[Formerly BS:] Musical snobbery

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,guestlexic
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 02:26 PM

Some raps alright!.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFBoeZm7-u4 great thread/read btw

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Stringsinger
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 06:57 PM

I think that the element that guards against the exclusive attitude of snobbery in music is the willingness to investigate the various musical forms. Each form and style has within it, its own value system and expertise that can't be compared with other forms successfully. Oranges and apples.

You don't have to like certain forms of music to understand and perhaps appreciate what it is that they offer. I don't like Schoenberg but I appreciate that he was a great musician and disciplined artist.

I'm not crazy about rap either but I see a kind of value in its story-telling approach to reflect on urban African-American life.

Hard rock and metal require a certain willingness to set aside personal likes and dislikes to understand the kind of musical approach of a Jimmy Page, for example.

The most identifying feature of a musician in my opinion is an open mind toward investigating all kinds of music and seeing how the styles interact with each other.

I'm no David Bowie fan but I absolutely love what Esperanza Spalding does with his music.

I'm no Dylan fan either but I enjoy others renditions of some of his songs.

Musical snobbery is a dead-end street. Musical preference is understandable and personal. The music itself has its own world and if you don't like it, fine, but you might make an effort to understand it.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 07:39 PM

Stringsinger puts it where it is. I agree all the way.

Just because I may not like something doesn't mean it doesn't have value to someone else. If it didn't, it wouldn't be there. If I don't like something, it simply means that I don't like it. Maybe that's my loss,

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 09:17 PM

Others may like today's pop but it's a slippery slope. Those others might be 12 yo who have no knowledge of or affinity to music. They buy it because it speaks to their pubescent angst (first kiss, dating scene, current fashions, etc) and often buy simply because other kids are. They could care less if the music is any good and, in fact, wouldn't know the difference. In truth, if the music was actually progressive, they wouldn't like it. Part of the appeal is that it is simplistic enough for them to understand.

That's fine except if that's lopsidedly where all the money is in the recording industry then all the other artists find themselves needing to appeal to it to have careers. This has been the trend for a few decades now and it is getting worse.

"Since the '50s, there has been a decrease not only in the diversity of chords in a given song, but also in the number of novel transitions, or musical pathways, between them. In other words, while it's true that pop songs have always been far more limited in their harmonic vocabularies than, say, a classical symphony … past decades saw more inventive ways of linking their harmonies together than we hear now. It's the difference between Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" (2012), which contains four simple chords presented one after another almost as blocks, and Alex North's "Unchained Melody" (1955), which, though also relatively harmonically simple (it employs about six or seven chords, depending on the version), transitions smoothly from chord to chord due to more subtle orchestration."
--J. Bryan Lowder

You take a song like "I Can't Get Started With You" from 1936. It is written in a I-vi-ii-V7 scheme. It was done by countless jazz bands and singers--Anita O'Day, Bunny Berrigan, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, etc. By the 50s, it had helped to give birth to doo-wop. How? Because doo-wop is very often I-vi-ii-V7.

Here's how to play "I Can't Get Started" barebones with your guitar:

Playing in C major in 4/4 time, play in the first bar Cmaj7 and Amin7. Then in the second bar play Dmin7 and G7. Third bar: E7, Amin7. Fourth bar: D7, G7sus. Fifth bar: Cmaj7, Amin7. Sixth bar: Dmin7, G7 with a flatted 9th. At this point, you hit a two-bar turnaround and go back to the first bar and repeat up to the sixth bar again.

Notice CADG--I-vi-ii-V. That's the same scheme used in so many doo-wops. But notice that in the third bar, we use an E7 rather than Cmaj7. Isn't E a iii in the scale of C and shouldn't it then be minor? No. E7 is used as a substitute for Cmaj7 and is technically still I in the scale. It throws a variation into the scheme so it doesn't become monotonous. In fact, I-vi is just an alternate ii-V. Doo-wop plays with that scheme in endless variations which is why it is so harmonically rich with only 4 voices.

Most pop songs since the 50s have opted for simple ii-V7 songs. A repeating bar rather than repeating every two bars. I think that's why Gene Vincent started combining rockabilly with doo-wop--it gave the rockabilly more variation and harmonic content. Just a small change in one chord would change the way the song sounded.

