Why Is New Music Dying?

[matt72582]

Check out the entire article (I'm just pasting some of it)
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/is-old-music-killing-new-music


All the growth in the market is coming from old songs. 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams.

Consider these other trends:

The hottest area of investment in the music business is old songs—with investment firms getting into bidding wars to buy publishing catalogs from aging rock and pop stars.

The song catalogs in most demand are by musicians in their 70s or 80s (Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, etc.)—if not already dead (David Bowie, James Brown, etc.).

Even major record labels are participating in the shift, with Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, and others buying up publishing catalogs—investing huge sums in old tunes that, in an earlier day, would have been used to launch new artists.

The hottest technology in music is a format that is more than 70 years old, the vinyl LP. There’s no sign that the record labels are investing in a newer, better alternative—because, here too, old is viewed as superior to new.

In fact, record labels—once a source of innovation in consumer products—don’t spend any money on research & development to revitalize their businesses, although every other industry looks to innovation for growth and consumer excitement.

Record stores are caught up in the same time warp. In an earlier day, they aggressively marketed new music, but now they make more money from vinyl reissues and used LPs.

Radio stations are contributing to the stagnation, putting fewer new songs into their rotation, or—judging by the offerings on my satellite radio lineup—completely ignoring new music in favor of old hits.

When a new song overcomes these obstacles and actually becomes a hit, the risk of copyright lawsuits is greater than ever before. The risks have increased enormously since the “Blurred Lines” jury decision of 2015—with the result that additional cash gets transferred from today’s musicians to old (or deceased) artists.

Adding to the nightmare, dead musicians are now coming back to life in virtual form—via holograms and deepfake music—making it all the harder for a young, living artist to compete in the marketplace.



I'd like to add that it's worse than the numbers show

Many older people don't use streaming to listen to music. I talk to a LOT of people (just like here), and many still play their records, and others I know took their CDs and burned/digitized them into mp3's (some flac) so they can move them wherever and never have to purchase them again.

Simple answer: 60/70s > last 40 years, and it's no contest....

People can accidentally come across any kind of music on YouTube, and even the young people aren't going to deprive themselves of pleasure, despite the dumb pejoratives, like calling a 22-yr old a "dinosaur" (which happened today)

[Captain Steel]

I attribute it to the advent of rap "music".

It redefined music so as to say "music" no longer needed either melody or harmony (only a beat); singers no longer needed to be able to actually sing (to be in pitch, understand musical notes, modulate flats & sharps, harmonize with each other or carry a tune) all they needed was to be able to talk fast and in an angry fashion, often utilizing obscenities and vulgarity.

Rap became so pervasive (which was real torture for people who didn't like it) that even commercials with the Flintstones felt forced to utilize it.

And, of course, reams have been written on the derogatory effects "rap culture" had on society with its inherent misogyny, homophobia, violence, promotion of crime, illegal drugs, sexual assault, and calls to attack & destroy law enforcement.

The music world always had it's good & bad, and there has always been a place for music that questions social conventions, confronts outdated cultural constructs and which rebels against authority, but rap music and the hate-filled crime culture that it inspired was like a spreading cancer of violent ill-will and negativity that infested and took over popular music as whole

Let the flaming begin! ;)

[GulfportDoc]

As mentioned in the article, I believe that some of the problem is that new popular music is very poor quality. It's dull and repetitive. I'm a poor one to complain because I don't listen to ANY new popular music, and very little popular music of any type.

But to me rap/hip hop --if not killing new popular music-- put a huge hitch in it. The reason? It's not music. It's boring chant with rhythmic background.

What tickles me in re the production companies is, if they're worried about being hit by copyright violations, they SHOULD be embracing true new music. If it's unique and innovative they're not going to have to worry about litigious gold diggers.

But something will come along irrespective of the current drought-- it always does. After all if you hear something often enough it becomes popular.

And country music? It's gone. Every song pretty much sounds like every other one. I'm sure they're composed using algorithms. It all sounds like the drek that's played over the speakers in convenience store rest rooms...:rolleyes:

[Citizen Rules]

I didn't read the article the OP posted and I don't know squat about new music. I don't even listen to new music unless you count the homogenized, assembly line music they play in J.C Penneys stores while I'm shopping. So this is a wild guess, or maybe an educated hunch why new music isn't growing...

I blame the Baby Boomers. Well not them personally but they made up this huge generational group of people who came to age during the 1960s and 70s and grew up with rock music. Now that the Baby Boomers are older they still listed to the same older music and so do a lot of their kids and grand kids.

I've heard people here say their kids and grand kids are into Black Sabbath or Rush which is mind boggling because when I was in high school and a kid those bands were at the start of their careers. But as a youngster I wouldn't have dreamed of listening to music from 40 years in the past and yet that's common place today.

Last time I was into new music was the 1990s grunge and techno, but especially grunge as I live in the shadow of Seattle and the northwest music scene.

OK that's all I got:p

[crumbsroom]

Is it too much to ask that people who don't like 'rap' can at least call it music?

[Allaby]

My suspicion is that older music tends to be more popular and profitable because more people know it and have positive feelings or memories associated with it. They want to hear the music from concerts they grow up attending or the music they partied to in college or the music they danced to at weddings or the songs from their favourite classic films. I think it likely takes time to appreciate newer music. There is good and bad music in every generation and every time period and every genre. That's my theory anyways.

[Mesmerized]

They still make music?

[Captain Steel]

Is it too much to ask that people who don't like 'rap' can at least call it music?

Yes. ;)

[Mr Minio]

Is it too much to ask that people who don't like 'rap' can at least call it music? Yes. ;) [2]

[matt72582]

They still make music?


I wouldn't call it that.




But to me rap/hip hop --if not killing new popular music-- put a huge hitch in it. The reason? It's not music. It's boring chant with rhythmic background.

.:rolleyes:


And the actual music is mostly funk/soul from the 70s, which tells me something -- they couldn't create their own, so they leech off some poor musician, knowing they'll take any amount of money. And the really sad thing is, people attribute the creation to the most popular thing, usually the cover. I watch basketball, and they take every song, and put a "drum machine" on top, and sometimes, not even to make it more dance-friendly.
My suspicion is that older music tends to be more popular and profitable because more people know it and have positive feelings or memories associated with it. They want to hear the music from concerts they grow up attending or the music they partied to in college or the music they danced to at weddings or the songs from their favourite classic films. I think it likely takes time to appreciate newer music. There is good and bad music in every generation and every time period and every genre. That's my theory anyways.


You'd be surprised. On a huge music board, after scrolling through the hundreds of messages, as well as the board in general, I'd say the average age is about 25.. I asked someone else who works at a record shop, and I guess there's a huge sub-culture of people who love records. There's less compression, for there can't be that many audiophiles.... I'll add that the game is actually titled toward new music, because of the future possibilities.. Dead musicians won't be having future concerts or future albums. But, because of something like YouTube, someone can accidentally listen to something, and if they like it, chances are good they'll listen to their other songs and other albums. It would be like if your new school or work cafeteria had a new cook and the food is great. No one is going to care about the age of this cook - they just love the food.

Here's a really cool documentary I saw years ago. Alan Zweig isn't popular for some reason, but I've loved almost every one of his documentaries.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkCMSrvOTAo

[GulfportDoc]

...
Here's a really cool documentary I saw years ago. Alan Zweig isn't popular for some reason, but I've loved almost every one of his documentaries.
That album picture at the beginning of the video is from Unconditionally Guaranteed by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band from 1974. It was probably our worst sounding album although it had a few good songs.

[Siddon]

1. MTV/Radio - MTV stopped playing music which means music wasn't being curated and promoted to mass audiences. Radio also died...when I was a boy we had 5 or 6 stations for new music now we really just have one per genre if the distribution market doesn't exist...it kills the industry.

2. Record Labels - Record labels are really just money markets I don't think they do anything but sign content deals to streamers at very low prices. They make money but the artists don't.

3. Genre death - Rock N Roll is dead, it's been dying since 1995 the bands that come out are stale corporate shills (Nickelback, Coldplay, Maroon Five).

4. Market Saturation - 60's Rock, Motown, New Wave, Grunge, Gangster Rap they all still exist. Do I need to listen to the mumblings of Travis Scott when I can listen to Dr. Dre or Public Enemy

[crumbsroom]

Is Rap Music? Um.....yeah.



1) Outside of the early records of The Last Poets, I find virtually nothing in the entire 50 year history of hip-hop which should have us comparing what MC's do to 'chanting'. Chanting generally is about pure repetition, often remaining in the same one or two tones. Rapping plays with different rhythm, incorporates melody, often includes versus/chorus/prechorus/bridges. It is frequently the opposite of chanting, even if it sounds as if it is simply being spoken. But even if we want to reduce it to nothing but chanting, how does this play towards the argument that it 'isn't music', as chanting is clearly very much a party of the history of music. It is the root of a lot of aboriginal music. It is by any definition music. Unless we are in a position here where we are also going to throw the music of other cultures into the 'non music' dust bin (maybe we should do the same to classical Indian music while we are at it), maybe we should try and have some kind of open mind about how music from different cultures operates, and not close ourselves off because it doesn't sound like what played on the radio when we were kids. Just because it is unfamiliar or different to YOU doesn't mean it stops being music FFS



2) The music involved in hip hop is not simply a rhythmic background. It is generally integrated with the flow of the MC. It does frequently use repetition (but so does no end of modern classical composers which is music, last time I checked), but it doesn't exclusively lock into these repetition. There can be either subtle variation in this repetition as the music progresses, or it can out right move along with the structure of the verses much in exactly the same way that much popular music has done all through history. Or maybe the rhythmic musical background to A Hard Day's Night doesn't qualify as music either. It's very rhythmic and also technically in the background.



3) Sampling isn't simply stealing. In absolutely lame cases (like a good deal of Puff Daddy's biggest hits) I might agree that it is. But taking elements of other songs and recontextualizing how they are used, editing them to change their effect or meaning, or manipulating speeds and pitches so as they blend into their new musical environments is a musical skill set that can be just as rigorous as learning an instrument. There can maybe be arguments to be made about the physical demands of DJing vs mastering live instrumentation, but both take considerable amounts of sweat and musical knowledge to make work well. I would like to think in 2022 the argument that sampling is simply theft, without any creative (or musical or artistic or philosophical) contribution being made by the DJ, would have been rendered moot by now as its pretty clear that nearly all music (and all art) is about taking what is old and readjusting/repurposing it. While a sample may seem more blatant in how it does this, we don't start talking about how Led Zeppelin or Bob Dylan are 'musicians' for building their careers on lifting songs, lyrics and guitars lines. And they did it pretty ****ing blatantly too. They, like DJ's, simply molded what they took into their own image. Sampling isn't all that dissimilar in what its function is.


4) The notion that rappers don't need to sing or worry about pitch is just flat out wrong. There is a long history of MC's who can both sing and rap. And if you tell me someone like Rakim or Big Daddy Kane aren't worried about pitch, you should probably listen a little closer. And this isn't even getting into all the varieties and different styles of rapping that have evolved since old school hip hop came into play, and to act like what they are doing with their voice is of no consequence to anything you can consider musical, is on its face laughable.



5) Focusing on anger or vulgarities as our dividing line to why rap is bad and other music is music, is disingenous and ignores the endless stream of artists who are completely clean and have exclusively positive messages. If we are picking and choosing artists to discredit an entire genre, we all already know we can do that to attack every single genre. Give me a ****ing break here.


6) If we are going to talk about artist who do talk about violence and anger and use vulgarity, while I think it is fair game to criticize these particular artists, and I don't expect people to have to get on board such messages as they are purposefully confrontational and controversial and maybe even sometimes not particularly great culturally, maybe for a second it could also benefit us to try and understand WHY there is such anger and violence in these. elements of this musical culture. If we want to take a specific example, and look at the hysterical overreaction that greeted **** tha Police back in the 80's, instead of looking only at what through one lens may be promoting violence against law enforcement (which I also would disagree with), we can try and deepen our understanding of what is being said by considering whether or not the men and women in these communities that were targeted by police during this time had reason to be fed up with how they were being treated. Even if we don't agree with the ultimate product of their anger, can we at least try and acknowledge they might have a reason to be angry in the first place? And if their reality is mired in a world where they feel they can't get a leg up, and the police are constantly knocking them down, should we not expect at least some artists to put a voice to this reality? Did working class rock and rollers simply pleasantly sniff the crotches of police, or did they some times rebel as well in their lyrics (Um...Black Flag anyone). And if they did, why do we only remember and still get angry over one genre of musics anti-authority articulations?



