posted
Rather than go into some of the music lover threads and act clueless, I thought I'd start my own thread. I wrote my whole Nanowrimo without really listening to much music.
Maybe it's that I'm not an ADD type. I don't function better with music going. When I'm in a hot tub, I like the jets off.
I like to make music. I think singing is very therapeutic, both on an emotional level and for breath lymphatics (long exhalation). I have been learning piano at a glacial pace.
And there are sometimes old songs that take me back. But music just doesn't seem to do for me what it seems to do for some here. Am I just weird or are there others of my kind?
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
You're weird. Kidding! As much as I love music, I cannot listen to music and do other things, like writing or reading. I have t actively listen to the music, unless i am cleaning the house or something.
I remember a little friend of my daughter's who would start screaming if we sang in the car. He really hated it. Poor kid. We are big car singers, and would always forget.
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posted
*Scandalized* I got to have music CONSTANTLY or I get all twitchy and miserable. I love music, it's my life's blood. Also, it smells and tastes pretty good if it's good songs and not that stupor-inducing tripe they play at the supermarket. It also has some nice colours in it too. But, this means I get to be 50 times more annoyed than anyone else when they play bad music.
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posted
mothertree, though I do love music, I'm also in the camp that does not in fact function better when music is going. I actually find it to be distracting. I also appreciate silence (in the car, for example, or in my quiet house). You can appreciate music without having to go into raptures over it. Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Is listening to Gypsy Kings, typing on Hatrack and filling out paperwork for work...
I haven't been productive recently. I just put my headphones back on for the first time in months, because kat posted that music video and I wanted to hear it. The music is definitely helping me focus.
posted
Good music makes me high and makes it easier for me to concentrate and makes books better. Opera and Harry Potter is a good combination.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I know exactly how you feel. For the longest time I listened to very little music at all (and what I did listen to wasn't really all that good.) I always felt completely alien from all of the people whose first question upon meeting somebody new is "So what music do you listen to?"
I tend to listen to more now, simply because I moved back in with my family, and my little brother has excellent taste in music. You should try listening to some really relaxing mellow stuff, like Icelandic band "Sigur Ros".
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posted
I don't know if I would have the same appreciation if I weren't a symphonic musician, that's why I cringe when I hear about orchestras going under.
There is something intoxicating about digging in with 80 people to play serious music. There is a commitment and responsibility to the music and to each other that's incredible. It's not the same in a band, or even jazz. Fun music is fun, and I've seen that technicolor band on tv, but I'm not sure that music is supposed to be fun as much as it's supposed to be important and consuming, and playing with an orchestra is both.
posted
I think people who are primarily band or jazz performers would disagree with you rather strongly.
Also, I don't think you have to be a performer to really appreciate music...but neither do I think everybody needs to appreciate music the same or even at all. It's a matter of tastes. I, for example, do not enjoy sports at all, no matter how hard I try. I cannot comprehend passionate discussions about football, or tennis, or soccer, or basketball, or whatever. Baseball, I marginally get, but only marginally. It's one of those things that just isn't an important part of my life in the slightest, and that's just my tastes.
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posted
I have played jazz and in bands, and I think the people who don't see the difference in the severity of the music are wrong. They may disagree with me, but they are wrong.
I don't have a problem saying that some genres are better, more important, than others.
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posted
Irami, I had a feeling you had; that's why I added the word "primarily." And, I think whether you call a genre more important or better than another depends a GREAT DEAL on what aspects you use to define that quality. That's why I'd be very, very hesitant to make a judgment call like that without explicitly defining what I was talking about.
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posted
I agree, Irami, I loved playing in orchestras, back when I did that kind of thing. And I think it gave me a better appreciation for symphonic music then I would have had otherwise.
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posted
Singing choral music is pretty awesome, too. There's something exhilarating about being a part of a group of voices all working together to make music. I loved that. Posts: 5771 | Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
"I don't have a problem saying that some genres are better, more important, than others."
I'd like to know what music you feel is disposable. I am interested in hearing more about a narrow view of music, as the concept is so foreign to me.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Some people really like comic books, and there are virtues and dignities that can rightly be explored in a comic book, but am I supposed to pretend, with a comic book on one hand and "East of Eden" on the other, that they are equally important works?
