OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

*moves to the other thread*

Even under the rubric of Theory, don't different people use it to mean different things at different times? An old school classical guy might be referring to something out of the common practice period, particularly the law as laid down by Rameau in 1722, whereas a recent Berklee grad is walking around with his head stuffed up with Chord Scale Theory?

Sure, but they're both doing structural/formal analysis of music. They're just working with different repertoire. They could still present at similar conferences, etc. Anyway, I better go mark some counterpoint.

(Xp)I guess what I am trying to say is if you define theory as something like "the study of what chords go together and what melodies go with them" then there are different approaches to theory and some explain certain things better than others. What is surprising or not done in one theory is not surprising and done all the time in another. If you don't take this into account then theory is kind of a strawman.

*ok I'm leaving too*

(Something about tyranny of theory, blah blah blah)

I want to continue this discussion just in the more specific "talking about articles" thread instead of the "lol at this guy" thread

Should we start a new thread for theory and pop or take it here?: Rolling Music Theory Thread

(I don't think math & music would be the right place.)

Yes, the math & music thread is too specialized, but that rolling theory thread looks fine. Plus I'm sure it will makeTim happy.

Moved.

I'm not at all suggesting a musicological approach is flawed, only that mentioning a series of facts about clusters and time signatures and chord sequences still adduce opinions.

Yes, but like with any discussion about things other than facts, you usually proceed without undercutting what you're doing by asserting that you'll never be able to communicate and that everyone's frame of reference is entirely alien to your own.

What I do definitely "veers into qualitative stuff," as Hurting 2 put it. In fact, that's the whole point of it.

I think very few music theorists would claim that certain chord progressions or melodic leaps in certain contexts or certain kinds of voice leading sound objectively "better" or "worse" than others, but they might describe "effects" that they create, as well as how they rate in certain historical periods in terms of what is more or less common, what would be more or less expected, etc. Of course, all this stuff can be shaped by culture and by individual music experience, so it gets to be a bit of a mindfuck. A very simplistic but classic example is that the very fact that a major key sounds "happy" and a minor key sounds "sad" has been shown to be culturally conditioned, and there are cultures where minor is not associated with "sad" at all.

There's a quote I love from Marc Ribot that playing a standard is like playing a duet with the audience's memory. But in a way all music plays a duet with the audience's expectations -- you're used to hearing a certain chord progression resolve a certain way and suddenly someone fakes you out and has it not resolve but move to a series of chords that leads to a key change. Even if you don't know how to identify what you hear in music theory terms, you still hear it. But then if you aren't used to the chord progression resolving a certain way in the first place, you might not experience the exciting "surprise" of it moving in a different direction. It's not much different than when a film plays with a trope -- if you don't know the trope, the play isn't very meaningful to you.

A very simplistic but classic example is that the very fact that a major key sounds "happy" and a minor key sounds "sad" has been shown to be culturally conditioned, and there are cultures where minor is not associated with "sad" at all.

Pharrell's house

Ah

is Pharrell's house close to Daryl's?

well this ain't exactly a peer-reviewed journal, but
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad

well this ain't exactly a peer-reviewed journal, but
Better not let Sund4r see that.

hey guys she's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

update: she listened to a record at the wrong speed

Gird your loins, ILX. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/the-pernicious-rise-of-poptimism.html?_r=0

In the guise of open-mindedness and inclusivity, poptimism gives critics — and by extension, fans — carte blanche to be less adventurous. If we are all talking about Miley Cyrus, then we do not need to wrestle with knottier music that might require some effort to appreciate.

Preach

Hahaha that URL is straight trolling ilx

the rise of.... what decade is this?

*closes tab when he mentions The Great Beauty as an example of something of quality*

There's some Morbzbait in there too:

I spend most of my time, professionally speaking, writing about movies and books, and during quiet moments, I like to entertain myself by imagining what might happen if the equivalent of poptimism were to transform those other disciplines. A significant subset of book reviewers would turn up their noses at every mention of Jhumpa Lahiri and James Salter as representatives of snobbish, boring novels for the elite and argue that to be a worthy critic, engaged with mass culture, you would have to direct the bulk of your critical attention to the likes of Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer. Movie critics would be enjoined from devoting too much of their time to “12 Years a Slave” (box-office take: $56 million) or “The Great Beauty” ($2.7 million), lest they fail to adequately analyze the majesty that is “Thor: The Dark World” ($206.2 million).

