What WAS good in the 'Good Old Days'?

[Akka]

You are on a (t)roll here.

 

[Lexicus]

Ah, typical Lexicus post. Nearly a cas study.

That post is hot buddy

Higher effort than "cas study"

CFC be crashin when i try to directly paste images into the edit box so it did take an unreasonable amount of work

 

[Farm Boy]

I like it when the people who don't like the things I like are mental retards, too.

 

[El_Machinae]

What's 'better'? Of course, non-fans will have 'heard' a different message in rap than the target audience (so should probably shut up when it comes to criticising it), but bards motivate behaviour in their audiences. If we're going to say it's 'better', then judging its influence on people (in measurable terms) seems to work.


Do we think that the people who were influenced by that rap created a better community than the people who were influenced by earlier music but will also out-perform the 'kids these days' that will eventually be the dominant influence in their communities? It will (in history) be a shining moment when the culture started to improve but then degraded?

 

[Rg339]

None of those bands are as good as the Beatles though

I think you can make a pretty strong case that the Stones are better than the Beatles

edit: it helps that the Stones were a bit edgier. The Beatles are tame, too tame.

You hear the Stones and you think of Scorsese movies, Mick Jagger, drug addiction, real rock stars.

You hear Hey Jude in the grocery store, and it’s irritating, sounds phony. That’s it. The McCartney Beatles songs are the ones most frequently heard. They’re tame, they’re beige, and you usually hear them in places you have to be, but don’t want to be, like while waiting for your scheduled root canal in the dentists lobby.

 

[sophie]

All eras are eras of good music. I mean, look at '58-'60, you have all-time great albums from: Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Tito Puente, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, Gil Evans, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, John Fahey, João Gilberto, Cal Tjader, Bill Evans, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Ornette Coleman, Ella Fitzgerald, The Louvin Brothers, Lightnin' Slim, Wes Montgomery, The Everly Brothers, Etta James, Muddy Waters, and Joan Baez.

Getting precious about music is silly, and insisting that only your music from when you matured is The Good Stuff and it's all downhill from there is a sad way to experience art.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm looking for a technical article on music that I'd read previously (which is distinct from the communication within music) regarding the rate of innovation in music.

When viewed as a percentage-improvement, their finding was that there was a pretty linear graph when it came to innovations, except for a strong blip in the early 80s when the synthesizer caused a wave of experiments in new sounds. I do personally wonder if the mid-aughties perfected the 'ear worm' for a time, where our cognition was just scientifically high-jacked so we'd 'like' what we heard very quickly (the musical equivalent of video 'shorts' consuming attention for hours at a time). Auto-tune, specifically, reduces the spread of musical innovations, if only because everything is slightly more standardized (I'm not going to check, since it's just gut instinct and I don't know how to check, but I suspect that 'live albums' have undergone a shift in popularity when it comes to total ratios).

 

[Narz]

Hopefully AI can create a revolution of musical creativity

 

[sophie]

How are we defining "innovation" though? Like odd time signatures? "Unexpected" chord progressions? Polyrhythms? It's the same problem as when people try to define musical progression according to "complexity". At some point to do so, you have to define complexity, but simple rhythms and chord progressions with delicate harmonizations and orchestral arrangements can be understood to be every bit as "complex" as some absurd fusion 17/8 over 5/4 modal piece.

 

[Hygro]

I think you can make a pretty strong case that the Stones are better than the Beatles

edit: it helps that the Stones were a bit edgier. The Beatles are tame, too tame.

You hear the Stones and you think of Scorsese movies, Mick Jagger, drug addiction, real rock stars.

You hear Hey Jude in the grocery store, and it’s irritating, sounds phony. That’s it. The McCartney Beatles songs are the ones most frequently heard. They’re tame, they’re beige, and you usually hear them in places you have to be, but don’t want to be, like while waiting for your scheduled root canal in the dentists lobby.

That's funny, I would consider the Stones the beige/boring ones. Stuck in one sound, verse chorus, verse chorus. Have you listened to Hey Jude in full? Like actually listened to it?

Hey Jude is actually a great example, it broke the pop format, and was a pop song. It is completely wild and unhinged. If you've ever, say, listened to UK #1s in order, the coming of Hey Jude was like dropping acid and everything changed. There was nothing like it before, and for a long time after everything was trying to be it.

 

[Hygro]

You are on a (t)roll here.

The only music you like is the music you know or are ready to know. Almost all great music takes work. You can stay at the level of lullabys and Baby Shark or you can learn better music.

