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Classics that "everybody" likes, except you. (pg. 20)
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| GT357 |
Sorry everybody but please remember, this is trance that EVERYBODY else likes except me.
Whiteroom - Whiteroom |
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| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by GT357
Sorry everybody but please remember, this is trance that EVERYBODY else likes except me.
Whiteroom - Whiteroom |
So how is that a classic, exactly? |
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| GT357 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mr.Mystery
So how is that a classic, exactly? |
Your joking right? With the way that everybody is talking about it? And i do mean everybody! If you want i can go to all the threads and get a list of everybody who's either bought it or raved about it. Within the technical definition, no not a "classic", however i bet you %75 of these ppl would say its an instant classic. But if you want, supreme commander, remove the post since its technically flawed. jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez |
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| tieann |
| Verococha - Carte Blanche (overrated) |
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| Radagast |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
I don't understand what you mean. Shouldn't music be allowed to evolve and spawn sub-genres? Shouldn't tracks HAVE breakdowns/climaxes? |
In Trance climaxes that are built up to slowly by adding layers over a extended period of time are okay, yes. Breakdowns that aren't so long that you have time to take a before the beat comes back are okay.
When the evolution turns an introspective genre that rewards paying attention into emotion tugging formulaic pop sing-along song music, why, that kind of evolving is bad. Why is it bad? Because it kills a respected genre of music that's why. What would you think if Shpongle along with all other psy artists started to add two minute breakdowns, huge supersaw riffs/catchy melodies, and a climax that hits harder and faster than a freight train? Some people wonder why Trance is a dirty word among other scenes...well I just explained what I think is the reason for that.
That kind of evolving is what happens when pop gets a hold of a genre. The most annoying part is when the DJ's, producers, and audience pretend that that isn't what has happened. |
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| Cobalt |
| quote: | Originally posted by GT357
Your joking right? With the way that everybody is talking about it? And i do mean everybody! If you want i can go to all the threads and get a list of everybody who's either bought it or raved about it. Within the technical definition, no not a "classic", however i bet you %75 of these ppl would say its an instant classic. But if you want, supreme commander, remove the post since its technically flawed. jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez |
White Room doesn't deserve to be raved about, nevermind mentioned in this thread. It's just a decent track that people got hopped up about because nothing else was filling the popularity void. |
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| Cobalt |
| quote: | Originally posted by Radagast
These things are even okay when overdone in other genres of music that doesn't try to conceal itself, but when it turns an introspective genre that rewards paying attention into emotion tugging formulaic pop sing-along song music, why, that kind of evolving is bad. |
I agree with you to a point. This holds up as long as you're assuming that active introspection is always the listener's intent. But it isn't, and there's no moral edict that says it always should be. People desire different things out of their music than something to approvingly nod about after astral contemplation. That those different desires have been more widely fulfilled by the splintering and evolution of trance is something positive, not something to be disparaged.
People sometimes want emotion-tugging melody. If that doesn't meet the intellectual standard, well, perhaps that's because it's not supposed to. Saying there is a uniform heirarchy of value in trance based solely on the "pop" influence involved is, in that context, about as open-minded and artistic as a theocracy demanding only Biblical paintings. |
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| Radagast |
| quote: | Originally posted by Cobalt
This holds up as long as you're assuming that active introspection is always the listener's intent. |
No. That's why we have pop genres like, Eurodance, Nu-Italo, MTV Music, etc...becaues most people's intent is not always active introspection, it's okay to have fun once in a while. Yet a lot of people are stupid, so they need pop music fed to them EXCLUSIVELY or in very large amounts...in this case epic trance. They don't even realize they are falling into the same traps MTV sets for their audience.
My point is that when I want to listen to some well thought out music i'll go to something like DJ Surgeon - Food For Thought and when I want to listen to fun flighty low brow music I go to my Beccas, Gigi D'agostinos, and my Will Smiths. When they want something "well thought out" and by their own words "complex" they go straight to pop trance, which is a contradiction. This makes me better and more intellgent than they are, of course.
| quote: | | That those different desires have been more widely fulfilled by the splintering and evolution of trance is something positive, not something to be disparaged. |
I never considered the proliferation of stupidity where intelligence once existed to be positive. Perhaps you do.
| quote: | | People sometimes want emotion-tugging melody. |
Me too. That's why when I do, I go listen to some good pop.
| quote: | | If that doesn't meet the intellectual standard, well, perhaps that's because it's not supposed to. |
Assuming you think pop is a less intellectual form of music, just ask veterans like Mark Reeder, Oliver Lieb, or Green Velvet/Cajmere what Trance is supposed to be.
