I was inspired to ask this question after Bob the jazzmammal pointed to dubstep
The new music - do you like it, hate it - or feel it's not 'music' ? Just curious how a group of jazz musicians from a previous generation feels about the most-viewed youtube video in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYPvAMrMzwII'd be interested in knowing if you've never seen the video at all, and either way - what was your first impression of it.
Let me share that - for me, there is music that entertains in the absence of video and stage performance, music that depends (along a continuum, of course) on video and stage performance, and both types fall under the category of "Art" - what's your take on this opinion of mine ?
Couldn't take more'n the first few beats o' that. The nearfields pret' near jumped offa their stands here <grin>,
Myself, I find most Techno or Euro offerings to be too simple for my tastes, of course. But that dos not preclude me from occasionally listening and finding out what they're doing.
I do try to listen to just about everything, at least as far as being able to keep up with things goes. If I like it, I'll do what I and most other serious practitioners of the musical arts these days are likely to do. I'll steal it. What I mean by that is that it will get placed into the practice regimen and parts of it may indeed appear in my live gigs or in my songwriting, or perhaps found useful as in influence in improvisational soloing.
Always in search of the popular vernacular hooks, themes, riffs, etc. and I do try to incorporate as much as I can that will work and sound good into those moments in a solo where you "quote" such.
While others knock today's Nashville offerings for various reasons, I listen to those as well, and I've come to the conclusion that they are representative of some of the cleanest studio work to be found. The Audio Quality that comes out of Nashville is simply state of the art. Never mind if the genre is or is not "real country music". ALL musics that are made by live human beings will grow, change, or go the way of the dodo.
Quote:
"Keep listening. Never become so self-important that you can't listen to other players. Live cleanly....Do right....You can improve as a player by improving as a person. It's a duty we owe to ourselves." --John Coltrane
"You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything." --Branford Marsalis
Bird quoted so-called "hillbilly music" (later to be renamed "country western") in some of his famous bebop solos.
Diz quoted some of the Classics, such as the use of Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite hook. In Bebop and Modern Jazz solos.
Heck. While most Rap is not my cuppa tea, I will listen to it. And, if I find some little thing in there that I can take away and use to communicate with my audience, maybe for just the fact that a particular audience may identify well with same -- I will use it.
"The more you know..."
--Mac
Personally I don’t rate genres of music as like or dislike. I do that for individual songs. I will however listen to all styles and like Mac take what I like from them for my own use/ideas.
I did like this song. I especially liked the synth work in it. The song is a little redundant but that is quite common in pop music regardless of the generation.
One thing Joe, don’t generalize that we are all “a group of jazz musicians from a previous generation”. I started at a rocker playing 50’s through 70’s music. I swung over the wedding band scene because I had a family and didn’t want to tour and because the money was really good. Much better than playing in bars! I have always liked jazz and rock but we didn’t play a lot of jazz at weddings, with the exception of some of the jazz standards like Misty and Stardust.
,
You might as well ask "How old are you?"
Kids today listen to music that seems calculated to push me over the edge. I lived through Disco, and Punk and Hip Hop and Rap, each of which was as roundly denounced by the previous wave as the latest new thing is today.
My parents denounced Rock and Roll, Motown and the Beatles. They were sure these were the end not only of music as we know it, but civilization as we know it. It was all about drugs, sex and 'those people,' don't you know. My grandparents denounced my mother's idols - Pine Top Smith, Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong, and for the same reasons: it was all about drugs, sex and 'those people.'
And through it all a single refrain rings out over and over: "That's not music - that's noise."
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Here are some contemporary critiques of a well-know musician. Care to guess who?
"[His Music} is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding..."
"mere fetishism...insufferably long-winded...dull and ugly…stupid and hopelessly vulgar music!...unspeakable cheapness..."
"sounds to me like the upsettings of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer."
"a raw and undigested mass!"
"eccentric without being amusing; and laborious without effect."
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There is plenty of music on the air today that will drive me out of the room, but "Gangnam Style" is not such a piece. It has a nice catchy beat and is eminently danceable. Its creator has said that it is nothing more than a dance tune. I say that, as dance music, it succeeds admirably.
He looks like the guy standing next to Ryan Seacrest on the New Year's Eve show, right? I wondered why he was famous. [The guy in the OP video, not Mozart...]
If I have to listen to Dubstep, I prefer this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf6LD2B_kDQ&list=PL5DF6078ABC09FBCD&index=1or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation...p;v=aHjpOzsQ9YI
Quote:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here are some contemporary critiques of a well-know musician. Care to guess who?
"[His Music} is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, that refuses to expire, and though bleeding..."
"mere fetishism...insufferably long-winded...dull and ugly…stupid and hopelessly vulgar music!...unspeakable cheapness..."
"sounds to me like the upsettings of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer."
"a raw and undigested mass!"
"eccentric without being amusing; and laborious without effect."
Sounds remarkably close to some of the newspaper reviews I've read about my own performances...
Then again, Autotune may also be changing what we listen to as music:
"Ain't Nobody Got Time for Dat" This one's catchy. The music starts in the middle.
--Mac
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Close. They were talking about Beethoven.
Heyyyyyyyy....Macarena...
There's always songs like this. They all suck. When Grandma starts doing the Gangnam style dance, you can book it as OVER.
"Personally I don’t rate genres of music as like or dislike. I do that for individual songs. I will however listen to all styles and like Mac take what I like from them for my own use/ideas."
Me too.
For me, the video is a huge part of Gangnam success. It's got wry humor, keeps moving to keep it interesting and really props the song. I'll never know if I'd have liked this song as well if I'd only heard it first.
I do like lots of today's songs in many different genres.
