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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#47
Talvieno wrote:Someone with intelligence would surely know how to look up the definitions of words they didn't know. :D
I know I'm a member of the intelligent people, but sometimes I skip over difficult words, as the words surrounding it (as well as the sentence pre and post said sentence) should usually depict the topic of conversation.
Although the words Josh uses, definitely requires some googling to fully grasp the topic he is elucidating upon.
:ghost:
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
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Re: Wednesday, March 8, 2017

#48
Flatfingers wrote:
BFett wrote:There was more rap and less singing in the 2000's than in the 90's. From what I recall there weren't that many good songs that came out in the 90's either.
This is indisputable truth.

Prior to the '90s, digital fakery, and Western culture turning on itself, making music required talent.

This didn't prevent junk from being made. There was just more actual music, as a percentage of the total, made in the 50-year span from 1940-1990 than from 1990 onward when "music" was redefined as autotuned technical warbling and spewing narcissistic hate at 300 words per minute.

Really, every word I've said here should just be a Wikipedia entry.

Also, I sure hope there's a new devlog soon, because we are so far off-topic that no return may be possible.
Well having music require talent serves more as a barrier than it does as a metric for how 'good' music is. It's pretty difficult to define music in an objective sense because of it's very nature of being an art. You may like Beethoven for some rationalization and you may not like rap music for some other rationalization but that doesn't mean that the 'quality' of music isn't going down. Take for example Death Grips(I expect none of you to like this), what MC Ride says speaks WAY more about humanity than fur elise ever could. If anything like every other art music has become far more convoluted but many see through the veil of misrepresentation which just stops you from listening to some great boundary pushing music.

edit::there were 4 pages and I only saw one :ghost:
IVE BEEN OUT OF MY MIND A LONG TIME
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Re: Wednesday, March 8, 2017

#49
Slymodi wrote:You may like Beethoven for some rationalization and you may not like rap music for some other rationalization but that doesn't mean that the 'quality' of music isn't going down. Take for example Death Grips(I expect none of you to like this), what MC Ride says speaks WAY more about humanity than fur elise ever could.
Either we have very different definitions of what "music" is, or we'll have to disagree about its relative quality.

I listened to a couple of minutes of "Death Grips" -- long enough to catch the reuse of Pink Floyd and exactly the kind of continuous "I," "me," "my" narcissism that pervades virtually all rap and pop. I don't believe we're going to be able to agree that this is a more genuine expression of the human experience than "Für Elise".

Is it art? Sure. Does being loud and nasty somehow make it more authentic, more human, than something that's more "pure" music? I don't think I can agree to that.

Please understand what I'm trying to say here, which is not that commercial or protest stuff is "not music." I'm not saying that. I'm saying that I believe music has become "less musical" -- that there's less compositional knowledge and artistry in it. What music has mostly become today is "hey, look at me!" performance art.

That doesn't mean everything written today is junk, or that everything today is less musical than before our post-modern era. There are exceptions... but that's sort of my point. I think such music has become the exception.

I'm not saying this to try to persuade. We -- I, definitely -- are well into the realm of personal taste here, so a lot of this is subjective and not really arguable to any mutually agreeable conclusion. I just thought I'd try to offer an explanation for a comment I probably shouldn't have made.

At any rate, as threatenedpromised, here are the first two original pieces I've written. I'm not making any claims of Great Musicality for them -- I'm just sharing them because I believe that the privilege of criticism ought to be earned by trying to create.

Violet's Music Box: https://soundcloud.com/flatfingers/violets-music-box

Discovery Theme: https://soundcloud.com/flatfingers/discovery-theme
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#50
I can agree that in a 'pure' sense music today has become lessened, but through the incorporation of other art forms we can see that music, as an art form, has become greater.

Death Grips, though on the surface seeming loud and obnoxious and offensive, conveys a darker part of the human psyche. I find that far more interesting than a lot of 'popular' music in any era. This doesn't discredit classical artists(sorry if it seemed that way), but through this addition of mediums(dare I say intersectionality) we see a greater medium than it's parts.

Mixtape/videos/singles coming soon :squirrel: :monkey:
IVE BEEN OUT OF MY MIND A LONG TIME
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#51
music, as an art form, has become greater.
I don't disagree that music can be good today, but this is totally unsupportable, unless you mean to say that music has become expressible through more diverse media... and that's not the same thing.

Also, just because a piece of music 'conveys a dark part of the human psyche' doesn't mean it's artful. There's a lot of things that convey all sorts of things about the human psyche which are not art, so if a piece of art does this it doesn't necessarily add to its artfulness.

Something can be qualitatively bad while still being meaningful.

ed: Flat those are very nice~ Music box has a similar progression to one of my favourite bits from the MoO2 soundtrack.
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#55
DigitalDuck wrote:Today is always the greatest time for music because you can listen to any great music that has been written at any point up until today.

