"I like this music" vs. "this music's goo

Art is meant to be enjoyed and not rated.  Art (including music) is enjoyed through mental processing and each person's perceptions are unique and so is the experience one has in apreciating art.  You either have an emotional connection with the music or you do not, regardless of others opinions.  It truly is subjective.  I do not enjoy Barbara Streisand or opera singers, but intellectually I know they are very skilled and popular.  I just do not make that emotional connection. 

Call me a weirdo, but for me it is easy for me to appreciate something for an artistic quality, even if I don't actually enjoy it and it's not my thing.

Edited by NotSoKoolAid - November 23 2006 at 02:01

It's the difference between expressing your personal taste based on the way a piece of music makes you feel, versus measuring quality based on technical criteria.

Obviously, this is not black and white - and cannot be, as even those observing technical criteria to the letter are bound by taste to some extent - it may be that a technique is excercised precisely, but the precision itself is what stops it feeling as musical as it might.

The technical criteria you use to judge music are based on your experiences - so someone who has only studied music will use a different, more cerebral set to someone who has only played "from the heart" - and different again to someone who has never studied or played.


Also, it depends upon how you excercise these criteria, and the context.

There is, for example, no point using the same measurements to assess the quality of ABBA's music that you would use when assessing the music of Beethoven - although one could usefully use an appropriate subset.

For example, you wouldn't waste time exploring ABBA's development of themes or motifs, but you might examine the arrangements and harmonic progressions and discover interesting little quirks that make ABBA's compositions stand out from other pop music of the time.


So it is useful to decide the context of the piece of music before coming to any judgement of quality; for example, the Sex Pistols wrote great punk rock music, and many fans of the Sex Pistols might think that both Beethoven and ABBA wrote awful music.


To sum up, quality is about measurements of technique - such as execution in performance and composition, and originality of thought in the approach to style.

If you understand why aspects of technique are one of the most beautiful things you can listen for in compositions, then that is very lucky - as you get something very special out of music that people who don't understand this cannot get.

They like it, and that's enough to make it good.
    
And that's a conclusion that educated people can come to as well

Edited by Certif1ed - November 23 2006 at 03:21

I don't really believe in objective criteria to measure the quality of music. Of course these criteria exist, and each one makes sense logically. But even if a piece of music is of high quality as determined by applying these criteria, it doesn't mean that someone will like it. Even people who have a good education in music and know the criteria and what they mean might not like such a piece of "high quality" music ... and they might totally love a piece of music which is of a low quality objectively, breaking most rules established by musical theory.

So: While I think that these criteria exist I try to ignore them when "judging" music. 

gosh some very wordy answers to what I percieved to be a simple question!

If you like a piece of music, then YOU like it, and YOU can NEVER EVER be wrong, because only YOU can judge wether you like it or not.

As to wether it is good or not........ well, there is poorly executed music out there, there really is, but even the poorest can still be enjoyed by people, and that's ok.

When I get angry reading comments on the forums, is when someone might say "X" are rubbish, they are no good" when tens or hundreds of thousands of record buyers obviously found something valid in "X" so therefore it should really simply be the case that "X" are not to the taste of that person.

I don't mind if someone says they don't like my favourite bands, but I feel justifiably annoyed when folk say my favourite bands are rubbish!

P-C x

^^^ Who told you mr andu that Tarkovskiy and Fellini movies are GOOD??? And how dare you call these movies good in "an objective sense". IMO Tarkovskiy is Genius and his every movie is a Masterpiece, and this what I call GOOD. As to Fellini - I wasted my time while watching his films (several attempts to get something out of it with no positive effect), and I would never ever call them good, leave alone recommending it to somebody, despite all the critics in the world might praise them to the sky. You obviously mixing up two different things: "critically acclaimed" and "good/like it".  

epictetus1 wrote: Art is meant to be enjoyed and not rated.  Art (including music) is enjoyed through mental processing and each person's perceptions are unique and so is the experience one has in apreciating art.  You either have an emotional connection with the music or you do not, regardless of others opinions.  It truly is subjective.  I do not enjoy Barbara Streisand or opera singers, but intellectually I know they are very skilled and popular.  I just do not make that emotional connection.

I was going to right up a fair bit but Epictetus1 hit the nail on the head for me, and I completel agree with what he said.