This is long gone in pop music today. So while we can say it still has value, we do have to concede that there has been some degeneration because all the artists that want to be big sellers have to "dumb down" their music for the sake of money/sales/profits. That does hurt us culturally speaking.

Someone mentioned Esperanza Spalding. She used to be jazz. Her first two releases were utterly brilliant. Her next two are not even jazz. She started turning into a pop diva. They want her to sing more and play less. Her bass lines have appropriately simplified. On her 4th CD, "Radio Music Society" her basslines can be played by anyone with two years of decent instruction. A far cry from the amazing basslines she was chunking off on those first two CDs that totally blew me away. It has made her a commercial success but at the sacrifice of her creativity.

Does that make me a snob to say all this? I don't think so but others might.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 08 Feb 13 - 11:28 PM

Actually, the song goes to E7 because it's the dominant chord in the relative minor. There is a D in the melody at that point which isn't in the I. I know this because I have been fooling with the chords to that song for the last 40 years;-)

As for, "dumbing down" and "degeneration", Keep in mind that a lot of today's music is based on minimalism--which is is an aesthetic that repeats simple musical figures, rather that extrapolating from them. If it is dumbing down, it is dumbing down that was inspired by Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, If it's "degeneration", remember that that's what they called Stravinsky.

Given that, if you like melodies, and you like the classical ways of harmonizing them, and if you like the way that the great jazz arrangers managed to interlace melodic ideas with rhythmic ones, a lot of this stuff might not speak to you, and I do understand that. I keep a huge folder full of 78s on my computer for that reason.

Musical tastes change, which could be comforting if you hated disco, but painful if you love the Four Freshman. It may be cold comfort, but all the changes in music are initiated by musicians. Audiences just decide whether they like it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 12:57 AM

Still waiting for them to dumb down to my level.....

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 01:02 AM

"Actually, the song goes to E7 because it's the dominant chord in the relative minor."

Well, yes, because the next chord is A minor. On the circle of fifths, they are next to each other--E and A--and any notes next to each other on the circle are harmonically related. So if you have CADG and want to vary it up, you find another harmonically related note to precede the A. E works because V resolves to I very nicely but E can't be minor because the A is already minor. You're just substituting the E as an alternate I.

"There is a D in the melody at that point which isn't in the I. I know this because I have been fooling with the chords to that song for the last 40 years;-)"

D is ii. What else can it be in the C scale?

"If it is dumbing down, it is dumbing down that was inspired by Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder,"

Minimalism is a Zen concept of less is more. It has nothing to do with stripping things down to make them simple for simple-minded people any more than haiku is meant to be poetry for the mentally retarded. It's taking out the fluff and leaving the essence. Minimalist music and film are incredibly rich and nuanced. A film as "Samsara" is minimalist but is audially and visually far richer than the average Hollywood blockbuster. Below is a trailer:

Samsara trailer

"If it's "degeneration", remember that that's what they called Stravinsky."

When you can prove to me that Katy Perry or Eminem are in any way on the same level as Stravinsky I'll be happy to admit defeat. Well, I won't be happy--I'll be shocked. While you're at it, please prove to me that Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder are minimalists.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 02:44 AM

Eminem has done some decent stuff as have a lot of modern artists,I don't buy it myself but my daughter changed my view on rap.Despite the content and language most these days deliver a positive message.A recent phenomena she pointed out to me was how many of them start out really negative then the better their "product" becomes the more positive it gets,might be a brain thing.Take the fun yt clip I posted above, that boy goes to school with my grandson and has gone from quiet boy to school celeb.This could get him to learn an instrument/mix whatever. What you don't want is someone coming in too soon and showing him all that's wrong with it.Wrong handling or snobbery could push him away from a potential passion/career.As peoples ears are educated their taste changes,stuff I was passionate about in my teens is only of nostalgic value now.
      Just tried to think of a genre/style where I could say yes never heard anything from that sphere that was any good,but I couldn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 09 Feb 13 - 09:03 AM

