Music: theories and commentary
I don't know how often you listen to music. I listen to music. We all do really. Except robots, I don't think they like music much at all. Everyone can think music as playing a part of his or her lives. We all run to soundtracks of our own makings. We characterize the 60s by the revolution of rock; the 70s by disco, the 80s by the synthesizer and the electric keyboard, 90s by grunge rock and the emergence of hip hop and rap, the new millennium by MTV exploitation and artificial pop....
I personally can't go 5 minutes without a song forcing its way into the front of my mind, and it’s not something I mind either. There is just far too many theories and thoughts I have on music for me to keep a continue in an organized fashion, so I have to admit I'll just have to wing it and hope you keep up. Organization isn’t what music is really about anyways so expect random tangents and interjecting thoughts, after all if you ended up where you thought you would be at the end of a song its not a good one is it?
Foremost in my mind, I cannot stand people who disregard a type of music to be ‘worthless’, or ‘not music’ or ‘not art.’ I consider it a type of racism to consider a genre of music to be worthless. I will repeat myself; I cannot take people discounting a whole range of music as "not music.” I cannot stress enough that it tantamount to racism; as generally its rap that weathers the brunt of “that’s not music” comments. Classical music snobs (as the most common music racist) call rap and hip-hop as a medium of bitches, cars, drugs created by no talent ex-drug dealers. Well clearly because of their enthusiasm for music so steeped in European history, they have the right to decide what is or is not a performing art. I wanted to write a strong, emphatic article but I cant promise clean, fuck them. If you can't find artistry in an entire style of music, you are clearly uninterested in looking. If you think hip hop was never a real art and are dancing on its grave then you need to listen to ‘The Documentary’ by ‘The Game,’ its an amazing album; even if you haven’t been to the hood recently or never sold rock on the street corner, that album can move you. On the other side of the coin, to be fair, if you think classical music is all Bach and elitist snob music then you need to find the scores for the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and the Batman Begins score. Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams worked magic on these soundtracks. I've so far gone after the obvious targets of music hate, hip-hop and classical; but what about music's other rivalry?
Lets not ignore Country and Rock, these two have not exactly been at war with each other but with themselves for some time now; country has had the obvious problem of manufactured fake country that lasts as long as an artificial sugar high, luckily this kind of country has crashed and burned as the community of country music fans seem quite good at spoting fake artists; unfortunately Rock has suffered from a collapse from a civil war. Rock is actually second generation Rock and Roll which is characterized by the Rolling Stones, Blue Öyster Cult, Led Zeppelin, and the late Jimi Hendrix. Modern Rock was the first new genre to come out as the new mainstream rock and roll music, but eventually they cut the bullshit and called it Rock when they realized it was no longer modern or able to stand up to the now "classic" rock of the greats. The alternative rock scene breathed life back into Rock, bands like Nirvana, Bush, Offspring, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, anything grungy, and fast. I find it interesting that a generation of Alt rock fans now generally goes nuts over bands like Coldplay, Dave Matthews, and the Killers; but I might get into that sort of commentary later.
What makes music important? Music can make you remember things (remembrance value), feel things, change your thinking or your mood, and make you feel connected either to other people or to something greater. Remembrance value is a term that came up in a discussion I had about Abbey Road about 5 years ago and the term stuck. Abbey Road was the greatest album ever created according to my friend; his argument was that at the time he was listening to the album heavily, he was going through an episode with a close friend, or love interest or something like that. The point is, every time he heard an Abbey Road song from then on, and he remembered those feelings he was having about this girl. He claimed the remembrance value of Abbey Road was the highest of any album/song/music because of the vividness of the memories that came to him every time he heard the songs. We all have those songs, thinking “Ah that takes me back” is a big clue the song has a large remembrance value to you. Any time a song makes you want to close your eyes and just listen, is a great song. Songs like that are important to us because they give us a moment of clarity and peace, no matter if we are stuck on a subway train. Songs that change your thinking/mood are also important, the song that makes you smile by 30 seconds in, that is a great song. Songs that make you feel connected, to me, are usually some of the same songs that give me the 40 seconds of peace. I can’t really describe it better than this: some songs make me feel there is a higher plane, a connectedness among humans that only exists when we’re all listening to the same rhythm. This brings me to a new point…
Music is a religion to me because of songs like that. In a practical sense, a religion is a construct designed to make you feel good in the moment, feel assured about the future, and connect with other people. Music does all of these and more. If you can’t rattle off 5 songs that make you feel just GOOD…change your oil because you are a robot, if you can’t share an emotional connection or a certain song/album that is either private or with another person (ever have an “our song”?) go stock up on WD-40 because you are still a robot. I don’t want to declare any new paradigm about what music is, but as far as music causing a connection between people, I have 2 pieces of evidence: the concert and the church. Concerts tend to form a sense of community, people who find they were at the same concert talk about it and get excited hence the obligatory concert t-shirt purchase. Church is also another good example, its historical record that adding music to the Catholic church increased its popularity but even when you considered yourself ‘stuck’ at mass, you can’t help but feel something… especially at holidays, its slightly out of reach to describe to me, but I feel like you probably know what I mean.