Tomorrow you will have all of the great music available today, and then some more.
I agree with this :)
Scytale wrote:
music, as an art form, has become greater.
I don't disagree that music can be good today, but this is totally unsupportable, unless you mean to say that music has become expressible through more diverse media... and that's not the same thing.

Also, just because a piece of music 'conveys a dark part of the human psyche' doesn't mean it's artful. There's a lot of things that convey all sorts of things about the human psyche which are not art, so if a piece of art does this it doesn't necessarily add to its artfulness.

Something can be qualitatively bad while still being meaningful.

ed: Flat those are very nice~ Music box has a similar progression to one of my favourite bits from the MoO2 soundtrack.
I think how I perceive it is less in a 'pure' music way and rather in the composition of the music and it's baggage so to speak
IVE BEEN OUT OF MY MIND A LONG TIME
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#58
Scytale wrote:ed: Flat those are very nice~ Music box has a similar progression to one of my favourite bits from the MoO2 soundtrack.
Thank you for listening, and for the comments.

Although, EEK! The melody and time signature of the first section really are pretty similar to Violet's Music Box. Given the literally hundreds of hours I've heard the MoO2 music playing, I suppose it's not impossible that I might have been influenced by it, but it certainly wasn't a deliberate copying. My two main conscious inspirations -- other than learning how to use Mixcraft 8 -- were the tone of the recent adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Danny Elfman's "snow music" theme for Edward Scissorhands. Again, there was no overt copying, but with such a simple/short piece I suppose it's inevitable that it sound like other, existing music.

It's a good thing I didn't post the first project I worked on, which was a deliberate attempt to faithfully recreate "Kometenmelodie 2" from Kraftwerk's awesome Autobahn. :D (Of course I won't post that anywhere since it's not my composition. It was just fun to work on as a novice project.)

More to come, in various styles, I suspect. Among other ideas, I have this notion of composing some music for a space game.... ;) (Nothing as good as what Francois and Josh do, but we'll see.)
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#59
Flatfingers wrote:
Scytale wrote:ed: Flat those are very nice~ Music box has a similar progression to one of my favourite bits from the MoO2 soundtrack.
Thank you for listening, and for the comments.

Although, EEK! The melody and time signature of the first section really are pretty similar to Violet's Music Box. Given the literally hundreds of hours I've heard the MoO2 music playing, I suppose it's not impossible that I might have been influenced by it, but it certainly wasn't a deliberate copying. My two main conscious inspirations -- other than learning how to use Mixcraft 8 -- were the tone of the recent adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Danny Elfman's "snow music" theme for Edward Scissorhands. Again, there was no overt copying, but with such a simple/short piece I suppose it's inevitable that it sound like other, existing music.

It's a good thing I didn't post the first project I worked on, which was a deliberate attempt to faithfully recreate "Kometenmelodie 2" from Kraftwerk's awesome Autobahn. :D (Of course I won't post that anywhere since it's not my composition. It was just fun to work on as a novice project.)

More to come, in various styles, I suspect. Among other ideas, I have this notion of composing some music for a space game.... ;) (Nothing as good as what Francois and Josh do, but we'll see.)
Please don't take what I said as a criticism, or any accusation of copying! One of the first things I learned about composition was that there isn't really such a thing as "overt copying" when it comes to original compositions - mere inspiration. If Rachmaninoff could do it, then so can we. That kind of chord progression, besides, has been used all the way from Purcell (sort of) to Sins of a Solar Empire, so it's hardly unique to MoO2. The reason I bring up MoO2 is it was the first time I remember hearing that progression and taking notice of it.

e: your discovery theme could be the first on the track of getting to Paradox-style soundtracks! I'd cheer you on for sure, I'd loved to have become a game composer
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Re: Relative quality of music over time

#60
No worries; I understand. I mean, there are only so many notes to go around. :)

The Purcell reference was perceptive; I'm fairly steeped in Baroque and early Romantic classical music -- not nearly as much as a professional, but it's a primary reference.

That era/style is actually half the inspiration for the Discovery theme. In particular, I love the brass sonatas of Gabrieli, and the sound of the French horn especially resonates with me. My goal was to try a similar sound as the basis for a Star Trek-like theme, similar to (though obviously not as mature or well-performed) as what Jerry Goldsmith did for Star Trek: Voyager.

If I can ever achieve something as fantastic as the new theme he wrote for Star Trek: First Contact -- seriously, it's extraordinary -- or either of John Williams's Jurassic Park themes, I'll have accomplished something.

But first, Mrs. Flatfingers is demanding that I do something that includes me singing. :P That'll be more pop, so easier to compose if not to play....

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