pop music DOES all sound the same

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 12:41 PM

Counter to prevailing popular misconcetions..

Over the last decade a growing and profitable trend in the music equipment industry,
is development of increasingly advanced and affordable technology
enabling electric guitarist to achieve desired optimum tone and dynamics
at the lowest possible volume...

Arguably even quieter than banjos and some acoustic guitars...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 12:43 PM

"I understand that the production of such "music" usually starts with a "rhythm track" to which other layers are added."

Sort of how baroque music is made then...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 03:08 PM

I understand that the production of such "music" usually starts with a "rhythm track" to which other layers are added.
Sort of how baroque music is made then...

There is a really good book of Renaissance and Baroque bass lines you can use to emulate Tin Pan Alley hacks like Monteverdi, Purcell and Bach - Martin Erhardt's "Upon a Ground". I'm slowly working my way through it using the a=415 version of the backing CD.

An unvarying basic rhythmic pattern is also common to the Middle Eastern art music I play every week - usul in Turkish, iqa' in Arabic.

Some of these grumpy-old-man comments remind of an anecdote from a rural autobiography where the writer described talking to an old farmworker who was complaining that you didn't hear birds singing any more. There was a lark swooping and twittering directly over his head throughout the conversation but he was too deaf to notice.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 07:54 PM

All folk music is the same because they all sing down their noses with their fingers in their ears. All pop music is the same because they all sing with a mid-Atlantic accent. Just thought I'd mention it. And I should say that I don't believe a bloody word of it. Know why? Because, in my long and misspent life (pass the bloody corkscrew...), I've listened to both and discovered total shite and total nirvana in both. But at least I've listened.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 02:38 AM

Me: "I understand that the production of such "music" usually starts with a "rhythm track" to which other layers are added."

Steve Shaw: "Sort of how baroque music is made then... "

Perhaps, but baroque music and many other genres have plenty of melody and harmony. Pop music (of the sort that I'm referring to) is built on a foundation of percussion.

My dislike of excessive percussion goes all the way back to early years at school, when the music teacher would play something on the piano and a whole class of kids would be bashing drums, tambourines or whatever. A good solo fiddler can produce a driving danceable rhythm with no need for percussion, bass or any "rhythm section" whatsoever.

The pop music (of the sort that I'm referring to) also usually has a heavy off beat. Syncopation as one ingredient of a complex structure is fine and dandy. Syncopation as the fundamental basis of the music is tedious.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 03:40 AM

Amen to richard's last sentence as loud as anyone cares to trumpet it from the rooftops
My music is largely (but not by any means entirely) traditional
The non- folk music I like is largely that which requires individual skill, dexterity, variation and constant re-creativity
Today's pop music appears to be based on blanketed group sound - in the the vocal music, the words have become little more than repetitively meaningless appendages to the instrumentation
That's fine if you want to use it as a background (assuming that this is the kind of background that appeals to you) but the extreme volume that seems to be the norm excludes it from being any background I want in my life
I listened to a lot of pop music when I was young, but it was music I had to stop and listen to to fully appreciate
I still listen to the greats of popular music but nowadays they are the ones that came before I was interests - Ella, Billie Frank Sinatra... pre war giants
I've re-tried the ones I went out to buy, The Crickets, The Everly Brothers, Connie Francis... but find they have paled and become part of a past I used to occupy
The big leap forward when popular pop lost its tweeness and got some guts and provided excitment - little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis.... lasted for a time, but faded from lack of inventiveness and folk provided the stimulant and the opportunity to participate I needed to make music a part of my life
That's still here (as is much of the jazz I love)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 04:11 AM

"Amen to Richard's last sentence" - but you love jazz...?

Just listening to "Girl On Fire" by Alicia Keys on Desert Island Discs. Brilliant song, great vocal, smashing arrangement. One of the songs I did for the dance teacher. I love it!