I don't condemn anyone who listens to rap. I don't like it myself but it's not up to me to decide what people should like. Would it bother me if rap died tomorrow? Only in the sense that I'd have to wait another 24 hours but someday it will die and be replaced with something else. Something better? I wouldn't count on it.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 04:48 AM

Geust DDT: … past decades saw more inventive ways of linking their harmonies together than we hear now. It's the difference between Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" (2012), which contains four simple chords presented one after another almost as blocks, and Alex North's "Unchained Melody" (1955), which, though also relatively harmonically simple (it employs about six or seven chords, depending on the version), transitions smoothly from chord to chord due to more subtle orchestration

That's cherry-picking one way. I could cherry-pick the other way and say that something like "King of The Road" contains only C, F, G7 in very simple progressions whereas Oasis' "Wonderwall" uses C, D, Em, Em7, Dsus4, A7sus4,G, Cadd9, G5, G5/F#/E and Em7/B with much more complex structure.

In general, my memories of late 50s/early 60s pop are that, with a few notable exceptions, it used 3 or 4 chords in very simple progressions.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 09:46 AM

Please don't attribute that quote to me. I clearly marked it as someone else's quote (J. Bryan Lowder) that came from a European study of musical progress over a the period of 1955 to 2010. Instead of cherrypicking, it examined 464,411 songs. The study is nicknamed "The Million Song Dataset."

They found that songs have become both louder and more homogenized. The study found, among other things that "the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."

And it has gotten louder due to over compression, a trick by recording engineers because the louder it is, the newer it sounds. I have CDs that are so over compressed, you have to remember to turn down the speakers or they'll blow you right out of your chair despite the fact that every other CD was of normal volume at that setting. This has become a real problem in the age of digitizing music.

Lowder, editorial assistant for culture at Slate magazine, was simply commenting on the study with his own example or he pulled the example from the study for his own use. That you can find an example that goes against their findings is not surprising since they weren't saying it's true in every single case. They're saying it's a trend and that it is pretty much undeniable when you examine it closely enough and I fully agree. The old farts win. You can google the study on your own.

If you don't like their findings, please take it up with them. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 02:44 PM

Er, I seem to recall that we DID look at that study here a year or two back, and that I was one of the very few (perhaps the only?) contributor to that thread who actually bothered to go and look at where the source material for the "million song database" had come from and how it was put together. I'll see if I can dig it out when I have the time but my memory of the thread is that the way they'd selected songs for inclusion in the database left a lot to be desired....the way they'd structured it was such that it was skewed...so if your sample's skewed, the results are likely to be too.

And I AM an old fart myself....just not one who's mind is still mired in "good ol' days", trying to be *objective* and filtering out the fact that my first instinct is just to recall the good stuff from "back then" while having edited out of my memory the sea of dross it floated in. And realising that today is very little different....some decent stuff plus a lot of manufactured clone-sound.

When I go back and look at the charts of the late 50s and early 60s, I just can't agree with either you or the "study"...the more popular stuff back then, with a very few notable exceptions, was generally very simple, 3 or 4 quite basic chords put together in very predictable ways. Contrast with even fairly simple more modern songs like Cooper Temple Clause's "Who Needs Enemies?" (10 chords, including several flattened "sus2"s and "13"s) and Arcade Fire's "Intervention" which lulls you with its initial Am, F, C and G, then throws in Em and E before adding Bs Ds and Bms towards the end....a very very simple song but the little shifts make it more interesting to listen to as it builds...much more than I can say for the basic repetitive nature of most stuff from the 50s and early 60s:
Intervention Live

I agree entirely about the over-compression. In fact, the trend among the newer generation of sound engineers (and I know half a dozen of them) has been to fight against this over the last 5-6 years....and at last they show signs of being listened to!

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 03:21 PM

I'm not an old fart but I agree with them. "They don't make 'em like that anymore" isn't just nostalgia, it's true.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 10 Feb 13 - 03:34 PM

By the way, I am a recording engineer and have also worked a little as a producer. And I went to school to learn how to do it and my teacher was the guy who mastered all of Motown's hits from '64 to '68 after which he went to work for HDH at Hot Wax. His name is Bob Dennis. You can look him up. I was an "A" student.

