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-- Does the music has to sound perfect?

Does the music has to sound perfect?

Odd question. But recently I've been asking myself that. The spark came from listening to Solar Fields' Altered Second Movements album which is, in my opinion and taste, much better than the original Movements. Reason why is that it has that enigma to it. Original Movements is too much perfect in a sense that with each listen there is no new experience (ofc this is for me), the sound is just the same, the melodies are good but predictable as well as the structure of the album. Nothing surprises, nothing elaborates in time. But production-wise and soft ear-pleasing is perfect.

So, does the music has to sound perfect both in production as well as a listening experience or does it have to challenge the ear and mind a bit more and not just be a good background? By all the things I mentioned above I dont mean cheesy hooks or something but structure and sound which are designed to be way too soft and polished both in technical and mind-exploring way(very hard to explain what I mean but I hope some of you experienced this and will come with some interesting opinions).

Tracks with subtly, you mean? Where some layers aren't heard until several listens?

Without having heard the new version of Movements I can't really understand what you're getting at.

Trying to apply perfect in describing music is only going to turn the topic into a semantic Vietnam. With the way you describe the experience, it seems like perfection doesn't really apply but is as close as you could get in describing a very complex topic with a single word. Your use of the word, perfect seems to mean an intrinsic simplicity which, however complex the music may have been, revealed itself possibly due to the meticulous way it was crafted.

Personally, I don't see this topic going very far without some refinement of the meaning in what you're asking. Perfection, alone, is difficult to qualify and when you torture the meaning of it, the thread may as well be a slap-chop for a word salad. It's not going to make ANY sense.







EDIT: Lack of caffeine and a tendency towards perfectionism.

Yeah, I dont think I explained it well. Probably some of you who will listen to both Movements will sense it too or maybe its just me. What I mean was that the original Movements (and some other albums too ofc) sound way too polished, straight-forward in terms of the idea behind the track and lack the pleasure of multi-listening experience (eg. rediscovering the track and, it, leading to some new dream/idea/inspiration whatever).

So I may reconfigure the question into: does the music always has to be perfected in its idea? Or does it has to have multiple paths? Personally I like the latter.

What do you think the idea behind Movements is?

Loving "On A Wind"
"Black Arrow" even more so...
nice to see Solar Fields is having some success achieving perfection. Atleast through music it is capable.

quote:

Originally posted by EddieZilker Trying to apply perfect in describing music is only going to turn the topic into a semantic Vietnam.

I think Magadansky's using 'perfect' in the same way as 'perfect translation' applies to messages between languages. The idea is that a track can be fully understandable by the listener, in the sense that they can hear all the nuances and sonic happenings consciously. 'Perfect' doesn't mean a measure by some standard, but a way of structuring music. Like, let's say you listen to a car moving in front of you and it's basically completely clear; the farther you move away from it, the more indistinct it becomes, so that if you sit in some field on the outskirts of the city the sound of cars passing becomes one droning continuum rather than a discrete sound. The character of the sound changes completely in the two instances, but even still, if you push yourself to listen hard when sitting in the field, you can pick out some little details in that drone even though the total field is basically a blurred wash of sound.

I haven't listened to Second Movements but there was this thread a while back about Justin Bieber's song being stretched by 800% percent. Perfection is the difference between that track and something like Troum - Autopoiesis.

quote:

Originally posted by pozz I think Magadansky's using 'perfect' in the same way as 'perfect translation' applies to messages between languages. The idea is that a track can be fully understandable by the listener, in the sense that they can hear all the nuances and sonic happenings consciously. 'Perfect' doesn't mean a measure by some standard, but a way of structuring music. Like, let's say you listen to a car moving in front of you and it's basically completely clear; the farther you move away from it, the more indistinct it becomes, so that if you sit in some field on the outskirts of the city the sound of cars passing becomes one droning continuum rather than a discrete sound. The character of the sound changes completely in the two instances, but even still, if you push yourself to listen hard when sitting in the field, you can pick out some little details in that drone even though the total field is basically a blurred wash of sound. I haven't listened to Second Movements but there was this thread a while back about Justin Bieber's song being stretched by 800% percent. Perfection is the difference between that track and something like Troum - Autopoiesis.

