“I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And, for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’.” — Bob Newhart
Well, that’s slightly better than my assessment, which is that “country” music is the best contemporary music played on radio. I know; damning with faint praise, since everything else is “less good” than pig manure.
Just a drive by observation…
I think you’re crumudgeonosity has blinded you to a wide range of really good music, but we all are a product of our past and people develop certain tastes over time, and a comfort zone about things like this.
Music keeps on going regardless of our ability to appreciate it. I’m sure the Bach devotess in the early 1800’s thought Beethoven was the classical equivalent of Britney Spears, but they were manifestly wrong. They just couldn’t get out of their comfort zone and music passed them by.
I keep finding new music to enjoy all the time. It takes some work to seperate the wheat from the chaff, but my family’s lives are enriched by it. My wife thanks me all the time for expanding her horizons. If she hadn’t met me she’d have much simpler tastes. Same for our daughter. How many thirteen year old girls have the George Shearing Quintet, Tim Story and Ulrich Schnauss on their MP3 players? Only 1.
Keep looking David. There’s tons of good music out there hiding in plain site.
sidebar: Bach had no devotees in the early 1800s. Not until Felix Mendelssohn and others rediscovered his music in the MID-1800s did he even become known at all outside a limited number of churches in Germany. THE big star of the early 1800s was Franz Joseph Haydn (as he had been since the late 1700s)… and he was a BIG fan of Beethoven [though apparently he hardly even knew about Bach, well, unless it were Johan Christian, who was closer to being his contemporary].
[Update: BTW, even Mendelssohn’s efforts didn’t effect much. It wasn’t until Robert Schumann’s many musical tributes to Bach, follwed by Johannes Brahms’ open admiration of Bach’s music, that he gained much widespread acclaim. Last night was just too pooped to develop the line any further than mentioning Mendelssohn. Still scanty, but less so by a tad.]
What I find so disgusting about nearly all the crap being produced nowadays is that
a. Most of the so-called artists cannot find and reproduce pitch at all well. Most have never developed the EARS to claim to be musicians, let alone the chops to actually make music, and it shows in the weak fecal matter they perform. (Listening to someone who cannot accurately match pitch or maintain a key can be physically painful at times for those of us who can.)
b. The “music” these fake “artists” perform is–in most cases–structurally weak, without any real teleos or grounding in musical meaning. It’s mostly noise, even the badly written ballads. And,
c. Lacking a strong teleos, the chords, rhythms and even melodies–when they accidentally happen to exist–are characterized by poor mating to
d. Utterly banal lyrics at best, though often more like toxic pablum.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There IS good music nowadays, but I haven’t heard–and I have searched–any good music from the manufactured voices “singing” crap music and lyrics on top 40, except in extremely rare cases, in the last 30 years. And don’t EVEN get me started on the crap that passes for “serious music” nowadays. Gagamaggot. But hip hop? Useless at best, actively destructive of musical sensibilities at norm. Rap? NOT MUSIC. Period. The best of rap can have a certain savage, pagan rhythm, but even the best is pretty much crap.
There is new music that’s worth listening to out there, but as I have frequently said, it’s not on the radio; it’s not in the high-selling albums; it’s not being listened to by the 99% of folks out there ruining their ears with the crap that IS on the radio, etc. Heck, I have tried to listen to the “American Idol” thing, hoping for at least good performances, but that’s the best they have been: mostly on pitch; decent, average voices, nothing to write home about at all.
Sad.
And at least 99% of folks can’t even tell it’s crap, because they can’t actually hear what it is, having had their ears turned into crap funnels over the years. (Sidebar: Our lil “church in the wildwood” lost my attendance when it just would NOT keep the piano in tune. An inexpensive lil investment I even offered to fund. Used to be, this part of the country turned out musicians by the wagon load. No longer. Now it turns out folks who can’t hear thunder, just like everywhere else. I stopped going to hear the local school music groups play, well after I stopped teaching music here, because the groups’ directors NEVER TUNED THEM or taught them HOW to tune their instruments properly. Just more of the same. The directors apparently had had their ears so “detuned” that, like 99% of the populace, they no longer cared or something. I worked the board for an extended recording session with the high school band one year–the last year I let it desecrate my ears. The current “director” “conducts” it by clapping her hands, I’ve been told by folks who’re as apalled at the practice as I am. [By contrast: EVERY student I had could tune their instruments, from their first year on. If it’s not in tune, it’s crap. Period.])
