Lord Skye

That's what I'm saying. I'm not hiding behind anything, because there isn't much to hide from. We don't know the answers. In fact, I don't think there are answers. If someone wants to think everything you hear while walking down the street is music, great, and another person contends that Mozart's symphonies are artistic and pleasing but technically not music, that I'll accept too. We've so stretched the idea of music (thanks a lot 20th century) that it doesn't really matter anymore.

I think there's a difference there. With tonal counterpoint, you can't really write it and think you're not writing music, even if it's an academic exercise. No composer would write a fugue and then call it not music. And I don't think any audience member would take him seriously after that declaration. However, I'll contradict myself later. No, and I stipulated that there is nothing wrong with it. But I can't call it musical. This topic is just a semantics issue, really. People put too much weight on "music". It's not better than sound, or art, or science or plumbing or a flowerpot. It's not the only thing that appeals to our senses. I just have a fairly specific definition of music. With the freedom we have as composers to write more or less whatever we want and have it played in a concert hall, you have to consider three options: everything is music (absurd), nothing is music (perhaps, but it makes for difficult conversation) and there is some line between noise and music, but since no one can define that line, everyone must do so for him/herself (there's the contradiction from earlier). Mine excludes noise, not out of a grudge, but simply because I want some kind of boundary. And to be honest, I've not worked out all the details yet (i.e., what about percussion pieces? where's the line between percussion and noise?), but it seems better to me than to go the extreme one way or the other. But really, it's a pointless argument. I'm off to noise theory class.

I don't see it as a problem. Like Gardener said, there's really no way we can run out of things to write. And there are so many colors yet unexplored... think out of the box! Just write what you want. The only reason you should be worried that you're copying people is if lawyers come knocking on your door...

I just don't buy it. That's not the way I think. I mean, suppose someone famous were to record some birds, some wind, some idle chatter and a few cars in the background, all of this phasing in and out of perception, and say it was his new piece. Then, when everyone is eating it up, he comes out and says he never meant it to be artistic, it was just a social experiment, and the sounds were just him walking through the park with a voice recorder. What becomes of the recording? Sound can be artfully done. But it's not music. It doesn't have to be, mind you, there's nothing wrong with just sound. But it's not music.

Well, here comes another shitstorm. For me, sound and music are very different. Sound can be used in music, and you can even use music in sound, but I don't think even organized sound is musical. It can be nice, but what would we have if we just allowed all sound to be music? (inb4 someone quotes me then goes "uh, ____?")

I think the answer's already been made. It was relatively obvious to start, too. 4/4 is rhythmically stable, even more so than 3/4 or 6/8. It works for audiences as well as performers. That's about it.

I too can do what you're asking, but if J can do it, go for him as I would probably take a while to get back to you! :)

That's basically what I think about it. Cute, but are they making actually good, non-novelty music? (I'm not particularly responding to you Ferk, just QFT.)

ITT: penis swinging :laugh:

Now THAT would be crazy.

This has elevated into shitstorm status. I'm sorry, anyone who responded to my posts, but I can no longer continue this. I'll still read all/some posts though.

Well excuse me! You've made a point that's impossible to deny! We'll all just give up then. You win. Uh, who are you to say that someone who prefers Avril Lavigne is wrong? Who are you to say anyone is wrong? Even within one specific genre, you have a million different perspectives on who's better or who has better music (written for them possibly). Trying to argue that your aesthetic is the objectively correct aesthetic is always a mission failed.

It's irrelevant... to what? :laugh:

That's true, objectivity in music is always difficult. But there has to be some space between "everyone enjoys this music due to an empirical goodness of it" and "nobody enjoys this music because any goodness it has lies in some obscure compositional technique the composer used and it doesn't actually sound good". It doesn't matter if the piece follows the Fibonacci sequence or is a palindrome, the score itself is a work of art, the score was computer generated from a mathematical algorithm or whatever have you. If someone can't listen to it without knowing anything about it (even the title) and enjoy it, perhaps there's a problem. That's what I'm referring to when I say music should be self-evident. At least in part... maybe some of the meaning lies in the title or the position of the composer when s/he wrote it. But if it just doesn't sound good whatsoever, most people won't enjoy it. Example: my musically uneducated best friend made a few things in Finale that I love listening to just because he made them, but I know the writing itself is bad, and no one else would like them but me. You don't have to change. In fact, I wouldn't want you to. I want everyone to sell out as little as possible. Changing because of some labeling issue would be selling out. If everyone honestly felt compelled to write noisy atonal music, that would be fine. I just hate it when I hear people talking about the necessity of continuing the "tradition", whatever they mean by that, of classical or "western art music". I wish it was more "this is what I want to hear, what I feel the world is lacking, as an artist" rather than "this is what needs to be done to keep the tradition alive". I have heard both. I know what you meant... that is the problem, the way I see it. Pop music, referring to everything after classical (sometimes even including jazz) is actually not the worst title in the world; even though it's a huge umbrella and I think it should be done away with, at least it doesn't insinuate that classical music isn't artful. But it would present a problem if it ceased to become popular. I don't really know what could replace these terms though, but like I said, almost anything would be better. Don't you think, though, that we could potentially make even more different music if the dichotomy was torn down? Different not just between genres, like art vs. pop, but different from anything we as a society have heard before? It frustrates me because there are so many combinations possible, and we need good composers to explore them and work them out, and nothing is happening. Composers continue to work in their own world. Yes, I'm generalizing, and no, there isn't anything morally wrong with sticking to your guns. But I wish we would realize how much potential there is for new, exciting music if we just think out of the big classical box! Is this really such a romantic, unrealistic notion?

I don't know yet if I want to contribute to this. I have some pretty heavy opinions but I'm waiting to see how things play out. One thing I will add is my objection to all the terminology. And we've covered this already, but "art music" implies a non-art in everything else. And "contemporary music" is even worse, because it implies everything else isn't music! And that's not the only problem with the terms stated in the topic title. If "western art music" began to be totally popular again in 20 years, say as a result of people getting tired of hip hop and indie rock, would it then be called pop music? What would become of what we now call pop music? Is there a solution? I don't know. Would "concert hall music" and "CD music" be better? Maybe. I'd rather have slightly misleading terms, or terms that have exceptions to them, than ones that imply something negative about its complementary term. And as a sort of aside, don't you think it's a little difficult getting into "contemporary music" when you have to understand where our living composers are coming from, stylistically, to understand what the music is doing today? Shouldn't music be self-evident, and not have a pre-requisite? I feel as if enjoyment is no longer the primary goal of that music. Maybe it's the job of the composer to write music that doesn't veer as far away from the threshold as possible. Maybe it's the contemporary composers to blame for the dichotomy we have. Should we have it? Well, that might be a moot point, but it's there, and it's because most people insist on keeping on the tradition of classical music, and just letting pop/jazz/whatever do its own thing. That brings up another point. It might be a little shallow to say there is only pop and art. Even aside from the terrible terminology, metal is nothing like pop. Jazz is nothing like pop. Ambient electronica is nothing like pop, and neither are video game scores. In fact, the only thing that's really pop is... pop. We're sort of saying that, because they all evolved in the twentieth century in a sort of different tradition, they're all lumped together in a category of their own away from classical. And nothing could be more closeminded. Then, would it be a good idea for composers to try to blur the lines and do bits and pieces of both? I've been told no. I've been told that you pick a slice of the pie and you stay there. People who try to blur the lines are unsuccessful. Is that really a healthy way to think about music? Progressing towards unity is pointless? More often than I'd like, I don't think that's the direction we're heading. I guess I did contribute there. Oh well. It had to be said.