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-- Music that's too good to listen to
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quote:

Originally posted by epdarks If you tune into your local classic rock station you'll undoubtedly hear Stairway to Heaven 6 times a day. Ruining a classic, for what?

They assume you won't be listening for so long that you'll hear it more than once. I listen to the radio sometimes and I think I've only ever heard stairway once or twice. The classic rock station keeps it pretty varied actually (no like the top 40 stations).

Oh and stairway is far from the best Led Zeppelin song.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec you're nutty good music is always good it doesn't go bad if you listen to it too much. if that happens then you were deluded in the first place

I don't agree with you at all. Good music doesn't become bad, but overplaying something can make it lose its appeal. "Familiarity breeds contempt", as the saying goes.

What you have to consider is that you respond to music differently every time you encounter it. The first time you don't know what's coming next, the second time you have a vague idea. Later listen reveal details or structures you didn't pick up on the first time. Context is all important. Music can become tied in with specific memories, and playing it mundane situations can lessen those memories.

Above all, if you play something all day, every day you dilute it because it just becomes mundane. It become the same piece of music you always hear.

Yeah. I don't think good tracks become bad, they just becomes less "effective" for me if I listen to them a whole lot. Just like any other pleasurable experience, really.

And overplayed tracks can regain their effectiveness if I take a break from them for a while.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I don't agree with you at all. Good music doesn't become bad, but overplaying something can make it lose its appeal. "Familiarity breeds contempt", as the saying goes. What you have to consider is that you respond to music differently every time you encounter it. The first time you don't know what's coming next, the second time you have a vague idea. Later listen reveal details or structures you didn't pick up on the first time. Context is all important. Music can become tied in with specific memories, and playing it mundane situations can lessen those memories. Above all, if you play something all day, every day you dilute it because it just becomes mundane. It become the same piece of music you always hear.

yeah but that's not the music's problem, that's the listener's problem

if you don't listen to music because you're afraid it will get old then it is probably not that good.


sure, i can get tired of things, but if it's really good then when i come back to it it's still great. obviously if you just play the same thing on repeat you'll get sick of it, but who the hell does that?

for me, getting sick of music is a sign that it wasn't as good as i thought it was.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec yeah but that's not the music's problem, that's the listener's problem

Since we're talking about personal experience, is there any practical difference?

quote:

if you don't listen to music because you're afraid it will get old then it is probably not that good. sure, i can get tired of things, but if it's really good then when i come back to it it's still great. obviously if you just play the same thing on repeat you'll get sick of it, but who the hell does that?

Bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. Playing the same thing until you're utterly sick of it is an extreme example of something that happens to a lot of music. I think it's stupid to try and draw up universal rules like "If you're afraid of playing something too much, it probably isn't very good", because not all music is the same. Some stuff you play and you know instantly that you love it, some stuff takes time. Some stuff works in all contexts and moods, some stuff doesn't. You may as well say "If something doesn't sound good on any sound system it probably isn't very good" because of some vague idea that music should sound good all the time, everywhere no matter what the circumstances, and if it doesn't it isn't "good music". But of course, does it mean dub is somehow flawed because you can't enjoy it properly through laptop speakers? No!

Rules like that don't exist. Nobody's saying that the music irrevocably gets worse the more you play it. It's just about how you enjoy your music. I want to keep an album special by only playing it once or twice a year so it has that freshness, that difference, that sense of being a unique event every time. I have a list of records that I will hold off playing for a while because things are more special when you don't indulge in them all the time. It's as simple as that. If it doesn't work like that for you then you're lucky, but I think it's condescending to suggest that we're treating the music like that because it isn't very good.

im not trying to be condescending, sorry if it comes across that way.

whatever makes you happy i guess?




i generally can't help listening to music i like. i would never be able to restrain myself from listening to it like that, nor would i need to to recognize its special quality.

i mean, especially when it concerns electronic dance music, which is mostly disposable IMO.


i listen to enough different things that I rarely get sick of them

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I just like to keep special records special by not playing them very often. There's more significance to the event that way.

senseless thread ever

Routine slowly disrupts concentration and therefore appreciation. I practice this absence mainly with mixes/albums, particularly Dream Theater's Scenes From A Memory and Sasha's Ibiza CD 1. These two I consider more musical journeys than merely "good music". Just as I wouldn't wanna watch my favourite movies every Sunday evening in order to maintain that emotional impact they have on me upon experieincing them, I'd prefer keeping this gems for special occasions. You don't wanna open an exquisite bottle of Bordeaux wine while eating Dominio's Pizza eihter, would you.

