The Arrogant Proggie

Astrapto wrote: Rocktopus wrote: That would work if you are a robot. [while holding your nose] Beep! "This music is catchy, more popular and has a good beat "    Surprisingly enough, if you'll unplug the robotic nose you'll find a normal person, describing why they like certain music, rather than just proclaiming it "good."

I know I would find a person I'd have no interest in discussing music with. Maybe not a robot, but a person with autism is a more presise description?

Astrapto wrote: Popular art, including music, is effective in appealing to the public. That may or may not portend musical ability. People like music because it appeals to their emotions, intellect, sense of fashion, sense of fellowship, memories....and so many other facets of a human. No music is inherently "better," i.e. "more artistically valid" because there is no way at all to quantify such a distinction. What does "better" mean? Faster, slower, more aggressive, more intellectual, exceling withing the confines of musical theory, soaring outside those boundaries, hobbling without them? Does "good" music facilitate laughing, dancing, cringing, rejoicing, lamenting, fuming, tripping, or escaping? Are there really any upper or lower limits on complexity, prerequisite to artistic validity? People like different music because we're different than each other. No one can completely understand. It's subjective.

I seem to be one of the few who gives credit to things such as knowledge and experience here. With lots of both, your opinion is more valid than someone who'd only listened to an adult contemporary formatted radio station all his or her life. Same if its literature, paintings, movies... whatever. Someone who's never read a book is less entitled to an opinion about what is the greatest novel ever written than someone's who read a lot. I don't believe everything is 100% subjective. A trained ear, eye or mind is discredited in this cultural relativist age. It unhealthy and makes our world stupider.

^Thanks. And yes, I agree.

I don't consider myself an elitist, but I couldn't care less if others thinks of me as one.   

I haven't read all the pages, but I just want to say a couple of things.

First off, I have to point out - the whole "prog is superior" thing isn't COMPLETELY unfounded. Prog is one of the gernerally more complex forms of music (along with a lot of Jazz).

Also, I don't particullarly thing pop singers are that great... but I've never been able to tell great singers apart from good singers.

Finally, I don't think pop is that hard to write... just get the good old chords out. If you have a keyboard in front of you, play the following power chords (meaning, leave out the third) - C, G, A, F. There's your chords. Perhaps in the chorus change it to C, G, F. Play 8th bass notes, just on the root of the chord. Make up some random melody, and play a simple rock beat on drums. You'll probablly end up somewhere in the charts.

Obviously, some pop music is more complex - then that's a bit better. Though the very definition of pop stops it getting too complex. I have heard some fairly complex "indie rock" as the kids call it (lol) - but that's a bit of a huge umbrella genre anyways.

Edit: Someone was saying you cannot quantify "artistic validity". I think you can to an extent. For example, when a Green Day song is literally just the same chord sequence, with the same bass, the same drums and the same/similar melody, you can say it isn't very artistically valid because it's unoriginal, pointless and uninteresting. But even then, I suppose you could say that taste comes into it...

I don't like to knock a band/genre before I've tried... but I have pretty much given up on hip-hop at the moment. And punk would need to do something great to win me over lol.


Edited by Nathaniel607 - September 12 2010 at 16:52

Nathaniel607 wrote: First off, I have to point out - the whole "prog is superior" thing isn't COMPLETELY unfounded. Prog is one of the gernerally more complex forms of music (along with a lot of Jazz).

Oh, missed this!  As others have already asked, how exactly does complex make it superior?  I don't see the connection.   

GY!BE wrote: cannot be compared to a totally made up pop star by a big music corporation and some auto tune who's goal is to sell albums, not trying to bring a message to society.

Stevie Wonder is not made up.  ABBA used to write their own music.  Tori Amos, as seems to have been acknowledged by this website, is proggier than a lot of stuff from the same decade that gets called prog.  Before generalizing (because I am not saying there are NO made up stars), please do recall how annoyed you probably get at people dismissing prog...so why would you do the same unto other genres of music? 

Rocktopus wrote:   I seem to be one of the few who gives credit to things such as knowledge and experience here. With lots of both, your opinion is more valid than someone who'd only listened to an adult contemporary formatted radio station all his or her life. Same if its literature, paintings, movies... whatever. Someone who's never read a book is less entitled to an opinion about what is the greatest novel ever written than someone's who read a lot. I don't believe everything is 100% subjective. A trained ear, eye or mind is discredited in this cultural relativist age. It unhealthy and makes our world stupider.

Rocktopus wrote: Reading this and similar discussions, the consensus is that everything is down to personal taste and totally subjective.

  

Edited by Certif1ed - September 13 2010 at 09:32

Certif1ed wrote:   "Superiority" lies where you find it - and anyone claiming it should be challenged on the terms by which the superiority is measured.

But even in that case, prog is not as a rule more complex than classical music.  It is more complex than stuff like basic rock and roll, that's about as far as I'd go to generalize. I don't even think, going with the kind of amorphous definitions of prog we have, we could generalize prog as a whole as complex music but it's fair to say that some of the great prog rock bands made complex music.   At the most, prog could be tenuously argued to be 'superior' to basic rock and roll (strictly on grounds of complexity and I agree with you that it is not a good yardstick) but not classical music, so any 'arrogance' based on prog being the most complex music is misplaced.

Certif1ed wrote:   It's a reasonable observation that early prog, at least, is, as a rule, more complex than other forms of popular music - so in that respect, our proggers can enjoy a degree of arrogance, should they wish.

Qualified thus, I would agree with it. 

Certif1ed wrote: Rocktopus wrote: Reading this and similar discussions, the consensus is that everything is down to personal taste and totally subjective.       That's not what I've got out of this discussion - and it's not what I said above, but I agree, a lot of people are under this misapprehension, and are missing out big time on some of the beauties that lie in the objective, technical side of music.   For example, Beethoven's Symphony #6 is a programme piece in 5 movements, each of which describes Pastoral scenes (hence it's name, the "Pastoral").   You would need to study it in depth with a well-versed tutor to get the maximum understanding of what Betthoven was trying to achieve (this much at least is objective), and the extent to which he achieved it - this much is both objective and subjective, because much of what he was trying to get across with the music is documented, and we can decipher the musical devices he used to do it.   But the layman can get a lot of subjective feeling from the music which would confirm the "Pastoral" feel of the music - it doesn't take any learning for that, especially the famous thunderstorm section.   In other words, while it is true that you do not need any musical education to enjoy music, you can get a whole load more out of music if you do, and music written from an intellectual starting point is more likely to provide intellectual stimulus in addition to emotional stimulus, while it's probably less likely true the other way around - even if you don't understand how it does it.   Conversely, having musical education and appreciating the finer technical points should not mean missing out on the best part of this amazing art - the soul of it.   Rocktopus wrote: Who wants to be the snob spoiling the fun for everyone else?   Me.

As usual, I agree with most of your thoughts on such matters but have serious misgivings about this critter.
Disregarding what might be termed 'academic' instrumental music or what is described as 'absolute music' from the classical realm, where does something like Lou Reed or Bob Dylan fit into this scheme of things? Very simple non-challenging harmonic forms etc but texturally very complex and dare I hazard, from an intellectual starting point?