Music Appreciation/Education Blog

Haha optisailor that's part of the point. To understand that to copy their licks and parts individually without putting it into perspective is pointless. Well to put it plainly over-analysis only happens if you don't know how to put it into perspective.

Notice how in a highly priced art every single part of the art itself is part of the bigger picture? From the brush strokes to the usage of the paint, the colour, the texture, the strength used. They all lead to the greater end - the painting itself. If one misses out a vase behind, would it cause that much of an effect? If the framing was shifted by a centimetre to the left or right by the artist, what would be the change in the effect?

Overanalysing is when people turn it into some show and tell and break things down without actually understanding why every part of the picture is beautiful. What they tend to do is they zone in on that "tree in the forest" and keep attacking it left right centre, but fail to ever put it in perspective with the rest of the forest, the insects, the compost and all the rest of that stuff.

Who needs talent? Knowing your place in the band and sticking to it is far more important than putting a few show-monkeys on stage trying to outshine one another. Everyone in the band, if truly musical, should know their place and their worth in a band and work for the music itself. Which is what many bad bands lack.

Hi soft! I am in the middle of analysing Stacey Kent's YouTube video of "The Best Is Yet To Come" on my blog right now. Would you be interested in reading it from the blog? If not would you like me to present another case on soft itself to present the details of a rock/metal song? I'd be glad to do so. =)
 
I think I can see where both sides are coming from. I listen to jazz also, but not the kind of jazz that crazyguy106 listens to. I prefer the more avant garde Thelonious Monk / Eric Dolphy / John Coltrane sort. Or else it's the Electric Miles Davis / Weather Report / Chick Corea sort. Or just plain bop - Art Blakey / Jackie Maclean / Lee Morgan.

Well when you talk about form, I don't really like talking about form. It's like somebody gives you a book, and he tells you that the paper is kinda squarish, the words are written from left to right, and are segmented into sentences, or paragraphs, or chapters. It's totally meaningless to me, although I concede that it may not be meaningless to people who don't even know these facts. Fact is, I first listened to jazz with an already trained ear, and already internalised a lot of the concepts.

So if I were to listen to, say "So What" from "Kind of Blue". I would first think, wow that sounds really blue. Then I might think, "that sounds very compulsive. This is very well written. It's deceptively laid back, but you just can't stop playing it back in your head. Every time you go through the chords your ear follows, the same way that if a hot chick walks by, your eyes keep on following her ass. Every time somebody does something new to that sequence, it adds a new layer of meaning."

Then somebody might say, "hey this is modal jazz. It's modes (ie scales), not chords." I'm like, hey yeh that's also very interesting but I wouldn't give a shit. It's like I see this really hot woman in front of me, I'm undressing her in my mind. I'm thinking of 10 different ways to stroke her, and suddenly somebody comes up and whispers in my ear, "she's wearing pink". Well I didn't need to see it that way. It's distracting, although it does teach you something about what's appealing.

On the other hand, if I didn't understand the context I wouldn't understand it. For example, if I were a 4 year old kid, and somebody pointed that hot chick to me and said "she's sexy". I'd be like, "sexy? What does that mean?" To me that is what music to the uneducated ear is like. Even at a tacit, subliminal, unwritten level, there is no understanding.

If I can follow the bassline, that would be like understanding what is 36-24-36. If I can follow what John Coltrane / Bill Evans is doing, it would be like peeling off her clothes piece by piece in my mind’s eye. And if I were to be able to improvise along, that would be like … well you see I’m pushing the boundaries of respectability here.

So when somebody comes up to me and says, “that’s Giorgio Armani she’s wearing. Chanel number 5. Hair done by XXX hairdresser.” I’m like, well there’s a reason why when you buy FHM magazine, those things are in like small type. That’s nice. But you go for the ass.

To take the music sex analogy a little further, the ultimate thing level of appreciation takes place when your mind actually interacts with the music. In the immortal words of the great James Brown at the beginning of “Sex Machine”, “Fellas, I'm ready to get up and do my thing / I wanta get into it, man, you know / Like a, like a sex machine, man, / Movin' and doin' it, you know / Can I count it off?”

So I will never disavow the value of a proper music education. OK, you know diminished chords convey a certain emotion. Augmented stuff, your 7s and your 9s and your 11s. Inversions. Polyrhythms. Coming in behind the beat. (I’m talking about music here, not sex.) But a lot of music theory is the “she’s wearing a hat”. “Shoes by Jimmy Choo” variety and it does nothing for me. And I leave the final word to Duke Ellington: “If I had to if I had to explain it, you wouldn't understand it
 
Pardon me, centralcatchment. I am listening to whatever you're listening and more modern as well. I personally like Ornette Coleman, Dave Holland, Robert Glasper, Aaron Parks, Aaron Goldberg, Brad Mehldau. Please do not mistake my blog entries as a music listening preference thing. My current playlists are Avishai Cohen, Sonny Stitt, Sonnie Rollins and the like. I write the blog to account for most people who are starting out.

