Gray on 8/8/2019 at 19:27
What does music mean to you? For some people, it's just background noise. For others, it adds some enjoyment to their lives. For me, it's much more important. I've learned so much about life, and other people's lives through it. I've learned about love, hate, betrayal, happiness, despair, grief, and more, way before I experienced any of them in real life. Music prepared me for when it happened to me. Good music makes me think, or feel, or dance. It can make me happy. Bad music makes me angry. But what is bad music? What is good? Why does it annoy me so much when some TV ad is using a song I like, out of context, edited horribly for time. I shout very angry words at the TV several times a night for this very reason. They're ruining my songs to sell pointless crap. Why does it rile me so much? Is it just me? Why do bad songs piss me off to no extent? Do I need to get my head checked? Is modern music getting worse or am I just getting old and whiny?
Questions, questions...
Tocky on 9/8/2019 at 02:42
Well shit, you said it all didn't you? There is some incredibly good stuff being made now but that doesn't mean it will resonate with us on the same level it does with those younger. When I think back to the seventies the only thing that somehow explains it all, that takes me back, and puts my mind right in the day is music. It's the very feel of a particular age. And there is some magic in it. It makes you feel. It makes you remember how you felt. It's a lot like love in that. Using it for commercials is like the difference between meeting someone and hitting it off and winding up in bed together marveling at the wonder of the connection and someone who just uses you or worse tries to sell you sex.
demagogue on 9/8/2019 at 03:44
Alright I'll bite.
Music to me is first of all a form of meditation, self-expression, and above all self-discipline. I need to play music constantly just to keep myself in equilibrium. It's like exercise; I'm not doing well when I'm not doing it in a regular way. I play jazz piano, and once nice thing about it (like martial arts or chess or painting or whatever) is that it's a bottomless well. No matter how much you practice it, there's always deeper levels to plumb.
That also feeds into how I listen to music. I listen with a mind of how I'd make music. Everything is fodder for ideas to go into possible tunes. And I make music in the way I'd want to listen to it. The best way I could express it is I listen to music ritualistically. I listen to it to evoke a certain emotion, like a kind of practice. And I'll latch on to certain styles and pieces that really evoke it and obsess over them, no matter how popular or obscure--they're all equal--whereas loads of music that doesn't evoke anything for me just never stays on my radar.
It's interesting because the music that speaks to me often has a pop sensibility. It's not like I'm listening to "meditative music" (not entirely true as I listen to a lot of dark ambient; but even noise can be well-composed, if you know what I mean, as opposed to people just lazily throwing a bunch of drones on top of each other). So I listen for a pop sound almost religiously.
Very recently I've been getting into synthesis, which is a whole other thing. For that, it's not just music by itself. It's trying to create the perfect sound. That also has a kind of mystical side to it. And now when I'm listening to electronic music, I'll really focus on the sounds it's making to see what ideas they're coming up with and how they're using it...
Pyrian on 9/8/2019 at 04:32
I'm like on the opposite side of this spectrum from you guys. I, y'know, like music, some of it, makes me feel things and all. But... Not very strongly, not like you guys describe. Sometimes I have background music on... More often I don't. Once I'm concentrating on something, I won't notice either way. If I hear a song I like turned into a jingle, I'm like, hey, I recognize that, neat.
Mr.Duck on 9/8/2019 at 06:08
A bit of this, a bit of that, a whole lot that I still need/want to explore. Funny enough, I'm always picking up the -sound- and MUCH later the vocals (I have to reaaaally pay attention to listen to what someone's singing or it's just another (wonderful) instrument).
I gotta explore more. Hrrrm...
Sulphur on 9/8/2019 at 07:17
I remember having an argument discussion about the nature of music a long time ago. The way someone who creates it versus someone who only experiences it can be very different. To the classically trained pianist I spoke to, music tended to be math, more an extension of skill and technique combined to form beauty. And I know the thrill of performing a run of brilliance on the keys, multiple harmonies playing off each other at the same time, contrapuntal melodies, using weird time signatures, all that jazz.
But still: to me, music's like oxygen. The right kind of song is like an electric tingle thrumming along my spine, setting each nerve aflame until it reaches my brain, and then I process the nuances like a perfectly executed bass swoop in time with the rest of the rhythm section, or a ridiculously liquid guitar line, or the synthesis of all of this with a lyrical melody that ties the entire piece together with exactly the right words. It's that feeling, where this disparate bunch of sounds magically comes together to set your own soul reverberating like a taut bowstring against the fabric of the universe, that is what music means to me. It could have been math, it could have been stories, but it is this.
And so, yes, the flip side is that the wrong kind of song, wrought out of vacuousness or tepid commercialism makes me inordinately angry. I often get linked to pop songs I know in my bones are lazy, insincere; I can't contain my ire for them sometimes. Artifice pisses me off, especially when it's uninteresting. But there is great music being made out there still, it's just difficult to sort through the sheer volume of lazy dreck to get to it.
icemann on 9/8/2019 at 07:29
For me, music is all of the above. It's background music, it's emotional, it can be a story experience (eg some of U2's music videos have good stories to them), it's an experience. It's all of the above. I love music. Listen to it very often daily, and it's a different experience for each genre.
demagogue on 9/8/2019 at 07:55
It's interesting for me to think about lazy dreck. I used to get really upset by that too. I know it's a cliched punchline, but I remember some a Nickleback song coming on the radio once and getting physically queezy by the sheer emptiness of its soul as the song went on. The fact it was a really polished sound somehow made it worse. I can literally still remember where the car was at that moment, it made that kind of impression.
But now, I mean I still have that reflex, but since I've started recording music, now I tend to think even a really bad or soulless song can have some good ideas I can yoink. It doesn't mean I suddenly like the song, but it means I'll listen to it with honest ears and try to pull out what might honestly be an interesting sound or trick. That's kind of a new thing for me and has opened my musical horizons quite a bit, because now I'll listen to anything with the thinking that ideas can come from anywhere.
Pyrian on 9/8/2019 at 08:34
Quote Posted by Sulphur
But still: to me, music's like oxygen. The right kind of song is like an electric tingle thrumming along my spine, setting each nerve aflame until it reaches my brain, and then I process the nuances like a perfectly executed bass swoop in time with the rest of the rhythm section, or a ridiculously liquid guitar line, or the synthesis of all of this with a lyrical melody that ties the entire piece together with exactly the right words. It's
that feeling, where this disparate bunch of sounds magically comes together to set your own soul reverberating like a taut bowstring against the fabric of the universe, that is what music means to me.
Wait...
Oxygen is like
that for you? :D I only really notice oxygen when it's not available...
icemann on 9/8/2019 at 08:57
Tell that to a person who has anxiety :p.