The concept of a 'Taste Vocabulary'

Yeah, that is true, and is actually quite interesting - aerosmith brings up the idea of having a particular frequency that he cannot stand, and I wonder if there is something to the individual physical side of hearing that affects this, or if this is still somewhat culturally formed. (Probably a bit of both, as these things often are.)

xpost

sometimes appreciating something is work. most people don't want to work that hard.

sometimes appreciating something is work. most people don't want to work that hard.

This is total bullshit IMO. And the ways in which it gets trotted out, and in support of whom, make me really, really suspicious of anyone who uses this line.

i think it's true. the vast majority of people on earth don't want to take a lot of time learning about things that they don't immediately enjoy or are interested in!

or have an interest in. need more coffee.

you should be very suspicious of me though. at all times.

I do think it is true for a fair number of people. But I think it is highly dodgy to attempt to apply on an individual level rather than the macro level.

most of the things I like best are things I had some resistance to initially - my yes-I-like-this-right-away centers are less interesting to me than the places that're about what feel, to me, like more complex reactions. Mahler for example is probably my favorite composer, but he's not immediately exciting a lot of the time like Beethoven or bracing like Mozart - it's music I had to absorb, which at first to me sounded like film soundtrack for a film I hadn't seen. And then once I locked in, whole worlds opened. Glad to know that my way of enjoying music makes me a totally suspicious person though, it's like getting a rep without having to work for it

it took me over 30 years to truly appreciate polka. who would attempt to appreciate polka - on and off - for that amount of time? me. that's who. because i realized that i wasn't really hearing it. and that i needed to really listen to it. and hear it in different circumstances. and get over my initital distaste for accordion-based musics. fortuitously, i moved to an area with two excellent local radio shows that played many different styles and eras of polka music and THEIR enthusiasm for the music coupled with the stellar polka history lesson they were giving me (hearing the music change from the 50s to the present day) opened my eyes and ears in all kinds of ways.

long story short: i never gave up on polka. i would hear it for years here and there and groan and roll my eyes. not anymore! decades of paying attention paid off.

sometimes appreciating something is work. most people don't want to work that hard.

This is total bullshit IMO. And the ways in which it gets trotted out, and in support of whom, make me really, really suspicious of anyone who uses this line.

― Shepton Mullet (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 14:39 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can you explain why this is total bullshit? IMO of course appreciation of art and music takes work, or else it would all be easy listening. There would be no concept of "difficult" music. Once you get to a certain point as a listener, have the fun is the pursuit of new tastes and experiences, but you do have to get off your butt and seek them and challenge yourself, and not everyone has the will to do so.

*have = half

I think "vocabulary" is completely the wrong term for what we're talking about but I'm struggling to think of what it is we're getting at. With someone like Mahler it's about finding a way in and by and large you have to *want* to find that way in or at least be open to the possibility.

Someone telling a sceptic they have to acquire the right way of listening to Mahler (or metal, or someone like Actress or whatever) is pretty much guaranteeing they'll resent it and dig their heels in. But still, you can study as much Mahler as you like and still not actively enjoy it - if it doesn't work for you emotionally it doesn't work for you.

This link I just came across seems nicely relevant (a new thing for me, I know):

Elliot Schwartz from Music: Ways of Listening

Well, again, it's just the way that it's always the guys who are always trying to lecture me about how I haven't ~developed my taste centres~ enough to appreciate metal, or IDM, or noize rock or whatever super-specialised thing they like - are exactly the same ones who refuse to develop their taste centres to appreciate 90s R&B, or the girl group sound, or bubblegum pop, or, y'know, disco or "commercial" house or whatever. If the "stuff that requires appreciating" consists of all canonised straight white dudes then I give that shit the side-eye.

But this is just becoming fucking robotic posting at this point and is even boring me blah blah blah and there are about a billion x-posts now

I think "vocabulary" is completely the wrong term for what we're talking about but I'm struggling to think of what it is we're getting at.

capacity?

it would be like if you picked up a book when you were a teen - a book that was supposed to be "great" or an author who was highly thought of - and you did't like it and for the rest of your life you never read that author again. because of that one experience. maybe you would always not enjoy the author/book. but its silly to think that you don't grow/change/open up to things that you initially didn't like when you were younger.

and again for MOST normal people liking a small narrow range of stuff is a happy and comfortable situation and that's how they roll through life. i get that. but for fanatics enough is never enough.