Yes, they do over compress these days. Compression is normally for keeping soft and loud passages close together so that when the music gets soft, you still hear it and when it gets loud it doesn't blow your speakers. You have about a 23 dB range to work with (I was also trained on the old standard analog systems--SSL and API--and then attended more classes to learn digital recording later on). Over compressing is done so that the signals can be jacked up louder but there is also less dynamic response because the crests and troughs between the loud and soft signals are far too smooth. So everything sounds more homogenized.

And by the way, I was waiting for you to reject my source. I'll keel over and die the day someone puts forth a source for their info and it gets accepted. It will never happen at Mudcat--hasn't yet and it won't here.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 11 Feb 13 - 06:08 PM

"deeper cultural prejudices".   Whatever you say.

Open mouth. Insert foot.

    Never mind that quite a few black people cannot stand rap--and they tend to be highly educated.    Also never mind that it happens that last night (after a dress rehearsal in the afternoon) I spent rocking out , with lots of gospel music--all memorized-- at an annual celebration of the life of Martin Luther King--with standing ovations interspersed throughout the concert.   And 300 of us, black and white, blew the roof off a sold-out (2,000, I believe) Kennedy Center Concert Hall.   Again.


But, by all means, perhaps the poster would like to tell us more about the emperor's finery.   Did the poster particularly like the doublet and hose?   Or perchance he swooned at the sight of the emperor's robe.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 11 Feb 13 - 09:34 PM

Actually it was African music--we sang in Zulu-- as well as gospel.    Siyahamba and Shoshaloza were two of the African pieces.   And we danced too.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 02:07 PM

In every era there is a disdain for the "new" music..Jazz was "evil"....rock, "evil" or "mundane" or "doggerel" or whatever.

I was never one to be "folkier than thou" because I recognized that cultural patterns in music are attributable to cultures or sub-cultures that are homogeneous to some degree. It's impossible to be a musical snob when you consider that one form of music evolves from another.

But to a significant point for me, music is not an exclusive club. The musicians who make it so limit their artistic options and deny the social aspects of music as being important.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 12 Feb 13 - 10:56 PM

Traditional jazz doesn't make use of the IV of the scale much. It was used as a passing note. A passing note is a kind of bridge note that is used to string notes in a chord when those notes are played sequentially rather than simultaneously. A ii-V7 of, say, D minor 7 and G7 could be played on the bass or the piano left hand as ascending CDEA (1,2,3,5) of C minor 7 and then descending as GFED (8,7,6,5) of G7. The passing note is #2 or D as it is not part of the C minor 7. Then it turns up again on G7 as #5 of which it is part. It is #6 or E that that is passing in G7. Since a chord is 1,3,5 then the passing notes would be 2,4,6.

In bop, however, the 4 was prominent and not just passing. This drove the traditional jazzers crazy. Emphasizing the IV???? Why, that's the end of jazz! The boppers have killed it!! Even now the traditionals and neoclassicists disparage bop and refuse to play it. That's one kind of snobbery.

There is also a cultural snobbery that permeates pop music, one reason I'm not dying to defend it from attack today and often attack it myself. It is a bastion of snobbery that dates back to the 60s when suddenly all forms of music from the previous decades were simply ignored. When I grew up in the 60s, I rarely heard anything from the 50s, most of which was considered a joke. And nothing from the 40s was ever played despite about 90% of America's songbook being songs from the 30s and 40s. Oldies stations specifically advertised themselves as playing music "from the 60s, 70s and 80s."

Not until the advent of satellite radio was 40s and 50s music resurrected. Today's oldies stations play a bit more 50s to compete with satellite but nothing from the 40s. All pop today is descended from the 60s or later and so has that snobbery built into it. It sees itself as all there is. As a result it is a largely degenerate music just as anything with an isolationist policy degenerates. And that is the reason it will not be remembered in 30 years. It's not worth remembering. Just see if I'm wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 06:26 AM

DDT, IMO you're wrong on several counts:

1) "All forms of music from previous decades" just *weren't* ignored from the 60s onwards. There are numerous examples of songs from the 60s to the present days being either remakes/covers of or based on musical styles from previous decades...one that comes straight to mind is Canned Heat's 1967 "Going Up The Country" which was virtually a remake of Henry Thomas's 1927 "Bulldoze Blues". Kitty, Daisy & Lewis also did a cover version in 2008. Same with "Hesitation Blues", originating in the early 1900s, then made popular in the 20s by Art Gillham, recorded by Rev Gary Davis, Janis Joplin in the late 60s and then many others such as Dave van Ronk, Ralph McTell, Taj Mahal and Steely Dan, to name a fraction. ...there are just thousands of examples.