Music is something I know very, very well, Woody, and I stand by my assessment of the contemporary music scene. BTW, my “damning with faint praise” comment about so-called “country” music? Of all the genres out there, the typical “country” music piece does at least stand a chance of being in tune and having decent prosody. Of course, the lyrics mostly suck, so tacking a Good Prosody (a good mating of music and lyrics) label on “country” music is again damning it with faint praise. Still, with good prosody, things played and sung (mostly) in tune, structural integrity–for the most part–and a shockingly decent connection with some sort of musical teleos, “country” music is consistently head and shoulders above other genres. And it’s a genre I simply do not like because of reasons of personal taste (and a dislike for fake “country” vowel production, although I confess a weakness for country-western music, an entirely different critter to today’s “country” music… which still suffers from the “manufactured music” sound).
Let me direct you once again to THE remedy for the music itself (there is only one remedy for bad performers: talented people paying the price in blood and toil and sweat and tears to really learn music): The Principles of Classicism (not classicism). No, not the techniques and styles of Classicism, its principles.
Balance
Clarity
Accessibility
Expressiveness
Edification
Of the five, most contemporary (and darned near all top 40, every time I can steel my stomach to listen to a top 40 station again), “music” manages to barely deal out two of them, and usually exhibits the opposite of all the others while doing so. *sigh*
I almost ruined contemporary music for my kids as they were growing up by listening to their music with them and then teaching them how to analyze what it was doing. (Oh, the fact that they can recognize and reproduce pitch helped blunt appreciation for the stuff, too.)
Yes, again, there are pearls out there buried in the landfill of contemprary “music” but they are few and darned far between.
BTW, Ulrich Schnauss? Overprocessed “Moody Blues” instrumentals without the imagination, IMO (imeem and other places let me sample such wares pretty often). A bit over-manufactured. Not bad, but that’s the best I can go. Tim Story is better, with Hans-Joachim Roedelius of course, right? Without his input, Story’s less good, IMO, although the theme from In Search of Angels is a relaxing lil piece. Kinda cutsie on some of the deceptive resolutions–overdoing that detracts from the piece, IMO. Still, perhaps I’ve not heard enough of ’em. Sounds derivative and monothematic to me after a while. By contrast, travel through just one “album” (a song cycle) of Schubert lieder and the range of dynamics, tempos, keys and emotional content will astound. Not so even with the “good stuff” (and it is OK) you’ve mentioned. But as decent as a few are, there’s still not a lot out there compared to the dreck that dominates contemporary “music”.
BTW #2: of the five listed Principles of Classicism, Ulrich and Tim seem to routinely manage three fairly well. But just one short Schubert lieder can emody all five at once, and Schubert was a Romantic composer, not Classical (but then, Beethoven was a Romantic period composer for the last half of his life; heck he WAS Romanticism for the last half of his life, and he managed to never drop a single stitch in embodying all five principles, no matter what he wrote or in what style he wrote. Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, even Aaron Copland all managed to embue their work with all of those principles, and you can experience them all combined in one short song, Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” (from Turandot), arguably the greatest song written in the 20th Century, so great that rock and jazz artists frequently butcher it to the wild applause of their musically deaf fans.
Others manage to unconsciously use those principles as well, even in contemporary music, but because few recording engineers are worth their salt as musicians, little to none of that makes the charts.
Wow. I thought I had pretty discriminating tastes David, but I guess it’s all a matter of degrees.
You obviously know way more than I do about music, but I’m not sure if I envy you for your deeper understanding and appreciation, or pity you for not being able to appreciate all the tunes that bring people like me such simple enjoyment…
Either way I stand corrected, and bow to your authority on the matter. Excellent dissertation BRW. I already left my wife a note to get me some Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Copland, and Puccini CD’s on her next trip to the library so I can “improve” my ears a bit.