| quote: | | Saying there is a uniform heirarchy of value in trance based solely on the "pop" influence involved is, in that context, about as open-minded and artistic as a theocracy demanding only Biblical paintings. |
So you mean to tell me that "pop" influences have the ability to increase the value of a genre of music? |
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| Cobalt |
| quote: | Originally posted by Radagast
No. That's why we have pop genres like Epic Trance, Eurodance, Nu-Italo, MTV Music, etc...becaues most people's intent is not active introspection. Most people are stupid, so they need things fed to them wrapped up in shiny, colorful, bright little packages. |
Yes, that is part of why we have epic trance. And there is a grey continuum between the cheesiest eurotrance and the most arcane psy. What we get out of our music is not black and white; it's a combination of many desires and interests, including intellectualism and shameless escapism.
| quote: | | I never considered the proliferation of stupidity where intelligence once existed to be positive. Perhaps you do. |
Both in your original post and in your response, you're working under the assumption that complexity, depth, and intelligence are the only elements of any worth in music. Art would be profoundly empty and uniform if that were the case. Humans are also emotional creatures, also shallow creatures. Our art reflects that. Enforcing some totalitarian norm from above is not only ill-conceived, it's against the nature of art.
| quote: | | Me too. That's why when I do, I go listen to some good pop. |
Again, the objectives of music, including trance, are not black and white. Attempting to categorize it as such is futile and misunderstands the palette of what music does for us.
| quote: | | Assuming you think pop is a less intellectual form of music, just ask veterans like Mark Reeder, Oliver Lieb, or Green Velvet/Cajmere what Trance is supposed to be. |
Trance isn't supposed to be anything. It's art, and people can do what they damn well please with art, intellectual or not.
I do assume pop is a less intellectual form of music. But what I'm saying, and what you fail to understand, it that its being so is not necessarily a bad thing. It's merely a different thing.
| quote: | | So you mean to tell me that "pop" influences have the ability to increase the value of a genre of music? |
Yes. What I think you're confusing with intrinsic value of such music is the diminishing value of what has already been done. Pop is often of poor value because it is, by definition, beaten to death, softened, processed, replicated and produced in large amounts: Popular Music. But this has nothing to do with the particular genre that spawned its popular trend. For example, I blast most material on Armin's A State of Trance, not because it's uplifting, but because it's been done before a hundred times. The new material adds nothing distinctive to the body of work. Yet I think there are many uplifting/epic tracks that are very good, because they are particularly innovative or groundbreaking. Take Armin's remix of Aria - Dido. Uplifting and shamelessly emotional? Absolutely. But of low value? Not at all. It was, and remains, quite powerful and significant in expanding the bounds of overblown epic anthems.
You're missing an important distinction and running with it. Art is not linear. |
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| Radagast |
| quote: | Originally posted by Cobalt
Yes, that is part of why we have epic trance. |
That doesn't mean it didn't eliminate a less accessible but more intelligent form of music.
| quote: | | And there is a grey continuum between the cheesiest eurotrance and the most arcane psy. |
Trance was better music when it was on the higher end of that continuum.
| quote: | | Both in your original post and in your response, you're working under the assumption that complexity, depth, and intelligence are the only elements of any worth in music. |
Simplicity, shallowness, and stupidity have a worth of their own to me. The worth to entertain me when I don't feel like getting into some real music.
| quote: | | Humans are also emotional creatures, also shallow creatures. Our art reflects that. |
Good trance can elicit emotions, even strong emotions. Bad trance tries to force emotions upon us.
| quote: | | Enforcing some totalitarian norm from above is not only ill-conceived, it's against the nature of art. |
Holding that standards set by the first trance should be what all trance is judged by is not ill-concieved.
| quote: | | Again, the objectives of music, including trance, are not black and white. |
Trance:
n. 1. A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state.