7) Criticizing a musical culture, by drawing a direct line to those who participate in that culture, and then using that to associate them with crime and vulgarity and every other unsavoury thing we can think of, is frankly gross. Unless we still want to talk about all the juvenile delinquency Bill Haley and the Comets are mucking up, maybe we want to step back from saying hip hop (and those who like it) has been the cause of a hate-filled crime culture. Because, it was a completely ridiculous argument in the 1950s, and it still is.

[cricket]

I don't listen to newer music, nothing newer than the early to mid-90's really, and it doesn't matter the genre. I have no idea if other people feel this way, but the small amount of newer music that I am unfortunately exposed to screams look at me. I don't want to look at you and I don't care about you. Make some music that everyone can relate to. This attitude is not just in music, it's everywhere.

[Captain Steel]

Interesting: WABC AM radio has been conservative political talk for decades now. But in recent years they've been talking about how they started out as a music station and have started to return to those roots on the weekends. They've taken on Cousin Brucie who spins "oldies" (as he always has), they've got Tony Orlando hosting a variety music / talk show that plays mostly hits from his heyday era, and they've got Joe Piscapo (SNL alumni) hosting "Sundays with Sinatra" - fielding calls from listeners & spinning hits by ol' blue eyes.

[pahaK]

I haven't planned this post in any way, so sorry if it's merely rambling.

First, I agree that memorable, recognizable, and unique artists seem scarcer every year. That seems counter-intuitive considering how much easier it is to self-publish these days. For years now, there's been only a handful of new albums each year that I've felt like revisiting multiple times, and only a few have stayed in heavy circulation. The rest are just forgettable, bland mass.

So, why is that? I blame, at least partially, technology. The easier it is to fix things in post-production the less skill is needed by the artists. Auto-Tune makes everyone a pitch-perfect singer, but it also eliminates all the imperfections that would have made the voice unique. Often in popular music, it's almost like listening to a robot instead of a human. The production is often optimized for poor portable players, making everything sound flat and loud. Instruments use "perfect" sampled sounds to a point where everything sounds the same.

I believe that the average skill level of new musicians is lower than 30+ or 40+ years ago. I don't mean just the technical level of playing (there surely are modern virtuosos) but the understanding of music on a theoretical level. Popular music is becoming simpler all the time. At times I feel like the whole of humanity is on the decline.

Oh, and I stay away from that rap discussion. I don't need more private messages from Yoda :D

[Captain Steel]

In response to crumbsroom's last post: you make a lot of good points. And I'm not trying to play semantics police or even style-classification police.

But since you mentioned hip-hop, I kind of draw a distinction between rap and hip-hop (although the line, admittedly is a thin one). I see (or rather hear) hip-hop as a style that incorporates aspects of rap along with funk, soul, jazz and R&B.

You will hear melodies in hip-hop and sometimes even harmonies which are, for the most part, devoid from most typical rap music (there, I said "music")!

Of course, every genre expands into others at some point depending on the song & artist.

[matt72582]

Here's a follow-up video from a guy who checked out the same article I posted.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYX1YFiQTDw&t=750s

[Sedai]

Love Rick Beato (Bee-at-o), thanks for posting that video, matt72582.

For more on the subject at hand, here is an interesting video on the science behind the simplification of music, as well as some other thoughts on the subject, by Thoughty2.

https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

[GulfportDoc]

Love Rick Beato (Bee-at-o), thanks for posting that video, @matt72582 (http://www.movieforums.com/community/member.php?u=85325).

For more on the subject at hand, here is an interesting video on the science behind the simplification of music, as well as some other thoughts on the subject, by Thoughty2.

Very revealing. I suspected that these techniques were being used. The business aspects have way overtaken the artistic, whereas it used to be a joint circumstance.

[crumbsroom]

Love Rick Beato (Bee-at-o), thanks for posting that video, @matt72582 (http://www.movieforums.com/community/member.php?u=85325).

For more on the subject at hand, here is an interesting video on the science behind the simplification of music, as well as some other thoughts on the subject, by Thoughty2.

https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII


I'm always hesitant to get into 'it was better back in the day' style complaints, but this makes a pretty good case as to why modern approaches to recording music have been detrimental to the art. Anytime any art form starts finding formulas to access the attention of as many people as possible (instead of allowing the eccentricities of an artist to naturally find their audience), it turns into a marketing project and not art. Call this the Robert McKee-ing of music production.



I still think there is always good music to be found when one digs. But there are probably legit complaints about the quality of what is now 'making the charts'. Not that I would know specifically, since I don't even know what is chart popular these days...but whenever I hear the latest mega smash, I almost never like it much.

[Sedai]

I'm always hesitant to get into 'it was better back in the day' style complaints, but this makes a pretty good case as to why modern approaches to recording music have been detrimental to the art. Anytime any art form starts finding formulas to access the attention of as many people as possible (instead of allowing the eccentricities of an artist to naturally find their audience), it turns into a marketing project and not art. Call this the Robert McKee-ing of music production.



I still think there is always good music to be found when one digs. But there are probably legit complaints about the quality of what is now 'making the charts'. Not that I would know specifically, since I don't even know what is chart popular these days...but whenever I hear the latest mega smash, I almost never like it much.

I concur. My wife and I still listen to a wide array of music, both old and new. In the metal genre, we tend to listen to mostly new stuff, for instance, even if we still adore much of the classic material. Still, even what we consider to be the best, or at least our current favorites in the genre, still suffer from a somewhat formulaic approach, or are stuck in the ruts of their alleged sub-genre, or especially in metal, are a clear casualty the loudness war or other production annoyances of today.

As far as more popular genres are concerned, there is a clear simplification in everything from melodic complexity to depth of arrangement, with some err...actually many of the most popular hits simply focusing on a single, repetitive passage, only building energy through additive production - I image artists spending 14 minutes on the writing process, and then 2 weeks on production ideas/tricks.

[Swan]

Why can't you let us button mashers live in harmony?

[Mr Minio]

Is Rap Music? Um.....yeah.

Eh, most naysayers don't say that rap isn't music. They say that rap isn't music music.

It's a kind of reactionary retort simply saying "(to me) rap is so terrible, it's not worthy of being called music".

I really don't think anybody's arguing that rap isn't music in the general sense. If Harsh Noise is music then so is rap.

Also, the "rap isn't music" thing is a part of the trendy rap-hating of several years ago that became a meme of sorts (we say "rap is the music of subhumans" in Poland). Similar to "anime is for f-word (no, the other f-word)". If you're into rap or anime, you just gotta live with people bad-mouthing them from time to time. ;)

Moreover, old geezers may spout these "rap isn't music" opinions just as another way of bemoaning the good ole times that are long gone and are never comin' back. This was the time of their youth and true happiness. Now they're old and wrinkled so their defense mechanism is to reject anything new. Yes, they not only claim that rap isn't music but that basically, anything made after the 80s sucks.

All in all, I'd say that people who really believe that rap isn't music in the theoretical sense are in the minority so all points you're addressing, although valid, sound kind of like preaching to the choir. Rap-haters know all of this, but they still reject rap on other (subjective) grounds.

[John Dumbear]

Video killed the radio star...

[crumbsroom]

Eh, most naysayers don't say that rap isn't music. They say that rap isn't music music.

It's a kind of reactionary retort simply saying "(to me) rap is so terrible, it's not worthy of being called music".

I really don't think anybody's arguing that rap isn't music in the general sense. If Harsh Noise is music then so is rap.

Also, the "rap isn't music" thing is a part of the trendy rap-hating of several years ago that became a meme of sorts (we say "rap is the music of subhumans" in Poland). Similar to "anime is for f-word (no, the other f-word)". If you're into rap or anime, you just gotta live with people bad-mouthing them from time to time. ;)

Moreover, old geezers may spout these "rap isn't music" opinions just as another way of bemoaning the good ole times that are long gone and are never comin' back. This was the time of their youth and true happiness. Now they're old and wrinkled so their defense mechanism is to reject anything new. Yes, they not only claim that rap isn't music but that basically, anything made after the 80s sucks.

All in all, I'd say that people who really believe that rap isn't music in the theoretical sense are in the minority so all points you're addressing, although valid, sound kind of like preaching to the choir. Rap-haters know all of this, but they still reject rap on other (subjective) grounds.


I get that most of those who say 'rap isn't music' aren't truly speaking literally. It's a joke. Brash hyperbole. But the intent of such an off-hand and obviously ridiculous comment isn't to necessarily prove a genres non-musicalness. Instead, it is the bold declaration that is used to kick open the doors to delegitimize a form of artistic expression. To not take the things these artists are saying seriously. And it is a broader dismissal than simply 'rappers just talk fast'. It always immediately turns towards taking shots at cultures that are deemed unsophisticated, and the damage to society they invariably cause. It's tired and boring and has been cribbed from a very old playbook that I don't have any patience for.



The same shit is used against films that don't fit a very specific function to its audience, or writers who don't abide grammatical constraints, or basically anything that doesn't offer comfort to those who just want to see, hear and experience the same old shit they liked back in the day, ad nauseum, forever. So yeah, its a joke, but it's also both deliberately and not-so-deliberately used to inject a permafrost in culture where nothing will ever change. And fresh voices can be shut down as soon as they say or do something different. Almost as if there already isn't an overwhelming glut of product already tailor made for this kind of audience.



In short, this kind of thing is one of the few irritants in the world that can still ignite a fire in these particular dead guts of mine. Any comment that brushes against the notion that artists need to stay within certain boundaries to remain legitimate, I will come after with a pitchfork every single time. Of course, for some the idea of 'what is art' thickens like a kind of cement when they get to a certain age, so I feel I probably am preaching to the choir, as you say. But to just give up and assume the world is just slowly going to shutter up and all art will eventually become some hugely boring monolothic slab of 'more of the same' just doesn't sit right with me. I've already given up on the rest of the the world, so I will at least keep this one little corner of the universe lit with the tiny candle of my neverending internet screaming.

[ScarletLion]

If you can't find any new music you like, you are not looking hard enough.

[ScarletLion]

In short, this kind of thing is one of the few irritants in the world that can still ignite a fire in these particular dead guts of mine. Any comment that brushes against the notion that artists need to stay within certain boundaries to remain legitimate, I will come after with a pitchfork every single time. Of course, for some the idea of 'what is art' thickens like a kind of cement when they get to a certain again, so I feel I probably am preaching to the choir, as you say. But to just give up and assume the world is just slowly going to shutter up and all art will eventually become some hugely boring monolothic slab of 'more of the same' just doesn't sit right with me. I've already given up on the rest of the the world, so I will at least keep this one little corner of the universe lit with the tiny candle of my neverending internet screaming.

Well said.

https://media4.giphy.com/media/3o84U6E7YQLb1w7StW/giphy.gif

[mark f]

I'd keep away from crumbsroom's fiery dead guts if I were you.

[Citizen Rules]

Video killed the radio star...Best post on the thread. It's poignant and not a WOT.

[CringeFest]

I'm always hesitant to get into 'it was better back in the day' style complaints, but this makes a pretty good case as to why modern approaches to recording music have been detrimental to the art. Anytime any art form starts finding formulas to access the attention of as many people as possible (instead of allowing the eccentricities of an artist to naturally find their audience), it turns into a marketing project and not art. Call this the Robert McKee-ing of music production.



I still think there is always good music to be found when one digs. But there are probably legit complaints about the quality of what is now 'making the charts'. Not that I would know specifically, since I don't even know what is chart popular these days...but whenever I hear the latest mega smash, I almost never like it much.


There's a lot of electronic cheese out there now but it's better just to make music than to be concerned about this.

[Captain Steel]

Here's an idea for "new" music - how about reviving older styles with new songs?