Well put. If the OP was meaning to talk about space in the mix, this seems to be an adroit description. Perfect would be thus defined as a "clean" mix where every sound has a surgically precise space and there are relatively few, if any, clashing artifacts which, given a staid music arrangement, might tend to be a little dry.

A dirty mix, would tend to let instruments bleed onto one another to a point where sonic artifacts are created, thus adding new parts to the mix. As the spectral field became more noisy and dissonant I could hear that challenging a listener.

Ambient music is not supposed to surprise you with each new listen or bring something new to table every time you hear it. As much as people try to redefine it and give it a new meaning, ambient is still best described with this Eno quote: �Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.�

I can't see how Movements is ignorable. It hits you right in the face with its big sounds and pretty melodies. Of course it's predictable, because it has no subtlety. Psybient label is very suitable in this case: it's ambient music for people who became tired of psy trance and want to take a little break. It's equivalent of Joris Voorn's take on Detroit techno. I want to believe that every true ambient lover avoids it (together with the rest of Ultimae catalogue), but surely that's not the case.

Ambient artists I like are Biosphere, Fennesz, Tim Hecker and Alva Noto. While their music doesn't offer anything revolutionary, it still has a certain offset from traditional forms of stale ambient - its minimalistic design and unorthodox sound manipulation that includes a lot of noise, acoustic guitars, glitches, errors, field recordings and everything in between still offers a certain novelty compared to that clean sound of Ultimae recordings.

quote:

Originally posted by sljiva It's equivalent of Joris Voorn's take on Detroit techno. I want to believe that every true ambient lover avoids it (together with the rest of Ultimae catalogue), but surely that's not the case.

This sounds like you're being very disparaging towards Solar Fields, Ultimae and Joris Voorn, and yet I recall you rating all three quite highly in your Albums Of The '00s list.

EDIT: Also, I've no idea why you're bringing ambient up, considering nobody has called Solar Fields ambient and I don't think anyone would.

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Originally posted by sljiva Ambient music is not supposed to surprise you with each new listen or bring something new to table every time you hear it.

quote:

Ambient artists I like are Biosphere.

Take a listen to Biosphere again. He uses more discrete layering in his music than I have ever heard anywhere else. All of his repeating phrases are composed of more layers than I can keep track of even now, after listening to his material steadily for the past 3-4 years. There have been times where I listen to specific tracks and albums continuously to try pick out certain patterns that I normally don't pay attention to or that slide out of my focus into different ones. Fennesz and Alva Noto are similar, also. Like, even in Alva Noto's really minimalistic work, where it sounds like one sound throughout the track, there is stuff going on that I have to struggle to pick up - little vibrations and wobbles.

Don't be so harsh towards Ultimae. I think you're right about it's being a chill-out label for guys who are mostly into psy, but they have some real gems like almost everything on Carbon Based Lifeforms - Hydroponic Garden, some tracks by Aes Dana, and some bits of Circular - Substans.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Also, I've no idea why you're bringing ambient up, considering nobody has called Solar Fields ambient and I don't think anyone would.

For some reason, that kind of stuff is always described as ambient music. Not so much tracks like Brainbow, but even the downtempo stuff is referred to as ambient all the time.

Re: Does the music has to sound perfect?

quote:

Originally posted by Magadansky Odd question. But recently I've been asking myself that. The spark came from listening to Solar Fields' Altered Second Movements album which is, in my opinion and taste, much better than the original Movements. Reason why is that it has that enigma to it. Original Movements is too much perfect in a sense that with each listen there is no new experience (ofc this is for me), the sound is just the same, the melodies are good but predictable as well as the structure of the album. Nothing surprises, nothing elaborates in time. But production-wise and soft ear-pleasing is perfect. So, does the music has to sound perfect both in production as well as a listening experience or does it have to challenge the ear and mind a bit more and not just be a good background? By all the things I mentioned above I dont mean cheesy hooks or something but structure and sound which are designed to be way too soft and polished both in technical and mind-exploring way(very hard to explain what I mean but I hope some of you experienced this and will come with some interesting opinions).

here is a good example of a movement and you can say the production is't the best in tech terms but what they have been able to get across is defo real and organic in nature witch is the hole point in movements anyway

quote:

Originally posted by pozz For some reason, that kind of stuff is always described as ambient music. Not so much tracks like Brainbow, but even the downtempo stuff is referred to as ambient all the time.

