From another thread (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15041):Originally posted by Nebuchadnezzaar
As for saying if a song is good or not, their is no point, as long as somebody out there digs it it's a mad song as good as the rest, it's all music, it's all good.All music is good? Absolutely true.

Listening to music is such a subjective experience. An individual's backgrounds, training, experiences, prejudices, even religious beliefs are factors that influence their musical enjoyment. Your mood at any given moment can impact your experience. I have often put on a record or CD that I know I love only to find, a few minutes later, that I am "not in the mood to listen to this."

All musicians have both people who love them and people who hate them. Looking at this in a global sense, you are forced into one of two camps: either you or some person you pick is the ultimate arbiter of what is good music. I choose to respect my on opinion.

The music I like best and respect the most is that which grows out of a genuine creative/expressive urge in the part of the artist. Music whose sole function is not the generation of record sales. Music that fulfils the artist's need for self-expression, not music that is assembled because the performer's accountants and business managers have reminded him/her that Christmas is coming and he/she needs to get some product into the marketplace. Music that the performer creates because they are driven to it. Music that they play because they want to, not because it's just a gig. Music that isn't manufactured and marketed for mass consumption - which is what I feel plagues the marketplace now.

How low mass popular music has sunk in the past 20 years.

Whether or not a particular person likes a particular artist or musical form has no bearing on whether that music is "good" in a universal sense. I personally am unwilling to abrogate my title of Arbiter, so rather than harbor petty judgments, I try to see what makes the music "good" to the people who like it. While I don't always succeed, by refraining from judging music before we truly understand it, we might just learn something about it.

So don't go dissin' my man Elton. Or Herb Alpert. Or Gordon Bok, John Denver, Ani DiFranco, Sonia Rutstein, Cheryl Wheeler, Edgar Winter, Richard Thompson. Or Tone Loc. Or Barney. Not, at least, until you have listened to them with the ears of the people who like them.

:m: Peace.

im with ya mate... manufactured music totally defeats the purpose making music.. its a bloody business where music is made according to a particular segment of consumers and what is most commercially viable.. i hate all that shit...

i respect artists who write their own stuff and play their instruments... and i do like a lotta em too... cuz i knoww they're making music cuz they like it... of course im selective abt what i'll listen to, but i will give my respect to ppl who do it for the love of makin music...

i just saw elton john in dubai october end.. good show... outta the names u mentioned, i give my props to ani difranco for sure... she's wicked.. i love her stuff... dilate is probably her best album.. the others, i haven't listened intently.. will give it a shot...

I wouldn't agree with you there.. :)
Music is not necessarily good, if it sounds good. And I believe there is a more impersonal view towards art criticism. You account for the depth of the idea, general quality (of sound, mixing, performance), complexity (?), idea's representation, etc... Anyways I am not an expert on this topic.. So this is IMHO. But I truely wouldn't class all music as good. Really, it's about having the right idea of criticism.

I love music that is played with heart and soul, not that rubbish that is churned out by hardware and microchips.

"Listening to music is such a subjective experience."

However, this doesn't mean all music is good. It means some people lack the knowledge to tell the difference between "good" and generic.

I love music that is played with heart and soul, not that rubbish that is churned out by hardware and microchips.

But what about techno artists? Moby does everything with keyboards and "hardware" and his music is very souldful. i love it.

Other then that, i agree with you all. All Music is good, but that doesn't mean i have to like it all. ;)

Yah techno & trance music is great stuff, i like it mainly cuase there so much of it, and its not on MTVs top 10...


i have over 300 CDs and about 150 burnt, 50 of thoes CDs are just data disks full of MP3s

i notice as you progress in life you music tastes changes....
whats goin on in your life really affects what you listen too

tho i am a techno/Trance freek now i still like the greats like Metallica, Led Zep, AC/DC, Jimmy Hendrex and hell even the Bare-a-naked-ladies

"if i had a million dollars.... id be rich"

Music makes me think, it makes me wonder, it makes me cry, it makes me smile, it makes me clap my hands, it makes me get up and dance, it inspires me, it changes my moods, music is good!

aha! it can also be bad, but i'm not commenting on that today.