There are reams of bad classical music. People have been writing for hundreds of years, and on the Brahms thread, we are lauding a few tens of pieces. _______________________________
Edit:
I feel comfortable saying that the sixties and seventies are better musical decades than the 80s and the 90s. The overwhelming percentage of Punk bands, and I'm talking about the kids who are actually trying-- and who, you know, practice-- are disposable. It could as simple as time. Brahms studied and thought and didn't finish his first symphony until he was 45, maybe Avril Lavine could take a lesson from that.
posted
I wasn't looking for a metaphor, I just want to know what specific music you feel is cast-off trash.
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posted
I don't know... Have you read Nausicaa of the Valley of Winds or Kabuki? Those are some pretty deep comic books. Best of all, it's visual and condense, therefore, more accessable.
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posted
Philosophically (and from my point of view) music is a medium to carry words. It is a tool, like rhyme and meter to help convey the message of the text - the lyric. But of course, notes without words can convey their own "message" albeit an abstract one. But the music is a tool. It is a way to allow an entire church to recite the same text in unison or harmony. It is a memory aid... how difficult it'd be for a child to learn the english alphabet without the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star serving as a memory aid. And as we have more and more musical experiences in life, we develop a love of music from passionate (in the most generic term of the words) encounters which also accompanied music. That's why when we hear Barber's Adagio for strings - we think of apocalypse now and the -whatever- of war. We get melancholy because the movie used the pattern of the notes to underscore the passion of the movie. Listen to popular Italian light opera and we can't help but smile and be happy because for most of us, we are reminded of Bugs Bunny. Passion and pattern... will have to ponder this some more. Sorry for the rambling post.
May I ask, what DOES do something for you? What draws out a passionate feeling for you? It could be that those things that do make you feel passionately about something weren't underscored by music as you grew up. probably something Pavolovian about it. passionate experience accompanied by music= passionate feeling
over time, revoving the passionate experiece - just having certain music could = passionate feeling.
posted
I like talk shows. They are very informative and help with current events. Makes it so I can do multiple things at one time.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Music, art pertaining to the muses, the muses being the daughters of memory and zeus. You can't separate music from memory, and what music helps us remember is more important than the alphabet or the antics of Bugs Bunny.
Properly speaking, all important writing and speech is music, the muses speak through us in tones.
posted
Sorry, Irami. I was with you until you said that Twinkle, Twinkle was more important than the alphabet.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
I LOVE music. I've found, though--and it is demonstrated here--that the more people immerse themselves into music, the more discriminating their tastes become. As far as influencing our culture and society is concerned, a comic book can be just as important as, or more important than, "East of Eden."
The same can be said with music styles. Just because a person happens to have spent their life appreciating, for example, Hip/Hop and R & B, that doesn't make it better or more important. I especially see this tendency to judge music among members of the Music Department at the university I attend. They are truly wonderful people, but when it comes to music, they are much more discriminating as to what is "good" and what is "crap."
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posted
*never realized that the Alphabet Song is to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
*is musically inept
[Seriously, I'm pretty sure a lobe of my brain is missing. Tom and Christy have graciously agreed to try to drum something into my head. I think it will take a few years, but something might happen.]
quote:I LOVE music. I've found, though--and it is demonstrated here--that the more people immerse themselves into music, the more discriminating their tastes become. As far as influencing our culture and society is concerned, a comic book can be just as important as, or more important than, "East of Eden."
The people who immerse themselves in it probably know what they are doing. I imagine it's the same with being a doctor. To me, everything looks like a liver, but I think that CT's eye is more discriminating, and furthermore, I don't think our opinions should be held as equal with respect to all things in the body.
I don't have to listen to CT when she tells the difference between a kidney and a liver, but it seems that it I'd be fooling myself.
This is why I stick to analogies that I know. I can't even joke about the difference between a kidney and liver. I just know that if I drink water and don't drink alcohol, I'll do okay. Right?
quote: The people who immerse themselves in it probably know what they are doing. I imagine it's the same with being a doctor. To me, everything looks like a liver, but I think that CT's eye is more discriminating, and further more, I don't think our opinions should be held as equal with respect to all things in the body.