When people start out in jazz they don't even begin to understand what is jazz all about. So education about form, about chord structures, about all of that are needed. I'm opening a beginner level kind of education and will be expanding from there.

The thing is that your analogy actually really doesn't match. And if you want to go with the idea about animal instincts then fine by me. Because all you concentrate on is about the time you're listening to the music or playing it, you miss out the whole discussion/analysis/talk before or after it. To bring it into the picture with analogy, during sex you don't think, you enjoy and interact with the situation. But to really enhance the experience, you must have prior experience and thought towards sex before you head in. Things like length of foreplay, estimation of positions which actually work better, and all that stuff. You obviously wouldn't know that because you like to charge right in. I'm not talking about analysing as you do it, which again, is ridiculous, but I'm talking about doing prep work to really develop an ear/an understanding such that you can appreciate and understand new things.

And your last quote, is absolutely true. If I had to explain it, you wouldn't understand it. The thing is that in order for the music to hit a vibe with you and allow you to understand it, you must have some level of common knowledge, common perspectives as the original composer/musician/medium before you can understand it. If the person tries to explain to you during the thing it wouldn't make sense because you're not getting the point.

Educated listeners are people who know and understand the idioms and the phrasing and the ideas of the musicians. A common man would never understand what Confucius is trying to say if he/she does not have the knowledge of language, tonal portrayal and all that jazz. And he/she needs to start with basic language. And even in sex and aesthetics of human being, there is a reason why there is "high fashion" and all the things which seems elitist. It's really because some people get it better than others. If you want to break down the seduction of a woman to you, in an FHM magazine, you can do it and understand what turns you on, then you can probably get your wife or girlfriend or someone to do the same or similar to you to spice up your sex life. Why settle for "I like this, but I don't know why."

dodgethis said:
You win, just for the usage of a referencing format :D
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You win too, for catching that! Haha
 
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crazyguy106 said:
"Cognitive overload" can be imaginations, doing other things, distractions etc. And even the emotional centre response is subjective to fMRI imaging and interpretation. I know nothing of the methodology and it talks nothing about actually analysing the music. Therefore it's too broadly categorised and makes no sense why it's even brought in. Yes distractions decrease enjoyment in music... Distractions could mean a billion and one thing.
Click to expand...

the reason why i brought up the study is to show you that conscious thoughts can inhibit emotions, which you had thought otherwise. And for that purpose this study is very relevant. Its just as it is, i'm not trying to make any far fetched ambitious links here. Other studies have reported similar results, outside music and also with a wide variety of conscious distractions. It doesnt matter what kind of distraction it is , as long as it disrupts your ability to appraise the situation/thing , it 'kills' the emotions.

But if you want to talk about doing all the hardwork before you play music ,then this study is totally irrelevant, well because that wasnt my point at all.

I'm aware of the limitations of using neurological responses as measures of emotions, indeed the emotions related cortices can be activated by reasons not due to emotions. and the chances for that to happen is minimal in that study. There is no 'perfect' measure for emotions, for this study, FMRI is perhaps the most appropriate, most valid measure here. Surely, it would be foolish to dismiss the study for using a controversial measure without considering its rationale?

Just to add, by analysizing a piece of music, you will attempt to put arbitary rules and labels on the piece music. And these are all man-made discrete labels, imo they add very little meaning to music which is something that is rather 'organic'.

i think many people will be turned off by the idea of educated and uneducated listener, it does sound quite elitist.Through out history, many people made great music via uneducated way.. Yes, musical education might be helpful, but you can do without it too.

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights - John Frusciante
 
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I like the idea of the blog!

I don't see what anyone has to lose by reading some of the analyses you share, and I think to pose a slippery slope argument that the blog would cause it readers to become "less appreciative" of music is a tad paranoid. In any case, who can say objectively what appreciation is anyway? In defending the subjective nature of music, it is a little ironic that some of you are attacking crazyguy for sharing his own subjective thoughts. I don't think he pretends that his evaluations are objective, if you care enough to read say, just his very first post.

In any case, I think some of issues that has been brought up are worth disccusing. But as attacks on the blog they would require much more scrunity, because I am afraid they might have misunderstood the function (ostensible or otherwise) of the blog. For example, it is one thing to claim that overanalysis can kill one's own experience of art, but to say that the blog itself is detrimental to musicians in general is to be unfairly dismissive of both the blogger and his readers. If you can't object to analysis because it hinders you, and refuse to participate in such discussions, so be it. But don't pretend that you know for sure that it would also hinder other people. To do so is to understimate other musicians' abilities as readers and thinkers.