Thanks for the lesson.
Not intended as a “lesson” Woody. I just really love good music performed well, and since I’ve spent most of my life listening with an ear toward understanding what I hear, or playing/singing/directing/arranging music from an early age, and invested years in honing what little ability I possess as a performer, I sometimes express myself a little more forcefully than some might expect… or want me to. *heh* Yeh, I said that: “what little ability I possess as a performer”. I mean it too. My primary gift has been my ears and my mind and using them to coax music from folks who just want to sing or play music. I simply cannot understand (or accept) so-called artists who can’t accurately reproduce pitch ort, if they can–mostly–are like Michael Bolton butchering Nessun Dorma (a horrific performance that actually invaded my dreams and woke me in a cold sweat after I’d had it inflicted on me). Personally, I don’t miss the simple joy of enjoying poor performances of bad music. But that’s just me, and obviously, the way crappy non-0artists have become millionaires left and right sellijng theirt performances to an increasingly tone deaf public, I’m part of an endangered species.
My collection of recordings is actually smaller than my collection of printed scores, in part because I sample so many recordings before allowing myself to purchase them, weeding out as much crap as possible, and in part because just reading through a score and “listening” to it is often the only way to “hear” a really good “performance” of it. Unfortunately, scores of well-written contemporary music are either more expensive than recordings or unavailable, for the most part. *sigh* Sure, the physical elements are lost, but not much more than many audiophiles lose when using top flight headphones.
It’s a cross I’ll gladly bear, I suppose. 🙂
One thing that’s a bright spot on my music horizon, though it will come with a cloud, is that my dad has offered me the use of his collection of around 300 original scores of 30s “big band” music when he no longer needs them (he’s in a major metropolitan area and still plays in several groups… at the age of 87, even went on tour with one of them to Armenia this Spring. Whatta guy)… as long as I eventually cede them to his high school alma mater for their historical collection. I can at least, then, play a few of the riffs, rescore and arrange them to suit me and perhaps even record them off using electronic reproductions (SuperMidi Conductor does a mostly decent job of tweaking midi files to make them a little more realistic, and “Garriton Personal Orchestra” is hands down the best sample set for the money–or even much, much more. It’d not be like live, but closer to “right” than most bands today could reproduce. *heh* I’d have a hard time seating the horns to do them live around here, though.)
Oh, and Sibelius? Until I heard Finlandia, The Swan of Tuonela and the whole Kalevala suite, I was just a kid who liked singing (yes, in choirs as well as just whenever/whatever) and playing my little kiddies’ instruments. Sibelius was my first awareness of symphonic music, although my parents and grandparents had filled our home with the stuff. It’s just that I’d never listened before THAT record… which I now have in my own collection of vinyl.
Interesting (well, to me), I once had a particular class of seventh graders (seventh graders in general ought to be locked away in privater padded rooms until their hormones settle down) that I was tasked with “teaching music” to. All of them complete musical illiterates with varying degrees of tone-deafness–seriously. Could Not Reproduce Pitch. Period. Finlandia got their attention, and from there, though it was an uphill climb all the way, the semester became “do-able” and they did end up “getting” some music. *heh* Class project in the last month: groups worked together to write their own songs. I was their consultant, they were primarily the lyricists with input on melodic material and instrumentation, from which I arranged their songs. Was loads of fun, not the least because most of them at least became able to reproduce pitch and maintain key.
I still wonder, at times, if they’d have been better off in private padded rooms, though, because what they had for music when the class ended was… what they could get on the radio or for their CD players…
Well, I do tend to go on whenever someone lets me talk about music, and anymore it’s usually this kind of disconnected ramble.
“Ramble On” (is Led Zeppelin okay?) my friend. It’s what I came back to read.
Led Zeppelin is an order of magnitude better than most of what’s available in contemporary music today (but that’s kinda like my “praise” of contemporary “country” music… *heh*)