Or amalgamating various styles into a new style with new songs?
"Bubble Gum Thrash?"
"Techno Swing Dance?"
"Doo Wop Grunge?"
"Disco Metal Modal?"
"Punk Funk?"
"Island Cool Jazz?"
"Ballroom Acid Trance?"
"Reggae Retro Turbofolk?"
"Hardcore New Wave?"
"Folk Pop Polka?"
"Garage Band Easy Listening?"
"Western Rhythm & Blues"
"Country Ragtime"
"Rap Rock Opera"
"Gospel Bluegrass"
"Big Band Acapella!" ;)


As an example of the first point, I will direct you to one of my favorite bands: The Stray Cats, who brought Rockabilly music to a new generation as they peaked in the early 1980's alongside the cusp of New Wave & early Rap music. And they did so with new flare quite successfully.

[John McClane]

Making music has become far too accessible. I ain't getting into the "rap isn't music" debate because crumbsroom already laid out why that's hogwash, but I will say that the ability for anyone to go buy a beat and then lay vocals over top of it in their bedroom has created an excess of mediocre content (yes, that includes my own horseshit music). There are thousands of songs being released every single day. There's more content being released than there has ever been, so in that regard music isn't dying. It's just getting beat like a dead horse.

[Yoda]

Re: "isn't music." I'm glad we agree it's hyperbole. Taken literally it's an absurd claim, but because of that I feel comfortable thinking it's almost never truly literal. Lots of things most of us would register as mere noise (hi Yoko!) can still technically be music, in the same philosophically banal sense that anything can be art. I think that kind of observation, while technically true, only enhances our understanding if we use it as the beginning of a discussion, rather than an end.

That said, I want to steel man this, because I think there's something here, in the criticism about harmony and melody, which holds together and matters, even if not everyone who expresses it could or would articulate it:

A work of art can be criticized because it fails to utilize the strengths of its chosen medium

Example: video games are sometimes described as "walking simulators" if they essentially only ask the player to move around and click on things and then be fed a story. You walk around, you see a note, you click on it and read it. You find a tape player, you click on it and an audio file plays. Some people suggest these games are not "real" games because they have no failure state and require no skill. "Walking simulator," therefore, has a negative connotation.

Some people respond to this by noting that those games are still games, and shouldn't be excluded from the category of "game," and doing so limits what games can be, etc. And note well, they often use the same language as in this thread, something orthogonal to the question: they say that the game is saying something important. Sometimes they go further and say these are "just as much games as any other game." I think that's where it starts to miss something.

The choice of medium is part of a work. This is obvious when we talk about someone painting with oil rather than sketching with charcoal, but it applies to music and games, too. The "walking simulator" is using a video game to essentially write a short story. Some music is using music to give a speech or advance a cause. That these things can be good or valuable is obvious, but it's equally obvious that people can have valuable things to express and still choose a form that is ill-suited to that expression. And I don't just mean picking a form that hinders that expression, but also picking a form that they aren't able to fully utilize.

Music does not need harmony and melody (though I really wanna second what was said earlier about how a lot of--most? Almost all?--rap music has plenty of harmony and melody), but those are some of the things that separate music from, say, poetry. You can make a movie that's just text scrolling by on a screen, but there is no reason for it to be a movie instead of a book. Defending an art form means preserving its borders from both contraction and expansion, lest it become stale and predictable or muddled and meaningless.

So yes, talking over a beat is music, if we insist on thinking of each art form as a binary. But within that binary there is a sliding scale, with works and messages that would be annihilated without some components, and others that would mostly survive. It can all be music, but it can be more or less musical, and I think that matters.

[Captain Steel]

It's merely a matter of opinion and semantics. One man's music is another man's noise (and vice versa). Thus is the way with anything considered "art" by anyone... or by those who can't believe what others might consider "art".

Take the guy in the subway station who plays a white bucket as a drum. His talent is unmistakable, but is he making music? It's percussion so it's certainly an element of music (add one or two more instruments and you'd have all of the elements of music working together). To some the rhythm and tones created by the sticks hitting different parts of the bucket has its own melody, so they'd call it fully a musical style in and of itself.
Others would say it's just a beat which is enjoyable based on the energy & skill of the artist.
While some others would say its noise that is disturbing their peace and should not be allowed in public, but rather regulated to venues designated for loud performances.

[Yoda]

Unfortunate timing, I just heard one of those guys on the sidewalk the other day and he was killing it. Not just hitting buckets, he had some glass in there to mix it up and it was :fire:

[beelzebubble]

I think it may not be music that is dying but the radio that has ossified.
I listened to pop music from 1968 to 2010 and found stuff to enjoy. But now the pop music stations are awful!!!!!
Now new stuff worth listening too maybe out there on the internet but it seems to be hidden from the likes of me.
Sometimes I hear new rock music on a radio station that includes some newer stuff in their rotation.
I know there is new stuff out there that is good (at least to my friend who works for the Hard Rock Cafe.
He actually gets exposed to new artists at work.)

[John McClane]

Most radio stations are, by and large, run the same regardless of their regional demographics. It's why they never play the shit you wanna hear even if you get lucky enough to get someone on the phone when they're taking requests. If your request ain't already on their playlist, which like 80% of radio stations share, then it ain't getting played.

[crumbsroom]

Defending an art form means preserving its borders from both contraction and expansion, lest it become stale and predictable or muddled and meaningless.



Here is a couple of fairly famous example of 'expansion' for you.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOIkT1-QWY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDvYokFU7U


Is it Music?


While in theory I get what you are saying about preserving borders, otherwise music (or any other art form) hazards becoming meaningless. But, at the same time, any serious expansion of any musical form has to at times bring us to the precipice of the question 'is it still music'. It's what gives us new modes of expressing ourselves in that form, otherwise stagnation is imminent.



An awful lot of art that is now completely accepted as the norm, was at one time an outlier to the point of also having its legitimacy questioned. Simply because it dared to poke holes in the notion of what art can be. And all of us I'm sure have examples of pushing back on these things. At some point, all of us will begin to wonder when does the work of an artist stop expressing anything to us? At what point does it stop having meaning? At what point do we stop enjoying it? These are all fair questions, but over time, they will all have different answers as the art form evolves. And this happens through artists delivering a shock to the system from time to time. Usually through what will initially be dismissed as avant-garde egg-headism.



Ultimately though, even these extreme cases often will seep into the general aesthetic of what is considered basic and acceptable. Is anything more commercial these days than Andy Warhol's 'Soup Cans'? Even though when they initially arrived they sent shock waves with their intent to make us see the commercial world we are surrounded by as being ready for the gallery, this is now asically the stance of a whole lot of pop culture these days. Warhol was a prophet when it comes to this.



Now, when it comes to the two above examples, I think they are both important in how they force us to look at the very essence of music (sound) in a mostly non-abstracted form. Now, maybe if you find both of them grating with their pretensions, or silly with their aspirations to be considered music, you might still be willing to grant them the position of being 'art' for this particular purpose of challenging norms. But maybe you don't see any need to see them as examples of 'music' as this might lead to that problem of ultimate meaninglessness if we keep expanding our definitions.



And, fair enough, to a point. But simply leaving it being defined solely under the nebulous term of 'art' really isn't enough because I would argue we need this pointed confrontation of whether or not we want to still call it music. This is what forces us to contemplate the sounds of a bicycle being tinkered with on a stage, or a man pouring water from a jug in a more direct way. It is through this specific definition which can potentially change how we think about these sounds. This is because we all know what music is supposed to sound like. We have a bunch of rules from it we've learned simply from even the most passive of listening. And it is only through placing these pieces inside of the context of this known thing, and its understood rules, that we can begin to think differently about what we are hearing. Someone like John Cage, wants us to understand the sound of running water on its own terms, and to him it is as beautiful as any composed piece of classical music. But without the confrontation, this collision between or expectations of what music is and what he is delivering to us in the audience, it is simply a man filling a jug of water. We need the friction between what we accept and what we don't want to accept, to open our eyes to what he is showing us.



And as broadly as these questions Zappa or Cage present to us are, I don't think they have remotely chipped away at the integrity of music. They have emboldened it to take on different shapes and do different things and have it affect us in many different ways, even if we don't actually like what these particular artists are doing (personally, both of those videos leave me pretty cold with what is being performed)

[John McClane]

Since we're sharing videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q

If music is dead then why am I headbanging to a block of wood dropping marbles? xD

[Mr Minio]

You can make a movie that's just text scrolling by on a screen, but there is no reason for it to be a movie instead of a book. Taking this out of context because it's a fascinating thing!

It still wouldn't be the same because the act of reading and the act of watching are two different acts even if one of them is a subsection of the other. In addition to that, you read a book at your own pace, but in such a film, you'd be at the mercy of the director. Just imagine a playful film in which the text scrolls excruciatingly slow to annoy the audience but then starts scrolling so fast it becomes impossible to read. Then, there's the FILM itself. If we assume it is a film and not digital then on a live screening you've got the actual light of the projector, grain, etc. Regardless, you've got the audience, their reaction. If you released it as a book, you wouldn't have them screaming at you, asking for a refund!

Even the act of watching a film (at the cinema or sitting on your couch) is already different from reading a book because it brings some expectations. A film like that would mess with these expectations or downright shatter them.

And that's assuming there is no sound in the film.

Lastly, releasing such a film could lead to discussions on the following topics:

Why are the subtitles scrolling at the given speed and not some other speed?
Are the scratches and decaying filmstock actually the director's intention or just a side-effect of the film being poorly preserved?
What is a film? What makes a film?
Is cinema dead? And if not, do we have to kill it?


And if you think any of these questions (or the film, for that matter) are preposterous, then you are actually questioning them and this film - again something that wouldn't have happened had it been a book. Also, you're already discussing it, and you yourself said something like: "I believe films are just an invitation to think more deeply about some topic". Needless to say, releasing it as a book would not lead to such discussions.

So yes, saying it'd work better as a book is fine, but saying there is no reason for releasing it as a film... well, the director wanting to do that is enough of a reason. Plus everything I listed above.

PS: Film is not theatre.
PSS: Noise (of any kind) and silence are music, too.

[John Dumbear]

An awful lot of art that is now completely accepted as the norm, was at one time an outlier to the point of also having its legitimacy questioned. Simply because it dared to poke holes in the notion of what art can be. And all of us I'm sure have examples of pushing back on these things. At some point, all of us will begin to wonder when does the work of an artist stop expressing anything to us? At what point does it stop having meaning? At what point do we stop enjoying it? These are all fair questions, but over time, they will all have different answers as the art form evolves. And this happens through artists delivering a shock to the system from time to time. Usually through what will initially be dismissed as avant-garde egg-headism.


Great paragraph from crumbs.



Reminds me of the poo I received from loving Kraftwerk back in my teens. Saw them as being very forward and deliberate. Their expansion of sound that years later, many claim as a major influence.

[Yoda]

While in theory I get what you are saying about preserving borders, otherwise music (or any other art form) hazards becoming meaningless. But, at the same time, any serious expansion of any musical form has to at times bring us to the precipice of the question 'is it still music'. It's what gives us new modes of expressing ourselves in that form, otherwise stagnation is imminent.
Sure, but that's why I include both. The main thing is to simply establish that the spectrum of inclusive/exclusive is not good/bad, but more of a balancing act.

And, fair enough, to a point. But simply leaving it being defined solely under the nebulous term of 'art' really isn't enough because I would argue we need this pointed confrontation of whether or not we want to still call it music.
Precisely. But "pointed confrontation" requires a second site. So while you may like to be more inclusive, and you may bristle at others being more restrictive, the interplay of the two is crucial. I'd argue this argument is, in fact, the whole reason the expansionary, experimental stuff has value. And that's a point that the critics of rap should note well, too, since it means things have to push against those boundaries in order to help them clarify what they think music is.

In other words, the experimental stuff needs its critics, because you can't transgress against a rule that doesn't exist. Similarly, the more guarded types require the experiments in order to clarify what they reject, and why. That either side can just choose to be thoughtless about all this is sad, but unavoidable.

Anyway, there's a survivor bias problem, too, in that most of the experiments we remember are the ones that "worked," that changed the form or were accepted as a forward-thinking example of it. I think, statistically, though, most of it's just bad. That's kinda the nature of experiment, be it in the physical sciences or the sonic.

