Fun Stuff > BAND

QC Music Blog discussion thread

<< < (26/46) > >>

imagist42:
I'm not sure what this says about me or the world I've grown up in, but here is my personal experience on the issue: music is inevitably ubiquitous to the point where even if I took a day of from listening to it, it would still be with me. I've got a pretty much nigh-constant "soundtrack" of sorts in that at any given point I can just start humming or singing or dancing to whatever song is already in progress up there. I can be sitting around reading a book, or taking a walk with a girl, and any silent moments can effortlessly, subconsciously, be filled with music. Almost like getting a song stuck in your head, but instead getting almost every song you've ever heard well enough to know stuck in your head, as though the spirit of music in general has been ingrained into my soul. There's no avoiding it.

Personally, I don't mind this state of affairs. More often than not, music keeps me going; physically, I can put on something dancy and stay awake and active almost like I've had a shot of caffeine; emotionally, certain songs can just support or work to change my state of mind whenever I need; etc. Music does a lot to sustain my lifestyle, so I see absolutely no reason or want to separate it from that lifestyle. If I could play or even effectively write I would, because I'm just as likely to find a song or snippet thereof completely of my own design slip into this "soundtrack" as someone else's song. I can't, of course, and when I've tried the result is something terrible that hardly qualifies as an adequate translation, so these songs stick with me. But the point is that music is vital to me around the clock, and more than minding it, I love it enough that I would do anything to give back to it (and this, in essence, is my justification for actually buying music, which I don't do nearly enough because I can't afford to buy as fast as I can listen).

I have some more to say on the oversaturation of music, but it'll have to wait for a little while later. I'll probably just edit this post with it.

a pack of wolves:
I think it was John Cage, when discussing with somebody the annoyance of sounds from the newly common transistor radio, who said that the way he came to terms with it was to write a piece which used radios, so whenever he came across the sound of them muddling together it became an example of his own work, something he could understand and be happy with. This kind of incorporation of the ubiquity of music is great, it's a way making sense of the auditory environment. But the way mp3 players or the PAs at festivals or in shops are making single audio sources of music which will stay with you unless you stop using them or remove yourself from the location (which can be difficult, music in a place of work for example) are something else. There was a good article written when the ipod was first becoming massively popular by someone who'd purchased one and then begun to have it with him at all times. He said that for a long time he enjoyed having a soundtrack to his life, and the ability to instantly find something which fit his mood. But in the end his experience was that he found the soundtrack trivialising, it fit so well that it was like being in a bad tv show where some annoying appropriate piece of pop music swells up to match and make overblown the emotions of the characters. He was wallowing in his feelings and making his life somehow more trite by constantly flicking on the correct bit of Sigur Ros for a late night walk when feeling low or Public Enemy to match the bustling city streets.

There's a few other questions raised by the post. One is whether listening to a piece of music over and over is somehow necessarily better than hearing a new piece afresh. Adorno raised issues with the too frequent reiteration of any piece of music, saying that this could rob it of its power due to over familiarity. There's obviously an unease with constantly acquiring new things to listen to over repeatedly playing records bought before, but this is not at all necessarily a bad thing. I rarely watch films repeatedly, even those I love. Stalker is probably my favourite film but I doubt I've seen it more than ten times. This kind of statement never raises an eyebrow with cinema, but if I was to say Double Nickels On The Dime was my favourite album but I had only played it a handful of times, each listen with months if not years in between, it would strike most anyone as extremely odd. Since this limitation of the number of times a work is experienced is seen as perfectly legitimate for other forms then why is it seen as strange when applied to music?

One more thing that struck me was the paragraph talking about the daunting nature of making music due to the sheer vast amount that exists, and I presume tying that in with the huge amount so many people have at their fingertips these days. This is only a problem if the creation of art is seen as a competition, particularly one for originality. Why does originality matter though? If we take art to is simplest state then it is fundamentally a means of communication. We don't vet our conversations so rigorously for originality (although we do resist being told the same thing in the same way be the same person repeatedly), so why are we so obsessed with our artistic communications being so original? Instead of a competition if you see the music that has existed before, currently and after you as a dialogue then making music and entering into that dialogue becomes a much less daunting prospect.

