Post a controversial music opinion

Few famous session players made good songwriters or producers so their musical powers appear to be somewhat limited too.

i think part of the argument being made here is that songwriting and producing are too heavily weighted as indicators of musical powers in the first place.

Not a controversial music opinion: there are many different ways to "understand music" and none of them is the best one.

enjoying chewing this over.

I guess what I'm thinking about is that the more editorial ways of making music afforded by technology make it much easier to develop the detachment and distance necessary to have a sense of music as material, to be able to step outside of something and cast the same thing different ways. I think you can get it through composition, and if you have a high level of mastery of your instrument your performance of material can have that reflexive or ironic quality, gesturing outside itself, but you get this altering/slippage/transcendence of meaning all the time in DJ sets, everything is constantly in dialogue. some of my very favourite instrumentalists have that relational or materialist sense to their music as well, and I don't think it's a 'higher' or essential value, but I think it's only possible with a broad or flexible understanding and sympathy to different sorts of music, or different ways of hearing the same thing. it makes me think of hegel's idea of modern art as opposed to classical art but I don't want to read hegel again to confirm

I don't think there's a best way of listening or that all ways of listening are equal

"We've had 70 years of making records. Now, we sample them." = Mixmaster Morris

my problem this is the assumption that there's one way to understand music or better or worse ways to understand it

― Greta Van Fleek (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

otm

That assumption underlies a shitton of posts in this thread

what's the argt that all ways of listening to and understanding music are equal

music is for the people

ogmor, I often get the sense from your posts that you listen with a sociologically-tuned ear, by which I mean that you're primarily interested in the sociopolitical contexts that each and every fragment of raw sound necessarily betokens, so I'm inclined to read your hyperbolic praise of DJ-ing as an extension of this general understanding of aesthetics. The critical doubling or 'lag' that is a necessary feature of reflexion, whether of self or other, whether in art or beyond it, is indeed heightened by recording technology, and I do think there is a difference of more than just degree between this method of playing/listening and more traditional musicianship, perhaps because DJ-ing allows for a greater and more readily available gamut of contextualising and decontextualising gestures than other approaches to sound, but the implication that this somehow produces a higher understanding of music strikes me as moot, although you could no doubt say the same thing about my own 'selftaste' (I love this word by Gerard Manley Hopkins, it always springs to mind when I'm baffled by certain musical opinions here). Incidentally, if memory serves, Hegel argues that art is a thing of the past, i.e. that there is a sense in which modern art is simply an oxymoron divorced from the immediacy of yore, hence the seemingly more widespread, exact opposite argument: art begins where the sacred ends, which also makes for a more sociologically-compatible position.

well I'd say I'm primarily interested in meaning and emotion, which are social in some important senses, but I think they go beyond what we normally talk about when we talk about the sociopolitical. as I say, I don't think this ability to shift contexts and perspectives is a higher understanding so much as a more broader one.

my faded memory of hegel is that he thinks there's an analagous difference between modern and classical religion. in both cases it's a perfectly self-contained pure expression vs a gesture outside itself to something transcendent.

Free your booty on the dance flo and your Nietzschean dialectic will follow

My apologies if I misrepresented your position, ogmor. Either way, I agree with DJ-ing's potential for greater variety (only too rarely lived up to, however, at least in my experience, as it tends to favour certain materials more than others, largely due to its conventional ties to the club). As for Hegel, it's almost as if, for him, art and religion were one and the same, which subverts his own claim to some extent: when he's bemoaning the passing of art, he's really talking about pure religion and vice versa, which ironically does a disservice to both.

Schopenhauer spot on WRT Hegel.

Post a controversial philosophical opinion

when musical discussion turns to philosophers, i know it's time for me to leave
that is not a controversial opinion but it is generally true

Why is that, LL?

first, i have no idea what anyone is talking about -- that is probably the main thing. second, it is no longer a discussion about music, and talking about philosophers isn't an activity i enjoy engaging in (see first point)

That's too bad. I think we're always engaging with music philosophically when we talk about it, even if it's only in an impressionistic manner. The lexicon can be a drag, though, I agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_xIvlUYyPc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Tc4mXodrI

adorno was in fact taught composition by zemlinsky and berg -- but i think he and FN are the only two?

(i wondered about bloch but while ernst bloch the philosopher wrote about music, the composer ernest bloch is someone else)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld7XDELDnto

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, incidentally.)

basically all goths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH2gqTVXzZ0

(down with schopenhauer)

I think hegel's ability to see analogues in different areas is one of his strong points, and am inclined to assume continuity between these overlapping areas without evidence to the contrary

the idea that adding philosophy to a discussion about a topic stops it being about the topic is what we call in philosophy a 'hot turd'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y__f6czarnA

Arcade Fire are a good band

Arcade Fire are a good *live* band

The first album bangs. Each of the subsequent ones had at least one incredible track. Thematically they can be corny but my generation is only self conscious about that because of the nefarious influence of music critic and internet personality chris weingarten

Bruce Springsteen is lame

agreed. Corny too

'State Trooper' is a good song though.

also playing gigs for 4 hours is not a virtue in and of itself

Morton Feldman's 2nd string quartet > the Boss's live shows.

I've yet to meet someone unswayed by a live Boss show, but hey, who knows.

^^^the refrain of every Phish, Grateful Dead and Ween fan

Ooh, vicious

Also the mollusk is a good album even though i’ll never ride for ween as a band/concept

xpost Yeah, but I think it's a different thing to play 1 song for 30 minutes vs. taking 4 hours to play 30. Also, aforementioned jam fans are on drugs.

The grateful dead, however, were a great band, but better in the studio. american beauty is a great album but their live albums are tedious.

Honestly, I think it's mostly that Bruce himself is such an incredibly physical performer, it's sort of like watching a force of nature, which is not something you can say of most acts, but esp. not the Dead or Phish.

Like, I'm pretty confident the Dead and Phish have played shows in shorts and flip-flops before.

Is it controversial to suggest that no band should play shows in shorts and flip-flops?

I like Ween fwiw but seriously that argument holds no water with me.

If I had to choose a band that plays for 4 hours it would be P-Funk

uh ... so?

xp this thing ilx has about shorts and flip flops

I love shorts and flip-flops! On me.

xpost Maybe P-Funk a few decades ago. The last two times I saw P-Funk live they were on some sub 24-7 Spyz metal shit and it was nigh unlistenable. And no way was it 4 hours.