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What modern music (today) is considered to be both pop AND intellectual?
Vurbal:
One of the big problems I have with the "Alternative" scene especially beginning around the '90's is that the word itself was in reverse, a negative. Supposedly people wanted "Alternatives to crap" ... but what if the alternative to "overpolished stadium rock crap" is ... "semi-melodic uncrafted crap"?
-TaoPhoenix (June 05, 2014, 09:24 AM)
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My feeling is there are two ways to break a "rule" in music: through a conscious decision - or - out of sheer ignorance.
The first way has a much better chance of securing a good outcome even if serendipity is never completely absent from musical invention.
Crap, on the other hand, remains crap no matter what you do with it. ;)
(see attachment in previous post)
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 09:49 AM)
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It's typically overlooked that when "breaking the rules" out of sheer ignorance pays off there's often some behind the scenes work involved by people who apply a touch of informed wizardry.
OTOH I explain the difference between a good and great musician this way. A good musician plays the notes you expected to hear - or one of the readily anticipated options. A great musician plays notes that wouldn't have occurred to you but somehow they're still the right notes.
The thing is, in any art the "rules" are really just there for people who are plotting their way through the process rather than feeling their way along. Not by coincidence, actual artists happen to follow some subset of the rules most of the time. That's why we turned them into rules - sort of a crutch for the creativity impaired.
Art is fundamentally more like a different language - a different sense entirely even. Or maybe I'd say creativity is another language which most people don't speak very well and the less you speak the language, the more you need a roadmap.
superboyac:
Perhaps that's the real sacrifice an artist pays for his or her art, whether it's music or one of the many others such as painting, sculpture, or poetry. Knowing how "the trick" is done removes much of the wonder one experiences when watching a performance even while it elicits admiration for the performance itself. And admiration, while enjoyable, is not the same pleasure you get from wonder. Wonder comes from innocence - admiration comes from knowledge and experience.
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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So true. I am getting better at switching my mind from critical musician analysis mode to just being able to enjoy the music. I still have a hard time with things that BUMP too much like at clubs, lounges, most parties, most situations where I have to dance with girls. I'm not really able to tolerate it for more than an hour. But yea, that's the price I pay for trying to figure out music. I'm fine with it, I love being able to experience hearing and recognizing a great new song. I wouldn't give that up for much.
One of the reasons many musicians attempt to master multiple instruments; or explore unrelated musical genres and cultures; or create (or join) radically different music ensembles is to recapture that sense of wonder and innocence. To be able to "just listen" once again. And ignorance (the healthy kind) plays a key role in that.
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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You know, I never though of it like that! One of my close friends is like this, and I'm the opposite. To quote Oscar Peterson, "I'm having enough trouble trying to just play the piano" (when asked if he likes to sing also). But that makes a lot of sense. But we are different like that, he's the type where his mind will quickly bore of something once he hears it once (unless it's really good, like Bach or something). But I don't mind lots of repeated listens. Usually it's for analysis, but sometimes I can loop a good groove for a while. Something like this:
When that guitar is soloing over those two chords, I can listen to that for a hell of a lot longer than my friend. Actually, this is really what my question was all about. In this particular example, yes it's only two chords, but they just got it right for me.
I'm one of those people that experiences music as a form of mathematics. I really think Pythagoras
was onto something.
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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Ha! You know, before I even knew about Pythagoras and music, I made a chord progression diagram in Autocad to see the geometric shapes made from my favorite progressions. Then I found the Pythagoreans were all over this stuff! lol.
What modern music (today) is considered to be both pop AND intellectual?
The challenge is not to get so smart and crafty (i.e. "slick") that the sense of what it's all about gets lost in the process. Because most people - even untrained people - do have an innate sense of what it's all about. And they can easily recognize a good song, even if they don't consciously know why.
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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This is probably my problem. But I've been getting better lately at striking that balance. Playing with people more helps this problem a lot. Also, not "practicing" and just playing also is a good way to fix it for me. I tend to practice too much and play too little.
By "intellectual" music, I think what SB was talking about was well-crafted music that dealt with subject matter that speaks to needs a bit higher up Maslov's hierarchy than most of what passes for "popular" music does.
-40hz (June 05, 2014, 08:30 AM)
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Yes, that is exactly right. lol! Especially for performances, I really try not to be an intellectual since my experiences with jazz has taught me that it is largely alienating, unless you have a very particular type of audience (which is very rare). I spend the analysis/intellect on arranging a song and coming up with the practice routine, after that, I plan on just playing it a lot and see what develops. And for performances, I like most of it to be pretty second-nature so I can focus on the audience and react to them without screwing up the music. I was so relaxed at my last gig (country music, easy stuff) that the organizer of the festival made a special note to come to me and mention how relaxed i looked. I couldn't tell if it was a compliment or if he wanted me to have a little more energy. I think it was a compliment because I was playing pretty well!
Stoic Joker:
"Gangnam" refers to an upscale district considered to be snooty but has a lot of what we would call "wannabes" mixed in. So the song parodies the wannabe-posh people.-TaoPhoenix (June 05, 2014, 09:24 AM)
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I Did Not Know That. Interesting...I kind of like the song now..
40hz:
It's typically overlooked that when "breaking the rules" out of sheer ignorance pays off there's often some behind the scenes work involved by people who apply a touch of informed wizardry.
-Vurbal (June 05, 2014, 11:37 AM)
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That's pretty much how the best band I was ever in worked. We had somebody (the lead singer) who was very creative and original - but totally clueless. He was our wild-card factor. The rest of us would take his good ideas and chord progressions (he had made up his own chord shapes - which he played badly) and turn them into workable songs. We used to call it "the process" - or "assaying." It was a good symbiosis. A neat (occasionally brilliant) idea he lacked the knowledge to do something with got turned into a complete song. And we got that oddball riff or idea we might not have come up with ourselves since we knew better. It was a workable arrangement.
I sometimes suspect most song writing duos work in a similar manner. One is the wildcard - musical but largely untrained. The other is the so-called "real musician." And in the best of such teams, those roles get switched back and forth.
40hz:
That's why we turned them into rules - sort of a crutch for the creativity impaired.
-Vurbal (June 05, 2014, 11:37 AM)
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FWIW I think some "rules" are actually liberating. And creativity by itself is vastly over-hyped in my opinion. A musical idea is cheap. Most of us can crank out a dozen or more on demand. Finding one that's worth doing something with, and knowing how to do something with it, is an altogether different thing. Therein lies (to me) the difference between creativity and art. Creativity is just the raw material - not the finished piece. Or the process leading to it. You need both. But music isn't just about being creative.
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