View Single Post
Old 02-05-2013, 12:06 PM   #2238
northern
Human being with feelings
 
northern's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Finland
Posts: 19
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by yep View Post
- To the point, and even discounting outright stupid or "bad" pop music, how many people are actually listening to that?
If there is any way to measure what music is good and what is bad, I would say it is how long people are listening it. One hit wonders that sell just because the singer is beautiful are soon forgotten, but it will take long time until we will forget Beetles. I don't know how many people listens Paganini, but if this piece is over 100 years old and it is still performed to full concert halls it can't be totally awful composition.

I take another example. This album was second most sold album in Finland when it was released, so you can't say that only few nerds like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMbFu457jGs

Quote:
- Isn't there a point at which speed becomes a kind of novelty-act, like watching someone multiply big numbers in his head, or bend over to kiss his own belly-button from between his legs?
Yes, but is that problem? Some people like to listen beautiful piano ballads, some people like to listen disco, some people like to listen fast flute shredding... Saying that other is better than other is pointless arguing.

Quote:
Please understand, I am not dismissing the value of virtuosity. But I submit that the piece you linked is artistically inferior to Beethoven's Ninth, Simon+Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", and The Temptations "Can't Get Next To You", all of which are easier to play.
Well, it's hard to say that something is artistically inferior than other. Personally I listen more AC/DC than Paganini, but it doesn't mean that nobody loves complicated stuff.

Quote:
Yeah, you're totally reading that wrong. Moreover, if you think that Paganini's Caprice 1 is more musically, melodically, or harmonically "complicated" than a typical Simon+Garfunkel or Motown track, then you are sorely mistaken. The Paganini piece is fast and difficult to play, but there is nothing complicated about it, you just follow the dots, and most of them are in-key.
Actually I just linked first youtube video I found, I have never heard that song before. However based on the quick look at the score of Caprice 1 I would say there is more than just fast arpeggios of typical chord progressions, not many measures without off key notes. If I would start to analyze this song there would be lot of "what the hell did he do here?" moments. If it would be easy to compose songs like that, why wouldn't everybody compose fast shredding stuff that will be performed even hundreds of years after your dead? Easy way to get famous composer.

I'm not saying that Simon+Garfunkel or Motown tracks are any worse, but I wouldn't also say that Caprice is just random notes without any sense of musicality, melody, or harmony.

Quote:
Meanwhile, a typical Motown bassline has as many "out" notes as root notes, and "I Can't Get Next to You" is musically all over the map, it's not only changing keys, it's changing scales within the key-changes predictively, to achieve a mostly simple and pentatonic-sounding melody, over multiple rhythmic and key changes.
You can use this song as an example why I criticized your comments:
"If music is the product of a methodical series of chores and academic exercises, made by a glassy-eyed technician hunched over a computer, then it's going to show in the results."
and
"Nobody ever falls in love to their music or is compelled to break down and weep or to jump up and dance, it's music for music nerds. And that's fine, in and of itself."

Somebody did put hes "nerd glasses" on and thought "now we are going to change key here and scale within the key-change..." and people still love the song.

Quote:
I would re-phrase your criticism as: "guitar-nerds are the only people who will care about bad music purely because is difficult to play on guitar."
Again, is that problem? If ten million fans are expecting artist to make more complicated and technical stuff than anything they have ever heard before, then you probably get better result if you put your "nerd glasses" on and people will love the result. On next day when you are going to record that pretty looking boy band you probably want to take those glasses off.

I think things like "how technical and complex your material is" are purely artistical chooses. To me saying "don't do nerd music, because only nerds will listen it" is like saying "don't do rap, because only rappers will listen it". There are fans of nerd music, there are fans of rap, there are fans of pop... what works in one genre doesn't work in other.
northern is offline   Reply With Quote