Has anyone encountered this idea before? I think it's crap. But here's one example of the kind of thing I'm talking about :

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles ...lots of producers use simple chords and progressions because they're easier to figure out and even the most musically ignorant person will have an immediate response to them. But there aren't any "rules" about what chord progression a track has to use in order for it to be trance.

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Originally posted by mysticalninja By "immediate response" I assume you mean it will sound good to them? As in, you don't have to be a pretentious ass who listens to music for the complexity/scale/chord progession instead of how it sounds to appreciate it? Yeah, that is why people use those chords/progessions. Spot on.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Nope. I'm not talking about Schoenberg or microtones here, or dissonance for the sake of being "avant-garde." Sometimes young kids don't eat anything other than sugary cereal for breakfast. As they grow older, most of them grow out of eating nothing but sugary cereal because they learn to appreciate other foods as well. But some don't. Music is like that, too. A piece of music doesn't need to be comprehensible or enjoyable to an average four year old in order to be "authentic," and the fact that one isn't comprehensible to a four year old doesn't necessarily make it "pompous" or "pretentious." It's funny how readily that idea (that only uneducated, inexperienced appreciation is "real") gets bandied about and taken seriously in discussion of music, whereas people would laugh at anyone who suggested that Shakespeare would have done better had he written like Dr. Seuss.

Do you ever encounter people who think that if somebody completely new to a style of music will have trouble "getting it," then that style must be "pretentious" or "elitist?" What do you say to that?

bollocks


everyone could use a little elitism and a little humility

This sort of thing operates on a sliding scale. A little bit of accessibility is good, and the depths shall provide the more-than-curious enough room to swim. Take it too far in any which direction and you'll end up with shamelessly catchy rubbish or overly pretentious claptrap. Trance suffers from the first malady, whereas techno easily slips into the latter.

i find it funny.

Very interesting topic, wonder where it's going to end.

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quote:

Originally posted by basilisk This sort of thing operates on a sliding scale. A little bit of accessibility is good, and the depths shall provide the more-than-curious enough room to swim. Take it too far in any which direction and you'll end up with shamelessly catchy rubbish or overly pretentious claptrap. Trance suffers from the first malady, whereas techno easily slips into the latter.

I thought about posting in this thread earlier but couldn't word it properly. That's exactly what I was looking for!

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I think it's impossible to have any kind of "authentic appreciation" at all. To obtain the experienced ear to appreciate more sophisticated, subtle or leftfield music, the listener must go through the learning process and in that process encounter and become familiar with all the various stages of music in between, which inevitably affects the tastes of the listener. The only marker we have to say that the subtle and sophisticated music is "better" is the time and effort invested in acclimatising to it.

The trouble is, my favourite track is the FSOL's "Papua New Guinea". Now I defy anyone to call that a poor piece of music, but it really isn't very complex and the FSOL weren't developed musicians when they wrote it. About half of the track is sampled.

The mistake is to assume there's a direct proportional trend between technical musical complexity and objective musical worth. It isn't true, else we'd all listen to Mathcore. Simplicity can be bad, but it can also be good. In short, I don't think there's any authentic stance at all. For me, the best stance is the open minded one, which is why John Peel was a fucking legend.

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quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J The mistake is to assume there's a direct proportional trend between technical musical complexity and objective musical worth. It isn't true, else we'd all listen to Mathcore. Simplicity can be bad, but it can also be good. In short, I don't think there's any authentic stance at all. For me, the best stance is the open minded one, which is why John Peel was a fucking legend.

Also a great point, agree totally!

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Mix archive | Melbourne club guide

quote:

Originally posted by basilisk This sort of thing operates on a sliding scale. A little bit of accessibility is good, and the depths shall provide the more-than-curious enough room to swim. Take it too far in any which direction and you'll end up with shamelessly catchy rubbish or overly pretentious claptrap. Trance suffers from the first malady, whereas techno easily slips into the latter.

Exactly +1

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Infected Mushroom

"Dancing With Kadafi"
"Symphonatic"

'Nuff Said...

This is complicating something very simple. Music is art. Art appreciation is subject to taste or is interpreted differently by anyone who sees it. Someone with a in a degree in art history, might be more inclined to understand the intricacies of a piece and the raison d'etre, but not having this background does not mean something cannot be appreciated. People will like what they like, and maybe i'm missing the point but these statements just look like a whole bunch of fuss to have a cop out if someone doesn't like what you do. Appreciation is the best form of appreciation.

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quote:

Originally posted by MrsPiemont This is complicating something very simple. Music is art. Art appreciation is subject to taste or is interpreted differently by anyone who sees it. Someone with a in a degree in art history, might be more inclined to understand the intricacies of a piece and the raison d'etre, but not having this background does not mean something cannot be appreciated. People will like what they like, and maybe i'm missing the point but these statements just look like a whole bunch of fuss to have a cop out if someone doesn't like what you do. Appreciation is the best form of appreciation.

ur post are so well writed they gave me a boner.

*pets your head*

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