There's a lot of good music that dosn't really appeal to my ears. I it does appeal to my ears, then I can say I like it.

eugene wrote: I might have a simplistic approach to this matter, but I honestly believe that when a person saying "I like it" he should mean "It's good" and vice versa, unless this person is utter hypocrite. Any evaluation of piece of art is totally subjective and can't be otherwise, therefore I am always trying to say "it's good IMO" when I like it, and even when omitting "IMO" I definitely mean it. From other hand when I hear somebody stating "Oh, it's soooo good but I don't like a single minute of it" - I conclude that the person is either liar or hasn't got a clue what he is talking about, in a sense that it can't be good for him, unless he likes it.  Same goes to the ridiculous statements such as "I respect this band but hate the music they making". What the hell someone would respect a band for, if he hates what they doing???   Once at an exhibition I saw a woman staring at the painting, and she was seemingly enchanted by what she saw, and was declaring something like "Oh, so great expression and skills..." etc etc etc in very technical details, but when after I asked her if she really liked it, - she said "No, hell no.."  It was pure flattery towards artist and blatant hypocrisy from her side.

I disagree ... it's absolutely possible to appreciate and respect some piece of music (or the performers/composers) and not to like it or even to hate it at the same time. Ok, sometimes people saying that they appreciate something are just trying to be polite - but that doesn't make them hypocrites. Unless they give away their true opinion on other occasions ...

But if someone for example says "I don't like growling, but I appreciate what Opeth are doing musically", where's the problem? You can't like everything - but you don't have to despise everything you don't like.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - November 23 2006 at 09:52

andu wrote: eugene wrote: ^^^ Who told you mr andu that Tarkovskiy and Fellini movies are GOOD??? And how dare you call these movies good in "an objective sense". IMO Tarkovskiy is Genius and his every movie is a Masterpiece, and this what I call GOOD. As to Fellini - I wasted my time while watching his films (several attempts to get something out of it with no positive effect), and I would never ever call them good, leave alone recommending it to somebody, despite all the critics in the world might praise them to the sky. You obviously mixing up two different things: "critically acclaimed" and "good/like it".       carefull with that axe, eugene...   you saying you can't judge Felinni as good doesn't make Felinni less good. you're not "objective" (i'll explain later what this means) and can't get over your personal taste - which is not an accusation!!! myself i'm in the great position of being able of having a good perception of both, because of my cultural heritage and background being different then yours. your taste for tarkovsky is normal as his art works in the very "slavonic" way (slow motion, blurry representations, poetic connotations, big ideas being discussed) that made russian culture great; it is normal for you to like it as you're ukrainean and also for me to like it as in our culture all slavonic culture was always welcome and praised (Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Turgheniev, Tchaikovsky, Kandinsky, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov, etc., please excuse my own way of writing their names), and is also normal for a non-slavonic not to like Tarkovsky (and trust me i know many) - which doesn't entitle them to say it's crap (i know many). on the other side, Felinni's art is totally different and according to maybe the most important mediterranean-type creativity: latin (main features - strong, accurate representations and visuals, high motion, carnavalesque and bourlesque, theatralism, etc.). it's normal for you not liking art like this (which doesn't make it less GOOD, if it's good ) and it also normal for me to like it because of my latin anthropological heritage. but don't say it's not good, because you're not being objective.   let's talk about being "objective", now. imo it takes to have a basic education on the specific matter (what's it about and how it's done). if so, the "objective" judgement is a mix of these items: - a look over the important critics' reviews - a look over mass acceptance/rejection - your own opinion on the how the artist uses his art's ways - your opinion on how that specific "product" influenced and related to the history of that specific art   for example, i judge a moviemaker's art by - the way he uses camera and editing to create a valid visual narration (and strong both as VISUAL and as NARRATION) - the way he creates strong characters (the good, the bad, the good-and-bad, the a-moral, the Mother, the Father, the Son, the lover, the loonatic, the rebel, you name it...) and makes his actors act great - the importance of the ideas behing the script (life, death, human nature, love, hate, history, divinity, etc) and the final product - the innovations he brings in these previous achievements and the influence they have etc. by these items, both felinni and tarkovsky are at least GOOD moviemakers ... imo.   i think this discussion has long left the good/bad MUSIC, sorry.