Someone telling a sceptic they have to acquire the right way of listening to Mahler (or metal, or someone like Actress or whatever) is pretty much guaranteeing they'll resent it and dig their heels in. But still, you can study as much Mahler as you like and still not actively enjoy it - if it doesn't work for you emotionally it doesn't work for you.

...maybe? I mean, with Mahler, that's emotional music for me, so I'd agree, but take, say...where's Owen he'd be able to come up with a good example: Donald Martino, maybe? Somebody whose music isn't about emotional reactions, but other things. Music is vast, and the assumption that it's specifically about receptive pleasure-centers that it either touches or it doesn't: that's an assumption worth interrogating a little, which is I think part of what we're talking about. Enjoyment is a vast continent, there are many ways to enjoy a thing and they're not all rooted in the emotions.

That's wrong to me as well because, if you're talking about someone not having the "capacity" or "vocabulary" for anything you're basically talking down to them.

and i'm not telling anyone what they shouldn't or should attempt to appreciate. just saying that not everything in art is an immediate pleasure!

Sorry Scott - that was an xpost to How's Life.

scott and me are on the same page I think and should totally have a listening party some time

I'd go to that party, were I invited.

"Finding a way in" is much more the way that I like to think about this.

There's that whole didactic WELL YOU JUST DON'T LISTEN TO THE MUSIC PROPERLY!!! LET ME SHOVEL MORE EXAMPLES ONTO YOUR EARS thing which is a complete turnoff and actually makes one resentful both about the music and person trying to force you to listen to it - and then there's something like discovering a magical key by which you find the path to understanding it.

xxxpost Matt DC - bashing people over the head and insisting that they'll like something eventually will have limited results, yes, but it's also not exactly what is being discussed here. The idea is that as listeners we develop and build upon a lexicon that can be applied throughout the musical landscape. In many cases, if an entry in that lexicon is missing then it will be difficult to navigate around this landscape. Actress is a really good example, as much of his work is meta-textual. He references Prince, b-boy hip-hop and Detroit techno, but deconstructs all these into fairly difficult compositions. You wouldn't really give it to someone as a jumping off point into electronic music - in fact I'd go so far as to say that Splaszh is electronic music's equivalent of an Advanced Masters degree, using an academic analogy.

as far as the initial post goes, i don't even really bother with the people who say stuff like: all metal is... or all rap is...

it just reminds me of being a little kid when other little kids would say that punk was kill your mother music. i left those arguments on the playground.

and i would say that there is no point in trying to get people curious about things that they have no interest in, but i've kinds spent my life making people curious about music that they thought they had no interest in. its a gift. and i think people sell themselves short when it comes to art. they become afraid of stuff. or afraid of not knowing enough. i just tell people - all the time and every day at my store - to dig in! the listening station is over there. go for it. here's a good one you might not have heard. try this. no judgements though. never an unkind word.

it took me over 30 years to truly appreciate polka

this is a really interesting idea. i'm curious about why you felt such a need to pursue it tho. was it out of a sense of 'dilettant's duty'? are there other styles of music you were more comfortable about abandoning? i always liked the idea of trying to appreciate everything but now i'm more relaxed about not doing so (in several cases just to figure out exactly why i didn't like something was somehow enough).

i'm seriously thinking of giving people a free classical record with every purchase now. i just feel like people don't give it a shot. my store is filled with some of the most glorious sounds that people have ever created and 95% of the people who come in never so much as glance at it. plus, it just sounds great on record. i think i'm gonna do it. like johnny appleseed. but with bach. instead of seeds.

That's wrong to me as well because, if you're talking about someone not having the "capacity" or "vocabulary" for anything you're basically talking down to them.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, August 15, 2012 2:02 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, you're right. Maybe it's more like "settings". Like on a stereo, if your treble and bass and volume are in certain positions, certain frequencies and tones would be inaccessible to you, but if you were to be able to alter them, you'd hear new things in the music that were appealing.

"Finding a way in" is a better way of putting it because it implies it's something you do yourself on your own momentum, there has to be the belief that the work actually rewards the effort it takes to get there, which is what keeps people going through Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow or whatever. With pop (loosest definition of the term) music its much easier to get into that "you don't understand it - but there's nothing to understand" exchange.