I dug at MTV in this article’s opening so I feel a need to justify that comment. I do feel contempt for MTV. Since I was born, MTV has revolutionized and has attempted to destroy everything that is important to music. MTV is really an entity that started with good intentions and went from bad to worse. The first day of airing, MTV ran music videos non-stop; quickly this got old as you can imagine. MTV began running game shows, award ceremonies, the Real World (which is actually the pinnacle of scripted reality, network TV’s shows don’t even come close), and various crap like “Pimp my ride” or as I like to call it “Destroy any value my car may have had when sold for parts.” MTV has helped foster, extend the life of, and even create its own pop music icons. Fake music is the bane of all creative musical endeavors. The 1-hit wonder pop groups and the boy bands are the biggest offenders. If its been test marketed and remixed into an entirely different sound its not music any more. That is my biggest problem with MTV, not only does it feed off music, but it feeds off itself creating its own hype for itself. In the last few years one other problem as occurred, the music video became extremely popular. There are many good ones but they are far outnumbered by the bad ones. As Lewis Back once said, “Music goes in your ears and your brain creates an image. But now we have music videos, those go through your eyes, and if your brain makes an image that looks like the music video… kill yourself, you have no reason to live.” I can’t think of a better way to put it, there is nothing special, unique or inspiring in most music videos and it very well might destroy the special meaning you might have associated with that song. The loss of the special, personal, meaning in music is an assault on my religion, so I avoid it as much as possible.
I have talked a lot what makes music good to me but not at all about what kind of music I like. Music that is good to me generally has a few characteristics that they seem to hold in common. First and foremost, FULL. Music has to be full; it has to be big and robust, not loud mind you, but complete, full. Fullness to me is using the entire spectrum of audio, I don’t mean it has to have all different type of instruments and played from high treble to low bass. From left to right, the music has to occupy the entire range, a good example of this is why I like orchestral strings so much, it’s very common to hold the entire range of sound left and right. The score to The Chronicles of Narnia that I have mentioned before has these characteristics too. Other good examples could come from live rock, and electronica like BT and Chemical Brothers. Electronica is a very BUSY medium, I have listened to certain songs on repeat dozens of times trying to mentally isolate every track running through the song, and then once I think I had then, follow certain ones through the whole song, or attempting to tap a finger to each beat, that’s a challenge. One I would like to single out as well is “Hart of a Champion” by Nelly, however only the version of that includes a large vocal band remixed into the song, it sound much like Carmina Burana with rapping over it, odd but its good.
Music that can make you feel good about life in the moment are the ones that make you smile to repeat myself. An entire album that can do that for me is Dosage by Collective Soul, I’m a sucker for 90s rock because that’s what I started listening to when I independently, its just good rock sound that is more uplifting than angry. Interestingly enough the score to both the Last Samurai and Batman Begins also do this in some of the songs.
Heavy, powerful voices are also make a sucker out of me, Crash Test Dummies is a one hit wonder with a powerful vocal lead, though Depeche Mode is the ultimate example of a powerful vocal to me, Creed is also right up there. Depeche Mode is also a great example of full sounding music in many of their singles, the best one I can think of is “It’s No Good.” Most Better than Ezra songs, Guster, and Eve 6 songs also are insta-mood-improvement
Songs that make me question the existing of something more, quite aptly named for how I described this, is “More than This” by Peter Gabriel. Various other songs strike me from time to time but not quite as constantly as “Under pressure” by David Bowie and Queen. “I see death around the Corner” by 2Pac, “Headful of Ghosts” by Bush, “Lucky Man” by The Verve, “Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)” by DJ Shadow, “The Best things” by Filter. God, ok I’ve saved most recommendations for a list I’ll put at the end.