I feel EXACTLY the same. I have several vinyls that I dare not touch, unless I specifically want that music. I don't even rip it to MP3 - next thing I know I'll have it on my MP3 player and that would be the end of magic.

People who don't understand this never TRULLY experienced the rush that comes with a very special song. For me, there are very few and they are treasured dearly, to preserve the "rush" they produce when played.

For example (all musical tastes aside), I used to enjoy Peter Martin Wijnia's "Not the end". However, after downloading it into my MP3 player and listening to it over a span of a month, it became just another song. I now don't have the rush I had when I first heard it. Not that it's not a great song but the feelings dull after you've heard it so many times.

This is actually what kills me as a producer. I might have a melody in mind that I slap together in a track. But after X number of times of hearing the same song over and over and over again, while you're fine tuning it - it loses it's magic. This results in me going back to muck around with it, which then makes it even more shitty. The best tracks I've ever recorded cannot be made into a song, because they were recorded using some goofy method (like sonar 9 instant record of combined tracks). I can probably go back and try to reproduce it but it would not be the same.

I actually talked about it to a friend of mine who used to play professionally as a session musician, then in his own band, then as a producer/engineer for hire. He said that some of the tracks he made took him 2 or 3 months to produce before he was totally happy with them. I asked him how does he remain interested in a track while working on it for such a long time? He explained that he only allocates a certain amount of time to a track, he works on several tracks in the same day, he comes to work on a track with a specific agenda. That is unless he feels inspired and convinced that something needs to be changed, he works on a very methodical schedule/agenda. This way he remains interested in the track, while retaining its original "soul". After a while, if the track is still not finished - he walks away from it for a while. That means it's not ready to be "born" yet. Some of the tracks he released were "born" after 4 or more YEARS!!!! Part of it was that he wasn't happy with the way it sounded, part of it he felt that he did not play cerain sections well enough due to lack of playing experience of certain instrument (he plays all instruments himself, btw: synths, drums, guitar, etc), and so on.

I know I wondered off a bit on a tangent but I kind of understand the challenges he faced as a musician/producer because of the way I feel - e.g. that music tends to get "tarnished" after hearing it so many times.

Re: Music that's too good to listen to

quote:

Originally posted by epdarks We've all been to those parties where everything fell together, the party as a whole was greater than the combination of its elements, and there was a special something that went undocumented. I had that special night earlier this year. Recently the set was released. The problem is, I just can't get myself to listen to it. There seems to be some risk in the potential to dull down the memory, or maybe, even worse, the music was just average. This got me thinking further, my best music is rarely played. I feel guilty playing it. As if, each time I hear it, a little bit of the magic goes away. Am I alone here?

Are you posting while high again?

I agree 100% that over-listening ruins the specialty of a song. Surely its actual quality doesn't ever decrease, but I'm not too excited to hear a song the 95th time versus the 2nd.

worst thread topic ever

it's true for some rare vinyl that i own, but that's not because of the music, it's because i don't want the medium to degrade.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec it's true for some rare vinyl that i own, but that's not because of the music, it's because i don't want the medium to degrade.

that's the only time it would ever be appropriate

It's only too good if you listen to it 0034520875345 times a day and are able to decipher that cymbal you never heard before, the suble time change, hi's and lows, etc. And each 0034520875345th time you listen, it's really only the first. Ya dig?

quote:

Originally posted by Palladium senseless thread ever

quote:

Originally posted by Omega_Blue worst thread topic ever

That about says it all.

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