2) And from the above examples it should be obvious that current pop isn't all descended by any means from the 1960s. I could mention The Long Blondes' mid-2000s song "Polly" as a homage to 1950s Doo-Wop, or Boogie-Woogie influences dating back to the 30s in several recent pop songs and recordings.

3) You say it won't be remembered in 30 years? Well there's a huge catalogue of pop from the 60s and 70s that's remembered by, influences and is covered by young musicians today, which is already well over your 30 year remembrance limit.

Your dismissal of all today's pop as degenerate and isolationist is far more snobbish IMO than any (AFAICS non-existent) tendency of pop since the 60s to ignore earlier music. There'll be stuff from the 2000s around and remembered in the 2040s just as there's stuff from both the 60s/70s AND from the 30s/40s influencing today's music.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 12:21 PM

"new music".   If commercial rap were music.   Without melody it's a bit lacking--stretching the point, to say the least, to call it music. And it seems reasonable that you should be able to do it without electronic assistance.   2 serious problems for commercial rap " artists".

Not even going into the usual subject matter, which, among other things, plays into the hands of the NRA.   We have enough glorification of weapons in the US without the assistance of commercial rap "artists".


I believe in 'power to the people'.   One of the things 'the people' can do is make music.   The more you need electronic technology the less you are geting away from music. Somebody who needs a studio to "create" anything is no musician.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 12:26 PM

"The more you need electronic technology, the more you are geting away from music".

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 12:28 PM

"getting"    When will I learn to proofread?    It's amazing how much clearer you can see the words after you post.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 02:11 PM

Snobs????..Naw, just some people have a more refined taste!!!

Example One

Versus

Example Two

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 03:20 PM

OK, that makes it clear. Please put me firmly in the unrefined taste category.    Bobby Vee beats the pants off the pretentious twaddle of Example 2.    He's fun to sing, you don't need the absurd list of electronic enhancements which plague Example 2,--and you don't have to take him seriously.

Sorry but my unrefined taste is also squarely with the Brahms, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky symphonies (all of them), Scheherezade,   the Schubert String Quintet, the Bruch Scottish Fantasy, Tallis, Byrd, etc.   Or maybe they make the cut of being refined--who knows?

The ironic thing is that all the personnel involved in Example 2 seem to have lots of skill. Pity they waste it on the Secret Garden or whatever it was called.   But I suppose it sells--and they were paid for their efforts. The music business is rough.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 04:07 PM

Every genre of music seems to have its own aethetic. Irish session musi, f'rinstance, eschews harmony an counterpoint---which makes it agonizingly dull to my ears. Classically trained singers frequently try folk or pop songs---think of Peter Pears singing Benjamin Britten's settings of English folk songs or Dyer-Bennett singing "John Henry" (or, for tht matter, Springsteen crooning "We Shall Overcome".
Contrariwise, someone with a classical or operatic background who's unfsmiliar with field recordings is apt to recoil in horror at the the likes of Almeda Riddle or Sam Larner.
    To appreeciate any style of music, you have to "buy in" to its aesthetic.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 05:06 PM

"1) "All forms of music from previous decades" just *weren't* ignored from the 60s onwards. There are numerous examples of songs from the 60s to the present days being either remakes/covers of or based on musical styles from previous decades...one that comes straight to mind is Canned Heat's 1967 "Going Up The Country" which was virtually a remake of Henry Thomas's 1927 "Bulldoze Blues". Kitty, Daisy & Lewis also did a cover version in 2008. Same with "Hesitation Blues", originating in the early 1900s, then made popular in the 20s by Art Gillham, recorded by Rev Gary Davis, Janis Joplin in the late 60s and then many others such as Dave van Ronk, Ralph McTell, Taj Mahal and Steely Dan, to name a fraction. ...there are just thousands of examples."