Inlander:

--- Quote from: a pack of wolves on 06 Feb 2008, 09:29 ---I rarely watch films repeatedly, even those I love. Stalker is probably my favourite film but I doubt I've seen it more than ten times. This kind of statement never raises an eyebrow with cinema, but if I was to say Double Nickels On The Dime was my favourite album but I had only played it a handful of times, each listen with months if not years in between, it would strike most anyone as extremely odd. Since this limitation of the number of times a work is experienced is seen as perfectly legitimate for other forms then why is it seen as strange when applied to music?
--- End quote ---

That's a good point. I guess with music part of the reason we're expected to listen to a particular work repeatedly is because compared to films or books, listening to a particular musical work is a relatively brief experience (due in a large part to the historical limitations of various recording formats) and it's an experience that can be had while doing other things. (Whether you should be doing other things while listening to music is another issue.) Part of what bothers me about the constant quest for the new is not so much artistic side of it, as the commercial: after a while it starts to like just another form of rampant materialism. But that's probably in a large part because I buy all my music in physical form.


--- Quote ---One more thing that struck me was the paragraph talking about the daunting nature of making music due to the sheer vast amount that exists, and I presume tying that in with the huge amount so many people have at their fingertips these days. This is only a problem if the creation of art is seen as a competition, particularly one for originality. Why does originality matter though? If we take art to is simplest state then it is fundamentally a means of communication. We don't vet our conversations so rigorously for originality (although we do resist being told the same thing in the same way be the same person repeatedly), so why are we so obsessed with our artistic communications being so original? Instead of a competition if you see the music that has existed before, currently and after you as a dialogue then making music and entering into that dialogue becomes a much less daunting prospect.

--- End quote ---

Apart from anything else, if you're going to release your music for public consumption there are copyright issues to be worried about: just look at the mess George Harrison got into with "My Sweet Lord". I do think that artists should strive for originality of some form, especially in this day and age when so much art from the past, be it books, films, music, or whatever, is readily available in some form. Otherwise what's the appeal to me? Why would I want to listen to a band playing in the style of a past band, when I could just go an listen to the original recordings of that past band? That's not to say that the difference between old and new has to be huge: I adore the first two Camera Obscura albums, for instance, even though they're basically playing to a Belle & Sebastian template: the fact that they have a female singer is enough of a differentiation to me.

I guess if I was a musician I probably wouldn't have written that paragraph - it's very much from an outsider's perspective. Thinking back on it now I realise that as a writer I don't feel daunted when I read great novels from the past, but inspired instead. Still, music occupies a uniquely ubiquitous place in our world today and I do wonder how that affects musicians, if at all.

a pack of wolves:
That's an interesting point about the different amounts of time required for music and films, and the capability of doing a greater number of other things while experiencing music. Mind you, I'm typing this while half watching A Life Less Ordinary and I doubt I'd be paying more attention to it if it was a piece of music.

The relative length of albums and films seems to be changing though. While films will always be limited by how long people are willing to sit still albums seem to be gradually growing in length. Tommy's pointed out before the way the CD has led to longer albums, and it's reasonably to suppose that the digital release will lead to even longer albums still. Given the way music is listened to this probably won't decrease the importance placed on both having large amounts of it and listening to it a considerable number of times, people will just end up with even more music they feel they should be getting through.

There's little point in an exact replica, I agree, and when a band is slavishly attempting to replicate something that came before it's pretty unsatisfying. But for me that's because they don't seem to have anything of their own to say, they can only ape what someone else tried to communicate. However, an artist who's merely unconcerned with whether or not what they create resembles the work of somebody else I find a different matter. For example, I like a lot of fast hardcore bands. There isn't a huge amount of difference between these acts, and telling the difference between them can often be a difficult matter even for a fan of the music. If you were to put on a record I hadn't heard by, say, Reagan SS or Devoid of Faith I'm not sure I'd be able to spot which band it was without being told. Nevertheless, I like this music despite its lack of distinction since originality isn't the point. An existing style and its conventions are being used to communicate something by these bands in a similar way to a piece of genre fiction, and that's good enough for me.

MusicScribbles:
Hey, what happened to this thread? I like it now! There is some fun discussing going on in here!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page