Saul Austerlitz is the author of “Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes From I Love Lucy to Community.”

a guy who wrote a book on sitcoms complaining about critical obsession with pop

(xp) Like freakytrigger never happened.

oof didn't notice that, that's bad

the book he wrote i mean

haha not finishing it though since so many popists have done not actually engaging w/ rockism critiques of rockism it only seems fair to get it in the other direction. writing this however - the indie hero Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields was accused of being a racist for expressing his appreciation for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” from the (actually racist) Disney musical “Song of the South,” and his general dislike of hip-hop and not mentioning merritt's comments about the kkk or having no use for black musicians post-integration seems willfully dishonest. anyhow if there's any demographic that's shown its ability to not respond to every piece of navel gazing troll bait that comes across its rock critics so i'm sure this will pass unnoticed pretty quickly.

I mean, the piece makes like, one or two good points nestled amongst all the misrepresentation.

a guy who wrote a book on sitcoms complaining about critical obsession with pop

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, April 4, 2014 10:51 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was like the 'drummer for the rock band gay dad' of 2014 punchline

I'm surprised there's no mention of HAIM.

FWIW I remember way back when I first came around these parts (maybe ten years ago? Yeesh) and was first discovering what poptimism was about, I asked that same question about why mid 30s/40s men were devoting so much ink to music aimed at 12-year-old girls.

it still makes no sesne to me

these articles always come from such a weird place, like they'd be more convincing if they were arguing we should pay more attention to keiji haino or whatever--but it's always this anxious distinction between what's popular and what's...less popular.

FWIW I remember way back when I first came around these parts (maybe ten years ago? Yeesh) and was first discovering what poptimism was about, I asked that same question about why mid 30s/40s men were devoting so much ink to music aimed at 12-year-old girls.

― ביטקוין‎ (Hurting 2), Friday, April 4, 2014 11:05 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah don't get me wrong i often wish the big name pop critics would step away from the pop charts more often and look at some of the more critically unexplored corners popular (in the broad sense) music particularly outside of indie. This article isn't really making this argument, though

(which is to say, sometimes it feels like the SFJ/Ann Powers focus is on "Indie, or very popular music" to the detriment of genre writing)

(I guess since Jon is at the Times you can throw hip-hop into that formulation too)

the author of the book on sitcoms forgets that his favorite Hollywood entertainment was also studio garbage too.

guys guys he's corny and clueless about sitcoms also, let's not turn this into a tv vs pop thing.

It's like the NYT editors decided, "We should print a counterpoint to the Dan Kois 'Cultural Vegetables' piece from a few years back. In the interests of fairness, we'd better make sure it's equally stupid."

Still waiting for the poptimist gadfly messiah to revolutionize from within.

complaining that brilliant art is routinely ignored by the critical consensus is fine; I do it vehemently

however, the brilliant and ignored art he mentions in his article is fairly mainstream & has an extant critical discourse around it

consequently it all comes off as indier-than-thou mithering

http://furia.com/pjs/voter_686209.html#2013

we need more professional writers writing about stuff nobody wants to read about

hmmmmm trying to connect poptimism in music criticism to the gossip mill-style coverage of pop music in the media in general is really reaching. also the part where he quotes the kelefa sanneh 2004 piece to portray poptimism as basically "reverse rockism" is lolsobad. there may have some good points in there but i am too lazy to trim out all the cabbage to find them. (we poptimists ARE that lazy after all -- appreciating the national takes way too much effort for my feeble brain.)

in truth much of the mainstream pop music that is rapturously covered in the media over the past decade is still justified by rockist ideals in the press, but apparently that is "poptimism"

non-ilmer on my facebook after i posted this:

"NYT trolling ILM."

ryan otm about the "keiji haino" thing. This article's stance isn't "Hey, it's a big, wide world out there with tons of non-charting music that might be awesome!" Austerlitz instead takes the ever popular stance of "What, so I"m not allowed to like Springsteen anymore and still be cool? What the hell?!"

I mean, The National album he mentioned hit #20 on the Pazz n Jop poll referenced at the top of the article. The idea that it's "kryptonite" in the current critical discourse is a little silly.

ahahahaha omg lol @ his ballot

this truly is the vanity of not getting a decent pop critic job offer isn't it