Well I'm writing this article/essay thingy for a newspaper.
Anyway, the premise is that essentially music is dying as an artform, and that the quality and growth of music, and the emotion that drives music is dissapearing.
The way I think about it is this. And this is a whole lot of rambling thoughts that I've dictated... so I do know it's not coherent yet. And I haven't even began to add evidence and the likes.
Firstly lets take "Western Art Music" as the board of studies calls it... or generally reffered to as classical music. There is a reason that Classical music hasn't continued to maintain popularity with the general populous as the main form of music for a hundred years or so after the growth of Jazz. My theory is that it's become to "brainy" and that it alienates it's audience. Has anyone listened to much modern Classical music. Alot of it is pretentious wank! Matthew Hindson wrote a piece where essentially he burnt an old upright piano!
Now while it's a funny thought... as music... no one gives a rats arse. Only the most musically elitist type people are going to see any merit in that. When in all reality it's nonsense. I'm sorry but it is! And that's the way a lot of art music has gone. It's like the composers have been hit on the head and forgotten that people who aren't musical elitists like listening to music too. I mean from a musicians perspective they write cool and interesting things, and their explorations of sound are interesting... but if you don't like extreme dissonance then you're extremely isolated. I mean to the general populous it would be worse then listening to Reign in Blood by Slayer... because at least that extreme dissonance assaulting your ears has purpose.
On top of this they continue to play a lot of old music repetitively. Yes Mozart was brilliant... but you do NOT have to play all his Symphonies each year, and not each Symphony Orchestra in the world needs to do this. Rock bands do not play ALL the same songs on every tour (unless they're geriatrics like the Rolling Stones)... because people want to hear DIFFERENT things.
Now we move on to Rock music... which is the most stagnant of the lot of them. Only the recorded sound of Rock music has really changed at all in the last 10 years. And it hasn't been a good change. It's been a exact, click-track driven, equal tempo bunch of copy-paste pro-tools bullshit.
I'm sorry to say this... and people who listen to "Indie" music will hate me... but this means MOST of the acts. There are very few exceptions to this rule. VERY FEW. You can play me a Rock band, and I can tell you why they're the same as everyone else in some way or another. I'm not saying that they all sound the same... i'm saying that there's nothing original in their sounds! They're all just churning out the same old same old! The chords progressions I - IV - V, I - V - VI - IV just to name a couple are constantly repeated over and over again. In soft Rock, in heavy rock, in pop music... but it's the same chords over and over and over! And even bands that base their songs on riffs end up doing the same things!
Partly to blame for this I'd say is the Digital Music revolution... pretty much from the 80's onwards with home recording. It used to be that a band would get gigs based on previous merit and references from places they had played. They would then eventually get noticed once they had enough fans for a record company to make them viable (because having fans meant that people actually liked you). Then you'd go into a recording studio with a proper recording Engineer, and a producer... etc etc...
Now every man and his dog can set up a home studio that has a "professional" sound to it... meaning generally that he can record the drums, bass, guitars, vocals seperately and mix them to levels that mean all can be heard in the balance they should be heard. And with the growth of computers, the internet and programs like Pro-Tools... this became cheaper and easier. Now we're just flooded with a whole lot of crap. And it's become about the song more than the band... because the bands song sound just like the last band. I'm not going to even talk about the fact that Recording to tape and using Valve equipment and having your CD mastered is vastly superior... because most bands don't realise this... they don't truly care about the music... they THINK they do, but they just WANT to be famous and play some form of music doing so because it's more fun than sitting at a desk doing paperwork. They've forgotten that this is an art form. And people have just bought into it. There is a difference between playing "Stairway to Heaven" and writing a song that will last that long.
Pop music is just as bad as rock music generally... Rap is less of a problem though, because my understanding is that rap is supposed to be more about the poetry though. Although now a lot of the poetry has been lost in the sub-culture of rap music... and the bling, and the battles, and all the accompanying crap. There are still a few artists who write poetry... but they are sadly few and far between. But I don't have a problem with the music of Rap not developing, because it's the literature behind rap that I think should be important. They can be separated, whereas the other genres with lyrics should NOT be trying to separate the two.