That's a complete misunderstanding of what I said. I never said people remake, rehash and retread the old music. I said you didn't hear the old music itself. In the 60s, I heard only a handful of songs from the fifties--a few Elvis tunes, "Rockin Robin" and like that. Everything else was recorded in the 60s, original or remake. And you NEVER heard anything earlier than the 50s unless you heard it in an old movie in the days before cable when old movies were all they showed on TV.

"2) And from the above examples it should be obvious that current pop isn't all descended by any means from the 1960s. I could mention The Long Blondes' mid-2000s song "Polly" as a homage to 1950s Doo-Wop, or Boogie-Woogie influences dating back to the 30s in several recent pop songs and recordings."

And whoever heard of it? Not me. Not anybody. Nobody wants to hear someone retread old territory. We want to hear something new by people who aren't musically ignorant. The 60s artists were great that way because they grew up on the 50s artists but didn't sound like them. They created something new and memorable. It wasn't their fault radio ignored the predecessors. That's why Hendrix took Buddy Guy with onstage, he wanted people to know where Jimi Hendrix came from. Today, nobody talks about who Katy Perry's influences were. Why? Because who cares? She's forgettable and won't be remembered 30 years hence. And neither will the stuff you mentioned-whatever it is. If I want to hear doo-wop, I'll listen to the real thing.

"3) You say it won't be remembered in 30 years? Well there's a huge catalogue of pop from the 60s and 70s that's remembered by, influences and is covered by young musicians today, which is already well over your 30 year remembrance limit."

Sure stuff from the 60s is remembered. I just explained why. I'm talking about stuff made today by kids who don't know anything that wasn't made before the 60s. And most never listen to anything made before the 90s. They need to listen to the old stuff to make better new stuff--not to remake old stuff. Didn't we do it right the first time?

"Your dismissal of all today's pop as degenerate and isolationist is far more snobbish IMO than any (AFAICS non-existent) tendency of pop since the 60s to ignore earlier music. There'll be stuff from the 2000s around and remembered in the 2040s just as there's stuff from both the 60s/70s AND from the 30s/40s influencing today's music."

As I said--just see if I'm wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 09:15 PM

I'm with DDT on this.    "Long Blondes" homage?    The answer to that is a top 60's hit:    "Ain't Nothin' LIke The Real Thing".

Why settle for a pale imitation?   Or in this case, a souped-up imitation.

That's what very often happens in remakes or "homage".    Tell me, does anybody actually prefer Grand Funk Railroad's elephantine version of "Locomotion" to the original?    And so it goes--in almost every case.

There are a few cases in which in my opinion the remake outshone the orginal.    First is "Dedicated to the One I Love".   But I'm just a Mama's and Papas addict. Second is Beach Boys "Barbara Ann."   Again, I just like the Beach Boys--especially in the early, unpretentious years.    Third is Linda Ronstadt's version of "When Will I Be Loved?"   I didn't even realize til recently the Everly Brothers did it first.    And I like gutsy female singers.

But by and large, the version done before the 1970's always trashed anything done in the 70's or after. And to a large extent, it seems to me a main reason is that there has been a progressively stronger fascination with twisting dials in studios--to the detriment of music.   (Synthesizers haven't helped music either--as well as putting real musicians out of business.)

It's a real shame we can't turn the Wayback Machine forward to 2040.    All this electronically enhanced "music", drum machines, synthesizer garbage, etc. will not in fact last. I'd place a large wager on this.

And people, as they always have, will be looking for real music--especially music they can make themselves, or music that speaks to them emotionally, which technopop, soulless as it is, is unlikely to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 10:34 PM

There's so many gizmos in the studio you can't trust anything you hear anymore. I have an old Roland VS-880 digital recorder and it's already obsolete and yet it's amazing what it can do. I can sing into it, for example, turn a couple of knobs and my voice turns into that of a female--an ugly female to be sure, but a female. If I put it out on a CD, you wouldn't know it wasn't a woman singing.

The following was recorded around 1952 or 3. It's Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West with Cliffie Stone on bass. This was in the days when what they played was what you heard. And---ohhh---what they played:

China Boy

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 10:36 PM

Ron Davies: "OK, that makes it clear. Please put me firmly in the unrefined taste category."