I am also unsure of the payoff cc expects out of his analogy of music as sex, which is frankly to be quite bizarre the way he does it, as a way of downplaying the value of analysis. I certainly am in no hurry to think that my appreciation of music is merely about surface appearances, about what is hot and what is not, or even about what kind of fashion is being displayed. What if instead of someone whispering “that’s Giorgio Armani she's wearing...", they go "hey would you put down that FHM magazine already. Look at how kind that girl over there is...". And in the first place, who says everyone appreciates ass from the start? Maybe you've just been looking at boobs and what crazyguy will do for you is to tell you to look at the ass (strangely enough, he HAS told me that IRL before. Yes, I know him IRL :x lol)

So... yeah.
 
Thanks Sooty... =) Appreciate your support.

Anyway to hifikiller. The very nature of our arguments were off tangent. There's this constant idea that enjoyment and thought cannot be happening at the single time is kind of false, though I would agree that the must basic emotions (and sometimes the strongest) cannot be elicited without being without thought. But what I'm offering here is a mechanism of enhancing that journey by learning what to look out for. Learning how to pick up skills to pick up things in music which would enhance the experience. It's like learning to hit a tennis ball the right way. You learn it once, pratise it well, and when you play tennis you don't think, you execute. Same with listening or playing.

I would negate a lot of arguments that were put out by the simple fact that we were arguing on completely different grounds. I would really like to extend an invitation to you, hifi killer, to actually read through and try out what I'm talking about. The thing is that elitism wouldn't exist in this format. Why? I'm sharing my knowledge. As educated listeners we also should share our knowledge with uneducated. It's like the rich sharing with the poor. If the rich were generous, then how would that be elitism? They'd be helping support the poor to help them learn how to get rich. Elitism is about exclusivity, about lacking of embracing of differences, but this is not about that.

This is why I'm offering this. I'm offering an outlet for anyone interested in learning how to listen to music in a different light. A new experience altogether. That is why I'm doing this. If I were to try to make this exclusive I would just go "U SUXX0R" and just laugh and say that I'm better than you. But this is not the case. This is a sharing of knowledge and a passion that changed my life in hope that it'll change yours too.

It also doesn't change your beliefs systems, sometimes it might even strengthen it. So that's why I'm doing it.

Oh and I agree with frusciante who is one of the best soulful guitarists out there. But that's when you think too much into what you're playing and try to intellectualise as you play. But if you just KNOW about what you can do, KNOW what sounds better and EXPAND what you know, wouldn't you sound better? Better to get the intellectual stuff out of the way and learn it properly so that when you play, it doesn't get into the way.
 
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Well I misunderstood. I saw a very long list of names that didn't include many of my favourite musicians so I just put that across.

Let's put it this way. Before the word "jazz" referred to a genre of music, it was negro slang for sex. Sex, as in not political philosophy, not Confucius, but sex. The people who invented jazz saw no problems with comparing it to sex, so why should you or me.

Music is not really like literature. Suppose in a book, 2 people had a duel. Now, suppose you had a reading club after or before that to explain what is the cultural significance of a duel, something that was not meaningful before will become more so. Music is not like that. It is more like food or sex. It is a sensual experience. Sure, you do have wine tasting classes where you talk about "woody aromas" and stuff, but it's more like "woohoo!" or "bleurgh". Anybody had to explain to you what is sweet, sour, bitter etc? The only thing is they put a name to it, that's all.

And music? Sure, you can be trained to be better at sex. But you learn it by yourself. You have to play the music again and hear new things. It's not like there's a Cliff notes for "Bitches Brew" or something. It's not impossible, but quite difficult. And even if there were a cliff notes, it would take the form of another recording. Like Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" being a young person's guide to the orchestra.

Music is just not culturally deep. A joke gets lost in translation. If there was a pun in a foreign language you wouldn't get it, and if it were explained to you, you could understand how it could be funny, but it wouldn't be funny to you. With food, a chilli is hot in any language. With sex, "YES YES YES OH YES" is approximately the same thing in any language. With music, you beat a drum somewhere and a hip somewhere else will start moving, regardless of language.

To be sure, tastes have to be cultivated. Some foods, you just learn to eat it. Durian, chilli, we all familiar with that. Same with music - jazz. And the first time you had sex it just "feels funny". But you learn by listening to the same piece again and again and eventually "getting it". Yes, somebody beside you can help but you shape the experience yourself.