The problem with that logic is, those who immerse themselves in music usually have specialized in a particular area of music, so their affinity for that area of music is to the exclusion of other styles. Those who has spent their life studying and practicing Theraveda Buddhism are no more qualified to give their opinion on Christianity than are western-trained doctors qualified to give their opinion on Eastern Medicine.
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posted
For me, all music is folk music. It is made by folk, and tends to reflect the culture it emerged from. To cast off certain styles of music as not "real music" is belittling. Furthermore, much music feels rather spiritual to me. When I listen to my little boy play his guitar, there is something more there than little hands plucking strings. His music is coming from someplace else. It sounds goofy and corny, but I really believe this.
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posted
Well, I'm tempted to say that the Monkees, Menudo, and Backstreet boys were disposable music. It was music designed solely to pander to a popular taste. And yet there is something joyful in campy music. And the thing is that apart from the general "importance" of the band, Mike N. was a pretty good musician. So what made Mike a musician and the tamborine guy a musical actor?
Is the tamborine guy so different from Keith Lockhart who directs the Utah symphony? The question wouldn't usually occur to me except for the ridiculous promotions of Keith!(tm) that I see on graphics banners downtown. I'm sure Keith has an advanced degree in music, but he also has this splashy personality that they try to promote the symphony with, and I am not attracted to it. Part of the symphony is the oneness. Glorifying the conductor... reminds me of that guy who kept the Red Sox ball.
Anyway, I think there is something about music that is unifying. That is the value of boy band crap, because it draws together many people of that generation. It is a wide, loose net whereas "better" music is a narrower, tighter net. (Better = more discriminating, takes effort to appreciate, or eclectic) I guess the idea that music should bring together is what puts me off about people who go for extreme uniqueness in their music tastes.
But I also think it's possible for a crazy musician to be pursuing some kind of union with an ideal rather than other humans.
posted
What's interesting is that Irami's assertion boils down to this: that East of Eden, if it also were beautifully illustrated, would be a less "important" work. That merely becoming a "comic book" somehow reduces its quality.
Because if that's not what he's saying, everything else he's saying is meaningless. Because if a comic book could be as important as East of Eden, then it's not the genre that's holding it back: it's the quality of the content. And while I agree that some forms of media are inherently limited by their structure -- in that checkers will never be as transcendent a game as chess, and even the world's greatest yodeler will never be as illuminating as a full symphony orchestra -- the simple fact is that there is SO MUCH good stuff out there, in every genre, that it's not necessary for someone to feel ashamed that a genre they enjoy might not hold as much potential for greatness if, in fact, they enjoy it a great deal more.
Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
Awesome quote!
Most "cultured" people though seem to imply that it is a duty to oneself to be involved in some for"culture", be it art, music, dance, photograpy, haute coture etc. Is culture a duty or not? I'm not really sure. How does culture differ from socialization? I think there are multiple meanings of the word culture that need to be differentiated here.
This thread title made me sad. I know not everyone can appreciate everything to the fullest extent, but it still made me a little sad.
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posted
Allegra, there are people I know who absolutely hate "the great outdoors." They think it is highly overrated. There are lots of people who don't need music, or who listen to it pointedly, not as background for life.
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posted
I love music, and I've been involved in music for most of my life, but I rarely have it on, especially in the background. I feel I have a fairly deep appreciation of it. I listen to it in controlled bursts, usually when I can devote most of my attention to enjoying it.
We have a small boombox at home, and that's pretty much all we have for playing music. And we hardly ever use it. But my wife and I both love music.
Like mothertree said, both of us would rather be creating it. We have devoted a corner of our living room to what musical instruments we own, which include a large keyboard, several guitars, and my old trumpet.