You really people think that all music is good music? Do you think Basketreet Boys and westfile are good groups, making good music?
Do you think that their music is as good as for example Pink Floyd?

all music IS good. it's all in the ear of the beholder. :D

:o EXCEPT for country music...i forgot to mention that.:D

Six Feet Under, Cannibal Corpse and Pantera are not "good" music.

Addendum: "Unless you're a moron, in which case Six Feet Under, Pantera, Arch Enemy, Opeth, Cannibal Corpse, and Cephalic Carnage are great music."

It's all relative, even the relative judgment.

Saying all music is good means you are a pig - eating everything.

ok. i retract my earlier statement.

AC/DC and Queen are not good music, either.

Music is not objectively good or bad. It just is. Some people will like it, some people won't. It isn't 'good' or 'bad'.

Now, we are all inclined to impress our opinions on everyone else...so I might argue that popular music has declined in quality to all time lows...but it would just be my opinion.

Goofy,
You mentioned richard thompson, I think I am gonna go see him play soon...

Eminem - over played garbage, in which im going hurt someone if i hear another one of his songs, while dancing at the bar, again!



:mad:

the local radio station called "100.3 the bear" plays rock and classical rock. some bimbo called in and requested "Eminem - without me"...
i felt like snapping her neck!!
lucky they didnt play the song and the world was saved....

listen to chinese squeak their way thru an opera. this thread would never have been started!

:D

A Canadian:

You're from Edmonton?

Local radio station means WHAT again?! :)

yah edmonton area

I am not an Eminem fan.

I can apreciate the production of his tracks. I can apreciate the anger in his voice. I can apreciate the way he creates magic with words.

Some vodka that'll jumpstart my heart quicker then a
Shock when I get shocked at the hospital by the Dr. when I'm not cooperating
When I'm rocking the table while he's operating
You waited this long now stop debating cuz I'm back, I'm on the rag and ovulating
I know that you got a job Ms. Cheney but your husbands heart problem's complicating

The kid can put words together, no doubt.

Originally posted by ndrs
Saying all music is good means you are a pig - eating everything.

Well said. America is a pig that cannot have an opinion.

I understand what you are thinking, but you must admit that some music is exploited and used for the wrong reasons.

When a music artist writes a song that means something very powerful to him, that always becomes a good piece of music. The problem occurs when the song loses meaning to the writer, but they still play it at shows because other people want to hear it. I find that just sad.

My friend wrote about 4 songs about this girl who he "loved," but then they had the worst break-up. He didnt write any material during the break-up period, and so he still plays his songs about how much he loves this girl that he cant even look at. Needless to say, I dont go to his shows anymore.

Also, this has been an endless debate... should rap be considered "good" music? The "artists" write the songs about money and living rich, and when they do get rich, they use thier money on material items AND NOT THE MUSIC. Seriously, how hard are the beats in rap songs? I heard some guy say: "song has the tightest beat!!" It was all bass with a steady electronic cymbal beat.

Then come the lyrics... Yes, many raps have allusions, imagery, internal rhyme.. and many such poetic elements. The problem is that most rappers just want to be rich. So, they write crap about buying cars that pollute and getting women who have VDs. Is this any type of musical art? (I know that some rap is damn fucking good, and alot of it reflects the black culture, but cut the crap)

Music is your appreciation of a certain combination of sounds. No one can tell you what you can or can't appreciate. So it's all completely subjective. I hate people who mix "politics" with music. I don't care what the band leader said about some other band. I don't care if the band sold out or not. I don't care if it's played on the rock or pop station, or none. If I like it I listen to it. I find those who are controlled by the politics of music sad...

Example: Do you find the Mona Lisa beautiful? If yes, is it because everyone tells you it's beautiful? If no, is it because you want to rebel against everyone who says it's beautiful? Why not just decide for yourself wether it's beautiful to you or not?

Originally posted by Vienna
I love music that is played with heart and soul, not that rubbish that is churned out by hardware and microchips.

I totally second the motion!!!!