[Yoda]

It still wouldn't be the same because the act of reading and the act of watching are two different acts even if one of them is a subsection of the other.
Alas, I thought (worried? ;)) that I should probably include a caveat for something like this. I decided not to because the post was pretty long already.

But yes, I of course agree, if only in a technical sense. The film of the text and the text itself are not identical works, though I'd like to think it would prompt some very pointed questions about why those decisions were made, and I don't think the mere fact that they were decisions would inherently justify them or anything. The point of the example, anyway, was just to show that something in a given art form can be ill-suited to it. Hopefully if that particular example didn't feel right, you can invent one that would: some work that is technically the example of an art form but doesn't really utilize it.

And if you think any of these questions (or the film, for that matter) are preposterous, then you are actually questioning them and this film - again something that wouldn't have happened had it been a book. Also, you're already discussing it, and you yourself said something like: "I believe films are just an invitation to think more deeply about some topic". Needless to say, releasing it as a book would not lead to such discussions.
A few times on the podcast we've wondered (not concluded either way, just wondered, mind you) whether there's a distinction between "this film is good because it contained these ideas" and "this film is good because it made me think of these ideas."

Personally--and we might get into an axiomatic difference here--I require something more from good art than "well, at least you're talking about it!" I accept that
"that which intentionally prompts thought" is probably the purest and broadest definition of art I can come up with, but I also think it's a comically low bar to clear if taken literally. As always, we all have to agree on really broad philosophical umbrella terms (in the same way we have to agree that all opinions are subjective) as a sort of message board ritual so that we can skip ahead to the potentially useful part of figuring out if it's actually good, or just merely provocative, since the former is hard and the latter all too easy.

[Wyldesyde19]

Last night at the gym I played Ice Cube’s “Natural Born Killaz” while lifting weights. Good stuff

[doubledenim]

When this thread started, I had a lengthy post that I chyped. The thought being, this is just gonna be an old guy that hasn’t adapted to changes in music and industry and those minds won’t change.

You can take 10 secs of any Scott Storch video and kill the “not music, just beating and banging, broad stroke argument.”

This is just banner flying for old and out of touch, which I’m definitely on the mailing list.

Leon Bridges, John Moreland, Billy Strings, etc. is not gonna be fed to you by the Kraft General Mills Mondelez music industry.

[crumbsroom]

In other words, the experimental stuff needs its critics, because you can't transgress against a rule that doesn't exist.


Yes, but just because these transgressions are better illuminated when held against the darkness of those who don't want to budge in what they are willing to allow in a piece of art, doesn't mean those limitations stop being frustrating and essentially wrong in spirit.


I'd argue this argument is, in fact, the whole reason the expansionary, experimental stuff has value
You've said a similar thing in a different thread, as if you think rebellion is the only (or at least the more important) currency that more aggressively weird or non-conformist artists have. That championing these kinds of films is more a reactionary approval than anything to do with finding actual merits in the work. And I just don't really think this is true. I actually mostly despise films that seems only to exist as a confrontation to norms. Such a stance can only go so far before that becomes just as tiring to me as some conventional piece of work. And, ultimately that is all it is: a stance. A posture. And no thanks to that.


My interest in films that do not bend to expectations, mostly has to do with the fact that I believe the more we step away from what has been dictated we should do in a piece of art, the more potential there is to clearly view the inner workings of the individual who is creating it. For me, it always gets back to showing empathy towards creation, and the less unguarded this act of creation is, the better. I want to watch the instinct of an artist, taking chances, being vulnerable, and while this can be done both completely within and completely without the rules, it is outside of them that these things can be seen much more clearly.



So the notion of rebellion for rebellions sake is of very little interest to me. I don't think breaking rules, just because you can, cuts it. There is much more value in the work of outsiders, than something as superficial as this. The work of outsiders is important because it give a voice to those who find beauty and purpose in unconventional places. It just happens to be a kind of appreciation whose value is hard to weigh on some standard metric of worth, which invariably gets hung up on craft, or cleanly articulating some particular point, or looking obviously well produced.

[Mr Minio]

Yoda Fair enough, I get it. I just wanted to address this specific thing because I'm into unordinary cinema (I love all cinema which also includes a more avant-garde approach to it).

What crumbsroom said, basically. Yes, you can make a film just to provoke or make people think. And my point was that it was enough reason to make it. But I never said that such a work of art would be any good. It could, depending on how it was made. It's just it's a poor reason (but still a valid one) to make such a work of art in the first place. To try and expand the cinematic language is a much better reason. Just like Joyce tried to expand the language of literature, so did some filmmakers try to expand the language of film. And even if some of them failed or made middling art, the fact they were interested in progressing the medium is commendable, in my opinion. By the way, it's quite funny to see some self-labeled contemporary film prodigies that make half-assed experimental films and claim they're like something nobody's ever done. Most of the time somebody's already done that years ago. The other time they indeed made something somewhat new, but then they made 20 more films and they keep saying every one of them is revolutionary even though only the first one was if we're humble. But yeah, thankfully, there are not too many directors like that, and there are some really great directors nowadays still trying to push the boundaries of cinema.

RE: A film that has something to say vs a film that makes you think about something - case in point: Promising Young Woman (2020). It made me think about feminism the most out of all films, but I wouldn't call it a good feminist film, or a good film, for that matter. It made me think because it failed in some areas it was trying to succeed. But since it made me think, I think it's enough reason for it to exist, and yes, this fits pretty much any film in existence, which is IMO a good thing because censoring and limiting art never brought anything good*.

And last but not least, oftentimes a film may seem "merely provocative" because we didn't really understand it. We're all guilty of this in one way or another. It's just like first getting into avant-garde jazz. You may like it right away, for what it is, and you don't need to understand it to like it. But those who don't understand it often call it "just noise", which it clearly isn't. There's a clear methodology and a great display of skill behind it. And if you ask yourself-- why make art that needs some previous understanding, well, why not? Personally, I'm more into the intuitive approach to film-watching, and it's very funny how I was into many experimental/avant-garde/"difficult" works right away but actually had to "learn to like** classic Hollywood films. :D

* There's a point to be made that thanks to censorship, some films are actually better because filmmakers had to come up with fresh ideas to work around the censorship. I recognize this fact but it's hard not to think that censorship as a whole is destructive to cinema. One has only to think about the censorship of films in contemporary China or how Orson Welles and Erich von Stroheim's films were butchered.

** This doesn't imply forcing myself to like them or pretending to like them. Rather, it's just watching a lot of them and getting naturally accustomed to their style, tempo, and techniques.

[Yoda]

Yes, but just because these transgressions are better illuminated when held against the darkness of those who don't want to budge in what they are willing to allow in a piece of art, doesn't mean those limitations stop being frustrating and essentially wrong in spirit.
It's pretty hard to respond to this because I don't know what you mean by "those limitations." If it's something thoughtless like "rap isn't music," sure. If it's something more like "melody and harmony are a huge part of what makes music, music," then I don't think it's essentially wrong.

You've said a similar thing in a different thread
I don't recall what you mean. Can you elaborate/remind me? Is it the "jaded film critics" stuff from just this past week?

as if you think rebellion is the only (or at least the more important) currency that more aggressively weird or non-conformist artists have.
Well, I don't think this. Though I do think rebellion for its own sake is ultimately what motivates a lot of transgressive or subversive art. I also think it's reasonable (necessary, even) to ask that something particularly transgressive clear an extra bar or two, pardon the pun.

That championing these kinds of films is more a reactionary approval than anything to do with finding actual merits in the work.
I definitely don't think this. At most, I think as someone experiences more of an art form they (and this includes me, somewhat) usually become a little more jaded and more attracted to weird or experimental stuff, but that's about it, and I consider that observation pretty unremarkable.

My interest in films that do not bend to expectations, mostly has to do with the fact that I believe the more we step away from what has been dictated we should do in a piece of art, the more potential there is to clearly view the inner workings of the individual who is creating it. For me, it always gets back to showing empathy towards creation, and the less unguarded this act of creation is, the better. I want to watch the instinct of an artist, taking chances, being vulnerable, and while this can be done both completely within and completely without the rules, it is outside of them that these things can be seen much more clearly.
Leaving aside whether this is true (I'm genuinely not sure), I suppose the disconnect here is that my first priority is not to "clearly view the inner workings of the individual who is creating it." I don't think that leads to better art with any reliability. Art is often better when its purpose and source are more mysterious, rather than less. Think of every film that ends ambiguously without the ending being, as the filmmaker will often put it when asked, "spoon fed" to the audience. Some of those would be better if we know what the filmmaker themselves thought, but some wouldn't.

I also don't know that seeing more of their "instinct," as opposed to their considered and laborious efforts, makes for better art. If it turns out this is just an axiomatic difference, that's fine. You might just like different types of art for totally different reasons.

So the notion of rebellion for rebellions sake is of very little interest to me. I don't think breaking rules, just because you can, cuts it.
I agree with this, as I mentioned in my reply to Minio. Being transgressive is easy. Being transgressive in a way that actually helps enrich the standard you're supposedly transgressing against is hard.

There is much more value in the work of outsiders, than something as superficial as this. The work of outsiders is important because it give a voice to those who find beauty and purpose in unconventional places. It just happens to be a kind of appreciation whose value is hard to weigh on some standard metric of worth, which invariably gets hung up on craft, or cleanly articulating some particular point, or looking obviously well produced.
That's fine, but even that distinction, I think, is part of what I'm trying to say: I think it would be confused to call something good music if the thing you like about it doesn't have to do with its musicality. It can still be a good thing, it can still be a good work (of art or just, ya' know, work), but I don't think it does any good to blur those distinctions.

Someone might make an incredible, moving, socially important music video to go along with their song...but it's not the song. And I don't think treating the song as separate from the video is limiting the idea of music with a "standard metric of worth." It's simply taking the artistic taxonomy seriously.

[crumbsroom]

But since it made me think, I think it's enough reason for it to exist, and yes, this fits pretty much any film in existence, which is IMO a good thing


This is why I find there is much too value placed on whether a film is good or not. That a movie has to pass some threshhold of quality for it to have value. Obviously a movie being 'good' is an ideal of sorts, but I would argue if a film speaks to a single person, it is more than enough reason for an artist to have put it out there. And even if it speaks to absolutely no one, as long as the artist found worth in its creation, this also is good enough.



In art, failure doesn't make something negligible. Something not finding an audience doesn't mean it doesn't have something to say. We only start believing this when we begin pulling out supposed metrics to measure its worth. Did critics like it? Did its experiments succesfully expand cinematic language? Was it once considered a turkey, only to be rescued from obscurity by the championing of one persistently eloquent fan.

Of course it is great if a movie accomplishes these things, but as soon as we start talking about 'why did the artist even bother' or 'who cares what it was trying to do, it missed its mark', we've kinda lost our way. The existence of all movies, whether good and bad, is the history of cinematic creation. That in itself brings value to the worst of the worst, the most pointless of the pointless.



The beauty of the world of art, is that it is big enough to house even the deformed and lazy and self-important monstrosities we might think no one needs. And I welcome all of them inside. Each and every one.



Except Babydriver.

[Yoda]

There is definitely such a thing as an interesting failure. I value those a fair bit and they are, to my mind, the "good" way of getting jaded: valuing interesting failures as much or more than unremarkable "successes." I admit "interesting" is doing a lot of work there, though.

I think I might disagree about the relationship between art and audience. I think that can be true, there are any number of things I do or create that I find edifying in and of themselves, and if someone creates something and benefits from that creation, that's lovely. But the act of displaying or presenting a work implies some things beyond the artist's own edification. That's a pretty tricky thing to talk about/unpack, though.

I will say, though, that the "metrics" do not, to my mind, necessarily limit an art form: they can enhance it. It's been said in this very thread that the audience response is part of the work (relative to the sentiment in the preceding paragraph, BTW), and to that end, things which facilitate the thoughtfulness of that response are valuable. Art would be much less (maybe a different thing entirely) with nobody to consider and argue about it.

