My rant on today's pop music

inneedofgrace said:
1) cause me to contemplate the relevance of my existence or spirituality
2) sooth my soul
3) get me pumped up at the gym or in the car
4) allow me to relax
5) rebel against authority, such as with a cause or purpose
6) help enhance a romantic moment
7) inspire me to try and reproduce the music when I play drums

Yes, but you are generalising and making it seem like that is the be all for everyone by directly contradicting yourself when you say that 'the music is hollow'. Hollow to you, perhaps, but then again 70's Arena Rock is horribly hollow to me, whereas Japanese Onkyokei is incredibly rich.

Do you not see the inherent hypocrisy of your argument?
 
Are you really going to pull out the relativism trump card?

By that account, John Cage created a symphony in has later life that was a recording of noises on a street corner in four movements. By you reasoning that is equal to anything Beethoven ever wrote. there only one Beethoven. any one could have recorded Cage's piece. He was being extreme, somewhat absurd, and he knew he was.
 
Are you really going to pull out the relativism trump card?

Me? Not at all.

That would be pointless. We all know there's a lot of total crap out there and much of what inneedofgrace is describing is inherent in a lot of really terrible music - music that's objectively terrible. On the other hand, making sweeping generalisations about the nature of synthesised sound has nothing to do with whether or not the music is good or bad - Bermuda got it spot on. It's music - it's good or bad, but that's not because of the sounds that go into it necessarily, there's a lot more to it than that.

Do you really think I'd play the 'well, that's just your opinion, man card? Christ, you know me better than that.

Cage was saying something though, wasn't he? And it wasn't necessarily in the content of the piece, but existed outside of it. Cage was a theorist as much as anything else - so is Alvin Lucier and even Merzbow. Music isn't always about the sonic content. Cage has gravitas because of what he was saying about the state of music - Beethoven was creating music for the sake of music. You should know all about the opposing schools of thought on this and that's been covered by far more qualified people.
 
Yes, but you are generalising and making it seem like that is the be all for everyone by directly contradicting yourself when you say that 'the music is hollow'. Hollow to you, perhaps, but then again 70's Arena Rock is horribly hollow to me, whereas Japanese Onkyokei is incredibly rich.

Do you not see the inherent hypocrisy of your argument?

Perhaps "hollow" is the wrong word. The fact is that today's pop music doesn't stir my soul, cause me to start singing or jump up and dance. Yes, this is a generalization. There are a handful of songs that I've heard recently that are somewhat catchy or innovative. The rest just seem to drone on or actually hurt my ears.

And no, I did not like all 70's arena rock or music from the 80's. I hated disco when it first came out, but have grown to appreciated some of it many years later.

But would I rather hear Journey's Separate Ways with Steve Smith playing drums, or Kanye West Gold Digger? The answer is pretty obvious.

It's not that I don't like pop music. I've loved many top 40 songs, from Three Dog Night to Hall and Oates to The Go Gos (first song I practiced drums to was My Lips Are Sealed) to The Spice Girls to even Britney Spears' early material. I enjoy acts like Kelly Clarkson and My Chemical Romance. But I just can't seem to connect with most of the other newer stuff.

It is what it is.
 
Me? Not at all.

That would be pointless. We all know there's a lot of total crap out there and much of what inneedofgrace is describing is inherent in a lot of really terrible music - music that's objectively terrible. On the other hand, making sweeping generalizations about the nature of synthesized sound has nothing to do with whether or not the music is good or bad -

.

And on that point I think that in the need of grace was spot on because a Kurzweil does not sound like an Steinway and a Roland TD 20 does not sound like a Sonor DeLite.

Several years ago in one of my classes, the student brought in the song Dance with My Father. I hate the beginning because it was a little electronic crap toy. But when I heard the whole song, I realized that it was symbolic of his childhood and it works from that perspective. So maybe it is supposed to sound like an electronic keyboard or an electronic drum sound and not a Steinway or Sonor De Lite. I don't think any one would have a problem with that or the use of electronic sounds except that many times it comes off sounding like that toy electronic tune and not really anything of interest to listen to.

Cage was wrong. Beethoven was deaf and that was the whole fascination with him during the 19th century, that his music was not environmental. It came from his inner imagination.
 
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Cassette tapes? Wow.... why?

Part of a large collection of demos, live gigs, outtakes, etc waiting to be digitized and archived before they melt. As a viable medium though, they're inconvenient and ephemeral. I thought for a time that MiniDiscs would take over where cassettes left off, but the .wav recorders seem to have trumped all.

