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who thinks techno is flat out better than house? (pg. 5)
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| sljiva |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Didn't you once say Perfect Motion had some of the greatest lyrics of any EDM song? |
No, I said that its opening line is undoubtedly classic. But more as a joke than anything else.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Whether the lyrics of I Want Your Love are particularly deep or shallow is completely secondary to the point. They are undeniably melancholic and they are certainly profound, because they deal with a near-universal subject of heartbreak. The point is that by so directly addressing unrequited love, the track could not possibly be called simple hedonism and neither is it trivial. And while it's not really important to the point at hand, I personally think the lyrics are a wonderful example of good pop writing - they elegantly and efficiently summarise a feeling without resorting to faux-deep ambiguous metaphors. Artistically that is far more difficult and resonant than blurring out your intentions with obfuscation. The song encapsulates a complex emotional maelstrom of loneliness, sadness, desire and affection. As I've said, it is cathartic because it implores the listener to feel these emotions to their fullest, rather than burying them under mindless dancefloor escapism. "Baby can't you see / when I look at you / I can't kick this feeling when it hits" is a perfect pop lyric. |
Well, the lyrics in this song certainly owe much of its effect to instrumentaion that provides this type of melancholic and wistful atmosphere. You can pretty much put every type of simple (not stupid) lyrics upon it, and you'll get a perfect pop song (in your words). Sorry, but lines such as "Baby can't you see / when I look at you / I can't kick this feeling when it hits" have been rehashed million times in pop music before, with more or less success. This time they work because the song as a whole works.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
The problem is simply that you're making a classic fanboy error of generalising favourably towards a genre you like and negatively towards another you have little attachment to. 95% of techno is mindless, idea-less and . You would freak out if someone made such a casual dismissive generalisation of techno, without any caveat towards the minority of great artists it has produced. |
To tell the truth, techno occupies around 10% of my listening time. From around 30 albums I've bought this year, 4 have been techno (Passed Me By/We Stay Together, Liber Dogma, Plus Minus Null and Breaking The Frame). So I don't really have any special affection towards techno (or soul, funk, prog and kraut rock for that matter), and animosity towards house or disco. I'm just perceiving their qualities and efficiencies from the side. I couldn't care less for happy hardcore and dubstep for example either, but if I had to give an objective judgement on those two, I'd definitely say the latter has been more diverse, innovative or multilateral of the two. |
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| sljiva |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
You would freak out if someone made such a casual dismissive generalisation of techno, without any caveat towards the minority of great artists it has produced. |
Oh and techno has produced far more great artists than any genre of electronic music out there. From Belleville Three, Plastikman, LFO, Drexciya, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin, Basic Channel, Surgeon, Monolake, Echospace to new ones such as Andy Stott. And those are just players that drastically changed the sound and stretched out the boundaries. I may not like all of them, but to deny their roles in development of electronic music in general would be completely asinine. So you can try to dismiss techno as a whole, but you'll make a fool out of yourself. That's not the case with some other genres out there though. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by sljiva
Well, the lyrics in this song certainly owe much of its effect to instrumentaion that provides this type of melancholic and wistful atmosphere. You can pretty much put every type of simple (not stupid) lyrics upon it, and you'll get a perfect pop song (in your words). Sorry, but lines such as "Baby can't you see / when I look at you / I can't kick this feeling when it hits" have been rehashed million times in pop music before, with more or less success. This time they work because the song as a whole works. |
This is an extremely simplistic interpretation of what's going on in this song. For one, the vocal line is its own melody not repeated by any instrument, so the melodic content of the vocal is an important part of the emotional content of the song, and also the impact of the lyrics. For two, like a lot of things Chic did, the lyrics (and vocal content generally) is a subtle skew on pop conventions. The verses of this song are split into six lines, rather than the 4 or 8 that would more conventionally match pop's 4/4 time signature and phrase construction. They form an AAB CCB rhyming structure, and echo Haiku poetry in how the first two lines of each sub-stanza are related sentiments that come together in the final line.
What I love about that lyric is how elongated the first two lines are sung, and then the final line is twice as long as the others and comes out in a rush, encapsulating the wave of emotion the lyric discusses. It's notable that other verses in the song don't follow this pattern - the vocalist modulates the deliver of each one slightly depending on the lyrical content. In other words, this isn't an accident - the lyric is delivered in that way for effect. There are a few other moments in the song where the delivery of the lyric is accentuated by the vocalist, creating the effect of emotion welling up as the line is delivered.
This lyric is not just some general platitude about unrequited love. It's about a specific detail of a specific emotional encounter, and great pop lyrics pick out and perfectly express those little details. If this line is a rehash, post some other pop lines from before 1978 that sketched out this same detail - this same moment of staring at someone you love and getting that awful feeling of sadness because you'll never be with them. And then list some that also use the specific techniques of stanza construction, delivery and melody I've discussed above with which to express that detail. It's this combination of all these things that makes a perfect pop lyric - the instrumentation, the melody, the voice the delivery, the incision of the observational detail.
| quote: | Originally posted by sljiva
Oh and techno has produced far more great artists than any genre of electronic music out there. |
No, that would be ambient. Although spectacular job on proving my point. |
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| stevö |
thank you thank you thank you! this is exactly the message i try to convey through my selections, but a lot of people are determined to stay in their dreary sad crap posed as intellectual or deep. |
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| PivotTechno |
People say the music they play or listen to is this or that, but the music just is - what people *say* the music is, how they perceive it, is more a reflection of who they are.