2. Detachment from one's physical surroundings, as in contemplation or daydreaming.
3. A semiconscious state, as between sleeping and waking; a daze.
The objective of trance is to put you in a trance. Hence the name trance. That's why the genre was named trance so long ago in the early 90's. Because it had this hypnotic ENTRANCING effect which it has lost through the pushing and pulling of emotions. So says Mark Reeder, founder of the first exclusive trance label and probably the person who coined the word "trance" to name the classic sound.
| quote: | | It's art, and people can do what they damn well please with art, intellectual or not. |
This freedom has lead to a giant disrespect in trance of its own roots. Roots which most current producers, DJ's, and listeners were never a part of and are completely oblivious toward.
| quote: | | Pop is often of poor value because it is, by definition, beaten to death, softened, processed, replicated and produced in large amounts: Popular Music. But this has nothing to do with the particular genre that spawned its popular trend. |
Aside from the fact that it makes the parent genre obsolete due to the inclusion of famosity and wealth.
| quote: | | For example, I blast most material on Armin's A State of Trance, not because it's uplifting, but because it's been done before a hundred times. The new material adds nothing distinctive to the body of work. Yet I think there are many uplifting/epic tracks that are very good, because they are particularly innovative or groundbreaking. Take Armin's remix of Aria - Dido. Uplifting and shamelessly emotional? Absolutely. But of low value? Not at all. It was, and remains, quite powerful and significant in expanding the bounds of overblown epic anthems. |
On a scale of quality within epic/anthem trance there is a good and a bad. I think the entire scale is of low value. It's like trying to measure the true monetary worth of Monopoly money...I think...
Each genre has its basic rules that the leading subgenres within it should follow. There are exceptions but the exceptions don't prove the rules. House: The soul, funk, and groove. Techno: The impersonality, coldness, and soulessness of a machine. Trance: To entrance listeners through hypnotic sounds. |
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| Cobalt |
| quote: | Originally posted by Radagast
That doesn't mean it didn't eliminate a less accessible but more intelligent form of music. |
No one "eliminated" anything. There's no international gag order on what can be produced as trance, and what cannot. If people want to make classic, unadulterated trance they're fully able to.
| quote: | | Trance was better music when it was on the higher end of that continuum. |
You're just repeating a flawed definition of "better." In art, better is not the most deep, complex, and contemplative. That may be one grouping of criteria to judge music by, and it may be more important to you than someone else, but it doesn't at all follow that such elements constitute an objective "better" for everyone. You're taking your own definition of "better" and generalizing it. That works when everyone is one the same page in terms of what music does for them, but it's precisely my point that in trance, as in any art, that's not the case. Art has a significant subjective component, based on the values of the audience; it's not at all like science, where absolute principles objectively rule.
| quote: | | Good trance can elicit emotions, even strong emotions. Bad trance tries to force emotions upon us. |
I completely agree. But what does not follow is a wholesale condemnation of entire trance genres based solely on their elements. You have repeatedly done so, often invoking some moral superiority of "pure trance." This is indefensible given the many different values people bring to the evaluation of music.
| quote: | | Holding that standards set by the first trance should be what all trance is judged by is not ill-concieved. |
In matters of art, it certainly is. No one has a patent or license over art and its movements. That defeats its very nature.
| quote: | Trance:
n. 1. A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state.
2. Detachment from one's physical surroundings, as in contemplation or daydreaming.
3. A semiconscious state, as between sleeping and waking; a daze.
The objective of trance is to put you in a trance. Hence the name trance. That's why the genre was named trance so long ago in the early 90's. Because it had this hypnotic ENTRANCING effect which it has lost through the pushing and pulling of emotions. So says Mark Reeder, founder of the first exclusive trance label and probably the person who coined the word "trance" to name the classic sound. |
That's empty semantics. Have you read the definition of "Rock" lately?
| quote: | | Aside from the fact that it makes the parent genre obsolete due to the inclusion of famosity and wealth. |
Oh, how sad. Free societies are a bitch.
| quote: | | On a scale of quality within epic/anthem trance there is a good and a bad. I think the entire scale is of low value. It's like trying to measure the true monetary worth of Monopoly money...I think... |
That makes no sense, because you're evaluating epic/anthem trance from your own set of values. The genre as a whole doesn't fulfill what you want out of music; that's fine and well. But it gives you no right to assume your opinions apply to everyone when others may be approaching the music with a very different set of criteria to judge by. If you've established that someone holds the same artistic values as you do, then you can level on the same terms. But it doesn't make any sense at all that you would apply your values to everyone else. You can do that in science, because there's a solid objective world out there. But not in art, because there are many different standards and perspectives involved.
Again, note the distinction: this fully allows me to be critical, objectively, of most A State of Trance material, if only because it brings nothing new to the table in any apparent set of values. But that does not translate into a statement on epic trance as a whole, because that cuts to judgments on the genre elements itself, which have different importance to different people, different interpretations by different people. |
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| DJ Cinos |
| This seems to be another of those Radagasr Just Keeps Going and Going and Going threads. How about we use him in a commercial for batteries? :toothless |
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