Hip Hop is also a huge favorite of mine; different types for different reasons though; some songs the lyrics seem just incredibly powerful, like “Dream” by The Game just… it just kills me every time. Early Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg are lyrical masterpieces. On the other side hip hop with good beats generally could replace their lyrics for instructions to assemble Ikea furniture, the beat is just that good. In the words of Chris Rock, “If the beats all right, she’ll dance all night.” Hip Hop may be misogynistic and crude to some, but those who enjoy it, could not care less. And either do I.
Classical music is a bit of a mixed bag for me, Bach, Beethoven does not interest me in the slightest, and it violates the fundamental law of music being full. Carmina Burana (mentioned before) is epic in quality and many of the songs in the set are a joy to listen to at very very loud volumes. Same goes for Holts’ The Planets. ‘Liberi Fatali’, the opening song to Final Fantasy VIII, is amazing, as is a good chunk of the Original Soundtrack pieces from Final Fantasy X especially ‘Suteki da ne’. I swear serenity is in that song.
As far as live music I have seen, I will always remember this one all-day outdoor concert set. It was at the Rosemont Horizon, later called the All-State Arena but who wants to call it that? Anyways, it was getting into the evening and the sun was just fully set where the sky was dark purple but not black yet. Airplanes had been flying directly over the stage because the airport is right next to; and it had been pissing off people and the performers all day for the most part until Kill Hannah showed up. These guys had a very very strong fan base, extremely loyal people and they were going nuts with them on stage, I was standing a small distance from the main crowd and they had just launched into ‘Welcome to Chicago’ one of their best known songs and just as the chorus was starting, a plane went over and they didn’t miss a beat, the fans didn’t notice. The sound normally drowned the music out but for some reason I just didn’t hear anything, I have this perfect image to the band performing, the crowd moving back and forth, up and down perfect with the music I knew they were hearing, hands in the air…rocking. The lighting of the stage playing off the landing lights of the plane strangely complementary, perfect, soundless. Whoa.
Not really recommendations, but these are a small sample of songs I consider to be good examples of the qualities I enjoy most in music : a taste of music
I personally can't go 5 minutes without a song forcing its way into the front of my mind, and it’s not something I mind either. There is just far too many theories and thoughts I have on music for me to keep a continue in an organized fashion, so I have to admit I'll just have to wing it and hope you keep up. Organization isn’t what music is really about anyways so expect random tangents and interjecting thoughts, after all if you ended up where you thought you would be at the end of a song its not a good one is it?
Foremost in my mind, I cannot stand people who disregard a type of music to be ‘worthless’, or ‘not music’ or ‘not art.’ I consider it a type of racism to consider a genre of music to be worthless. I will repeat myself; I cannot take people discounting a whole range of music as "not music.” I cannot stress enough that it tantamount to racism; as generally its rap that weathers the brunt of “that’s not music” comments. Classical music snobs (as the most common music racist) call rap and hip-hop as a medium of bitches, cars, drugs created by no talent ex-drug dealers. Well clearly because of their enthusiasm for music so steeped in European history, they have the right to decide what is or is not a performing art. I wanted to write a strong, emphatic article but I cant promise clean, fuck them. If you can't find artistry in an entire style of music, you are clearly uninterested in looking. If you think hip hop was never a real art and are dancing on its grave then you need to listen to ‘The Documentary’ by ‘The Game,’ its an amazing album; even if you haven’t been to the hood recently or never sold rock on the street corner, that album can move you. On the other side of the coin, to be fair, if you think classical music is all Bach and elitist snob music then you need to find the scores for the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and the Batman Begins score. Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams worked magic on these soundtracks. I've so far gone after the obvious targets of music hate, hip-hop and classical; but what about music's other rivalry?