But pop music is about mass production and fame and celebrity. See Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan recording an album. Or any pop-star really who hasn't written their own songs. The music is written to dance to and sing along too... but what I don't understand is why the composers don't just write a whole lot of songs for whatever session musicians they like and do it that way... doesn't matter what his/her name is... as long as they're hot, and can dance well, and sing somewhat ok... they can do these songs.
Idol is a PERFECT example of this. Very rarely do the best singers win... and very rarely do the winners go on to much fame. Only Kelly Clarkson has done anything decent out of Idol... and she was good enough to make it without Idol.
Alot of people try and blame record companies for this, when the masses consuming it are just as much to blame, if not more to blame... because the consumption causes the record companies to earn money, and seeing as they are businesses, what earns them money is what they do. And so we're stuck in a constant cycle. Record companies don't take risks on new and interesting sounds and groups... because they're not sure whether or not people will buy the CD (download it from iTunes)
Jazz is the same as classical music. It's either standards, or Avante Garde stuff that no one wants to listen to. Which is sad really... because for a long time Jazz was the biggest exception to the rule.
In all honesty, one of the few styles to continue to push the envelope is Metal... and even then only a small part of Metal... and even then, that small part of Metal is only slightly moving forward and is holding on to a lot of its elements quite rigidly (riffing, growling/screaming, instrumentation, lyrical content). And the only way they're moving forward is by treading into other areas of music that already exist. Opeth with Jazz and further developing and changing the defined boundary between Jazz and Metal. Meshuggah with their time signatures... which is really an extension of a lot of traditional Eastern European type music. They've been doing those strange time signatures like 7/8, or 11/16 or 5/4 for a long long time. Dreamtheater having been trying similar things for a long time...
But even these bandsand others like them, considered by some to be extremely original, alongside acts like The Mars Volta and Muse with combinations that most people would be afraid to use... still use very generic elements in their songs. Constantly tying themselves to a style and audience and sound.
Anyways... these are just some initial thoughts... if you have any thoughts, please add them. Either for or against. But "no you're wrong" statements that aren't qualified are just lame. I don't need to hear how your favourite band is expanding the envelope that is music... because chances are, they aren't.
Anyway, the premise is that essentially music is dying as an artform, and that the quality and growth of music, and the emotion that drives music is dissapearing.
The way I think about it is this. And this is a whole lot of rambling thoughts that I've dictated... so I do know it's not coherent yet. And I haven't even began to add evidence and the likes.
Firstly lets take "Western Art Music" as the board of studies calls it... or generally reffered to as classical music. There is a reason that Classical music hasn't continued to maintain popularity with the general populous as the main form of music for a hundred years or so after the growth of Jazz. My theory is that it's become to "brainy" and that it alienates it's audience. Has anyone listened to much modern Classical music. Alot of it is pretentious wank! Matthew Hindson wrote a piece where essentially he burnt an old upright piano!
Now while it's a funny thought... as music... no one gives a rats arse. Only the most musically elitist type people are going to see any merit in that. When in all reality it's nonsense. I'm sorry but it is! And that's the way a lot of art music has gone. It's like the composers have been hit on the head and forgotten that people who aren't musical elitists like listening to music too. I mean from a musicians perspective they write cool and interesting things, and their explorations of sound are interesting... but if you don't like extreme dissonance then you're extremely isolated. I mean to the general populous it would be worse then listening to Reign in Blood by Slayer... because at least that extreme dissonance assaulting your ears has purpose.
On top of this they continue to play a lot of old music repetitively. Yes Mozart was brilliant... but you do NOT have to play all his Symphonies each year, and not each Symphony Orchestra in the world needs to do this. Rock bands do not play ALL the same songs on every tour (unless they're geriatrics like the Rolling Stones)... because people want to hear DIFFERENT things.
Now we move on to Rock music... which is the most stagnant of the lot of them. Only the recorded sound of Rock music has really changed at all in the last 10 years. And it hasn't been a good change. It's been a exact, click-track driven, equal tempo bunch of copy-paste pro-tools bullshit.
