i'm not saying it's bad, i'm saying it's too easy!
and by saying easy, i'm literally talking perceptually, playable, writeable, you name it. the hard part isn't the music, it's to get through to the audience! it has become much the same with art as with the animal kingdom - survival of the fittest. it is kind of darwinian; the music industry has become the strongest, and is now bashing it's competition to pieces.
music was once an artform mastered by few and enjoyed by many. there was a demand for genious, and many old masterpieces stand to live today (examples). which have you heard, or at least heard of? have these survived because of sales value? when this was made, do you think it was intended as a piece of good music, or as a product of capitalism?
along with the misuse of computer music software (amongst several other things) it's cutting many musicians off, and is by some means also killing the common musical sense. it's become easy to be creative, (and creativity is a good thing - may it forever flow freely!) but also far too easy to produce $}{¡† on conveyor belts, in an industry-like fashion (which is exactly what's being done). the music industry's demeaning role in it's own territory is terrifying.
to bring music back to the art it was once considered, there is a serious need for bringing quality back in business - literally! - not to say back into people's minds.
i'm not saying you can't like it - by all means, you might also enjoy staring at a white canvas with a black line on it, if someone markets it well, makes sure you see it everywhere, and makes you think it's a particularly cool black line. but i wouldn't call it quality art, just because you're 'tricked into liking it'.
and you might also enjoy drinking water that's sold in bottles (even when fresh tap water is easily accessable), if it's displayed everywhere with the right words accompanying it. crystal clear (we all like crystals, right? shiny and blinking and stuff?). healthy (duh..) directly from various exotic sources (exotic = rare = you want it). oh, and they put a "best before"-date on it, after claiming they tapped it straight from an ancient glacier (which by the way could be kind of toxic), onto a plastic bottle, and sold quite expensive.
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur!
and i hope by now you get the picture. (if not, just make a ... comment, i could go on.)
so, do you think you like the 'big stars' of today because they're simply the best there are..? or do you think you might like them just because of exposure (marketing / PR / music business out of it's mind)?
do you like their songs because it's the best quality music possible to produce at the moment? or perhaps because they're actually the only ones making it (or should i say distributed) to the mass media?
do you go to concerts so you can tell your friends you were there, or do you go there because you really enjoy the music? (and by that, i mean you could close your eyes, ignore the looks, and gimmick, of the artist, and actually like what you hear and what it does to you)...
i'm not saying i'm better than any one of you out there that listen to music. i might be better than some of you in terms of playing some music, but i cannot do anything else then to express my thoughts, and my feelings through the music i play, or the words i write (or say, for that matter). i might just yet have put some more thought into what i like and not, maybe even why i like it, but i can still not tell you what you would like. that's taste.
perhaps the furthest i would go is to claim that i have some ability and training in identifying quality when i hear it. and now i'm not talking about taste, but about the notion of hearing a uniqueness in certain musicians way of treating their instruments. something that has been practised, and shaped with intention and effort. something that is not necessarily made entirely out of the purpose of reaching the billboard, or winning any reality tv-show. something i fear too many people are missing out on, merely by obliviousness.
i will not judge you. nor your taste in music. i do not hope you will judge me. or my taste of music.
i am just simply asking of you to broaden your boundaries. to keep an open mind. to appreciate the sound and feel of top quality music. to not accept anything that is thrown your way. i am challenging you to try and identify what you like. to find out what you want. and not to be afraid of demanding it!
music has no boundaries - all i want is for it to become as good as possible.
what's your excuse?
3 kommentarer:
"music was once an artform mastered by few and enjoyed by many. there was a demand for genious, and many old masterpieces stand to live today (examples)"
Don't you think that the survival of these works has something to do with the German music scholar's (of the romantic period) need for proving the superiority of the german classical tradition?
"do you go to concerts so you can tell your friends you were there, or do you go there because you really enjoy the music? (and by that, i mean you could close your eyes, ignore the looks, and gimmick, of the artist, and actually like what you hear and what it does to you)..."
The symbiosis of aural and visual expressions has been the norm since the ancient Greeks.
Why some musicians insist on separating the sound from the body that produces it baffles me..
The criticism of technology as a corrupting force has been around since the Well-Tempered Clavier. Yet if you look to the history it is not ideas or philosophy but technology that make music evolve.And it continuous to make musical aestheticism progress. I'm not saying that the ideas of history isn't important. But they would not be possible without the technological inventions of it's time. Be it musical notation, the well-tempered clavier, the electric guitar, microphones, synthesizers and so on..
@olej: on all three points, i agree to some extent. however, on the first point my question is linked up against the fact that they have survived despite not being material made in a commercial context.
on the second point, i don't want to entirely exclude the visual input/impact, with regards to seeing an artist play the music, i was just asking for a musical alibi rather than the need for seeing boobs and thighs.
lastly, i'm not criticizing the developmental factor of technology, but the inhibiting results it also produces - and the tragic outcome of crap music on "hitlists".
thanks for your comment!
I think that sometimes people go to concerts/parties purely for hedonistic reason whilst others go there for the music.
Speaking from personal experience the former are generally the kind of people who get to know about the event from various media or are going because their friends are going. For this kind of crowd the music is only part of the experience since they are there to have fun regardless of how this is achieved.
On the other hand you have people who really care about the music, get to know about the event before everybody else and for them it doesn't matter whether 100 or 10,000 people will be attending the event. It doesn't matter what the performer is wearing either. They are there for the music and listening to the event on a live web broadcast at home, whilst different, would still be something that they would do.
I am not dismissing either of these approaches but I think that if one really cares about the music then he/she should be able to go past everything else, visual or otherwise, and appreciate music for what it is - an artistic form of auditory communication.
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