Why Is New Music Dying?

Tools    





Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
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.
__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



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.



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.



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.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
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.



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.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
@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.

* 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.



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.



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.



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."



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



* 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.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
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.
__________________
"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear



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. Feel free to continue or not, or to continue later, or whatever.



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.



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.



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. Feel free to continue or not, or to continue later, or whatever.

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