In the same way you value seeing the artist's inner workings, I value seeing the other person's inner thought process. So instead of saying "it's all subjective" and causing this forum to vanish in a puff of logic, we can have general notions of what makes something X rather than Y, and it can allow us to disagree productively sometimes. Or at least get us beyond "I liked it" and "I didn't like it."

[crumbsroom]

It's pretty hard to respond to this because I don't know what you mean by "those limitations." If it's something thoughtless like "rap isn't music," sure. If it's something more like "melody and harmony are a huge part of what makes music, music," then I don't think it's essentially wrong.


I didn't articulate myself very well because I was half asleep when I wrote that last night.


By limitations I mean the limitations that we all, in some ways, set up as requirements for a piece of art to meet. Like, to use your example of melody and harmony being a huge part of music, while this is technically true for a great deal of what we listen to, as soon as we start requiring melody or harmony be present to define something as music, for it to be one of the metrics we need to measure its worth, we have limited ourselves and the way we think about a piece of music. Or what can be music. Or what we can get out of music. Something like classical Indian music doesn't have much in the way of melody (at least not in any traditional sense to Western ears). For those who want melody, they will be left lacking. And for some ears, it will just be a long, ponderous drone due to this absence. But this lack of melody doesn't strip it of its musicality. Understanding what it is doing musically, expands our definition of what music is.



I don't recall what you mean. Can you elaborate/remind me? Is it the "jaded film critics" stuff from just this past week?


It's possible I misread your intentions, but this was the element of your post I was talking about


If you absorb enough film, I think it's very difficult not to be become jaded, to the point where it's exciting (titillating, even) to see anything extreme or unusual even if it's not good.....I'm not sure that's a good thing. I think, in a sense, it is just as exploitable as people mindlessly consuming cookie cutter entertainment. Liking something just because it's different is basically liking something for what it's not, which is a reactionary posture towards art that, if not checked, drives us towards the extreme and away from even the most basic storytelling principles.

I took this to at least be brushing up against the sometimes held assumption that when people like art that does not fit into a typically established form, that they do so almost exclusively due to it being different. That it's value comes from what it is refusing to be instead of what it is. Yeah, I guess it's possible some people do this. And maybe that is all you mean. But who are these people? Are we just assuming this is why they like these kinds of movies? Or are they confessing to their absolute contrarianism? Because my feeling is that even those who are predominantly drawn to movies that exist off of the beaten path, if they like it, the movie has spoken to them (emotionally or intellectually). It's probably very rarely just a matter of 'good because different'.



So unless they are just being deliberately contrarian in this pursuit, if they end up finding value in a 'different' voice, how can this be something that we should in any way frown upon. Why would we question if it's a 'good thing'. You mention the threat of drawing us away from basic story telling principals. First of all, this concern seems to contain some doubt that people can't retain an interest both in pure cinematic storytelling, as well as film as a more abstracted art form. But it also seems to contain a resistance to the idea that people might discover film is so much greater than being simply a medium to tell stories. It is limitless. At least that is my hope. And it has more than enough room for both the popcorn munchers and the chin scratchers (which, sometimes, are even exactly the same person)


Well, I don't think this. Though I do think rebellion for its own sake is ultimately what motivates a lot of transgressive or subversive art. I also think it's reasonable (necessary, even) to ask that something particularly transgressive clear an extra bar or two, pardon the pun.


My feelings are that, while I'm sure there are some artists out there who don't go much past the wanting to make a mark by being transgressive in their work, there are no end of provocative films I think exceed this low bar, and that I am a fan of, but are continually shamed as being nothing but works of exploitation or obscenity. So I bristle at any reflex we might have to assume the worst of an artist who makes more aggressive type films (even though I myself have definitely dismissed films on this pretext as well). I think there is a (maybe understandable) response we have when we are angered or offended by something that makes us believe this empty response of anger or offence we feel was the films only purpose. And I can't even count how many times I've found this to be untrue whenever I've responded similarly.


Also, just as an aside, I would argue the vast majority of films that break the kind of rules and expecations we are talking about, are not necessarily transgressive or subversive at all. They are simply the articulations of people who think and feel differently than we might.



Leaving aside whether this is true (I'm genuinely not sure), I suppose the disconnect here is that my first priority is not to "clearly view the inner workings of the individual who is creating it." I don't think that leads to better art with any reliability. Art is often better when its purpose and source are more mysterious, rather than less. Think of every film that ends ambiguously without the ending being, as the filmmaker will often put it when asked, "spoon fed" to the audience. Some of those would be better if we know what the filmmaker themselves thought, but some wouldn't.


Just for clarification, I'm not speaking about the intent of the work becoming more clear (as in having it spoonfed). I am talking about understanding the obsessions and indulgences and unique ways of thinking of the artist themselves. Beyond what is on screen (identifying with the ideas or characters or stories we are shown), a huge element of humanizing a piece of art is clearly seeing how it was created out of an act of faith by the artist. To empathize with why this artist wanted to show us this particular thing.



As for my talk of instinct, what I mean by this is that the less an artist relies on established forms (where many of the artistic decisions they make are pre-determined by the rules that govern these forms, for eg. the general structure of a three act story), the more they are forced to operate on the instinct of what simply feels right for them. While you can definitely still be very expressive in these forms, I think there is a lot to learn from an artist who is freestyling, and coming up with their form as they operate, in real time.



The closest analogy I can come up with for this off the top of my head (and I imagine it is very imperfect) is that when I speak to an employee behind the cash at a McDonald's I am unlikely to glimpse much of who they really are behind the uniform and the standard banter we engage in to move me along in line. But if I sit down with them at a table, after they have taken off the uniform, and now are not needing to ask if I'd like fries with that, I have a clearer understanding of who they are as a person because they are acting more on their own instincts, and not those mandated by the corporation.


You might just like different types of art for totally different reasons.


We undoubtedly would. Which is good. As is our disagreements on some of these issues we are talking about here. Kind of like Minio mentioned in his talk about the 'text movie', the fact that it leads to a discussion about these differences, there is value. Even if we both think eachother is completely wrong here, there is value in the discourse that has been created.


That's fine, but even that distinction, I think, is part of what I'm trying to say: I think it would be confused to call something good music if the thing you like about it doesn't have to do with its musicality. It can still be a good thing, it can still be a good work (of art or just, ya' know, work), but I don't think it does any good to blur those distinctions.



I felt I already said everything about this in talking about Zappa and Cage's performances I linked above. By inserting 'music' that antagoninzes the very root of what music is supposed to be, it makes us view it in a different way. If John Cage filled a bathtub on stage and we just watched him without the notion that what he was doing was 'music', we likely only see him filling a bathtub. Calling it music is what allows us to contemplate the musicality of everyday sounds. And while we might not end up viewing this as music in the end at all, just a failed experiment for us possibly, him introducing this kind of thought into the discussion of music, has rippled through more conventional musical forms (artists now use non-musical 'sound' all the time in big hits, the first example that comes to mind being the sample of the horse whinnying in Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Brain"...you can draw a direct lineage from this to the sound experiments of Cage, and this was not likely to happen without him confronting what 'music is' in such a direct manner)


Anyways, I've gone on way too long because this is what happens when I'm unemployed and have no idea how to kill this time. Sorry if I've bogged this conversation down in unbearable semantics, but this is my thought wheelhouse, and I can't be tempted and not write a wall of text. It would be an impossibility, because otherwise I'd be thinking about this all day long, and that would drive me crazy. So best I just drive all of you peoples crazy instead :)

[Yoda]

* There's a point to be made that thanks to censorship, some films are actually better because filmmakers had to come up with fresh ideas to work around the censorship. I recognize this fact but it's hard not to think that censorship as a whole is destructive to cinema. One has only to think about the censorship of films in contemporary China or how Orson Welles and Erich von Stroheim's films were butchered.
I agree with this very much. The spectrum is often presented as more interference = worse art on one side and less interference = better art on the other. I guess if we wanna steel man it we could say interference (or constraints, depending on what we're talking about) changes the purity of the art, but I think if we start to break down what that means we'll find there is no such thing.

Your mention of Welles is particularly appropriate, since he was the man to deliver this line, albeit in character:

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

[ynwtf]

I'm going to respond loosely as I'm aware that I may be misreading some of this and that the topic may have drifted a bit since page one. Is the music dying? Or is it just the marketing and commercialization of music that is dying? Or is that all simply changing?

Why would I buy a new CD or album when I can stream it from anywhere with my monthly subscription to Spotify? I now only use my car stereo to listen to NPR. If it's a longer trip than to work or around town, I'll sync my mobile via bluetooth and ...stream my music. I haven't listened to a proper radio music station for at least a decade. Even when I did, those stations were quite limited in their offerings. In the 90s, we had a local rock station playing the likes of Soundgarden and Nirvana for a couple of hours a day. Most everything else was classic rock of the time, pop country, or easy listening, probably catering to the wider audience that didn't care for the newer stuff coming out for us kids. I would assume that's a universal constant though. As we age, our lines blur more into the older audiences. I would guess that as we age, we become less likely to want to experiment by listening to whatever the new mumble rap wave may be. We become those grumpy old codgers, shaking our wrinkled fists in the air at those young whipper-snappers for blasting whatever their generational trend of the moment is. I'm generalizing, of course. But not.

I seriously doubt the production of new music is dying. I have no stats to point to, but home recording options have never been cheaper or more accessible by even just a pre-teen kid with an allowance. Mobile apps exist to record and mix directly to your mobile. How can it be that production is less? Perhaps it's more difficult to market one's music now that there is arguably a saturation of average, but a market is still there. It just may be a smaller slice of that pie now. Seems, on the surface, a fair trade though: I now at least have access to the pie whereas before, I did not. If I can learn how to self-promote (doing the exact job that the DJs and record execs of yore did), then perhaps I can cut my way through the noise.

Radio stations and similar technology (and mindsets) just cannot compete with the growth of the creator or the chaotic demand that random playlists can feed. I would think that affects album sales as well, as younger generations that have grown up in this streaming world see music as one track at a time and self contained rather than a longer, listening investment one would find within a themed album. What, exactly, can a radio DJ or record executive market with that? "Next up, the latest single from someone you're probably already streaming! That's it! There's not even an album! Ask your parents what that word means!!"

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the issue is expecting markets to abide by old rules as if technology doesn't change. Case in point? I find new music that I've never heard of through Chyp's near monthly song competitions. That's exactly how it used to happen when I was a kid though. The radio could only process so much new music. Everything else was shared with cassette copies or word of mouth from the music stores. Only difference is that the music store is a now streaming service. The music is still out there and growing far faster than I can keep up with. Granted, I do stream Bowie an average six hours a day so there's really not much time left for exploration of the new, but that's beside the point.

[Yoda]

I didn't articulate myself very well because I was half asleep when I wrote that last night.
I was half asleep because I wrote mine right after waking up. Maybe not much better. In fact, I thought I'd posted this an hour ago and just realized I hadn't.

Anyway, you were perfectly intelligible, I just needed/wanted some clarification. :) I caught myself doing that thing where I started writing out a counterargument without being sure how someone else was using a term.

By limitations I mean the limitations that we all, in some ways, set up as requirements for a piece of art to meet. Like, to use your example of melody and harmony being a huge part of music, while this is technically true for a great deal of what we listen to, as soon as we start requiring melody or harmony be present to define something as music, for it to be one of the metrics we need to measure its worth, we have limited ourselves and the way we think about a piece of music. Or what can be music. Or what we can get out of music. Something like classical Indian music doesn't have much in the way of melody (at least not in any traditional sense to Western ears). For those who want melody, they will be left lacking. And for some ears, it will just be a long, ponderous drone due to this absence. But this lack of melody doesn't strip it of its musicality. Understanding what it is doing musically, expands our definition of what music is.
I don't think it "strips it," but I do think it is diminished somehow as music (not just as art, to be clear). I think this is the "binary" thing I mentioned earlier:

So yes, talking over a beat is music, if we insist on thinking of each art form as a binary. But within that binary there is a sliding scale, with works and messages that would be annihilated without some components, and others that would mostly survive. It can all be music, but it can be more or less musical, and I think that matters.
I'll try to make this point by going full a**hole Socrates and asking: how would you define music? I think it would be difficult to formulate a definition that did not allow for this kind of sliding scale, without being so expansive as to seemingly include things none of us think are music.