See, you answered your own question.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Rich Lew
Date: 13 Feb 13 - 11:01 PM

At first, I thought this was a thread for discussing musical snobbery. After reading it, I realized it was a thread for expressing musical snobbery. Sorry. My bad.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 02:10 AM

No, just musical snobbery. Are you introducing yet another one?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Jim McLean
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 05:16 AM

I was on a long distance bus a number of years ago and a fellow passenger aske what kind of music I liked. I said Folk music. "Oh", he replied. "I prefer serious music". I thought about replying but decided to go to sleep instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 05:42 AM

A good decision Jim.

Your comment reminds me of the spat between the literary critics FR Leavis and CS Lewis.

Leavis had this thing about the necessity for great writers to be 'morally earnest'.

Lewis replied, I would rather play cards with a man who simply doesn't cheat - rather than someone who is 'morally earnest' about not cheating.

I think the tradition is like that. Give me the singer who just does it, rather than the one who is forever festooning the world with historical justifications for his folksinging being wonderful, correct and the only right one.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,MikeL2
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 11:15 AM

Hi

In my experience a snob is.....a snob !!! and likely to be snobbish about everything that they like. They think others are inferior.

Cheers

Mikel2

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 11:20 AM

You got it!..Spot on!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 12:07 PM

That's right, GfS.   I'm a person of unrefined taste, for whom all the Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky symphonies, a huge number of the Mozart symphonies, Dvorak's 8th and 9th, most of the Mozart piano concertos, all the Beethoven piano concertos, most Schubert symphonies, Bruch Scottish Fantasy, Bruch violin concerto, most Mendelssohn symphonies, all the Mozart violin concertos, Tallis, Byrd, Josquin, di Lasso-- and a long, long list of other classical pieces-- are old friends.   Maybe you're refined enough to like Webern, Hindemith etc. Good for you. I don't require my music to be intellectually challenging, nor to reflect the chaos and despair of modern life.

I do like it to be made by humans, not machines.

As I noted earlier, somebody who requires a studio to "create" is no musician. That seems to knock out a lot of commercial rap--and a lot of current pop.

Among other things, I think it's too bad that for current Irish music a lot of people seem compelled to create a fake 'ethereal" atmosphere with the aid of a studio or electronic 'enhancements'. And drum machines are an abomination--especially for anybody with a pretense to be doing "folk" music.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Rich Lew
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 12:23 PM

Some people can't enjoy anything unless they can shove it in someone else's face. You may not realize it, but the rest of us do.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 12:54 PM

Pobrecito. Too bad someone is forcing you to read this and comment.   It must be terrible to suffer so.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Rich Lew
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 09:32 PM

My point is not that I am suffering, it's that no one takes you seriously, because you're being such a jerk.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 10:21 PM

"forcing you to read and comment"

QED



Perhaps you'd like to take another Prozac before replying.   You seem to need something=- more-- to make you simmer down. Or perhaps you own a factory which makes drum machines.   That would certainly explain your intemperance.

I state my views, you state yours. That's the way it goes. But for some reason, you are easily upset.

As I said:   Pobrecito.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: number 6
Date: 14 Feb 13 - 10:36 PM

Let's face it

we are all snobs

all of us here on the Madcat

we are the upper most of the topper most of snobbery

we are snobs because we know everything about all things

there ... hopefully put a conclusion to this absolutely pompous thread

oh

and one more thing

Hi Ron Davies


biLL    ;)

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 02:49 AM

Ron Davies: "As I noted earlier, somebody who requires a studio to "create" is no musician. That seems to knock out a lot of commercial rap--and a lot of current pop."

Well, actually a 'studio' is primarily a place to 'study'.
Some studios, have electronic devices in them which you can record and play back what you did, to analyze it...speakers, too!

Remember all those radios, CD's, records and tapes you've listen to, through the years??....THOSE pesky electronic devices!!..all started with those damned microphones!

So, if you want to check out what ya' sound like....I'll just bet you've used one or two, in your lifetime, yourself.

Ever use reverb?

Or maybe you've just done campfires....and sidewalks.