Bermuda
 
Part of a large collection of demos, live gigs, outtakes, etc waiting to be digitized and archived before they melt. As a viable medium though, they're inconvenient and ephemeral. I thought for a time that MiniDiscs would take over where cassettes left off, but the .wav recorders seem to have trumped all.

Bermuda

I was in this store the other day and a BIG sign said We Sell Laser Discs. Thankfully I sold my laser discs before everyone realized they were a fad. But just a few months ago I threw away a lot of old cassettes of songs and live recordings. Now I'm sorry. I don't remember how some of those songs went.
 
Deltadrummer said:
Cage was wrong. Beethoven was deaf and that was the w3hole fascination with him during the 19th century. The music was no environmental. It came from his inner imagination.

But Cage wasn't necessarily talking about Beethoven. He was talking about three centuries of tradition, of which only a (fairly significant) part was Beethoven. Do you not think that modern composers that use environmental sounds like Barry Truax add something to the musical mix? Or are you really of the opinion that music has to somehow be artificially synthesised? In which case, I'd like to see your opinions on Messiaen's interpretation of birdsong.

You're coming at this from the opposite approach to me. I believe music is/should be influenced by the extramusical. The Classical (ergh, horrible word) tradition up until about 1900 disagrees with me, but I find it ironic that the proponents of the most academic of 19th Century music (eg. Schoenberg) started thinking extramusically.
 
Wow, how smart this discussion is - brilliant - awesome - smart smart, very smart people around...

B.
 
INOG, I get what you're saying but if the songs were well written, with good lyrical content, interesting arrangements, sung with expression and character etc I doubt you'd much care about the way the sound is generated. After all, people have played drum parts on lunch boxes and all sorts of things (albeit probably not Partridge Family lunch boxes) and they still sound "right".

The hollowness stems from the songs - seemingly less inspired by artists and the heart than by producers and profit. The formulas have long been there but they have increasingly been refined and polished in the same way as economic rationalism itself. The music reflects the times.

BTW Bermuda, your desk is a disgrace! Hang on ... my bad ... it's okay, a bit of desk is visible to the right of your Syndrum module :p
 
INOG, I get what you're saying but if the songs were well written, with good lyrical content, interesting arrangements, sung with expression and character etc I doubt you'd much care about the way the sound is generated. After all, people have played drum parts on lunch boxes and all sorts of things (albeit probably not Partridge Family lunch boxes) and they still sound "right".

Agreed. I think most recent pop songs are not well written or arranged, or sung with character. Combine that with no real instruments and it is a double whammy.
 
Thought I might chime in on this thread and give everyone another thing to think about.

What do you think folks of the early 1900's thought when they heard things like The Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, and Jimi Hendrix? In sum, Rock n' Roll. They had been listening to blues, country, swing, big band, and things along those lines. Not too intense. Sure big band and swing are pretty upbeat, but those emphasize on horns, not loud guitar and yelling vocals. Loud guitar solos, yelling vocals, strange wacky performances, blazing fast drums, shirtless young men: These were all fairly new concepts to them. Just as "fake" sounds, drum loops, auto-tune, and music computer programming are fairly new concepts to us. Many of the 1900 generation didn't accept the changes, just as we don't accept modern pop. And likewise, in both occurrences, the young generation (1940-1950/1990-2000) was very much into the new concepts. The two are very much related.

With this information, we can determine an outcome for our current music scene, based on what happened after rock n' roll. Look at all the brilliant styles that branched from rock: Funk, Metal, Progressive, Modern Jazz, Latin Rock, Punk. The list goes on.

We don't have to be appreciative of this new modern pop, however we can anticipate that with these new ideas, though they may be bad, we may see new ideas and even new genre's emerging, that may not be as shallow as modern pop.
 
But Cage wasn't necessarily talking about Beethoven. He was talking about three centuries of tradition, of which only a (fairly significant) part was Beethoven. Do you not think that modern composers that use environmental sounds like Barry Truax add something to the musical mix? Or are you really of the opinion that music has to somehow be artificially synthesised? In which case, I'd like to see your opinions on Messiaen's interpretation of birdsong.

You're coming at this from the opposite approach to me. I believe music is/should be influenced by the extramusical. The Classical (ergh, horrible word) tradition up until about 1900 disagrees with me, but I find it ironic that the proponents of the most academic of 19th Century music (eg. Schoenberg) started thinking extramusically.

Sorry for the typos . .my typing sucks at times and I was getting ready to go out for lessons so I didn't proofread. The interesting thing about this discussion is that there are two sides that really don't disagree with each other. I think there is a mis-reading between the two sides of the discussion.