Lets not ignore Country and Rock, these two have not exactly been at war with each other but with themselves for some time now; country has had the obvious problem of manufactured fake country that lasts as long as an artificial sugar high, luckily this kind of country has crashed and burned as the community of country music fans seem quite good at spoting fake artists; unfortunately Rock has suffered from a collapse from a civil war. Rock is actually second generation Rock and Roll which is characterized by the Rolling Stones, Blue Öyster Cult, Led Zeppelin, and the late Jimi Hendrix. Modern Rock was the first new genre to come out as the new mainstream rock and roll music, but eventually they cut the bullshit and called it Rock when they realized it was no longer modern or able to stand up to the now "classic" rock of the greats. The alternative rock scene breathed life back into Rock, bands like Nirvana, Bush, Offspring, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Godsmack, anything grungy, and fast. I find it interesting that a generation of Alt rock fans now generally goes nuts over bands like Coldplay, Dave Matthews, and the Killers; but I might get into that sort of commentary later.
What makes music important? Music can make you remember things (remembrance value), feel things, change your thinking or your mood, and make you feel connected either to other people or to something greater. Remembrance value is a term that came up in a discussion I had about Abbey Road about 5 years ago and the term stuck. Abbey Road was the greatest album ever created according to my friend; his argument was that at the time he was listening to the album heavily, he was going through an episode with a close friend, or love interest or something like that. The point is, every time he heard an Abbey Road song from then on, and he remembered those feelings he was having about this girl. He claimed the remembrance value of Abbey Road was the highest of any album/song/music because of the vividness of the memories that came to him every time he heard the songs. We all have those songs, thinking “Ah that takes me back” is a big clue the song has a large remembrance value to you. Any time a song makes you want to close your eyes and just listen, is a great song. Songs like that are important to us because they give us a moment of clarity and peace, no matter if we are stuck on a subway train. Songs that change your thinking/mood are also important, the song that makes you smile by 30 seconds in, that is a great song. Songs that make you feel connected, to me, are usually some of the same songs that give me the 40 seconds of peace. I can’t really describe it better than this: some songs make me feel there is a higher plane, a connectedness among humans that only exists when we’re all listening to the same rhythm. This brings me to a new point…
Music is a religion to me because of songs like that. In a practical sense, a religion is a construct designed to make you feel good in the moment, feel assured about the future, and connect with other people. Music does all of these and more. If you can’t rattle off 5 songs that make you feel just GOOD…change your oil because you are a robot, if you can’t share an emotional connection or a certain song/album that is either private or with another person (ever have an “our song”?) go stock up on WD-40 because you are still a robot. I don’t want to declare any new paradigm about what music is, but as far as music causing a connection between people, I have 2 pieces of evidence: the concert and the church. Concerts tend to form a sense of community, people who find they were at the same concert talk about it and get excited hence the obligatory concert t-shirt purchase. Church is also another good example, its historical record that adding music to the Catholic church increased its popularity but even when you considered yourself ‘stuck’ at mass, you can’t help but feel something… especially at holidays, its slightly out of reach to describe to me, but I feel like you probably know what I mean.
I dug at MTV in this article’s opening so I feel a need to justify that comment. I do feel contempt for MTV. Since I was born, MTV has revolutionized and has attempted to destroy everything that is important to music. MTV is really an entity that started with good intentions and went from bad to worse. The first day of airing, MTV ran music videos non-stop; quickly this got old as you can imagine. MTV began running game shows, award ceremonies, the Real World (which is actually the pinnacle of scripted reality, network TV’s shows don’t even come close), and various crap like “Pimp my ride” or as I like to call it “Destroy any value my car may have had when sold for parts.” MTV has helped foster, extend the life of, and even create its own pop music icons. Fake music is the bane of all creative musical endeavors. The 1-hit wonder pop groups and the boy bands are the biggest offenders. If its been test marketed and remixed into an entirely different sound its not music any more. That is my biggest problem with MTV, not only does it feed off music, but it feeds off itself creating its own hype for itself. In the last few years one other problem as occurred, the music video became extremely popular. There are many good ones but they are far outnumbered by the bad ones. As Lewis Back once said, “Music goes in your ears and your brain creates an image. But now we have music videos, those go through your eyes, and if your brain makes an image that looks like the music video… kill yourself, you have no reason to live.” I can’t think of a better way to put it, there is nothing special, unique or inspiring in most music videos and it very well might destroy the special meaning you might have associated with that song. The loss of the special, personal, meaning in music is an assault on my religion, so I avoid it as much as possible.