....and who's talkin' about trying to be commercial??...shit, learn your axe, practice the shit out of it, emote from the heart... an audience will find you!

GfS

P.S.........but then again, if that audience is THAT particular ..........................................................................................................................................................

(they might be snobs)

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 06:48 AM

Irish session musi, f'rinstance, eschews harmony an counterpoint---which makes it agonizingly dull to my ears.

A few things here. First, sessions are a relatively new tradition. The majority of Irish tunes predate the modern penchant for playing them in sessions. They didn't start their lives as "session music". Second, playing tunes in a session is not primarily, or even at all, about providing a satisfying listening experience for an audience (though it's a great bonus if it does, and, in my view, it often does, but that's a personal opinion). Third, you might have experienced some pretty rigid sessions, but I don't think it's generally true to say that sessions eschew harmony. You won't find too many sessions that are melody instruments only playing in unison. As soon as you introduce guitars, mandolins and other stringy jobs, you have harmony (and there are, of course, instruments that can do double-stopping). What you don't get much of in sessions is arrangements (apart from unconscious things such as dropping in and out when you know or don't know the tune). That's the difference 'twixt a session and a band.

I'd argue that you don't actually need to embellish Irish tunes with too much harmony, if at all. A bit like Bach's unaccompanied cello suites, which have many passages without even double-stopping, harmony is "suggested" in the mind's ear when you hear the tunes well played. Not that I'm saying that Irish tunes as as good as that, but the argument still applies.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 10:47 AM

Sorry, GfS, I suspect you know a studio in this context is not a place to study. But nice try.

I suspect you also know that studios are equipped with progressively more devices to change the sound 'artists" create, and that these devices are improving in fidelity and range all the time, such that, for instance, in such a studio--perhaps just with a synthesizer--you can create the sound of a clarinet, with excellent fidelity and a range exceeding that of the target instrument. And you can extend a person's vocal range 'on record' beyond the true range.

This is not good for the employment of instrumentalists--nor for music itself.

There is no comparison between earlier primitive techniques such as Spector's Wall of Sound and what studios can do these days, much as you want to lump all progress in sound recording together--gee, I wonder why you want to do this.

And a lot of music does not need the treatment available--which does not stop engineers from adding extraneous bells and whistles, in a bid by companies to win the approval of a jaded public.    Classical music recordings sometimes--not often-- have too much echo, for instance.    And Irish music is certainly strong enough to stand on its own without the "atmospherics" provided in the studio or with electronic "enhancement" devices--as in your Example 2.


Commercial rap is, it turns out, not strong enough without technological assist--which says worlds about its value. Not even to speak about its usual subject matter--which as I've noted, plays into the hands of the NRA.   And any reasonable person--perhaps that excludes you--should not be in favor of this.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 11:12 AM

One other thing:   Number 6,   I just can't forget about Laura; it's just too painful.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 11:28 AM

I would think a musician is someone who makes/plays music...........however he/she gets there.
Taste, again, may be a different subject.
I know of a synth/electric piano, that has a 32 bit sample of a Steinway full concert grand....sound so good, you can just about touch the 'wood', and the key action is perfect!.....are those on your list of 'no-no's?

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 01:09 PM

In a word, yes.   It takes work from a real pianist--and I like real pianos, not electronic imitators.   As do most real pianists.

If you can't see this, you are willfully blind.   Unsurprisingly.

And by the way, what are your views on drum machines?   Just fine by you?

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 01:10 PM

By the way, do you play classical piano at all?

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 01:12 PM

It's also interesting that you have addressed none of my points.

Silence consents.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical snobbery
From: The Sandman
Date: 15 Feb 13 - 01:27 PM

I'd argue that you don't actually need to embellish Irish tunes with too much harmony, if at all. A bit like Bach's unaccompanied cello suites, which have many passages without even double-stopping, harmony is "suggested" in the mind's ear when you hear the tunes well played. Not that I'm saying that Irish tunes as as good as that, but the argument still applies.
   poppycock, what about o carolans tunes, an important part of the irish tradition, often played on the harp and played with chordal accompaniment which is harmony.
in fact the irish harp and the uilleean pipes both use harmony to a greater or lesser degree.
Steve,you remind me of Le Petomane