The way I see Cage is that he is trying to subvert hundreds of years of entrenched musical aesthetics but also bourgeois notions of musical thought. I think he was very successful, and now we are moving towards the other side, a move back to traditionalism, which is replete with its own problems. They are finally educating undergrads about jazz fifty years after it is no longer a leading commercial art form. And of course they still look down on rock, which is slowly becoming the same. So they are training kids for jobs again that don't exist.

(Here's a wonderful lecture on education if you are interested. Do Schools Kill Creativity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY But I digress.)

At points, Cage's notion do become more aligned with the notion of the absurd than a sincere look at the history of aesthetics. I think one of his concerns was the democratization of music, ie. if all you have to do pick up a tape recorder and make a piece, everyone is a composer. He was very aware of that subversion context of that realization. Now we have the possibility for everyone to make music from their bedroom. The onus is on the individual to create his or her own musical satisfaction and not rely on the nickelodeon, the radio or youtube. That is a significant historical change. One need not play an instrument to be a musician, one need not learn how to compose to be a composer. As Ian stated, deejays in today's world are seen as musicians, at more so they are seen as composers. There are some that argue that they are the great composers of their time. It is often musicians, traditional musicians?, who find this notion most troubling and think it is no surprise that they are most alienated by it. Musicians in the modern world will need to subvert that idea to be successful. The way the modern drummers meld the distinction between programmed and acoustic drums is a good example of that. In the 1990s bands started to have deejays. I always loved The Beastie Boys, "Fight for Your Right to Party" video where the guy holds out an lp when asked what his instrument is.

As you can see, my concern is basically looking realistically about how the modern world fosters the culture of making music. But the idea of what can and should be used in the creation of music is easily answered, anything. Who would have thought that Stockhausen would have the affect on The Beatles and Pink Floyd that he had? Electronic music has affected everything. Most of the music we listen to is electronic. Therefore, your neighbor should be happy that you pound away at your drums for five hours and give them the raw and unique experience of hearing acoustic music at no charge.

Your readings of musical history may be creating problems that are not there. There is an objectivity in 20th century music that the romantics tried to steer clear of, maybe to their own detriment. Romantics were not clear of objective notions. They wrote a lot of referential music. Beethoven invented the notion of the programmatic symphony. I like your Barry Traux example. The use of objective representation in music, of course, goes back even further than Beethoven. Mozart and Vivaldi used it and you hear it in Renaissance song as well. Messiaen's fascination with bird songs may be a different matter all together though. :) As absolute as baroque music may seem, it was influenced by Rococo ideas of architecture with its ornamental design.

I think an interesting question is can Barry Truax be popular? Can non vocal or instrumental music be popular? I can think of a few tunes off the top of my head, Take Five, the perennial favorite Taste of Honey, Popcorn, Theme from A Summer Place, Rock It, Classical Gas, and Song Bird. Most of those songs don't have drums, so don't be surprised on a drum forum when drummers get a little cantankerous about the growing trend in the business not to use live musicians, esp drummers.:)
 
Can non vocal or instrumental music be popular? I can think of a few tunes off the top of my head, Take Five, the perennial favorite Taste of Honey, Popcorn, Theme from A Summer Place, Rock It, Classical Gas, and Song Bird. Most of those songs don't have drums, so don't be surprised on a drum forum when drummers get a little cantankerous about the growing trend in the business not to use live musicians, esp drummers.:)

The Miami Vice Theme comes to mind.

*ducks*



Ok, to make it relevant to drums again, here is Tony Williams playing the Miami Vice Theme song in concert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJpIQ3dituE
 
Thought I might chime in on this thread and give everyone another thing to think about.

What do you think folks of the early 1900's thought when they heard things like The Rolling Stones, The Talking Heads, and Jimi Hendrix? In sum, Rock n' Roll. They had been listening to blues, country, swing, big band, and things along those lines. Not too intense. Sure big band and swing are pretty upbeat, but those emphasize on horns, not loud guitar and yelling vocals. Loud guitar solos, yelling vocals, strange wacky performances, blazing fast drums, shirtless young men: These were all fairly new concepts to them. Just as "fake" sounds, drum loops, auto-tune, and music computer programming are fairly new concepts to us. Many of the 1900 generation didn't accept the changes, just as we don't accept modern pop. And likewise, in both occurrences, the young generation (1940-1950/1990-2000) was very much into the new concepts. The two are very much related.