Preemptively, I want to say I appreciate that defining these things is very difficult, to the point where whoever has the misfortune of being asked is automatically on the back foot, so I'm not suggesting you should be able to do this, or that I wouldn't find it similarly difficult. I'm posing the question only to try to establish that within the hopelessly broad category of "Technically Music" things can be more or less "musical." The word "musical" just by itself seems to imply a sliding scale, where things that are not music can also be more or less musical.

Because my feeling is that even those who are predominantly drawn to movies that exist off of the beaten path, if they like it, the movie has spoken to them (emotionally or intellectually). It's probably very rarely just a matter of 'good because different'.
I agree it's rarely just that, but then, people who say "rap isn't music" are rarely just being stupid or insensitive or close-minded or whatever, too. That's kinda my whole thing here: you'll notice I'm sorta-kinda "defending" the notion even though I think it's wrong, because I think the reality of that statement is complicated and referring to an actual idea worth holding, even if the way it sometimes comes out is literally wrong and inarguably reductive. When I say jaded people are susceptible to overrating novelties, I certainly don't mean that this supplants all their typical critical faculties or anything.

As for my talk of instinct, what I mean by this is that the less an artist relies on established forms (where many of the artistic decisions they make are pre-determined by the rules that govern these forms, for eg. the general structure of a three act story), the more they are forced to operate on the instinct of what simply feels right for them. While you can definitely still be very expressive in these forms, I think there is a lot to learn from an artist who is freestyling, and coming up with their form as they operate, in real time.
I agree there can be a lot to learn from that. But the tricky, ouroboros thing here is that certain forms of transgression are interesting only because they defy convention. Films that look like they're doing something cliché as a way to shock you even more when they reveal they're not. A film where the bad guy wins. Where the hero doesn't get the girl in the end. There's a wide swath of cleverness and creativity that needs convention in order to exist at all.

No art form can be truly freeform, without expectation or convention. If more than one person engages in an art form, influences and patterns and similarities will emerge. It's inevitable. To not have artistic conventions is to not have art, and I think most conventions are there for a good reason. The three act structure is not law, and the Monomyth is not the only way to tell a story...but I think of them as discoveries. Things we learned via those experiments, through trial and error, over centuries.

The closest analogy I can come up with for this off the top of my head (and I imagine it is very imperfect) is that when I speak to an employee behind the cash at a McDonald's I am unlikely to glimpse much of who they really are behind the uniform and the standard banter we engage in to move me along in line. But if I sit down with them at a table, after they have taken off the uniform, and now are not needing to ask if I'd like fries with that, I have a clearer understanding of who they are as a person because they are acting more on their own instincts, and not those mandated by the corporation.
That's all true, but using this example, if you sit down and talk to them...does your burger taste any better?

I felt I already said everything about this in talking about Zappa and Cage's performances I linked above. By inserting 'music' that antagoninzes the very root of what music is supposed to be, it makes us view it in a different way.
I agree, but I'm not sure that makes it music (to be clear, I'm not expressing any opinion about whether those specific examples qualify, I'm just responding to this quote). Writing about music can make me view it in a different way. A near-death experience may make me view music in a different way. Anything can, and most of "anything" is not music.

I think this is another example of what you said earlier, when you defended rap music first by pointing out it often does have harmony and melody (very true, and something I echoed later), but then by saying it has something important to say. Both "it says something important" and "it makes us view it in a different way" are true, and valuable...but neither are reasons the thing is music (or musical).

If John Cage filled a bathtub on stage and we just watched him without the notion that what he was doing was 'music', we likely only see him filling a bathtub. Calling it music is what allows us to contemplate the musicality of everyday sounds. And while we might not end up viewing this as music in the end at all, just a failed experiment for us possibly, him introducing this kind of thought into the discussion of music, has rippled through more conventional musical forms (artists now use non-musical 'sound' all the time in big hits, the first example that comes to mind being the sample of the horse whinnying in Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Brain"...you can draw a direct lineage from this to the sound experiments of Cage, and this was not likely to happen without him confronting what 'music is' in such a direct manner)
All true, but even this means he did not create music, only that he influenced it.

Anyways, I've gone on way too long because this is what happens when I'm unemployed and have no idea how to kill this time. Sorry if I've bogged this conversation down in unbearable semantics, but this is my thought wheelhouse, and I can't be tempted and not write a wall of text. It would be an impossibility, because otherwise I'd be thinking about this all day long, and that would drive me crazy. So best I just drive all of you peoples crazy instead :)
Not at all, it's been insightful and interesting. :up: Feel free to continue or not, or to continue later, or whatever.

[Yoda]

Responding generally to the righteous souls actually trying to answer the OP rather than parsing terminology with me:

I don't think music is dying, I think it's just stratified. My notion of music is the same as my notion of film: it is easier and cheaper than ever to find all sorts of wild, inventive stuff. I don't think it's even close. It's just that you're not finding that stuff released in 4,000 theaters the way Top 40 stuff/MCU stuff is. I don't think there's less good music, either, I just think less music is good, as a percentage, because there's so much of it being produced. And again, same thing with films.

[GulfportDoc]

I'm reminded of the G.K. Chesterton quote:


"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."

[Yoda]

Chesterton also said:

"All art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

[Corax]

I believe that there is arguably more good to great music being made today than at any other time in history. In terms of sheer volume, probability leans in favor of the proposition. Even if it is monkeys banging on a MIDI, there are A LOT of them out there trying to squeeze out a hit.



The problem is how music is presented to us. The official market curated for the pop-iest of pop crap generated by earworm algorithms. The top market is narrow, a country club that is really hard to enter. The open market is cluttered. There is simply too much rubble to dig through to find the gems. We don't need 10,000 additional Soundcloud rappers, but by Jingo we're going to get them. Anyone can record, so everyone is an "artist."



It's easier to simply go to old songs that we know are good. Old bands that we know are solid. There is more music out there, right now, than anyone could ever listen to. We don't need more new music. We need better music curation, promotion, and better music criticism.

[crumbsroom]

I'll try to make this point by going full a**hole Socrates and asking: how would you define music?


I think like any artform, this question is best left to each individual who is doing the creating. Everyone who enter the arena to make art has to determine for themselves what the parameters are. Just as it is up to me, as an individual in the audience, to determine what has been done or not done within those parameters.


So to answer your question about a general definition of music, I have to be as general as possible, and offer you the simplest definition of the basic elements music uses, which would be sound and silence, and the interplay of these two elements together. As for its purpose, it would be to use sound and silence to elicit feelings or thoughts in those either listening to or creating it.


While it might seem like it, I'm not trying to be either obtuse or evasive with this answer. Since I'm not terribly interested in artistic defintions which are used to exclude the possibilities of any medium, always willing to embrace all of the contradictions that art affords, I've got to play fast and loose here.



I think it would be difficult to formulate a definition that did not allow for this kind of sliding scale, without being so expansive as to seemingly include things none of us think are music.


As you can probably tell, I'm pretty okay being very expansive in the definition. I still don't really see the heresy involved in something that we instinctively want to reject as being music, sneaking into our definition of music. While I get that having parameters gives comfort, allows us to better articulate what we want to hear and allows us ways to gauge the worth of a piece of art with greater clarity and assurances, I like the inherent hopelessness that such a wide ranging defintion as mine provides.

Why do I like this? Well, I think its because the fewer measurable metrics we have to fall back on in our criticisms or praises, the more it forces us into a place of vulnerability in our critical efforts. Critics need less crutches to make themselves feel entirely sure of their evaluations. It's good to force more of our skin into the game as well if we are going to sit on the sidelines and dismiss what an artist is showing us. And limiting the devices we can use to 'prove' our point with any assurances, forces us to dig more and more into our personal feelings about the work. It forces the critic to be an artist in a way themself. The only way I'm really willing to listen to what a critic has to say with any seriousness.



Now, this doesn't mean I think we should throw all of our scales into the garbage when talking about music (or films or whatever). It's good to have the expertise of musicians who can talk about technical elements, or those who study language to offer their insights on lyrics (etc etc). But for me, I want enough uncertainty, that none of these things can entirely bail us out when we are trying to criticize or absolve a piece of art. There should always be an opening left open for us to change our mind, and a lot of these 'scales' almost can't help eventually being used dogmatically. And because art critics have a tendency to want to destroy that which we hate (you know, like me with Babydriver) I think its good to make it as hard as possible to totally annihalte something just in case we'd like to return to it one day.














The word "musical" just by itself seems to imply a sliding scale, where things that are not music can also be more or less musical


I suppose if you pointed at a chair, and asked me 'is this music', I would have to answer 'no'. So there are limits, even for me.



I agree it's rarely just that, but then, people who say "rap isn't music" are rarely just being stupid or insensitive or close-minded or whatever, too. That's kinda my whole thing here: you'll notice I'm sorta-kinda "defending" the notion even though I think it's wrong, because I think the reality of that statement is complicated and referring to an actual idea worth holding, even if the way it sometimes comes out is literally wrong and inarguably reductive. When I say jaded people are susceptible to overrating novelties, I certainly don't mean that this supplants all their typical critical faculties or anything.


I think it is entirely fine if someone like Captain Steel wants to dismiss rap from their understanding of music. And by this I mean, they are willing to not consider it something that would ever provide them any musical satisfaction (ie. the use of sound and silence, per my definition). My disgruntledness towards the 'not music' argument, as already articulated, only begins once it starts bleeding out to implicate those who create this 'not music', the people who are fans of it, and the culture it creates. Usually, it is obvious that this is what they mean. But, in the case of Capt, I feel there were a few things he said that were beginning to start implicating beyond his personal realm. And since there are definitely some people out there who very much want to debase rap music, sometimes for some pretty nefarious purposes, I simply wanted to point out the absurdity (and the offence) of these kind of claims if it continued moving in that direction. Not that I assumed it was going there....but just in case.



But the tricky, ouroboros thing here is that certain forms of transgression are interesting only because they defy convention


And if that is what it you ultimately decide when you are evaluating something, you'd have every reason to write out why you believe it is a vile, empty piece of crap. I definitely would, and have done so many times before (the film Voyage to Agatis would be a film I personally believe has no value outside of its provocations, and as a result, I think is worthless).



But I've also been on the other side where I've seen a movie I think has great value because of its transgressions (Salo, Last House on Dead End Street), and it can be frustrating to be told that there is no worth for me to find there. Why? Because someone has already determined it is empty. Not just for that person, but for anyone who comes upon it. They are frauds, unworthy of even debate (which is a ridiculous position to take, on its face, if we really care about art and what it offers us...endless opportunities to empathize with and understand things we otherwise might never have)



So, for me the door is always open to discuss what a piece of art can offer us. And I'd be more than eager to have someone explain anything of worth in Voyage to Agatis, even though it hasn't happened yet (and hardly expect it to). So, once again, it looks like I'm dodging any talk of absolutes. But I do so with complete sincerity towards this argument. I just really can't go there.




No art form can be truly freeform, without expectation or convention


We all have certain expectations whenever we begin to listen to a song or put on a movie. We also are aware of what most of an artforms conventions are before we even put it on. So, true, I don't think an art can completely defy the gravity of this. But it can dance around them, and we can contemplate how it moves in their absence, avoids them, spits at them, pretends to kiss them and plays hard to get. And you can still get pretty freeform while doing this. So freeform there might be no discernible difference.



To not have artistic conventions is to not have art, and I think most conventions are there for a good reason.


Conventions emerge simply because they appeal to a larger segment of audiences. This neither makes conventions good or bad by nature, but they do create an environment where the unconventional is treated with hostility. And, yes, this in some ways can be good business for the creation or consumption of a piece of unconventional work. It can make a piece of art resilient in the face of such derision. It can create the template where we consider where it deviates from what is expected, and why this might elate us through how it illuminates in doing so.



But it also invariably isolates. Pushes those who naturally have unorthodox interests or peculiar ways of having their attention grabbed, further marginalized as liking something that is 'weird'. Or pointless. Or stupid. Or annoying. Or worst of all, being told what they like is a bunch of horseshit, and they are only pretending to like it.