I have a confession to make. A long time ago I listened to pop stars, rap, trance, techno. I went with the stream of popularity. I didn't care if the song was written by the artist or performed by the artist or not. I listened to what I liked.
It all changed when I got familiar with something that entirely changed my taste. I started to learn playing guitar and as I progressed and got better and better I started listening to old rock and metal and much later - classical and neoclassical music like Beethoven, Bach, Malmsteen, Paganini, Becker, Friedman.
I have tried (and still am trying) to play their music and I realized the talent and the years of practice that takes to achieve what they did. That was the moment when I rejected anything that was mainstream. Nowadays, music has almost entirely degraded to the lowest level possible. Instead of concentrating on the melody of a song people concerntrate on the words (rap), which are good only for being written on a wall in a toilet in a school in Downtown New York. Another thing they concentrate on is the artists' ass and thighs and tits. If the singer is not "hot", he/she will never be shown on MTV (which I hate for being what it is and never watch it). The beat - trance and techno and dance. Why not take a stick and bang an empty can with it and sing something like "I want you in my arms oooh" over and over again? Same effect.
All the people I know who play at least one musical instrument hate mainstream music. It probably takes a musician to tell music from garbage...
Music, the real music, is being left behind and being taken over by the modern MTV music. This is wrong.
That's what I think about music.

Right on gerbil. Anyone that loves music or is a musician knows that what is popular nowadays is pure crap. Music on the radio is made for people who want something playing in the background that will remind them of how hot the singer looks on tv. It is pathetic and most of the people I know are an unconscious part of it.

A friend of mine actually tried to come up with some sort of math equation to define how good a piece of music was. the goal was for people like Britney Spears to score low, and groups like Led Zeppelin to score high.

He had a hard time coming up with the variables. creativity, originality. if there's any meaning in the lyrics. if it's catchy. lots of the top 40 stuff is maybe catchy at best. but there's always this X factor, some times you just like something for no good reason.

intersting idea about people who play not liking top 40 stuff. the one person i know who loves top 40 doesn't play. i'll have to ask more people, see if there's a trend.

Rap, rock and jazz are degenerate, structureless musics, in my view.

While I much agree that what is good music is only judged by the ear of the beholder; I also agree the with the statement;
Nowadays, music has almost entirely degraded to the lowest level possible.

In the rush for the dollar, actual skill is a lost requirement for music in modern times. With the use of computer enhancements many sounds that were impossible to make or took years of skill to develop are at the touch of a button or click of a mouse.

While I suppose rap is considered music to some degree, so is beating on a garbage can lid. It is easy to tell where the skill is when you compare this to a well played instrument. Lyrics are only part of a song; not all the song.

Prozak,

Rap, rock and jazz are degenerate, structureless musics, in my view.

I can see the rap point of view... rock and roll- I can see where you are coming from (but i dont agree)... BUT JAZZ? How can you say that jazz is degenerate? Jazz is where classical performers go to play their peices. When classical musicians want to jam the fuck out of a simple chord, they play intense scales with various octaves OFF THE TOP OF THEIR HEADS.

Read this about jazz:

"There are many other instruments besides the trumpet which jazz musicians have made do the impossible. And they can play, for hours on end, technical, involved, difficult, educated lines that have melodic sense. They are all virtuosi. The same goes for string buss. The same goes for saxophone, although it is not used much in symphony. But anything Milhaud has done in classical music, McPherson and Bird, alone, do with ease as well as human warmth and beauty. Tommy Dorsey, for example, raised the range of the trombone two octaves. Britt Woodman raised it three. And take Jimmy Knepper. One of his solos was taken off a record of mine and written out for classical trombone in my ballet. The trombone player could barely play it. He said it was one of the most technical exercises he had ever attempted to play! And he was just playing the notes—not the embellishments or the sound that Jimmy was getting." (Charles Mingus, from the liner notes to his jazz album Let My Children Hear Music, Columbia KC 31039.)

The great French jazz pianist Martial Solal tells of such a concert he gave in his youth, it was to qualify for a prize and at the climax of the classical piece he was playing his mind went blank, but his forced improvisation was so good that the judges didn’t even detect his bluff! It was at that point, he says, that he decided that jazz rather than classical music was to be his future.
http://www.marijuana-uses.com/examples/webster.htm

Jazz is something that you must experience live. Jazz is only about the live performances and how the performers create a new section of music from the beat of the original song. THAT is music, my friend.