With this information, we can determine an outcome for our current music scene, based on what happened after rock n' roll. Look at all the brilliant styles that branched from rock: Funk, Metal, Progressive, Modern Jazz, Latin Rock, Punk. The list goes on.

We don't have to be appreciative of this new modern pop, however we can anticipate that with these new ideas, though they may be bad, we may see new ideas and even new genre's emerging, that may not be as shallow as modern pop.

I know it's bad form to quote oneself but this side of things was acknowledged a while ago:

What I've wondered about is how there can be passion for music so lacking in depth. I admit to old fartism. That classic distorted brass sound you hear in lots of techno drives me as batty as distorted electric guitars drove my father's generation. The relentless of the doofs, whose low frequencies drive their way though any number of walls ... ugh!

I thought I'd become one of those "cool" old people who'd remain open to the music of the next generation. But I hate doof doof techno, abrasive machine gun metal and most rap. Well done, Gens Y and Z. Ya got me. Touché :)

People are changing so the music is changing. Music of the information age is, not surprisingly, being increasingly driven by data.

Ken, interesting stuff, as usual. As for Cage's democratisation of music - there seems to be a constant push/pull with this. Rock'n'roll, punk and rap were all designed to democratise music so that playing music would be within reach of the unwashed. Marx probably would have had something to say about it!
 
Deltadrummer, I think we're on the same page now.

Deltadrummer said:
It is often musicians, traditional musicians?, who find this notion most troubling and think it is no surprise that they are most alienated by it. Musicians in the modern world will need to subvert that idea to be successful. The way the modern drummers meld the distinction between programmed and acoustic drums is a good example of that. In the 1990s bands started to have deejays. I always loved The Beastie Boys, "Fight for Your Right to Party" video where the guy holds out an lp when asked what his instrument is.

I think it's a luddite reaction, I really do. Why that's the case, I'm not sure. It's a threat instinct, perhaps? Or is it that these ideas are naturally antagonistic. I'm sure Cage laughed at the feathers he ruffled, as the Dadaists did. I was actually reading 'The Art of Noises' by Russolo the other day and was amused with just how seriously they were taking themselves, but I suppose that is a naturally inverted threat reaction.

Deltadrummer said:
I think an interesting question is can Barry Truax be popular? Can non vocal or instrumental music be popular?

Sure it can, although the examples seem to be less numerous that 'vocal' music (although that term is starting to loosen!). Just for the record, I'm not actually an advocate of environmental recordings in 'electroacoustic' (argh, I'd wish we had some better genre descriptions) music - particularly current music. That's why I compose in computer errors and noise. The reasoning there is that it's been done to death for the sake of it. I met Barry Truax a couple of years back after he delivered a guest lecture at University. Interesting guy, pleasant chap. The issue I have there though is that he hasn't actually really moved on from the Vancouver Sound Project or the similar work he did in the early 70's. The development of granular synthesis is a big deal, but that was twenty-five years ago still.

Moving on is what's important to me. Not because 'new is better' but because I have a very short attention span and a low threshold for boredom. Nothing frustrates me more than current music that sounds the same as older music - not because there's usually anything wrong with older music, with the exception of screaming about 'Wohmen!' (thank you, Boomstick), but because I think it's important to stretch your own boundaries. That can be done in the past too - I love a lot of Renaissance music - but we also have to look forward and that's where I get concerned about the attitudes of some of the arguments I've seen on this thread. The same arguments that go back to the invention of the Piano.

Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of the music being ranted about here is genuinely terrible, I certainly wouldn't listen to it out of choice and I'd probably only hear it after about eight pints in the back end of some Godawful night club, but that's just the current trend - terrible though it may be. Pop charts move slowly, but in a couple of years it will be something different. The democratisation of recording is going to make a bigger splash in the next couple of years and the idea of something genuinely new excites me.
 
The more I think about it, my band is the complete opposite of today's pop. We are a blues-based rock band, with lots of improvisation and guitar/keyboard solos. We also delve into to some southern and classic rock, and play a few pop favorites as well. With a set list like this, it could be very difficult to connect with under 20 crowd, but that's not really our target audience:

Sunshine of Your Love
You Can't Always Get What You Want
Learning to Fly
Bad Moon Rising
Rockin' In The Free World
Spooky
Keep You Hands To Yourself
Crossroads
Gimme Three Steps
Can't You See
Tore Down
One After 909
Friends in Low Places
Take Me To The River

Interestingly I just saw a new beer commercial last night on TV, and they used Can't You See as the theme song.
 
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