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JollyJoker
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posted November 19, 2014 10:26 PM |
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That is NOT what we aare discussing - I care about the vocal performance differences between Pavarotti and Potts as much as aI care about the performance differences between two platform divers - but I would never dream of debating about the existence of objective criteria to compare the quality of the performance,
But that has nothing to do with music and art, when it comes to CREATING them: paintings, songs, operas, symphonies, novels, poems. You see - I'm not interested in the art of reading poems, comparing the performers and then debate the "proper" way to do it. I'm interested in the POEM. Or, as Sal says, in communicating emotions - except that I do not think there is a "proper" way to do it. Instead the history of art is the story of continually doing it in ways that the "art establishment" would consider as "improper".
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artu
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posted November 19, 2014 10:38 PM |
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The avant-garde and the popular are different things, though.
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Salamandre
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posted November 19, 2014 10:49 PM |
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Well, you work around now, as you, JJ, have no way to know what the music piece is about without listening to interpreter. If you want to talk about structure similitudes, then you will have to point me at them, using the proper language. When you use lightly the word "structure", it has not much weight, from technical viewpoint.
When you send me to some link and say "listen to see what is this music about", I prefer rather reading the score and not be distracted about all the visual fuzz around (ok, we all put links but is wrong if you try to suggest is good or not).
I don't need to see a singer constantly stroking his face between 20 camera rotations and whirlwind wisps to see if the music is good or not. I do a difference between emotional raw feelings music awakes in us and its technical quality, they are very different areas. And experience taught me that, more you educate your ear and musical scientific comprehension, less you fall for all the gibberish around. Being able to recognize and put a name on 25 modulations instead of 2 is not only a intellectual process, but a much increased acoustical sensibility using training. Listening to art becomes also a learning and participative process, and this is where it makes me reasoning.
Now you can continue to beat a dead horse and accuse me of elitism, but I take this area very seriously and actually dedicate to it about 6-8 hours daily, for about 30 years.
And no, I don't think major styles as pop, jazz or classical are incompatible, but only incomparable. Those who played my Atlantis mod saw that an entire planet is dedicated to M. Jackson, with its music, custom creature, dance steps and pics. Took me about 2 months to create this homage to him (was working on map while he died), so it says much on the powerful feeling I had about this artist, while I don't think his music is particularly good.
And, for the memory, the only apparition mr jackson did in Heroes:
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 19, 2014 11:15 PM |
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Edited by artu at 01:16, 20 Nov 2014.
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Sal said:
I prefer rather reading the score and not be distracted about all the visual fuzz around.
The video-clip or the stage-show is definitely irrelevant to the quality of music but you can not evaluate popular music just by reading the notes, Sal. In that area, usually if a song is exceptional, it directly has something to do with the sound rather than the compositional sophistication. Things like the tone of the guitar, if they used an organ or a piano etc, change everything. And there are many studio effects involved, that can be considered as a part of how the song was intended to be heard by the song writer himself. That's why a once mediocre song can turn into something special with an exceptional cover.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 19, 2014 11:25 PM |
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Salamandre said:
Well, you work around now, as you, JJ, have no way to know what the music piece is about without listening to interpreter. If you want to talk about structure similitudes, then you will have to point me at them, using the proper language. When you use lightly the word "structure", it has not much weight, from technical viewpoint.
When you send me to some link and say "listen to see what is this music about", I prefer rather reading the score and not be distracted about all the visual fuzz around (ok, we all put links but is wrong if you try to suggest is good or not).
I don't need to see a singer constantly stroking his face between 20 camera rotations and whirlwind wisps to see if the music is good or not. I do a difference between emotional raw feelings music awakes in us and its technical quality, they are very different areas. And experience taught me that, more you educate your ear and musical scientific comprehension, less you fall for all the gibberish around. Being able to recognize and put a name on 25 modulations instead of 2 is not only a intellectual process, but a much increased acoustical sensibility using training. Listening to art becomes also a learning and participative process, and this is where it makes me reasoning.
Now you can continue to beat a dead horse and accuse me of elitism, but I take this area very seriously and actually dedicate to it about 6-8 hours daily, for about 30 years.