That's all true, but using this example, if you sit down and talk to them...does your burger taste any better?


No. Especially considering my example was set at a McDonalds. That cashier had nothing invested in the creation of that burger. But if it was at a restaurant where the person I was talking to made creative decisions on how they wanted to cook that burger, understanding who that person is, why they chose those ingredients, who they would like to impress with their food, what kind of day they were having so maybe today they burnt the burger, makes me empathize with its creation. Makes me more willing to consider the taste of it if my initial reaction was I simply didn't like it. Or thought it was weird. Or too flavorful. Or not flavorful enough. But maybe once provided with this empathy of who they are, what their culture is, what that means to them, would make me think of trying that hamburger again and seeing if I might think of it differently the next time.




I agree, but I'm not sure that makes it music (to be clear, I'm not expressing any opinion about whether those specific examples qualify, I'm just responding to this quote). Writing about music can make me view it in a different way. A near-death experience may make me view music in a different way. Anything can, and most of "anything" is not music.


Personally, I think it is music, even if I'm not a particular fan of either of those clips. I've enjoyed some similar types of experiments in found sound. I have been moved by them. I have had my thinking changed by them. I have allowed them to make me interpret the texture of more conventional music differently. And while, yes, other non-musical things can also change how I engage with music, a near death experience, even by my liberal definition, is not music. If John Cage invited some tape recorders into a room to record his dying breaths, this would change things. But it would be because he is now forcing us to focus on the sounds and the silences of the moment, and sound and silence, by any defintion, are the basic elements of music.




All true, but even this means he did not create music, only that he influenced it.


He influence it through his use of sound. He is a composer. A musical thinker. I get the push back of why we might not want to bestow the crown of this being 'music', because I think there is fear in some that this might open the floodgates to charlatans and make it appear that 'anyone can do this'. And while I do have legitimate concerns about the former, I'm more than happy to accept that threat for the promise afforded by the notion of 'anyone being able to do it'.



Not at all, it's been insightful and interesting. :up: Feel free to continue or not, or to continue later, or whatever.


I'll get around to it sometime, I'm sure :)

[Yoda]

Sorry, busy weekend. So busy I had to leave myself lots of little notes not to forget things once the weekdays came back around, which I did very quickly, and yours was: reply yo crumbs. In my defense the y and t are right next to each other, and also it was funny so I didn't fix it. Anyway, I'll try to keep it short(er?).

...which would be sound and silence, and the interplay of these two elements together. As for its purpose, it would be to use sound and silence to elicit feelings or thoughts in those either listening to or creating it.
As you can probably tell, I'm pretty okay being very expansive in the definition. I still don't really see the heresy involved in something that we instinctively want to reject as being music, sneaking into our definition of music. While I get that having parameters gives comfort...
The definition provided easily (without any stretching!) encompasses all poetry spoken aloud, and all political oratory, and probably most speech.

I don't think wanting parameters narrower than "all sound with any intent behind it" is a matter of wanting "comfort." We get a lot out of taxonomy. Some of the benefits are identical to the benefits of language itself: communication. The degree to which any definition is expansive, it necessarily becomes less communicative.

I want enough uncertainty, that none of these things can entirely bail us out when we are trying to criticize or absolve a piece of art. There should always be an opening left open for us to change our mind, and a lot of these 'scales' almost can't help eventually being used dogmatically.
It really just sounds like you want people to be thoughtful, which I can safely say is pretty much all I want from discussions and disagreements most of the time, too.

I suppose if you pointed at a chair, and asked me 'is this music', I would have to answer 'no'. So there are limits, even for me.
I mean, I recall some dispute about even that (https://marklimbach.tumblr.com/post/9707642888/the-chair-is-not-my-son).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm8DogHkBQ8

And if that is what it you ultimately decide when you are evaluating something, you'd have every reason to write out why you believe it is a vile, empty piece of crap.
Oh, I didn't mean that. When I said "certain forms of transgression are interesting only because they defy convention" I didn't mean "they suck because all they're doing is defying convention" (that that's a thing, for sure). I mean that the convention creates the possibility for creative and valuable transgression, too. The example I've used elsewhere (and I swear I was not thinking of this when I wrote the bit just before this one) is that Michael Jackson says "Bad" when he kinda means good, and it's interesting only because we know it's the opposite of what he means. Films do this all the time, of course: Cabin in the Woods is a better film existing in a world full of cliché slasher films than it would be otherwise because we get more surprise and delight out of it because it first feints at being one of them. And so on.

So I wasn't making the argument that some things lazily defy convention just to defy it, since we've already sort of discussed that. I was making the argument that convention is good even for the good kind of transgressive art, because it gives that art boundaries to bump up against in the first place.

Conventions emerge simply because they appeal to a larger segment of audiences.
I think this understates things. I think we discover real things about art and what "works" in different mediums over time.

I'm thinking of Adaptation. I'm thinking of Kaufman daydreaming of a movie about flowers where nothing happens and then chastising his fictional self through McKee righteously telling him that the mere act of telling a story presupposes that it is not just a random slice of existence. I'm thinking of Chekov's gun and the Rule of Three and foreshadowing and all sorts of other things that are obviously just good storytelling, which are obvious to us now only because people have spent a couple millennia telling stories and noticing which ones seem to speak to people on the deepest levels. I think those are hard fought conclusions that still leave us an almost infinite playground of creativity without wondering if, say, a movie has to have any visual component at all, lest we be boxed in.

Sure, conventions can be bad or stifling, the same way good advice might not apply in any and all scenarios or (this part in particular) be misunderstood or clumsily applied by a less thoughtful person. Exceptions matter (if only for humility, the second most valuable virtue, and an inseparable component of the first), but continuing to think of them as exceptions is important.

But it also invariably isolates. Pushes those who naturally have unorthodox interests or peculiar ways of having their attention grabbed, further marginalized as liking something that is 'weird'. Or pointless. Or stupid. Or annoying. Or worst of all, being told what they like is a bunch of horseshit, and they are only pretending to like it.
I think this was a much bigger problem, but we're a few generations into the whole "the weird loner is invariably the protagonist" thing, so I'm thinking it's swung pretty far in the other direction.

Anyway, I would mostly just urge a distinction between "this is why this definition is limiting" and "wow, people can be kinda thoughtless about anything!" I think the latter is the real issue, and I don't think it gets fixed by advocating for more expansive definitions of art. I think that just pushes thoughtlessness, Whack-a-Mole-style, up in some other place.

He influence it through his use of sound. He is a composer. A musical thinker. I get the push back of why we might not want to bestow the crown of this being 'music', because I think there is fear in some that this might open the floodgates to charlatans and make it appear that 'anyone can do this'.
Not really. My "fear" is just that we dilute the meaning of words and make communication worse, and I'm pretty sure being able to communicate well is invariably a part of any good artistic discourse/criticism. I see this happening with words all over the place, so it transcends this particular issue.

[Yoda]

Quick little addendum/plug: I wrote an essay that touches on a lot of this about seven years ago (almost exactly) called Boyhood, Bears, and Roger Bannister (https://www.movieforums.com/essays/boyhood-bears-and-roger-bannister.html). There's some related stuff in there that ask whether the beauty in a work can exist outside of it, which I think speaks to what you're saying about any work that simply asks us to reconsider what music is.

It also ended up touching on the whole language/MJ thing:

I once had a debate with a friend about language. I'd pointed out that a word was being misused, and he told me I shouldn't issue those kinds of corrections because language was meant to flow and evolve naturally. I argued that language is useless if words don't have an agreed-upon meaning, and he argued that hewing too closely to those meanings makes language less dynamic and interesting. It was largely a disagreement of priority and emphasis, rather than the kind where either person is saying the other is simply wrong.

But then it hit me: you can't break rules that aren't there. Language can't be dynamic without a standard to transgress against. When Michael Jackson says he's "bad" to essentially mean "good," it's cool and interesting because he means the opposite of what he says. This wouldn't be possible if words didn't have well-understood meanings to begin with.

Structure doesn't kill art, it breathes a new kind of life into it. Is poetry the lesser because it has to have meter? Is literature hurt by punctuation? Do we even know Jackson Pollock's name if he doesn't first exist in a world where people have generally thought paintings should look like things?

Art is pervasive. It is not more or less beautiful because of the restrictions it lives under: it weaves itself around them, like ivy. It incorporates all hurdles to become something new, something often more beautiful in oppressive places than open ones, whether that oppression is life-threatening and specific, or a trivial grammatical correction.
Right after this is the Orson Welles The Third Man cuckoo clock quote. Frankly I've been cribbing from my own essay this entire discussion, so I figured I might as well finally credit the source.

[crumbsroom]

reply yo crumbs.


lol.



I also wasn't bothered by the slow response. I get there are real lives to live and this is all pretty secondary. Just because I write essay length responses, doesn't mean I think they require some kind of reply. Or that they even need to be read. I'm usually not even aware I've written so much until I've finished. Just like I'm sure when I'm done with this I will be 'way to go crumbs, finally kept something concise'. And then I'll scroll back to see what I wrote. And scroll. And scroll. And scroll. And then sigh.



The definition provided easily (without any stretching!) encompasses all poetry spoken aloud, and all political oratory, and probably most speech.


Yes, they would likely qualify, as both poetry and political oratory are fairly adjacent to how music works (you can throw comedy in there as well). There has been more than a few instances of voice without accompaniement--simply speaking lyrics--that have already been fairly accepted underneath the umbrella of music. And I'm fine with this. Poetry is basically about the musicality of language. Even if you want to consider them as fundamentally different, they are inseparable, probably more similar than dissimilar



And while political oratory doesn't completely fit as music, it uses deliberate pauses, the notion of ratcheting up emotion through volume and speed, employs timbre, rhythm, cadence (and a bunch of other things even musical purists will use to define what music is). So, it's not that radical a leap in thought to consider it.



But all this said, you are overlooking a fundamental requirement in my definition-- these elements of sound and silence need to be presented to us 'as music'. A technicality, you might say, but it is the submitting it as such that makes us consider it as such. If I was sitting in a music class, and a teacher wanted us to listen to a speech by Adolf Hitler or Martin Luther King (two men who know how the power of the voice can affect us, and I think, use it musically), and have us contemplate how they build emotion through their use speech in the context of a composition, I wouldn't bat an eye.



Now unlike the 'rap isn't music' hyperbole, I can accept that some people are going to turn their back when it comes to thinking of any of his as music. If sitting in a John Cage imposed silence is not music to you, I think there are at least arguments here. But, regardless of how valid some of these dissenters may be, there is still musical value in thinking about music outside of the realm of what is considered music. Contemplating such abstractions as this are healthy for the art form. Even if they don't take hold with everyone. And so I guess what we are really 'arguing' here, is the simply the worth of considering these things as music. Of the discussion that comes from it. And my argument is that some people definitely should consider it as such (me being one of them)



It really just sounds like you want people to be thoughtful, which I can safely say is pretty much all I want from discussions and disagreements most of the time, too.


In short, yes, I imagine this is mostly what I'm saying. And I'm for any way of forcing thoughtfullness on people, whether they want it or not.



I was making the argument that convention is good even for the good kind of transgressive art, because it gives that art boundaries to bump up against in the first place.


I agree having some absolutists out there fortifying definitional boundaries from any kind of kooked-out penetration are definitely necessary. There has to be push back, even though this rigidness can also be a nuisance and a discouragement for different art to break through. It's is the delicious paradox of art.



Ultimately, creating art should not be easy. Struggle of some kind is almost always necessary. And so if all these walls just fell over with a single breath from a half-assed, non-commital artist, then even I would have to start worrying about the foundations here.


...things that are obviously just good storytelling, which are obvious to us now only because people have spent a couple millennia telling stories and noticing which ones seem to speak to people on the deepest levels.



I essentially agree with all of this. But since what the vast majority of audiences want (and probably for good reason) is their story telling to be increasingly impactful emotionally, coherent and purposeful, this makes it so work that pushes back against these preferences evolves slower. Or in the shadows where they aren't likely to be adopted by more conventional audiences.