Actress is a really good example, as much of his work is meta-textual. He references Prince, b-boy hip-hop and Detroit techno, but deconstructs all these into fairly difficult compositions. You wouldn't really give it to someone as a jumping off point into electronic music - in fact I'd go so far as to say that Splaszh is electronic music's equivalent of an Advanced Masters degree, using an academic analogy.

See this is exactly the sort of thing that would put me off going back to Actress. FWIW I don't find Splaszh particularly difficult - it sounds great but those sounds are put to fairly dull use.

That's wrong to me as well because, if you're talking about someone not having the "capacity" or "vocabulary" for anything you're basically talking down to them.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, August 15, 2012 2:02 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't see this as "talking down". It's merely accepting that the mind isn't just a bunch of receptors passively waiting to be stimulated, same as no human being can understand every language on Earth without learning it first.

it's weird to me that "vocabulary" is off-putting to people - to me, learning new vocabularies is liberating, if I don't have the word for something I don't feel like somebody's judging me - I feel like there's something exciting for me to get hold of.

like people are mad defensive about saying "I don't automatically understanding everything placed in front of me immediately." Neither does anybody else!

i kept trying to hear polka - really hear it - because millions and millions of people love it and live for it - in pennsylvania and south america and austria! - and i just couldn't get the appeal. for a long time. and a lot of it had to do with the sound of the accordion. which i think i never took as seriously as an instrument for some reason. because its hokey? i never was a fan of zydeco or french accordion music or mexican folk music heavy on accordion (via germany, i believe) and i think its always just a challenge for me to embrace things that i've had a hard time embracing. i never ever listened to salsa and thought i wasn't a fan and thought it was boring and all the same (!!) and at some point i took my time and brought salsa records home and lucked into some great stuff that ran the gamut from 50s puerto rican records all the way up to the 80s and i educated myself. little by little. it took years. i became a huge fan. but it doesn't happen overnight.

x-post

Actress is a really good example, as much of his work is meta-textual. He references Prince, b-boy hip-hop and Detroit techno, but deconstructs all these into fairly difficult compositions. You wouldn't really give it to someone as a jumping off point into electronic music - in fact I'd go so far as to say that Splaszh is electronic music's equivalent of an Advanced Masters degree, using an academic analogy.

See this is exactly the sort of thing that would put me off going back to Actress. FWIW I don't find Splaszh particularly difficult - it sounds great but those sounds are put to fairly dull use.

But Matt, you're a paid-up and conversant member of the electronic music club - in fact I know of very few people who know more about electronic dance music than you. So of course you're not going to find Splaszh a particularly difficult or stimulating listen.

i kept trying to hear polka - really hear it - because millions and millions of people love it and live for it - in pennsylvania and south america and austria! - and i just couldn't get the appeal. for a long time. and a lot of it had to do with the sound of the accordion. which i think i never took as seriously as an instrument for some reason. because its hokey? i never was a fan of zydeco or french accordion music or mexican folk music heavy on accordion (via germany, i believe) and i think its always just a challenge for me to embrace things that i've had a hard time embracing. i never ever listened to salsa and thought i wasn't a fan and thought it was boring and all the same (!!) and at some point i took my time and brought salsa records home and lucked into some great stuff that ran the gamut from 50s puerto rican records all the way up to the 80s and i educated myself. little by little. it took years. i became a huge fan. but it doesn't happen overnight.

x-post

― scott seward, Wednesday, 15 August 2012 15:19 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love accordion music, but I don't own much of it. Might have to dip my toe in some polka.

definitive declarations that you dislike [machine gun snare/the timbre of paul simon's voice/sexist lyrics] rely on neither you nor the thing you single out being mutable. the epiphanies when things you've heard before suddenly sound righteous/barren (what's a reverse epiphany?) seem to suggest otherwise

it is really fun to say things are categorically terrible tho, i'd never want that to end

I grew up with polka, occasionally on the hi-fi at home, but more often at wedding receptions. Didn't like it at the time, but I credit Brave Combo with making me appreciate giddy dancing to accordion. Polka,, I think, is really about the dance experience. I still don't have much of a vocabulary to describe the difference between a schottische and an oberek, but that was the gateway for me to zydeco and the other styles Scott references.

Re: metal, even though I have enough 'taste vocabulary' to know hammer-ons, or blast beats, or dropped tunings or whatever, it hasn't helped me find a way in, and that's fine with me.