I do. Imo - and very strictly spoken - that's technicalities in order to analyze and describe things in the hope of understanding what should be felt.
you mention links and visuals. I works with a headset, and what I often do when I follow a link is - I close my eyes.
Is that a problem for you? Can't you just LISTEN to the music - not analyze it with your intellect, but following it with your heart? You don't HAVE to watch the pictures.
Anyway. You are biassed. You ARE elitist, because you make a living out of it. It's your job, I understand that.
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Salamandre
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posted November 19, 2014 11:38 PM |
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I am afraid you don't understand much, but act like you do. As often...
Ok, a shame this thread boiled down to call names, so I wholeheartedly abdicate from the noble task of defending classical purity. 
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Salamandre
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posted November 20, 2014 12:07 AM |
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artu said:
That's why a once mediocre song can turn into something special with an exceptional cover.
But this is not my area so can hardly argue about. I know how easy is to talk about, but when you have to teach about let's say, the 9 symphonies of Beethoven, it takes up to several years just to properly read them all. Then again several years until you memorize all details, then use those details to explain details in other works so everything between eras becomes structurally connected. And they are what, less than 0.0001 of the entire classical repertory I need to know by heart. Actually this kind of mastering gives rather an orgasm than being biased, then stimulate direct creativity, but can't convince the infidels and they don't know what they're loosing.
I have no time or energy to listen all the music made, but I keep myself informed as well as I can. When I was young all my private students wanted to learn pop songs (well, not always Beatles level) so I spent some years to teach and play that music. Is nice to hear when they sing, but from a technical point and when you have the score, is void, full of errors and extremely simplistic. It needs all the visual things around, in order to exist, and as I said, it goes over my area, which is studying music and becoming biased and snob as much as possible.
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artu
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posted November 20, 2014 01:41 AM |
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Edited by artu at 01:55, 20 Nov 2014.
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Lol. Think of it like this, in classical music, there are also many arrangements such as taking a piece originally written for harpsichord and rearranging it for piano or even orchestra. Think how that sometimes changes the effect of the work completely. Yet, in classical music, the kind of instruments used are usually the same traditional ones and they are all acoustic, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem to imagine how something written for harpsichord would sound on piano etc. In popular music however, there are hundreds of different electric guitar tones determined by the kind of amp and the brand of guitar you use plus the number of distortions or wah wah pedal you connect to it, zillions of ways to use the possibilities of a studio. (For example, in the sixties when the stereo sound was a new thing, they tried hundreds of things just by making sounds travel from the right cabin to the left, Sgt.Pepper by Beatles or Meddle by Pink Floyd is full of them.) The new thing, electronic music is almost completely based on produced sounds and discovering tasteful combinations of them. For example, check out the Wolf Myer song with Parov Stellar mix that I recently linked in the What Are You Listening to thread. The song as a composition is extremely ordinary, standard (but not bad) Soul vocal with funk guitar in the back. Yet, the sounds are incredibly inventive and original.
(While you're at it, also check out Andre Previn playing Cotton Tail, as a pianist of classical origin, he's very good and feels at home with Jazz, you might like it.)
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Salamandre
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posted November 20, 2014 07:07 AM |
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Artu, I hear that kind of drums based music all day around me, people headphones, public radios, TV. Sorry man, I can't concentrate on it, it has no interest to my ears. That's it, I can do nothing about.
My best buddy is a jazz pianist. When he comes home, he plays for hours. First 10 minutes I find it genial and feel all my body like dancing, then I get bored, its constant rhythm is oppressing me. I like living things, whose blood flows like ours, slower, faster, where there is a natural connection between accelerations and decelerations. Jazz is doing the transitions too brutally for my taste. The crescendo of every musical element I love so much is not enough sophisticated in jazz. For me.
Each one his thing.
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artu
Promising
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posted November 20, 2014 07:49 AM |
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Edited by artu at 07:53, 20 Nov 2014.
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I wasnt expecting you to like the electronic one anyway, it was a good example of what I was explaining, that the focus shifting on sounds themselves. I love how you call it "drum based music" though 
Btw, yours must be some kind of a special musician hell, both your girlfriend and your best friend are also musicians but they constantly perform music you dont like!