Rap is of course an acquired taste. If you weren't raised on it, it takes some initial work. You can go a lifetime irritated by rap in your environment, or you can take a year or two and listen to a lot of it and learn to like it, and then in addition to enjoying an entirely different art style and understanding it, you won't be agitated but happy, in alllllll the places it shows up from movies, to walking outside, to venues.

 

[Hygro]

I'm looking for a technical article on music that I'd read previously (which is distinct from the communication within music) regarding the rate of innovation in music.

When viewed as a percentage-improvement, their finding was that there was a pretty linear graph when it came to innovations, except for a strong blip in the early 80s when the synthesizer caused a wave of experiments in new sounds. I do personally wonder if the mid-aughties perfected the 'ear worm' for a time, where our cognition was just scientifically high-jacked so we'd 'like' what we heard very quickly (the musical equivalent of video 'shorts' consuming attention for hours at a time). Auto-tune, specifically, reduces the spread of musical innovations, if only because everything is slightly more standardized (I'm not going to check, since it's just gut instinct and I don't know how to check, but I suspect that 'live albums' have undergone a shift in popularity when it comes to total ratios).

Hard disagree on your autotune statement, reasoned by the point made in your paper, the invention of musical tools drives innovation in music. All great genre changes follow tech changes.

 

[Farm Boy]

The only music you like is the music you know or are ready to know. Almost all great music takes work. You can stay at the level of lullabys and Baby Shark or you can learn better music.

Rap is of course an acquired taste. If you weren't raised on it, it takes some initial work. You can go a lifetime irritated by rap in your environment, or you can take a year or two and listen to a lot of it and learn to like it, and then in addition to enjoying an entirely different art style and understanding it, you won't be agitated but happy, in alllllll the places it shows up from movies, to walking outside, to venues.

Lullabies that persist are sublime.

 

[sophie]

I'm just struggling to understand what is meant by "innovation" as a measurable quality. Is adding amplification to Delta blues standards innovation? Is refining the amplification into a distinctive genre innovation? Is white guys doing that genre innovation? Is white guys fusing it with other appropriated genres (like Skiffle) innovation? Or is it just techniques? Is it slap, or the Hendrix thumb-over chord shape? Is it theoretical developments? Like tracking changes to modal progressions rather than chord progressions? Is it technological? Like Van Gelder's refinement of recording equipment and arrangement? The development of looping and sampling e.g. with the Beatles and Miles Davis? The layering of loops and samples that happened in the 80s and 90s in hip-hop?

Like thinking about this in terms of jazz is so funny to me, because a lot of the things that I would consider genuinely innovative like the Bird changes, or the development of free jazz or fusion were very self-consciously efforts to return jazz to its roots, while completely novel developments, like third stream wound up as genre cul-de-sacs.

 

[El_Machinae]

Hard disagree on your autotune statement, reasoned by the point made in your paper, the invention of musical tools drives innovation in music. All great genre changes follow tech changes.

That's fair. Like everyone, I'm stuck in my past. But I listen to a specific ratio of 'live' albums vs. studio albums. There will always be literally more music available as time goes on, so figuring out how to measure the spread of "what we like" is going to be tough. I'll grant that preferring a mix of two completely different albums is going to be 'more diverse' than preferring a mix of studio and live albums. But the same artists are literally putting out different music in a live album vs. the studio album, even if the difference is subtle, it was enough to purchase.

 

[Akka]

The only music you like is the music you know or are ready to know. Almost all great music takes work. You can stay at the level of lullabys and Baby Shark or you can learn better music.

Rap is of course an acquired taste. If you weren't raised on it, it takes some initial work. You can go a lifetime irritated by rap in your environment, or you can take a year or two and listen to a lot of it and learn to like it, and then in addition to enjoying an entirely different art style and understanding it, you won't be agitated but happy, in alllllll the places it shows up from movies, to walking outside, to venues.

I would somehow agree with some underlying idea here (that it's good to expand your horizons to appreciate things). That's not really a groundbreaking nor a very original statement though, and that's even quite a bit trite. You might also have wanted to get a bit more context before trying to give some misplaced lecture.

First, just so you know, my favourite genre today is very much an acquired taste that I disliked when I was younger, so I'm afraid I was already pretty acquainted with your revelation.
Second, people have their own preferences, which don't necessarily change (I hated the "growl" part of metal when I was younged and disliked metal overall, I still hate the "growl" part of metal even now that it's become my favourite genre). I'm not going to inflict myself years of listening to things I dislike just because someone was trying to teach me the basics on a forum.
Third, I actually enjoy some select part of rap (typically, I'm a big fan of ERB and I quite like some guys like Stupendium). Some others are simply unbearable to my ears (and I mean, like "driving me out of the premise" or "immediately switch off" unbearable).
Fourth, my post about "there was less rap" was also a complaint about quantity, not just quality. Rap has just taken a lot of space in the music world.

