiculous... My question to you would be, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND??? How in god's name do you think we have ALL of the various types of music we have? Baroque music didn't appear out of fucking thin air, fully formed... It evolved from other forms of music... Elements borrowed from different cultures... I mean, my god, complex polyrhythms--complex chord voicings-- sophisticated melodies -- insistent meter--- all of those combined... I just described Afro-Cuban Jazz (Salsa music) ... Music does not take place in a vacuum, it never has... There is no form of music that is completely and fully formed by itself without any outside influence... All established music known to man is a hybrid

 

I'LL BITE YOUR FUCKING LEGS OFF!!!!

 

Way to argue against about 5 things I never said.:crying: Im out of this one.

 

You asked if people who make X music would incorporate elements of Z music into their initial "thing" if they became educated about Z, did you not?? It seems perfectly clear from your opening paragraph...

The answer, as all recorded history proves, is fucking YES... YES TIMES TEN MILLION... YES YES YES

 

People are gonna dance round a fire on hallucinagins in a field singing 7 layered choral choir vocals? They're gonna add complex percussion to sombre religious music in a cathedral and have it bouncing off the walls and turning to mush? A million times no. And a million other less extreme examples where context shapes/edits musical content

 

Preach brother Clogg. Hut is talking UTTER PISH.

 

LMAO... Art forms are created in one day, now??

The only way for this daft reasoning to be accurate would be if musical forms were completely static and unchanging and nothing was ever blended

Musical genres/types form over many, many years... You don't just get Jelly Roll Morton and Gonzalo Rubalcaba simultaneously... You don't get Chuck Berry and fucking Slayer simultaneously... It doesn't work that way and never has... But in order to get to Slayer, someone had to first alter Chuck Berry by adding another ingredient... In order to get to Gonzalo Rubalcaba, someone had to add another ingredient to Jelly Roll Morton

 

Hut is a musical FASCIST!!! He is talking HEAVY SHITE and acting like a BAMPOT!

 

Can you paraphrase what you think Im saying for me please? Art forms in a day? What?

 

what am I saying? Paraphrase it please.

 

Music is basically an incedental element of a larger cultural existence

Because of the above, what you will "like" will be based on said existence and cause you to be unable to enjoy musical forms that are alien to that existance

As a result of that, becoming educated technically about the alien form will change nothing and will not alter the music you identify with

Something about nuns not playing drums during a funeral mass = music does not become altered by exposure to and education about outside influences (never mind how the present music favored by those same nuns came to be, which is my whole point)

 

Its less abstract/more simple than that. Drums dont work in a cathedral, you'd hear each beat four times. It'd also be counter productive to the effect cathedrals were trying to create of awe and calm, disembodied reflection or whatev. So the fact choral music composers probably didn't know shit about polyrhythm isnt a matter of ignorance its a matter of context. Students who go to clubs and dance to what you (and I) would find to be crap poppy music want a mood that is best created by light simple music that can be easily sung along with, can be followed along with while lots of other things go on (they laugh with their friends, flirt with boys, half-dance, whatever). People have different values and want music to perform different functions. If you go to an unlicenced basement 'club' where people like to sit about together taking ketamin and weed a certain type of music facilitates or fits that. In another setting (or state of consciousness), to you or me, it sounds heavy shit. None of these things are really a function of 'ignorance' tho.

 

This just isn't accurate.. The fact that there is not a percussion instrument being used does not mean there is no Rhythm, complex or simple, going on... Tempo doesn't cease to exist because no one is banging a drum

Point is, you are treating all music as incedental music... Music for music's sake is a very real thing...

And still, I stand by my original, TOTALLY FUCKING ACCURATE observation... Most people KNOW NOTHING TECHNICALLY ABOUT MUSIC...

 

If someone knows nothing, they are ignorant, no?

 

1) absolutely. Music shaped by settings where people consume it intently, passively etc. That isn't somehow without physical/social context just because people are listening harder. That's how modern classical music evolved. Sitting with your eyes closed with 100 quid heaphones on like i do is a context

2) and i stand by my chef/food analogy. In fact is there any other aesthetic pursuit where that kind of pulling of rank on technical knowledge would stand? 'If they knew more about civil engineering people would appreciate this architecture better'.

 

The dudes in the acid house rave scene probably got more enjoyment out of music than you or me will ever dream and people made music that facilitated that, fit the context, venue, state of consciousness, behaviour perfectly. What you or me listen to wouldn't have worked. You gonna tell them they're 'ignorant' of music because they don't know the technical meaning of 'cadence' or 'scordatura' some shit?