Also, the explanation doesn't really have to be after the experience. When you're shagging, "ooooh" is a good enough on the spot coaching. For music you have James Brown yelling instructions to his band (his genius was that it completely fit the music). Michael Jackson says "OW!" and we know what it means. Before, after or during is not the issue.

The issue is that the written word and music are rather alien to each other. Why does the devil have the best tunes and not the angels? Because music is closer to animal instinct. What makes more sense, "sex and drugs and rock and roll" or "confucius and Kant and Beethoven"?

And another subtlety - I said that music and the written word are alien to each other, I am not saying that music is not intellectual. But most of the intellectual content is mathematical, or is pattern recognition. No need to elaborate here.

This is not to say that I've learnt nothing from the written word. Music critics have introduced me to all the jazz artists I mentioned earlier. They describe the music in metaphors. "Complex", "dissonant" (talking about Monk, surely), "percussionist", "chromatic". It's great. Then I listen to the music itself and it is what it is, and I forget about the words. Music theory - it doesn't contribute to my enjoyment of music very much, if at all. I follow all the notes, probably because I trained myself well. But imposing a framework on music, I don't like it at all.

There was once I was in a composition class. The teacher said, here, descending bassline is nice. Try that. Then she played Pachelbel. Then a lot of the other kids started writing stuff with descending bassline in. Deep inside I knew it was wrong: music shouldn't be reduced to a set of rules. At least, the rules shouldn't be that simple. Maybe it was necessary as a step up, but I thought it was ugly to think of music that way. My dislike of Pachelbel persists till today. Well my music teacher told me that minor 2nds were ugly, augmented 4ths were ugly. So when I heard Monk tear up all those rules, I was very pleased. I thought that it was best that you didn't tell people what the rules were, but instead you let them make them up themselves.
 
"And music? Sure, you can be trained to be better at sex. But you learn it by yourself."

Your hands must be very tired.... No wonder they call it wanking. Haha I wonder how good you are at either...

Have you even read my blog? As in actually read it. I'm not saying "this is the best way to do it". You completely did not understand the whole thing. And the guttural moans of sex is equivalent to the guttural moans of a musician on stage, so you're not talking about the music or the act, but instead the peripheral sounds in between. Obviously everyone would understand THAT part.

As much as I'd love to continue laughing at the comments. I'd like to plainly state that you don't even know what I'm talking about let alone coming up with a coherent argument towards my points. We're talking about similar things that you obviously don't understand. So please read the blog before you talk. Obviously you can't see or read details, let alone hear it, so no wonder you're so defensive about it.
 
hello centralcatchment,

please stop learning by yourself. when you need someone to do it with, you can always give me a call.

im talking about music of course.

ok by the way. i think it's disrespectful to read someone's blog by skimming past details and looking only for things that agree with you. that's totally not worth discussion. Crazyguy, why do you even bother discussing with someone who doesn't bother to read your blog? He doesn't even actually consider your points before he shoots his mouth off and pretends to be avant garde.

So what if i'm a novice and i appreciate people telling me how to start? even babies need people to teach them. so consider me a baby, then, and i appreciate people teaching me the language. I don't wanna OOH and AAH in carnal language only. I actually wanna know why i appreciate this form of music instead of just oohing and aahing when the musicians hit the sweet spot.

care to share your name?
 
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Wow your comment was very mature and befitting of an educator.

Guess we're going to let the people judge.

I normally don't have much beef against people introducing jazz to a wider audience. I just don't think this is the right way to do it.
 
Tell me what you gather from my blog?

And do you even understand my whole purpose behind all the things that I'm doing? And the ridiculousness of your posts?
 
so? and you're much better with 38 posts touting your superiority?

i'm a NEWbie ok? and a forum troll. big deal?

sorry crazyguy. i'm ruining your thread with childish banter with a juvenile freakshow. i'll leave. just can't stand his arrogance.
 
Of course 38 posts (now 39) doesn't make me superior. But if I'm crazyguy106 I'll tell you that I'm crazyguy106. I won't pretend to be a third person mrnotsoatas.

I wonder if mrnotsofake is taken. Gee maybe I should go for mrnotsochildish. Or mr-at-least-i-know-the-meaning-of-agreeing-to-disagree.
 
??? You are freaking kidding me. The person repeated what I said and you're ACCUSING ME OF IT?

My goodness. You're freaking brilliant.
 
just one last comment i'm so sorry.

you hung up on me but anyway i'd appreciate being recognised as my own person. you're so hilarious too.

"mr-at-least-i-know-the-meaning-of-agreeing-to-disagree" doesn't know what to agree with because he didn't even read the blog.

thanks.
 
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