Prozak,

Also, your name reminds me of a King Crimson song: Prozak Blues (they purposefully spelled it that way). Those guys revolutionized music the way that Zappa did. So, dont put down rock and roll dude. Rock gives beginning musicians a way to practice to become great performers.

Well here's the thing about rap,

it's really just spoken word over a beat, that's how it originated.
so if you want melody, or harmony or something like that, then you're probably not gonna get it.

most popular rap is crap. Men raping about loose women and women raping about broke men. but there are some good groups that mix hip-hop with jazz and funk.

I'll be impressed when jazz equals in composition what classical music or even metal have done. It's musical wanking without purpose and as such is artistically degenerate. I'm sure you see it differently.

Note also, slacker47, that not all classical musicians share your sentiment.

Rock has been renovated by prog-rock musicians many times.

According to CDNOW, "Prozak Blues" was released in 2000.

That means I beat them to the name by only eight years. Wow.

I'll be impressed when jazz equals in composition what classical music or even metal have done. It's musical wanking without purpose and as such is artistically degenerate

are you saying that jazz is degenerate b/c they improvise? maybe i'm misunderstanding you. Improvising is no easy feat, doing it well at least, they have to keep in mind key, chord progressions, how many measures they have, and whatnot. There is a purpose, it's just improvised to some degree. whether music comes from you head or a sheet of paper, it's still music.

and when you say jazz do you mean like Miles Davis, John Coltrane ect, or the stuff they play on the "jazz" radio station.

It's all good as long as someone digs it....

Music Is Healthy For Humans



Despite the stress songwriters occasional feel when suffering through the creative process, music is apparently good for human health. Medical researchers experimenting with music as therapy are now finding that music also may have the power to heal.

According to medical research conducted recently at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, music therapy has been used successfully to help stroke victims recover their use of speech. Researchers found that some stoke victims who were unable to speak were able to "sing" the same verbal content using music, a result that might be explained by the fact that music seems to be governed by one side of the brain and speech by another.

Researches have also used music to help relieve chronic pain. Studies suggest that medication and music therapy together are more effective in relieving pain than medication alone.

Also, in recent experiments with patients of Alzheimer's disease, researchers now believe music can be used to help patients focus and communicate better.

"Music," as the philosopher Confucius wrote, "produces the kind of pleasure human nature cannot do without."
Music is Healthy for Humans

http://www.songwritersresourcenetwork.com/page3.html

Jazz -
Evaluating it out of a 'live' context is pointless. I think seeing good jazz musicians play live is amazing. Alot of people buy a miles davis cd to see if they like it and..(surprise) the lack of a verse-chorus structure throws them for a loop and they disregard jazz as musical wanking off.

Rap-
Like any genre, there is highly creative and enjoyable rap music to be found if one is to dig deep enough. Some people may completely dismiss all of rap on account of it being 'spoken' but that seems strange to me. The problem with rap is that for the last decade or two it has thrived on degenerative themes, sounds, meanings, etc. I agree with prozak on that.

Rock-
Rock is such a broad reference that it is almost pointless. Avril whatever is refered to as rock...so is tool. It makes it hard to talk about music. The definitions need to be redone but everyone is too lazy so everything can be rock or pop or whatever.

I keep thinking something totally new will come and revolutionize music like we saw happen several times in the 20th century.

Most music can at least be tolerated, and if given enough time I am sure that I could learn to like most music genres. The only music that I cannot stand is the kind that brings back bad memories. :(

prozak,

I'll be impressed when jazz equals in composition what classical music or even metal have done. It's musical wanking without purpose and as such is artistically degenerate. I'm sure you see it differently.

While I do love and cherish jazz, metal, and classical, it is hard for me to say that any of them are better. Jazz has many times equaled metal (believe me), but classical takes too many instruments. So, it would be hard to match the intricate development of a classical piece, but jazz often is much more technical that metal. Some metal is just really fast, but it does not have substance. Same with jazz, but there are times when jazz musicians go beyond any type of expectation because the musicians go off the way that Malmsteen does.

I dont know if you have tried jazz, but try to go to a live performance. I bet you will be surprised.

Metal is good for technicality with speed, jazz is just pure technical rythym. It's hard to understand... In the words of Louis Armstrong: "Man, if you has to ask what it is, you aint ever gonna get to know."