Joking aside, the only mystery in here is, with such selectiveness, how come you enjoy Michael Jackson of all people? I mean, if I was mostly uninterested in Pop but one person was going to be THE exception, it certainly wouldnt be MJ. Did you use to listen to him as a kid or something?
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Salamandre
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posted November 20, 2014 09:24 AM |
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In fact, my friend started classical music carrier, and there we met. Later he switched to jazz and is interesting to compare when he plays both. I posted a photo with him (we both were a bit younger) in RL pics thread long time ago.
Today he uses to make classical-jazz mix concerts, for example improvisation on Mozart symphony, or Tchaikovsky.
However he continues to play pure classical often, as you can see in his ytube account. I love both jazz and pop, its just that I can't listen for hours, like I do in classic.
About MJ, what's bizarre? He was an immense artist. I am not snob at that point to become blind or deaf.
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artu
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posted November 20, 2014 09:43 AM |
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Well, I'm very into the Afro-American music that goes through the line of blues-soul-motown-funk 20-s to 70's, after that the sound starts to suck and we finally arrive at the Whitney Houston crap. MJ has his roots in Motown, a sub-branch or let's say period of soul/R & B, but his is the watered down version. Once he becomes a superstar with the dancing and the show, you have Quincy Jones doing his arrangements and people like Jimmy Smith (who is like the undisputed king of Hammond Organ in Jazz/Hard-Bop) playing on Bad etc but there's really nothing too special about himself musically, he's not as significant as Marvin Gaye or inventive as James Brown. And if we bring in more traditional soul such as Ray Charles, he'll stand like a midget. Once the eighties was over, apart from a few hits, he also got forgotten quite fast, even before the pedophilia charges, by mid-nineties he was fading away. And mostly all people focused on was how Eddie Murphy played on his clip or the million dollar effects on Black or White etc... He was exactly what you were complaining about, a fuzz created by a mediastorm.
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Salamandre
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posted November 20, 2014 09:52 AM |
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This is why such discussion about music is so hard to maneuver. I never said he was great musician, but artist. Compared to Marley, Dylan or Peterson, even Beatles are sort of kindergarden as musicians, despite their celebrity. MJ was a concert beast and had other obvious charismatic qualities I won't enumerate.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 20, 2014 09:57 AM |
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Salamandre said:
and as I said, it goes over my area, which is studying music and becoming biased and snob as much as possible.
I think I understand way more than you think, because it would indeed seem that it is your job, ruining it for you which on another field is what happened to me as well (until I decided to do something against it).
As you may or may not know I work as a translator, novels mostly, computer games. This can be a very complex thing due to the differences in languages, and in movies and computer games you have the environmental constraints (time constraint, lip synch and so on), but in any case it's not an easy or straightforward job.
Now, I also (used to) read a lot - but strangely enough, the longer I worked in my job the less I enjoyed reading the kind of books I'd enjoy reading in the past. The reason was simply, that I didn't read a book anymore, but instead I analyzed the translation, and too often I would flinch and frown and curse the translator, and in the end I'd lose interest in reading further.
Of course, part of the problem could be solved by reading the original - provided it came in a language I was good enough in to really be able to.
But that was only part of it. Instead, if I wanted to again enjoy a book I had to ignore that aspect completely and concentrate on story and story-telling.
Remember, it's the chain of little things that make life, not the big ones. Or, if you like that better, the Taj Mahal may be a nice thing to behold and grand palaces may be awesome and all, but isn't it also important to design nice little houses for all the regular people to live in?
Lastly, don't you think that even the classics wrote a lot of "pop"? Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann? Nice little serenades, or pieces for piano with nice melodies even the fetuses in the womb would seem to enjoy?
And don't you think, if Mozart would have been born at any time after 1945 he might have become a rock star (and with an according life style)?
Anyway. Everyone their own. Maybe *I* am the biased. Maybe I wrongly think that "rhythm" is an intrinsic part of life (heart/pulse/sex) and that the idea of musical "purity" has been nurtured by the same mindset that proclaimed the purity of mind and soul against the tainted impurity of the body. Maybe I'm wrong when I think that if art isn't also entertaining in whatever it is trying to communicate, it stops being art and becomes lecture.