I'm a dance newbie and didn't find Splaszh particularly "difficult" either.

But I also really reject this whole argument that there is something inherently worthwhile about "getting" difficult music. And this canonisation of listening and learning to love music as a rugged struggle. Fuck that.

That I accept it's important, as a listener, to try to expand one's horizons and push oneself out of one's comfort zone and challenge your tastes. It's just really frustrating to me what gets kind of... worshipped (odd word to use I know) as "challenging but worth it" and what gets dismissed as too easy, too open.

But I would think that, as someone who genuinely *loves* and has spent a lifetime trying to learn to better appreciate pop music, what makes it pop, what makes it immediate and compelling etc.

So much of life is a freaking struggle. Why does listening to music have to be represented as this epic struggle, too?

Re: metal, even though I have enough 'taste vocabulary' to know hammer-ons, or blast beats, or dropped tunings or whatever, it hasn't helped me find a way in, and that's fine with me.

Of course the "vocab" might stretch further than technique or instrumentation. I don't think one necessarily needs to know about the way metal's played to enjoy it; but there might be something in its imagery or values - something rarely heard in other styles - that one might really enjoy (or equally dislike).

I'm a dance newbie and didn't find Splaszh particularly "difficult" either.

Aw come on now. You know what side your Warp toast's buttered on, give yourself some credit.

I think you need to give general listeners more credit.

So much of this "Ooh, I had to struggle to develop a taste for X" just comes across like wanting to give oneself a giant pat on the back for appreciating music that the ~terrible hoi polloi doesn't get~ and you know, fuck that kind of elitism.

I don't believe that appreciating 'difficult music' precludes the appreciation of 'easy' music.

Or, seeing as I'm replying specifically to WCC here, I know that it doesn't, and if anyone tells you otherwise tell them to stuff it. On the other hand, please don't suggest that because some dudes are dicks to you that 'difficult' music is therefore not worthwhile.

it's funny but i think that open-minded metal fans are kinda perfectly set up to appreciate more genres of music than just about any other fan. folk, classical, bluegrass, polka, salsa, techno, all kinds of stuff. there are definitely more metal fans who dig electronic music than the other way around. virtuosity, repetition, rhythm, drama, emotion, there is a lot to love in the world for metal fans.

xp city

Somebody whose music isn't about emotional reactions, but other things

Can't really contribute here, aero; them composers who seek to divorce their writing from emotional content (i.e. Boulez), the listener will still infer emotional content.

Splaszh

Talking about Splaszh with people who have techno knowledge is really interesting. Even if the music does little for me in the house and less for me at a party, I'm always into talking about it-- listening to people talk about it, rather.

As for all the "don't tell me I'm listening to it wrong" rhetoric itt I just don't buy it. All music I dislike I just assume I'm listening to it wrong or haven't experienced it in the proper context. And please would you tell me how to listen better to it, etc.

No, emil.y it's more this kind of setup that there's something more inherently more ~worthy~ in driving oneself to appreciate "difficult" music. And that people who actually like or love "easy" pop music are somehow ignorant fools. I am just sick to death of that attitude, and want to punch it in its face.

So much of this "Ooh, I had to struggle to develop a taste for X" just comes across like wanting to give oneself a giant pat on the back for appreciating music that the ~terrible hoi polloi doesn't get~ and you know, fuck that kind of elitism.

it's not "elitism," it's people talking about their own experiences with enjoying music. if these experiences don't sound enjoyable to you, cool, enjoy music how you wanna, literally no-one is saying "that's bad!" to you. you are sitting here judging people for how they enjoy music, not the other way around. then you're calling them "elitist" for enjoying things. neat trick!

That I accept it's important, as a listener, to try to expand one's horizons and push oneself out of one's comfort zone and challenge your tastes. It's just really frustrating to me what gets kind of... worshipped (odd word to use I know) as "challenging but worth it" and what gets dismissed as too easy, too open.

It could be argued that "Challenging but worth it" and "Easy and Open" are both lexical categories. Some people like music that is "difficult but worth it", others like "open and easy", while many will appreciate the two depending on context. Some people are more accustomed to listening to "challenging" music and find other things too accessible - too easy, and vice versa.

xp My own polka example is Irish fiddle music. About five years ago, had a "you're listening to it wrong" moment with a Dublin friend, who set me up with a book on Planxty and a listening list. Like, the best music!