 

[Lexicus]

I think you can make a pretty strong case that the Stones are better than the Beatles

Absolutely you can not. The Stones are mediocre at best, and stole everything they had from more-talented black artists at worst. That is not true of the Beatles.

 

[Hygro]

Lullabies that persist are sublime.

Yes, agreed. Very agreed.

I'm not, and would not, denigrate simple music. Merely that we would never say something is bad music because a kid didn't like it. Similarly, an adult who didn't grow that branch of sophistication is definitely not an arbiter of taste.

I'm just struggling to understand what is meant by "innovation" as a measurable quality. Is adding amplification to Delta blues standards innovation? Is refining the amplification into a distinctive genre innovation? Is white guys doing that genre innovation? Is white guys fusing it with other appropriated genres (like Skiffle) innovation? Or is it just techniques? Is it slap, or the Hendrix thumb-over chord shape? Is it theoretical developments? Like tracking changes to modal progressions rather than chord progressions? Is it technological? Like Van Gelder's refinement of recording equipment and arrangement? The development of looping and sampling e.g. with the Beatles and Miles Davis? The layering of loops and samples that happened in the 80s and 90s in hip-hop?

Like thinking about this in terms of jazz is so funny to me, because a lot of the things that I would consider genuinely innovative like the Bird changes, or the development of free jazz or fusion were very self-consciously efforts to return jazz to its roots, while completely novel developments, like third stream wound up as genre cul-de-sacs.

I mean, yes to all of it, it's all innovation.

I've done a few real real deep dives into music innovation. The most important for me was my dive into synth music since there's basically a dividing line, the voltage controlled filter. Like all genres, it's a story of small steps. Any singular genius who changed everything pretty much changed one or two things (the Beatles, maybe 3 or 4), and what made them genius was a combination of iteration and really really well done execution of that iteration with the existing tropes they also brought with them.

That's fair. Like everyone, I'm stuck in my past. But I listen to a specific ratio of 'live' albums vs. studio albums. There will always be literally more music available as time goes on, so figuring out how to measure the spread of "what we like" is going to be tough. I'll grant that preferring a mix of two completely different albums is going to be 'more diverse' than preferring a mix of studio and live albums. But the same artists are literally putting out different music in a live album vs. the studio album, even if the difference is subtle, it was enough to purchase.

I agree listening to those kinds of differences is quite rewarding. It's a narrower but similar to favoring a genre. An effort to an idea made closer by its varied attempts.

 

[Lexicus]

Do we think that the people who were influenced by that rap created a better community than the people who were influenced by earlier music but will also out-perform the 'kids these days' that will eventually be the dominant influence in their communities? It will (in history) be a shining moment when the culture started to improve but then degraded?

I'd credit rap music with allowing me to be way less racist than I otherwise would have been given my upbringing and millieu

 

[Hygro]

I would somehow agree with some underlying idea here (that it's good to expand your horizons to appreciate things). That's not really a groundbreaking nor a very original statement though, and that's even quite a bit trite. You might also have wanted to get a bit more context before trying to give some misplaced lecture.

First, just so you know, my favourite genre today is very much an acquired taste that I disliked when I was younger, so I'm afraid I was already pretty acquainted with your revelation.
Second, people have their own preferences, which don't necessarily change (I hated the "grunt" part of metal when I was younged and disliked metal overall, I still hate the "grunt" part of metal even now that it's become my favourite genre). I'm not going to inflict myself years of listening to things I dislike just because someone was trying to teach me the basics on a forum.
Third, I actually enjoy some select part of rap (typically, I'm a big fan of ERB and I quite like some guys like Stupendium). Some others are simply unbearable to my ears (and I mean, like "driving me out of the premise" or "immediately switch off" unbearable).
Fourth, my post about "there was less rap" was also a complaint about quantity, not just quality. Rap has just taken a lot of space in the music world.

I like that you understand the idea and have personal familiarity with its value but with all due respect, from a conversation that started with "too much rap these days", originality was never. It's funny because my original writing of the post included when I had my "revelation", but it was in 2003. I would definitely know what I said isn't groundbreaking as I've been saying it here about as long as I've been here. . . but I never pretended it to be, so this is a good moment to reflect on the difference between what was said and what was triggered internally.

Why, psychologically, did you think it was important to attack a perception that I think I'm being original in saying life is better acquiring the tastes required to fully enjoy your environment? And as you say, it is the environment, rap certainly has taken a lot of space in the music world, as well as from cars down the street, bars, movies, etc.

You don't have to answer, though you are welcome to.