PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Old music is killing new music…

I think you can read one article w/o a subscription.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/

The situation with contemporary “serious” (AKA “classical”) music is perhaps the most depressing of all. Most people don’t even know such music exists. Imagine trying to make a living writing new orchestral music when all anyone wants to hear is Pachabel’s Canon or Beethoven’s 5th.

Well of course it is. Our music from back in the day was and is soooooo much better than this tripe they call music these days.

I think there are only two types of music, songs that I like, and songs for others. I tend to like a lot of old and new music, and I don't care for a lot of old and new music. If it moves me, I like it, no matter what genre and vica versa.

I think there are a few problems with new music. This is only thinking out loud, and not the result of any scientific study, so I could be totally wrong.

1) A lot of new music is bad. Endless repetitious loops and someone reciting poetry on top. After a while we have heard it all in the lyrics, and without a melody, it just gets boring. Where do you go after W.A.P.???

2) Video. It seems that soft-core pornography is more important than musical content. I've nothing against pornography, but the videos sell the bodies, and too many of the songs aren't worth repeating.

3) Music has spread into too many genres. From Sinatra to Elvis to The Beatles there was one Top40 station that virtually every young person listened too. Everyone may have not liked Sinatra, Elvis, The Beatles and their contemporaries, but everyone knew the songs, and they identified the generation.

Then Disco, Pop (M. Jackson), Rock, and Metal split the audience. Everybody listened to their own station (feed)

Now we have some listening to EDM, others Rap, Alternative, EMO, and dozens of other genres. Not every young person has heard the latest Minaj, Sheeran, Bloodywood, Adele, Doja, NasX, Ye, Metallica or whatever release and has heard them often enough to be familiar with them.

So the songs of the day do not define a generation. The songs today each define a fraction of a generation.

4) The big labels bought up all the indie labels and made it hard for new innovation to occur. Young folks want new, and rap has been around so long that the early rappers can collect social security now.

5) Music is not as important to the younger folks. With the Internet and computers in your pocket, there are more diverse ways to entertain yourself than the latest hit songs. There are dozens of social media sites, and many more kinds of entertainment that the older generation never had.

So the older generations still relate to the "Music of their lives" while the young folks couldn't care less.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good music songs and artists out there, and when I was young, there were plenty of bad songs and artists out there.

Again, this is just thinking out loud. I could be wrong, and I could be missing a giant piece of the puzzle, but it's good discussion fodder anyway.

Insights and incites by Notes

I dearly love Classical music, mostly from the Romantic to the contemporary eras, but not all of it. There are symphonies that I could take to the 'desert island', and there are some that I simply don't care for. It's not a judgement of good or bad, just what rings my bells.

I tend to prefer the dark brooding minor key symphonies like those of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Dvorak, Suk, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, more than others. Mozart was a genius, but his music bores me. It's still great music though. My favorite Beethoven symphonies are 4 and 7, the 5th has a great first movement then pedestrian, and I really don't care for #9. Like I said, not a judgement, just me, and I really don't know why some hit me and others don't.

Notes ♫

Most (if not ALL) of the the-old-music-was-so-much-better diatribes come from people who never listen to anything new. Or listen to what is on a limited radio playlist for about 3 minutes (and then make their pronouncements).

There is a LOT of very good music being produced today. A lot. And a good amount of it sounds similar to stuff done "in the good old days". There is also a lot of new, innovative sounds being created.

But you have to actually be listening to it to find it...

as I said in the lyrics of one of my songs.... "You can find it in the honkey tonks and internet downloads" Yeah, there's good music being written and recorded.... but you have to go looking for it because it sure isn't pouring out of the radio these days. I think we can all agree on that.

Like Notes there are only two types of songs, ones that I like and ones that I don't like.

I do agree with Notes on most all of his post. I will add that the cutting of music in elementary and high schools has a lot to do with kids not involved in music. When I was in school music classes were the classes a lot of students looked forward to attending, even though it taught discipline! In our little town of around 5K there was three different bands competing for school dances. We would all get together to jam, many times bringing our marching or orchestra instruments along with our guitars, basses keyboards, and drums. That does not happen today.

The lack of music in schools also has a major affect on the lack of discipline today. I have seen that in many of my guitar and bass students. It is much easier to play a video game then to practice an instrument. As always the path of least resistance.

One last thing is that back in the 50s, 60s and 70s one could listen to any genre of music on the radio, from classical to jazz to country, etc. Not so today, at least not in the same amount around here. I can listen to a radio station while driving, drive5K miles, and here the same music with the same MC with the only different being the local commercials.

Sorry about the rant.

Or they have a memory of some long-ago disliked song that can serve as a permanent basis for dismissing vast swaths of culture. I hear there is a man in Belmont, Massachusetts who has successfully hated hip-hop for over 30 years now, based on that one time somebody made him listen to “Me So Horny”.

Thanks for that link, interesting stuff.

Side note: I remember from the 90's when online dating was just getting started, it was very common to describe one's musical tastes as follows:


I just did an online search for those exact words, and apparently this really is a trope in my culture to this very day: the Openminded Listener Who Loves ALL Music (Except Country And Rap).

Agreed
I wrote an essay for college years ago and the purpose was to explain something to someone.
I wrote about being a musician(of course).
You are reading something in a foreign language (notation)
You are doing math on the fly (1/8 note 1/16 note 4/4, 7/4 etc)
At the same time you are listening to those around you so you fit in (cooperative)
On top of that you have your own inflections to bring into the performance (again in real time)
.. oh and you have to be able to do that and think about the next note before it is too late ..