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: JHW
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 05:47 AM

Just goes to show; I was listening to that D.I.D but when that track came on and the soap opera style tumbling drums came in the radio went off.
We all like different stuff, fine.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 06:26 AM

Don't know her Steve, but I'll try to get to (not in the Biblical sense of course)
My problem with many recommendations is that I feel it takes time to get to appreciate a singer fully - a single song seldom does that for me
Thanks
Jim

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 07:35 AM

"Syncopation as the fundamental basis of the music is tedious."

Any Brazilian mudcatters care to comment...

What.. there aren't any..??

They'd likely dismiss Northern hemisphere folk music
as too deadly dull, impotent, and rhythmically unsophisticated for them...???

They probably think it's music for grumpy old men to sit down and grow fat and lethargic to...??????

Crikey.. a lot of folks sure do get the wrong ideas about other folk's favourite kinds of music...

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 09:14 AM

My take on the 'long coach journey' bit - is not a long coach journey, it was the middle of the night on Moniaive festival campsite, a few years back. Unexpectedly overheard stuff, anyway - people sleeping, silence rules, and, out of I-don't-know-where, someone sang "What's going on ?" (Marvin Gaye ? Not my specialist subject). Comments :-

a) it was a wonderful performance. Unaccompanied singing at its best, I was very happy to have heard it.

b) as a clarinettist, I prefer to leave The Words to be someone else's problem, but that is not a bland melody, nor entirely trivial. It works.

c) I have no idea whether the song is to be regarded as Pop Music or not. Or who might wish to do the regarding.


And, since someone mentioned Metallica, I'd like to humbly suggest that their take on Whiskey In The Jar is worth a listen. It gave me the impression that they'd actually thought about the words, which doesn't happen often. Yeah, okay, see b) above, so I'm contradicting myself.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Oct 19 - 03:45 AM

"Any Brazilian mudcatters care to comment..."
All too busy shaving
Jim

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Oct 19 - 08:39 PM

I'm rather fond of Carly Simon, I confess, and would like to suggest a handful of her songs to the "pop is all the same" brigade. "You're So Vain" (obviously), "Anticipation" (my favourite of all), "Nobody Does It Better" (what a belter). Others may wish to add. She's a great singer, the arrangements are brilliant and the songs are as good as pop songs get, which is pretty good. I could go on to James Taylor and Carole King. You'll find variety and lyricism aplenty. My very favourite pop song of all time is Here Comes The Sun by the Beatles. Gentle, lyrical, meaningful, beautifully played and skilfully arranged. Hate it all by all means but diss it not. Somebody out there loves it and hates yours, and who's to say who has dominion? By the way, my main listening is to any Mozart and to middle- and late-period Beethoven, Bach, Gershwin, Bernstein, Ravel, Schumann, Manuel de Falla (Three-cornered Hat: wonderful), Albéniz, Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky and Sibelius and mo'. But I can't be a snob because I like some pop. I've even been known to indulge in playing and listening to traditional music. I'd far sooner play it than listen to it...

One of the greatest pianists and conductors of the 20th century, Vladimir Ashkenazy, said that music was a complete mystery to him. That's a lovely idea that I keep with me. It helps in keeping the mind open, I find.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,Starship
Date: 05 Oct 19 - 10:04 PM

"And, since someone mentioned Metallica, I'd like to humbly suggest that their take on Whiskey In The Jar is worth a listen. It gave me the impression that they'd actually thought about the words, which doesn't happen often."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boanuwUMNNQ&list=RDboanuwUMNNQ&start_radio=1

That take is heavily influenced by Thin Lizzy's 1973 rendition, imo. If Thin Lizzy gets an 8, Metalica doesn't deserve more than a 5. YMMV.

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Oct 19 - 05:32 AM

MM doesn't V. I fully agree!

Subject: RE: pop music DOES all sound the same
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 06 Oct 19 - 08:37 AM

I am also a "fan" of Carly Simon. She is very much under rated both as a performer and a as a songwriter. Two of My favourites are Boys In the Trees (the song, not the album) and Julie Through The Glass. Beautifully sung and lyrically   lovely.