I wasn't trying to gloss over the long weeding out process convention has to go through to become...convention. Only that conventions that are more easily digestable or pleasing are easier to establish in the conversation of 'what is art'. And weirdos like me are left fumbling with their rules in a dark cave somewhere, unlikely to ever actually become a part of all that pleasant banter I can hear coming from the adult table.





I think this was a much bigger problem, but we're a few generations into the whole "the weird loner is invariably the protagonist" thing, so I'm thinking it's swung pretty far in the other direction.


I'm sure its better. And there can also be some amount of pleasure in being left out and feeling misunderstood (especially when you are younger). But there is still lasting stigma to feeling you are on the outside of the world looking in, especially when the art you turn to in order to feel seen, just further reinforces that sense of isolation when others continually shake their head in dismay at what you are watching or listening to.







Not really. My "fear" is just that we dilute the meaning of words and make communication worse, and I'm pretty sure being able to communicate well is invariably a part of any good artistic discourse/criticism. I see this happening with words all over the place, so it transcends this particular issue.]


I think there is value in clear communication. But I think there can also be a danger in things being too well defined, in that it can put thought on auto pilot. Make us get much too comfortable with how we see or think about things. Personally, I like to think of my ideas and beliefs and values as always being under siege. Always being challenged. And not even just externally, by the 'enemy' out there. But internally, where I do my best to never let any philosophy I adopt completely settle. In fact, I've been using art very specifally for this purpose most of my life. Art, when we allow it to confront us on all fronts, to confuse or anger or annoy us, is the great un-settler. So I like to give it a lot of room for my ideas about it to constantly mutate. Let's see what it does. Encourage it to sprout the occassionally unneccessary appendage (you never know, it may come in handy one day). Let it spout off a few political rants, just for fun. Let it even point at that chair over there, and consider its inherent musicality. Because, why not?

[Yoda]

But all this said, you are overlooking a fundamental requirement in my definition-- these elements of sound and silence need to be presented to us 'as music'. A technicality, you might say, but it is the submitting it as such that makes us consider it as such.
And so I guess what we are really 'arguing' here, is the simply the worth of considering these things as music. Of the discussion that comes from it.
Yeah, this is definitely where it gets weird, for me. I see what you're saying, but the circular logic of "it's music because it's presented to us as music" is just something my brain will not allow, even though I know what you mean by it (and recognize you're being more practical than philosophically rigorous).

Anyway, I think your second quote there is dead-on: my capsule version is that you think things which involve sound and are meant to contribute to our understanding of music should be considered music, and I think they're just things that influence music. Part of music culture but not music itself. Big whoop, I can hear literally anyone else saying, which I would sympathize with. It's a pretty academic distinction, which I can live with.

In short, yes, I imagine this is mostly what I'm saying. And I'm for any way of forcing thoughtfullness on people, whether they want it or not.
I dig. I'm less on the "force" part, mostly because I don't think that's how thoughtfulness works. I think anyone thoughtful enough to get something out of weird sonic experiments probably didn't need to have the definition expanded to persuade them of its value, anyway, but ah well. I'm sure there are exceptions.

I agree having some absolutists out there fortifying definitional boundaries from any kind of kooked-out penetration are definitely necessary. There has to be push back, even though this rigidness can also be a nuisance and a discouragement for different art to break through. It's is the delicious paradox of art.
Agreed, like language it needs to simultaneously be able to evolve, but cannot evolve productively or meaningfully without some harder limits. This is the natural impasse of much thoughtful disagreement, I think, where it reaches the point where people on both ends say "I concede X and Y have risks and downsides, I just care more about X than Y so I'd rather err in that direction."

I essentially agree with all of this. But since what the vast majority of audiences want (and probably for good reason) is their story telling to be increasingly impactful emotionally, coherent and purposeful, this makes it so work that pushes back against these preferences evolves slower. Or in the shadows where they aren't likely to be adopted by more conventional audiences.
I definitely agree with this. I tend to think that's a feature and not a bug for transgressive art, though. In theory, the more mature and studied and art form is, the more difficult it "should" be to transgress. If it DOESN'T become more difficult to transgress over time, that kind of implies that no evolution or improvement is actually happening in the first place. In other words, we invent the "easy" things first and then scientific breakthroughs become harder, with the same being mostly true for artistic conventions.

I wasn't trying to gloss over the long weeding out process convention has to go through to become...convention. Only that conventions that are more easily digestable or pleasing are easier to establish in the conversation of 'what is art'.
Got it. That's fair. :up:

And there can also be some amount of pleasure in being left out and feeling misunderstood (especially when you are younger). But there is still lasting stigma to feeling you are on the outside of the world looking in, especially when the art you turn to in order to feel seen, just further reinforces that sense of isolation when others continually shake their head in dismay at what you are watching or listening to.
Definitely. I kinda think we've overcorrected in a lot of our fiction. Not to cite Cabin in the Woods again immediately, but I like that it was willing to say "hey, a jock can be smart/not a jerk." A total flip from "the dreamy captain of the football team is great at everything."

It's easy to idolize and even fetishize being misunderstood or a loner or whatever. It's not the kind of thing a given society is ever going to find a perfect sweet spot for: we will probably always be under or over appreciating weirdness. Ideally I'd like weirder kids (and I think almost all of us have felt like one at some point, which is why the whole idea is so misleading) to have enough out there to let them know it's a temporary thing, and not so bad, but not so much that it calcifies into a permanent identity in and of itself. That kinda elegantly mirrors the stuff about art, and how we need to simultaneously step over the boundaries to see where they should go without living beyond them.

I think there is value in clear communication. But I think there can also be a danger in things being too well defined, in that it can put thought on auto pilot. Make us get much too comfortable with how we see or think about things. Personally, I like to think of my ideas and beliefs and values as always being under siege. Always being challenged. And not even just externally, by the 'enemy' out there. But internally, where I do my best to never let any philosophy I adopt completely settle. In fact, I've been using art very specifally for this purpose most of my life.
Strong agree on all this.

Let it even point at that chair over there, and consider its inherent musicality. Because, why not?
Except for this part, this part is still crazy. When I recount this exchange to people I'll say "he said chairs might be music" and leave out the thoughtful stuff.

[Yoda]

Oh, also, you can have the last word here if you like. Unless you say something I have to respond to like "loveseats are literature."

[crumbsroom]

Yeah, this is definitely where it gets weird, for me. I see what you're saying, but the circular logic of "it's music because it's presented to us as music" is just something my brain will not allow, even though I know what you mean by it (and recognize you're being more practical than philosophically rigorous).[quote]


I think a less extreme, or rigorously conceptual way to look at this would be with strains of punk music where the musicians have literally just picked up their instruments weeks, days, or minutes before ever performing. Initially, there was a lot of push back other whether or not this was music (the argument being 'sure, those are musical instruments, but they don't know how to play them so....not music). Now, before punk became a thing, if we were to walk past a garage where one of these bands was rehearsing, we would recognize what was being played as drums, bass, guitars. But it would be noise. We might think, at best, 'maybe one of these days, these kids will learn to play actual music'. If we were nice we might wish them the best. But what punk did was it brought those kids up on stage, before they had learned how to play shit, which in theory was them pointing at this noise they were making and saying 'no, it's music NOW'. Before it was simply rehearsal. But once it is being defined as music, we have to struggle with what our definition of music is.


So, if you can get on board this kind of primitive, non-professional expression being music, what seems to be your hang up with considering noise as music is that (I assume) 1) Musical instruments are not being played or 2) Some of the noises they use are not of the artists own creation (ie. if John Cage turns on a television as part of his composition, he neither planned nor created the sounds that come from it). But if we listen to what composers of this type of music are trying to let us see by putting this out there and daring to call it music is that 1) the non-instrument sounds they use can still be composed and arranged, still elicit notes, still have rhythm and percussive abilities, and possess timbre, and 2) feedback and sampling are already existing examples where established musicians embrace the notions of randomness and appropriation.






[quote]my capsule version is that you think things which involve sound and are meant to contribute to our understanding of music should be considered music, and I think they're just things that influence music.
Yes, I agree this does seem to be our arguments, reduced to their essence.


I dig. I'm less on the "force" part, mostly because I don't think that's how thoughtfulness works. I think anyone thoughtful enough to get something out of weird sonic experiments probably didn't need to have the definition expanded to persuade them of its value, anyway, but ah well. I'm sure there are exceptions.
While I am kinda joking about the 'force' part, I also become really impatient when engaged in any kind of discussion where I don't see any kind of thinking going on from the other party. I have no time for people who just say things to go to bat for their teams, whatever those teams are. I only rarely actually care about the conclusions people reach through their thought. But if there was no thought there in the first place (and it is almost always very clearly evident when this is the case), I will even start getting testy with someone who agrees with me.





I definitely agree with this. I tend to think that's a feature and not a bug for transgressive art, though. In theory, the more mature and studied and art form is, the more difficult it "should" be to transgress. If it DOESN'T become more difficult to transgress over time, that kind of implies that no evolution or improvement is actually happening in the first place. In other words, we invent the "easy" things first and then scientific breakthroughs become harder, with the same being mostly true for artistic conventions.
There is some truth to this. And I think it is one reason some conceptual art can back itself into a corner, just in simple hope that there is still more room to evolve. If I have any issues that are similar to yours in accepting certain strains of art, it would be a good chunk of what ends up in high end galleries these days. I have little patience for endless attempts at 'purely white' canvases, or any of that ilk. Part of this has to do with the fact that I think 99 percent of this type of work is a con job, encouraged by a gallery culture that has become completely corrupted by the money of empty headed enthusiasts.



I'm of course open to people explaining to me why this art has value (I've listened to some talks in the past, and almost all of them have been anything but illuminating), but as much as I loathe a lot of this work, I understand the reflex to go there. It is arts nature to challenge and pick at the conventions of previous generations. And, yeah, most of these conventions have already been challenged long ago.Leading to some desperate attempts to cover new ground.



Except for this part, this part is still crazy. When I recount this exchange to people I'll say "he said chairs might be music" and leave out the thoughtful stuff.
To be clear, I'm in the 'chair not music' camp. Obviously, chair does not match my standards, even if someone were to put it on a stage with a microphone in front of it. I only brought it up here as I wanted to make it clear that even though I'm no fan of chair's work, and this chair is likely a complete no-talent fraud, I like keeping my definition of art open enough that one day I might accept ideas of music that are right now completely preposterous to me. Let it be clear when I say, back when I was maybe 16, no one could have possibly had a more narrow definition of what 'music was'. And it has been the joy of striking down all of those arbitrary barricades over the years, and coming to understand the creative process and (dare I say) souls of so many artists that I once would have been hostile to, where art hold so much of its value in my life. It always gets back to empathy.

Contrary to most well versed fans of music (or any other art form), I am vehemently against the notion that we refine our tastes through more and more listening. The idea that the more we learn, the more we exclude, is preoposterous to me. The more we learn, the more our interests should broaden. The less division there should be in delineating the greatness betweeen Swedish pop music and Free jazz and Lee Perry and La Monte Young. To me it's all the same thing. People making sounds in the hopes of saying something to us. All the other divisive shit is just a bunch of noise.

[StuSmallz]

I'm not really interested in the question of whether new music is "dying" in a financial sense, but as far as a creative sense, I feel that acting as though the art of music will never truly decline, while commendable in a way, is also naively optimistic, and not reflective of cold hard reality, based off personal experience. Like, when I look at my favorite genre of music (which is Metal), I can clearly see a period of infancy for it when it was being born during the 70's, then about a decade-long period (https://globaldominationisdead.wordpress.com/tag/golden-age-of-metal/) of peak quality for the genre starting sometime in the 80's, then a drop-off period afterward, much like the physical/mental development of human beings. Not saying that Metal's been on a permanent downward slope since it's golden age (because I don't think it has), I'm just saying that it stands to reason that there tends to be a certain period where genres/artforms are peaking, a point when they've been around long enough and developed enough to where they can peak, but before a certain amount of their creativity has already been spent.That doesn't mean I think that Metal or music in general is straight-up bad on its own these days, I just think it's best to accept that once you're past the peak of something, it's futile to just keep desperately reaching for that peak again, instead of appreciating the artform on its own contemporary terms.