It teaches discipline, teamwork, math, language, multitasking and self expression in one class while the students enjoy it.

Also studies have shown music students actually do have an advantage in many real life situations and perform better in school

/my parents owned a music store so they were prone to know such things
//they actually spoke to congress a couple times many years ago trying to keep music in school
///worked for while, and it is still an optional class in MI, FWIW

It taught me how to live on no money...that was truly an advantage later in life.

When you went to college Harv, what was it, a 4 room schoolhouse?

(On topic portion is bolded.)

The perspective here is many sided. Kids listen to what their parents listened to until an age that they were able to start forming opinions, tastes, likes and dislikes... Also remember that everybody has "old" music in their life. For the bulk of us here that would be Beatles era. It is also geographical. I had no idea who Hank Williams and Bob Wills were until my 30s. Country music was simply not in our house. Early life I heard polka and waltz. Then big band (which I live to this day. Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Les Brown, Glenn Miller...). That got me into big band jazz with a be-bop flavors, which of course leads to Parker, Dizzy... and then Miles Davis. And so forth.

Grade school years tend to see you in school with kids from the same neighborhood. In those years (the 50s for me) people lived with "their own kind", so everybody I knew was some kind of European flavor.

Before I went into the service, I didn't know I had an accent. I met soldiers from Virginia, Texas, the Southeast states and always thought "Man you talk funny" until I asked a guy from Alabama "Do I have an accent to you?" When I was stationed in Oklahoma for my last 10 months of duty my country music education began, and I LOVED it! There was a club in Lawton that had nothing but country bands, and I was there 4 nights a week. Now, just shy of 50 years later, I can appreciate the "old country vs new country" debate.

I can share this quick story too. In 2010, here in Ohio, I met a beautiful and extremely talented woman named Rachel Brown. She played in a band that was classified as Americana but her love was country. In fact she does a Patsy Cline tribute now as one of her acts. I learned about country and folk songwriters from her. For example, I had no clue who Townes Van Zandt was. I knew my Motown (Berry Gordy. Smokey! Yes!) and big band writers (Cole Porter! Yes!) but that deep down country and roots music was foreign to me. We hung out a lot for about 4 years until we had a falling out and parted ways, but that education was of more value than I can say.

So in my 70 year old mind and ears, yes "old" music is much better. The vulgarity, racism, sexism and overt anger in rap music has no value to me, with lyrics containing the same racial term that white people get shot over.

So here's a question to "rap" this post up. What do you remember as the first song that was any kind of rap? The first I can remember was Frank Zappa doing Dinah Moe Humm on the Overnite Sensation album. There was also spoken verse in I'm The Slime. That would be 1973. (I have SO much of his work!) I also consider that Zappa was a pioneer of Art Rock with those CRAZY arrangements he wrote that almost nobody could play.

(emphasis added)

A description like this is enough to hook me and have me saving that list to explore. Of most I know something, of Borodin and Suk I know nothing. Thanks.

Yet Zappa found guys that could play those songs .. and guess what, they were music students
/citation needed?; Mothers of Invention and Greggery Peccary
<grin>

If you haven't listened to Greggery Peccary it'll be an interesting half hour at the very least
It is both classical and classic Zappa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aymj5wcIhiY
He was one of the very few musicians in our lifetime that ventured into writing this kind of stuff
I miss him

In my above post I forgot to mention coordination (playing the right note at the right time) and theory (knowing what you should and shouldn't do, ahead of time, and deciding whether to do it) as other advantages of teaching music in school .. I'm sure I missed other aspects as well

In the last Zappa movie there's a scene of Ruth Underwood playing "The Black Page" on piano, with great hand closeups. It's totally riveting.

(edit: found it: https://www.facebook.com/guyalain62/videos/ruth-underwood-the-black-page-performance-clip/828003771371980/)

Do musicians actually speak with dread of being faced with "the black page" in the studio?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Page

For me it's more anticipation and excitement than dread
It takes work, but otherwise it would boring
I mean you do get a few seconds of Hancock's Chameleon to regain composure

I am eternally thankful for the first music teacher I had who, despite my young age (less than 5) beat theory into my head with a bowling pin. I was not allowed to touch a piano until I knew that the bottom line was an E and was able to point to it on my plastic keyboard mockup. And what ♪ and ♫ meant. He only took me 2 deep around the circle of 5ths to start, so 2 sharps and 2 flats, but the rest came later. Then theory classes in college picked up with the stuff like tonic, supertonic, mediant, sub dominant, dominant, submediant, subtonic, leading tone, modes, all of that stuff I know how to use but barely remember. Vary seldom does Ionian vs Aeolian mode come up at rehearsal with players who learn by copying CD tracks.

So the sub topic here could be how "the start button" is ruining music.

I was in a music class later on when I went back for my IT degree and needed hours to get full financial aid. I was in a music appreciation class and some 19 year old turned in a song he "wrote". When it was done the prof commended him. I asked him "Those are great sounds. What keyboard is that?" He said (without knowing he was being setup) "That's a Yamaha DX7." I smiled my sweetest smile and said "Yeah. I know. I have one and that's the factory demo song that comes in the keyboard. To quote Was... Not Was from their Born To Laugh At Tornadoes album, "Needless to say, the party broke up."

Of course Rick B has some thoughts on this

Slightly straying from topic, but asking for opinions more than anything.

Would you put Zappa in the category of prog, or do you consider him (as I do) to be BEYOND prog? I think Yes, Rush, Floyd when I hear the label "prog". Zappa was so far off the beaten path I always thought he WAS a category.