I like me a little bit of everything. Just heard a little bit of the Blue Danube waltz on a TV show and it reminded me how much I hate that song. Talk about inanely irritating repetition, that one does it for me.
Matt's first video was the artist where she did a different tune in the ice caves. I think that was the video where someone in the thread with that video (perhaps it was me) introduced the forumites to the word 'dubstep', which today's form really doesn't match previously done music labeled as such.
Common elements in what is now called dubstep are long triplets over 4/4 time with some of the instrumentation, as well as synchronized filtering on synths to give what they call 'bass wobble'. Such was not necessarily elemental a few years ago.
Anyways, listen and build on it. Keep the good, eliminate the bad.
Here's one guy that's glad that Frankie Valli didn't 'stick'. You can point at crap all through the ages. How about that 'Bird is the Word' song? Catchy, but inanely irritating.
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For me, the video is a huge part of Gangnam success. It's got wry humor, keeps moving to keep it interesting and really props the song. I'll never know if I'd have liked this song as well if I'd only heard it first.
...funny Josie - of all the comments, yours is the first to state what I thought would be at the top of everyone's list - that video just cracks me up - especially the over-the-top horsie dance. I guess everyone has a different sense of humor - not that the beat and theme isn't catchy also. And the pretty girls never seem to hurt video success either. And I'm positive I wouldn't like the song as much without the accompanying video. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts - and music is often as much about entertainment and fun as it is about interesting harmonic and rhythmic sounds that vibrate your eardrums.
What I hear mostly in this style of music is the beat and it automatially suggests "motion" to me. While I see it as appealing to the younger crowd that are able to participate in this physical type music it pretty much leaves those of us that can no longer take the strain of that much physicality out of the picture. Like TV, music is casting it's net for the younger generation and while I suppose that is where the $$$ are for the music industry as a whole, I still long for the emotional experience that beautiful melodies and well written lyrics sung by artists with magnificent voices as well as danceable music played by supberb orchestras that swept one off their feet almost magically. I can't imagine that there will be too many couples that will look lovingly at one another and remember this as "their song" even if it survives on the charts for many weeks and makes millions for it's producers. Most of the recordings being made today are so transient, here today and gone tomorrow and no one will even remember it a year from today.
With the proper promotion by the recoding industry it will have made millions for the companies whether it is good music or not and that is all that really matters now.
for me "there is a time for every purpose under heaven"
I don't eat the same kind of food for breakfast as I do for dinner
I don't wear the same clothes to a party that I wear to work.
And I wouldn't play the same music at a restaurant gig that I would play in a a dance club
Tunes like this are hard to beat for today's dancing, it is their place in the musical order. If I were playing dance clubs, this is the first song I would learn
A related, but different, question to ask is this: "does a musician have to like the songs he plays to please his audience?". Please, don't follow up with replies, as that question has no "right" answer, and the personal opinion is a over the place.
As part of the Over The Hill gang it reminds me a lot of an ancient musical form known as "Disco"
Either loved or despised when introduced it had it's place on the dance floor.
As one of it's loudest critics when it was all the rage,I was either into Rock or Country, I have to smile when I find myself tapping my feet and even singing along when an oldie (Donna Summers, Bee Gees etc)pops up.
Only wish I could dance like that again:)
As stated by others, same stuff, different name, technology and time.
Carkins
I'm pretty open to all kinds of music, if done well.
Ran across this guy on SoundClick... now THIS is Hip Hop/Rap, I can listen to. Not a single nasty word in this tune. It kinda grew on me.
http://therealpress.bandcamp.com/track/not-for-yallCheers,
Mike
I am reserving my opinion. So far, it hasn't moved me. Perhaps I need more exposure that I probably won't get because it doesn't "draw" me back to acclimatize myself to it.
Quote:
Then again, Autotune may also be changing what we listen to as music:
"Ain't Nobody Got Time for Dat"
This one's catchy. The music starts in the middle.
--Mac
Mac, that's fabulous! It was just over 1,000,000 views yesterday, now its over 10,000,000! I liked where they split screen and she started harmonizing with herself. Very well done.
I never heard of dubstep until Scott I think posted something about it months ago. To show what some kids are doing with it, I found one video of an alto player doing Take 5 as dubstep. On the one hand it was absolutely terrible, it bordered on some of the worst crap I've ever heard yet on the other hand the kid was really creative. First, he's a real player I could hear that in 5 seconds. The kid can play his horn. Second he has one of those big square controllers with about 16 or 20 lighted pads and he had them all programmed to do different things with Abelton Live. That controller was as much an instrument as his horn was. Between playing phrases on the horn, he's punching those pads and doing all kinds of very crazy things with Live. It was fascinating to watch even though it was really hurting my ears even at low volume. I mean, the screeching, the wobble bass, tons of very irritating synth stuff floating in and out etc. But yet, I grudgingly admit, very creative use of technology. I didn't save that video, if someone wants to see it you can probably find it on Youtube by doing a keyword search.
This vid is an example of folks like us not being qualified to even judge if that's good dubstep or not. For all I know those fans loved it. Or not, they might say it was very amateurish, how can we judge something like that?
Bob
On the other hand, there is nothing inherently wrong in discerning those things that we like or dislike, is there?
I don't like to use the word, "judging" -- which takes on a different aspect that I don't think is ours to do, anyway.
Discernment, on the other hand, is one of the gifts.
But then, I still enjoy reading Churchill. Talk about mastery of the English language.
--Mac
That not only was fantastic but it also shows what can be done with the right software! She wasn’t even singing and she sounded better than Taylor Swift
Run ducking for cover
All I can say is that cute little fiddle player can dubstep on my lawn anyday!
Later,