I'm sorry to say this... and people who listen to "Indie" music will hate me... but this means MOST of the acts. There are very few exceptions to this rule. VERY FEW. You can play me a Rock band, and I can tell you why they're the same as everyone else in some way or another. I'm not saying that they all sound the same... i'm saying that there's nothing original in their sounds! They're all just churning out the same old same old! The chords progressions I - IV - V, I - V - VI - IV just to name a couple are constantly repeated over and over again. In soft Rock, in heavy rock, in pop music... but it's the same chords over and over and over! And even bands that base their songs on riffs end up doing the same things!
Partly to blame for this I'd say is the Digital Music revolution... pretty much from the 80's onwards with home recording. It used to be that a band would get gigs based on previous merit and references from places they had played. They would then eventually get noticed once they had enough fans for a record company to make them viable (because having fans meant that people actually liked you). Then you'd go into a recording studio with a proper recording Engineer, and a producer... etc etc...
Now every man and his dog can set up a home studio that has a "professional" sound to it... meaning generally that he can record the drums, bass, guitars, vocals seperately and mix them to levels that mean all can be heard in the balance they should be heard. And with the growth of computers, the internet and programs like Pro-Tools... this became cheaper and easier. Now we're just flooded with a whole lot of crap. And it's become about the song more than the band... because the bands song sound just like the last band. I'm not going to even talk about the fact that Recording to tape and using Valve equipment and having your CD mastered is vastly superior... because most bands don't realise this... they don't truly care about the music... they THINK they do, but they just WANT to be famous and play some form of music doing so because it's more fun than sitting at a desk doing paperwork. They've forgotten that this is an art form. And people have just bought into it. There is a difference between playing "Stairway to Heaven" and writing a song that will last that long.
Pop music is just as bad as rock music generally... Rap is less of a problem though, because my understanding is that rap is supposed to be more about the poetry though. Although now a lot of the poetry has been lost in the sub-culture of rap music... and the bling, and the battles, and all the accompanying crap. There are still a few artists who write poetry... but they are sadly few and far between. But I don't have a problem with the music of Rap not developing, because it's the literature behind rap that I think should be important. They can be separated, whereas the other genres with lyrics should NOT be trying to separate the two.
But pop music is about mass production and fame and celebrity. See Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan recording an album. Or any pop-star really who hasn't written their own songs. The music is written to dance to and sing along too... but what I don't understand is why the composers don't just write a whole lot of songs for whatever session musicians they like and do it that way... doesn't matter what his/her name is... as long as they're hot, and can dance well, and sing somewhat ok... they can do these songs.
Idol is a PERFECT example of this. Very rarely do the best singers win... and very rarely do the winners go on to much fame. Only Kelly Clarkson has done anything decent out of Idol... and she was good enough to make it without Idol.
Alot of people try and blame record companies for this, when the masses consuming it are just as much to blame, if not more to blame... because the consumption causes the record companies to earn money, and seeing as they are businesses, what earns them money is what they do. And so we're stuck in a constant cycle. Record companies don't take risks on new and interesting sounds and groups... because they're not sure whether or not people will buy the CD (download it from iTunes)
Jazz is the same as classical music. It's either standards, or Avante Garde stuff that no one wants to listen to. Which is sad really... because for a long time Jazz was the biggest exception to the rule.
In all honesty, one of the few styles to continue to push the envelope is Metal... and even then only a small part of Metal... and even then, that small part of Metal is only slightly moving forward and is holding on to a lot of its elements quite rigidly (riffing, growling/screaming, instrumentation, lyrical content). And the only way they're moving forward is by treading into other areas of music that already exist. Opeth with Jazz and further developing and changing the defined boundary between Jazz and Metal. Meshuggah with their time signatures... which is really an extension of a lot of traditional Eastern European type music. They've been doing those strange time signatures like 7/8, or 11/16 or 5/4 for a long long time. Dreamtheater having been trying similar things for a long time...
But even these bandsand others like them, considered by some to be extremely original, alongside acts like The Mars Volta and Muse with combinations that most people would be afraid to use... still use very generic elements in their songs. Constantly tying themselves to a style and audience and sound.
Anyways... these are just some initial thoughts... if you have any thoughts, please add them. Either for or against. But "no you're wrong" statements that aren't qualified are just lame. I don't need to hear how your favourite band is expanding the envelope that is music... because chances are, they aren't.