Granted a lot of people seem to think that "chill out" (and by extension, psy-chill) and "ambient" are synonymous, but nobody's done that in this thread and yet sljiva's post seems to shooting down an assumption nobody has made.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J What do you think the idea behind Movements is?

Well the idea that I accumulate is that it is designed to sound joyful by all means. Above my post someone described it as pretty and that is it. It's always pretty, there isn't something to elaborate on the music in it. Btw, I listened to both albums and funny enough I find that the two good tracks on Movements for me - Sol and Sky Trees are the worst in Second Movements (Insolate and Closing The Sky). Didn't thought about it so much but they are for me at the moment.

quote:

Originally posted by pozz I think Magadansky's using 'perfect' in the same way as 'perfect translation' applies to messages between languages. The idea is that a track can be fully understandable by the listener, in the sense that they can hear all the nuances and sonic happenings consciously. 'Perfect' doesn't mean a measure by some standard, but a way of structuring music. Like, let's say you listen to a car moving in front of you and it's basically completely clear; the farther you move away from it, the more indistinct it becomes, so that if you sit in some field on the outskirts of the city the sound of cars passing becomes one droning continuum rather than a discrete sound. The character of the sound changes completely in the two instances, but even still, if you push yourself to listen hard when sitting in the field, you can pick out some little details in that drone even though the total field is basically a blurred wash of sound. I haven't listened to Second Movements but there was this thread a while back about Justin Bieber's song being stretched by 800% percent. Perfection is the difference between that track and something like Troum - Autopoiesis.

Well put although. Edit: read the post again and edited (deleted) the rest.

quote:

Originally posted by sljiva

As a big fan of Ultimae I tend to disagree here. They aren't a pure psybient label, I wouldn't even classify them as pure ambient label. They are quite diverse in their catalogue and they have a vast number of beautiful releases. Solar Fields in particular is a pure music genius and all of his albums are great, except of course Movements which is just too straight-forward for me. Still pleasant though.

definitely

in my opinion music is better if it isnt perfect it add something extra

quote:

Originally posted by EddieZilker Trying to apply perfect in describing music is only going to turn the topic into a semantic Vietnam. With the way you describe the experience, it seems like perfection doesn't really apply but is as close as you could get in describing a very complex topic with a single word. Your use of the word, perfect seems to mean an intrinsic simplicity which, however complex the music may have been, revealed itself possibly due to the meticulous way it was crafted. Personally, I don't see this topic going very far without some refinement of the meaning in what you're asking. Perfection, alone, is difficult to qualify and when you torture the meaning of it, the thread may as well be a slap-chop for a word salad. It's not going to make ANY sense. EDIT: Lack of caffeine and a tendency towards perfectionism.

I understand this part, Many thanks to your description! It's helpful to me.

When I think about music trying to achieve perfection, BT always comes to mind.

Re: Re: Does the music has to sound perfect?

quote:

Originally posted by owien

nicccce track!

quote:

Originally posted by couch-potato Tracks with subtly, you mean? Where some layers aren't heard until several listens?

I honestly prefer this, there are some tracks whose engineering is good but that have subtle instruments playing, maybe just one single note but it's magical when you start noticing them.

It's enjoyable too when you listen a track that you haven't listened in years and discover new things, but this is possibly because ear can be trained and you do by listening to more music/the same track.

Answering to your question, if having subtle elements isn't perfection i prefer "imperfect" music.

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