And I have to agree with Irami in part: There is nothing like creating music in a large orchestra. It's a beautiful experience. And I've been in bands, jazz bands, dixieland bands, trios, quartets, and choirs as well. Just watching the violin bows move up and down and the whole string section swaying during the slow parts, the serious look on the flautists' faces, and the blur of the timpani mallets. Plus, you're right in the middle of this huge, saturating sound. The whole experience is like nothing else.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
>>>mothertree wrote>>>Well, I'm tempted to say that the Monkees, Menudo, and Backstreet boys were disposable music. It was music designed solely to pander to a popular taste. And yet there is something joyful in campy music. And the thing is that apart from the general "importance" of the band, Mike N. was a pretty good musician.
AGH!!!! How dare you lump the Monkees in w/ Menudo and Backstreet Boys.
Monkees rocked! Ever heard Tork cut loose on Cripple Creek? Dolenz's vocal range was tremendous. Jones... eh... well, forget him. And like you said, Nesmith was good too - prolly the best musician of the bunch.
They had great songwriters! (boyce and hart) Sure, some were forgettable or overused - but most of their songs were pretty damn good.
Anyway, this comment is all in good fun from a die-hard Monkees fan. ;-)
quote:Culture is not a duty. Once it becomes a duty, it ceases to be culture.
This sounds like one of those aphorisms that's supposed to be common sense.
This seperation between culture and duty seems to denigrate both. It seems to me that culture arises from duty as the vehicle that allows one to meet their responsibilities.
quote:Because if a comic book could be as important as East of Eden, then it's not the genre that's holding it back: it's the quality of the content.
Tom, Problem is that being a 100,000 word novel was a constitutive element of the quality of the content. I'm not sure that one can tell the content of the story in a thirty thousand word comic book, and I wonder if 700 addition graphic representations would add or detract from overall story.
quote: I wonder if 700 addition graphic representations would add or detract from overall story.
That's an interesting question, of course. Would East of Eden be a "better" thing if, instead of necessarily reading a description of a setting or a character's expression, you could see a powerfully evocative picture of the same setting or expression along with a little caption that also included those parts of the textual description which would be necessary to the story or style?
And if that wouldn't work for East of Eden, and I'm not saying it would, would it work for some other book? Would it work for something designed to be both a visual and textual experience -- like, say, Maus or Pseudopolis or A Dream of Cats?
There is no manual on how to be a good human being that includes a list of symphonies you must appreciate, operas you must enjoy, games you must play, and novels you must read. Tiresome people frequently put out such lists, inevitably to advance their own agenda and promote what they think "culture" should be, and in so doing cheapen the appeal of those things they're recommending by demeaning them into responsibilities. The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: There is no manual on how to be a good human being that includes a list of symphonies you must appreciate, operas you must enjoy, games you must play, and novels you must read. Tiresome people frequently put out such lists, inevitably to advance their own agenda and promote what they think "culture" should be, and in so doing cheapen the appeal of those things they're recommending by demeaning them into responsibilities. The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
I love this quote, Tom. Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:The real culture sticks around, the reason it lasts, is that it speaks to its audience. If something doesn't speak to you, there's no point in insisting that it should.
I don't agree. I actually think that that way of thought breeds a culture of ease and immediate gratification.
Sticking around is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for anything important. Crap sticks. Baseness and appetites sticks. Laziness sticks. The Da Vinci Code has been on the best seller's list forever, that sticks around.
Sticking around just means that it has stuck around, and is probably readily accessible, but it does not mean it is very good or worthwhile. I'm not saying that one isn't allow to disagree with the great thinkers, but one should listen to what they have to say, and seek to engage them, even if it doesn't immediately speak to one.
posted
I hate to break it to you non-musical types, but you really don't like to be without music. Whenever you're reading or writing or driving and you think you don't have music on, you're wrong. You've really got 4'33" on repeat.
So when you say that you're not into music, it would be more accurate to say that you're actually just really big fans of John Cage.
posted
heh. I disagree. 4'33" implies that you're paying attention to the way that non-musical sounds fill the silence. If you're not paying attention to the sounds, there is no piece.
Besides, it's really more of a philosophical statement than an actual piece.
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I know not everyone can appreciate everything to the fullest extent, but it still made me a little sad.
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AGH!!!! How dare you lump the Monkees in w/ Menudo and Backstreet Boys. ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
