Fun Stuff > BAND

Objectivity in Music

<< < (6/18) > >>

KharBevNor:
Hip hop and metal can't both be good on the same terms. You need to judge each one subjectively, which is what I'm getting at.

And I said Sabbat not Sabbath. I'm way more metal than to think of such an obvious band! :p And neither of them is wrong. How can they be? There can never be a 'best metal band ever' just as there can never be a 'best british band ever'. The very criteria you judge by are subjective. There is absolutely no such thing as good taste, because 'good taste' is entirely subjective! I loathe Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie bore me fucking rigid and I'd like to stab all the members of Deerhoof with their own femurs. To one man, I have bad taste in music. Yet, I turn to another man and go, 'hey, I'm pretty big on Burzum, Darkthrone, Ulver and Aborym' and to that man I have good taste.

Music is an art, not a science. Emotional impact may be the main or even sole reason something is good or bad, in someone's eyes. It's entirely unquantifiable.

Gryff:
Oops, Sabbat/Sabbath - I guess I'm really not metal enough to be using that sort of stuff in examples... heh.

You make a good point about emotional impact in that people are free to interpret things from their own point of view, and thus one song may not be the same thing to two different people.

However, music is made up of technical parts which are not really open to interpretation. You can analyse a guitar player's technique or a singer's vocal range or the verse-chorus-bridge makeup of a song. I know this is kinda de-romanticising music looking at the technical rather than the emotional, and I'm not saying that I could do it myself (or that I would want to), but hypothetically, could someone remove all emotional response (ie. subjectivity) from music and find out what technically makes up a good song?

There is no way we can look at something completely objectively, but could it be hypothetically possible?

I'm also interested in the idea that there is no such thing as good taste. Does that mean that you would completely accept someone saying that American Idol is the pinnacle of humanity's musical evolvement? You might tolerate them (if you had a very strong will), but would you really be thinking that they were crazy/immature/just-fucking-wrong?

I'd just like to point out that at this point I'm pretty much playing the devil's advocate. This is not neccessarily my viewpoint, but I am pretty interested in this discussion. ;)

Inlander:
I find it's possible to listen to some music objectively - originality of the melody and chord progression, skill of the musicians, that sort of thing.  However I find that those albums that I can only appreciate on such grounds are the albums that I listen to maybe once a year, precisely because they don't involve me emotionally.

Kanno:

--- Quote from: Gryff ---I know this is kinda de-romanticising music looking at the technical rather than the emotional, and I'm not saying that I could do it myself (or that I would want to), but hypothetically, could someone remove all emotional response (ie. subjectivity) from music and find out what technically makes up a good song?

--- End quote ---


No. Impossible!  Emotion is all that music is!  

One of the only judges on having a good guitar riff that I have, is that if it evokes emotion, or more importantly, sets a mood.

All art is completely subjective.  That's the point.

nickyandthefuture:
You can only act objectively in determining whether or not music is good once "good" is defined.  Good is a concept inherently intertwined with subjectivity.  Therefore, music cannot be categorized objectively.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page