But maybe all that debating is also completely irrelevant and relevant is only the art and its effect on people.
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artu
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posted November 20, 2014 10:14 AM |
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Edited by artu at 10:31, 20 Nov 2014.
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@Sal
Well, I think the Beatles is one of those things that is genuine in its simplicity and Dylan is an amazing poet and song/writer, what captures me about him most is his constant search and his courage to take enormous risks although they don't always play well. Like early s60's, he is THE protest singer and already have his folk lover fan base but he goes electric despite the boo's which starts his most creative period with three of his best albums, then he goes folk again in a different style, then there is Desire which is something else again... He is like the Picasso of Rock music, in the sense that he is always trying to discover new directions, he has many faces and periods of creativity, like, almost a fear of repeating himself.
They even did a film about this where many actors (and an actress) play his various alter-ego's. He's the real deal, when it comes to "looking down the abyss."
Btw, I liked what your friend did to Mozart.
@JJ
JJ, don't you think it's a little artificial to always assume a duality between the emotion and the intellect? It's not that Sal consumes music on a purely intellectual basis, it's that the way his ears are trained (please dont get stuck on the word "train") cause him not to feel an emotion when he hears something that sounds ordinary to him and more things sound ordinary to him. I mean, consider a house-wife watching a Brazilian soap-opera and a cinephile watching Fellini's Amarcord, both watch a drama, they both feel emotional, they both can shed a tear and "enjoy" what they're watching. But the cinephile will feel nothing if he watches the soap-opera. Do you think that's because, he completely gets stuck on the technical aspects of the film?
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JollyJoker
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posted November 20, 2014 11:19 AM |
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I will answer with fractal mathematics.
An ice flower or frost pattern on a window looks beautiful, even complex. However, it's build follows the easiest of fractal building rules, and based on this information you can say that it's a very simple motive, repeated over and over in different sizes.
Now: does that information change the way you see them OR all the other astonishing structures in nature that once looked to be so complex, beautiful and fantastic, but are now only exercises in repetitiveness? Is that somehow diminishing the phenomenon?
Yes, I do think that knowing too much about technicalities, about analytical methods and all this stuff is diminishing the fun.
THink of an illusionist. There are 3 kinds of people:
1) Those who enjoy the show because it's magic (they enjoy being surprised and that inexplicable things happen, they enjoy that someone is good in presenting the tricks and so on).
2) Those who don't enjoy the show, because they know it's all based on tricks, mirrors, illusion, sleight-of-hand and so on.
3) Those who know the tricks. Obviously these will watch THE ILLUSIONIST to determine HOW GOOD THEY ARE, whether they make a mistake, whether you can see when an exchange takes place and so on.
Conversely, if they go to a show where an illusionist does a trick they do NOT know, they will be most keen to get behind the secret.
I would say, the last category of people can only enjoy the best of the best, the flawless - which may be alright with an illusionist show, but which is difficult when it comes to a whole body of art. I'll understand someone who's an expert on a certain PART of the body, say, umm, Musicals or Industrial Rock or Flamenco or Love Ballads and had very strict listening habits IN THAT PART.
Put to completely dismiss everything except a certain something?
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artu
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posted November 20, 2014 11:44 AM |
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Well, I don't think your analogy is accurate, first of all, in today's world, everybody knows they are tricks, we all know it is ALWAYS some mirrors, ropes, secret compartment or whatever and to extreme majority of the audience, it doesn't affect the way they enjoy the show. It can even be considered something more extraordinary and suspenseful, because you are not some illiterate person who believes in magic and gets dumbstuck by this false premise, but someone who's watching the stage like a hawk and trying to figure out how can it be done but still can't.
But if we put aside the analogy, I think it's quite the opposite when it comes to music or anything else similar. We recently talked about it, as you dig deeper, as you invest more time and energy, you enjoy it more because just like mutual relationships, the more you care about and spend time around something the more attached you become. Yes, there are cases of déformation professionnelle but I consider them exceptions rather than the rule, that's why it's named like a disease.