I used to play music to mind, often with the intent to damage. Have worked through much of my long-conditioned anger, so my intent now is more to uplift and inspire, as it's primarily what I seek for myself. |
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| mishu.edm |
| quote: | Originally posted by MSZ
post garbage > Get replies. matt has this place figured out.
then theres me posting a wonderful track and getting 0 replies :(:(:( |
where's your track? I wanna check it out :) |
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| mishu.edm |
| quote: | Originally posted by Zharen
Oh look, another stupid thread. |
+1 (plz don't blame me for this reply... ) |
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| Chimney |
| quote: | Originally posted by mishu.edm
+1 (plz don't blame me for this reply... ) |
How is this a stupid thread in any way? It incited to a great discussion, both opinion-wise and historic-wise. |
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| sljiva |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
This is an extremely simplistic interpretation of what's going on in this song. For one, the vocal line is its own melody not repeated by any instrument, so the melodic content of the vocal is an important part of the emotional content of the song, and also the impact of the lyrics. For two, like a lot of things Chic did, the lyrics (and vocal content generally) is a subtle skew on pop conventions. The verses of this song are split into six lines, rather than the 4 or 8 that would more conventionally match pop's 4/4 time signature and phrase construction. They form an AAB CCB rhyming structure, and echo Haiku poetry in how the first two lines of each sub-stanza are related sentiments that come together in the final line.
What I love about that lyric is how elongated the first two lines are sung, and then the final line is twice as long as the others and comes out in a rush, encapsulating the wave of emotion the lyric discusses. It's notable that other verses in the song don't follow this pattern - the vocalist modulates the deliver of each one slightly depending on the lyrical content. In other words, this isn't an accident - the lyric is delivered in that way for effect. There are a few other moments in the song where the delivery of the lyric is accentuated by the vocalist, creating the effect of emotion welling up as the line is delivered.
This lyric is not just some general platitude about unrequited love. It's about a specific detail of a specific emotional encounter, and great pop lyrics pick out and perfectly express those little details. If this line is a rehash, post some other pop lines from before 1978 that sketched out this same detail - this same moment of staring at someone you love and getting that awful feeling of sadness because you'll never be with them. And then list some that also use the specific techniques of stanza construction, delivery and melody I've discussed above with which to express that detail. It's this combination of all these things that makes a perfect pop lyric - the instrumentation, the melody, the voice the delivery, the incision of the observational detail. |
I though we were talking about lyrics, not vocals and the way they are performed. I appreciate all of the technicalities, and I generally like their style of singing and coulour of the voices and everything, but the lyrics itself still strike me as plain. As I said, the whole song is good (including the vocal delivery, but most importantly the instrumental backing) so the lyrics feel appropriate and satisfying, but put them on a slightly different instrumental matrix and you'll not get the same results. On the other hand, lyrics which I really like from artists such as Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan are universal, profound and can be put on a much wider range of instrumentals and still work. Lines such as "Breathe in the air / Don't be afraid to care" and "Long you live and high you fly / Smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry / All you touch and all you see / Is all your life will ever be." are anything but plain, though still very simple and effective as hell. The thing is, I've known and listened to I Want Your Love for almost two decades, I know every little nuance and detail of it, and I kinda realize what it tries to say, do and represent. But I still think that with better lyrics, I would be able to appreciate it a whole lot more. Kinda like those early The Beatles songs such as And I Love Her, that don't realize their full potential solely because of plainness of their lyrics.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
No, that would be ambient. Although spectacular job on proving my point. |
Yeah, ambient is up there too, but more as a result of its vastness and use as an umbrella term (kinda like IDM) for most of the beatless and atmosphere oriented electronic music than anything else. While techno can't deviate too much from its established rules and boundaries because of the risk of being called something else, ambient can employ and utilize the whole world of sounds and techniques, as long as it's letting ambient soundscapes and generally atmospheric elements prevail. So Biosphere, FSOL and Fennesz can all be called ambient, though their music uses different compositional methods, instruments, sounds and arrangements, creates different types of moods and atmospheres, and has a radically different effect on the listener.
And how the hell did I prove your point? By defending a completely false and ignorant alleged assumption? You don't have to be emotionally attached to a certain genre to this. I'd do (and I did) the same if somebody attacked genres such as jazz which I personally don't like, but have much respect for. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
Because you felt it necessary to defend techno's honour even after I gave a caveat to the great artists it has produced, as if I'm not aware of them. I was never trying to "dismiss techno as a whole", quite the opposite, so why so defensive? I don't think it's a baseless assumption to say you prefer techno to house, given I can see the music you discuss on TA, the music you rank in your end of year/decade lists and everything you listen to on Last.fm.
In the interests of fairness, techno is one of the oldest and more enduring genres of electronic music, so it stands to reason that it would have produced more great artists. Disco was a relatively short-term and localised movement for the most part, at a time when far less music was being released generally. If you add up the hordes of mindless '90s techno and bandwagon Beatport minimal compared to the number of artists on par with Monolake, I'd say the ratio of quality to is probably far worse in techno than in disco.
And I should point I prefer techno to house or disco and listen to it a lot more, but the point stands that you made a dismissive and unfair generalisation against a whole genre, and you freak the out when I even hypothetically make a similar one about techno. |
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| PivotTechno |
| quote: | Originally posted by mishu.edm
+1 (plz don't blame me for this reply... ) |
If you dzn't want to be blamed for somethngz, then next time, don't reply at all. You're the internet equivalent of someone who walks around chain smoking, mindlessly flicking their cigarette butts all over the street. |
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| mishu.edm |
| quote: | Originally posted by PivotTechno
If you dzn't want to be blamed for somethngz, then next time, don't reply at all. You're the internet equivalent of someone who walks around chain smoking, mindlessly flicking their cigarette butts all over the street. |
=)))))))) ok, don't take it seriously, I was just joking...:tongue3 :tongue3 |
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