I have talked a lot what makes music good to me but not at all about what kind of music I like. Music that is good to me generally has a few characteristics that they seem to hold in common. First and foremost, FULL. Music has to be full; it has to be big and robust, not loud mind you, but complete, full. Fullness to me is using the entire spectrum of audio, I don’t mean it has to have all different type of instruments and played from high treble to low bass. From left to right, the music has to occupy the entire range, a good example of this is why I like orchestral strings so much, it’s very common to hold the entire range of sound left and right. The score to The Chronicles of Narnia that I have mentioned before has these characteristics too. Other good examples could come from live rock, and electronica like BT and Chemical Brothers. Electronica is a very BUSY medium, I have listened to certain songs on repeat dozens of times trying to mentally isolate every track running through the song, and then once I think I had then, follow certain ones through the whole song, or attempting to tap a finger to each beat, that’s a challenge. One I would like to single out as well is “Hart of a Champion” by Nelly, however only the version of that includes a large vocal band remixed into the song, it sound much like Carmina Burana with rapping over it, odd but its good.
Music that can make you feel good about life in the moment are the ones that make you smile to repeat myself. An entire album that can do that for me is Dosage by Collective Soul, I’m a sucker for 90s rock because that’s what I started listening to when I independently, its just good rock sound that is more uplifting than angry. Interestingly enough the score to both the Last Samurai and Batman Begins also do this in some of the songs.
Heavy, powerful voices are also make a sucker out of me, Crash Test Dummies is a one hit wonder with a powerful vocal lead, though Depeche Mode is the ultimate example of a powerful vocal to me, Creed is also right up there. Depeche Mode is also a great example of full sounding music in many of their singles, the best one I can think of is “It’s No Good.” Most Better than Ezra songs, Guster, and Eve 6 songs also are insta-mood-improvement
Songs that make me question the existing of something more, quite aptly named for how I described this, is “More than This” by Peter Gabriel. Various other songs strike me from time to time but not quite as constantly as “Under pressure” by David Bowie and Queen. “I see death around the Corner” by 2Pac, “Headful of Ghosts” by Bush, “Lucky Man” by The Verve, “Organ Donor (Extended Overhaul)” by DJ Shadow, “The Best things” by Filter. God, ok I’ve saved most recommendations for a list I’ll put at the end.
Hip Hop is also a huge favorite of mine; different types for different reasons though; some songs the lyrics seem just incredibly powerful, like “Dream” by The Game just… it just kills me every time. Early Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg are lyrical masterpieces. On the other side hip hop with good beats generally could replace their lyrics for instructions to assemble Ikea furniture, the beat is just that good. In the words of Chris Rock, “If the beats all right, she’ll dance all night.” Hip Hop may be misogynistic and crude to some, but those who enjoy it, could not care less. And either do I.
Classical music is a bit of a mixed bag for me, Bach, Beethoven does not interest me in the slightest, and it violates the fundamental law of music being full. Carmina Burana (mentioned before) is epic in quality and many of the songs in the set are a joy to listen to at very very loud volumes. Same goes for Holts’ The Planets. ‘Liberi Fatali’, the opening song to Final Fantasy VIII, is amazing, as is a good chunk of the Original Soundtrack pieces from Final Fantasy X especially ‘Suteki da ne’. I swear serenity is in that song.
As far as live music I have seen, I will always remember this one all-day outdoor concert set. It was at the Rosemont Horizon, later called the All-State Arena but who wants to call it that? Anyways, it was getting into the evening and the sun was just fully set where the sky was dark purple but not black yet. Airplanes had been flying directly over the stage because the airport is right next to; and it had been pissing off people and the performers all day for the most part until Kill Hannah showed up. These guys had a very very strong fan base, extremely loyal people and they were going nuts with them on stage, I was standing a small distance from the main crowd and they had just launched into ‘Welcome to Chicago’ one of their best known songs and just as the chorus was starting, a plane went over and they didn’t miss a beat, the fans didn’t notice. The sound normally drowned the music out but for some reason I just didn’t hear anything, I have this perfect image to the band performing, the crowd moving back and forth, up and down perfect with the music I knew they were hearing, hands in the air…rocking. The lighting of the stage playing off the landing lights of the plane strangely complementary, perfect, soundless. Whoa.
Not really recommendations, but these are a small sample of songs I consider to be good examples of the qualities I enjoy most in music : a taste of music
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