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Salamandre
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posted November 20, 2014 11:54 AM |
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JJ, so what is your conclusion, remain a stupid and uneducated person, in order to enjoy life's magic and fun?
Go ahead.
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markkur
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Once upon a time
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posted November 20, 2014 12:51 PM |
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Edited by markkur at 14:41, 20 Nov 2014.
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JollyJoker said:
...the idea of musical "purity"...stops being art and becomes lecture.
As a fellow git-fiddler (mid-west-back-in-the-deep-woods slang)what did you think when electric stars started "Un-plugging"?
Here's what happened to me. Just before that Fad started, I met a dude that played any stringed instrument with serious talent. He was an old fart then and he'd seen no more than a brief stint as a lead-guitarist for a talented but short-lived bar-band. His thing was, and he said it before it was fashionable, electronics had changed everything and not for the better; "now, many that couldn't really play a lick...were stars."
I agreed in part but because I had mastered some of the tricks especially "voice-manipulation" I also saw it has a sort of "music-science" which also had the element of discovery along with fine-tuning etc. if anything, <imo> experimentation grew much larger than ever before.
But many years later I got bored with the whole wired-world. So what, that I could take my voice and widen it or color-it in unimaginable ways or had dozens of variations to sounds that were, pure technical or electronic ? (usually both at once) However, I started plucking my Gibson 12-string again and "this time" I heard a purity in the strings that was not there before. So I'm sort of snobbish now too and at the expense of my own creative gifts in general. I suppose it boiled down to; if I can do it so can anyone. And of course I knew that to be true. <L>
And about the "lecture over art" I think that's absolutely true in that powerful music companies puppet-string the industry now and can manufacture artists like pull-string-china-dolls. 
What's your take on; is "unplugged" a purer look inside your own self? I know I'm talking about something quite subjective but using only voice, hands, fingers, feet and strings...is purity to me.
Looking ahead; since a sort of robotic-processor is what the internet is making humans today, while many human livelihoods are now lost to the robot, I suppose one day, humans will robotically walk to a city park to watch robots play some sort of instrument while playing computer generated music and think...how wonderful! Glad I will not be here to hear about Pandora's<Electric>Box.
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JollyJoker
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posted November 20, 2014 12:54 PM |
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artu said:
Well, I don't think your analogy is accurate, first of all, in today's world, everybody knows they are tricks, we all know it is ALWAYS some mirrors, ropes, secret compartment or whatever and to extreme majority of the audience, it doesn't affect the way they enjoy the show.
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Yes, that's the people under 1).
But I assure you, there are those under 2) that say, waste of time, all just tricks and stuff, nonsense.
Quote:
It can even be considered something more extraordinary and suspenseful, because you are not some illiterate person who believes in magic and gets dumbstuck by this false premise, but someone who's watching the stage like a hawk and trying to figure out how can it be done but still can't.
Well, you can, actually. You just have to make an effort.
Quote:
But if we put aside the analogy, I think it's quite the opposite when it comes to music or anything else similar. We recently talked about it, as you dig deeper, as you invest more time and energy, you enjoy it more because just like mutual relationships, the more you care about and spend time around something the more attached you become. Yes, there are cases of déformation professionnelle but I consider them exceptions rather than the rule, that's why it's named like a disease.
What you describe is simply the research, looking for MORE as a consumer of art. Along the line you may try to answer a few whys and hows, but Sal is a different person than you, in that regard - you don't teach stuff, right?
By the way, what about the fractal example?
@ Sal
No, that's not what I conclude. My conclusion would be to ask why it would be so important for things art to fulfill certain criteria in order to be "acceptable". The question would actually be, whether "bad art" wouldn't compromise itself automatically in that no one was interested? (or interested only for a very short duration.) I mean, you can't start a metronome and sell it as music, because even if people start nodding their heads to it, after a minute or so at the latest everyone would ignore it.
Which brings us to the entertainment part, and I suspect, that's what it amounts to and that's actually where we differ: I don't have the same demands than you what art should be - communicating emotions, yes, but in an interesting (which means, entertaining) way, because otherwise it could be communicated in a lecture.
You see that different, if I remember one of your recent posts right?
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