KVR Audio

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Thu Apr 30, 2015 4:56 pm

I don't imagine it's pertinent to 'think it's a good record' particularly either. It speaks to music what gets a lot of views in a very general sense.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:12 pm

jancivil wrote:
ghettosynth wrote:I don't think isolated examples makes the case. I did not say that "being a good musician is all that matters", what I said was "good does have something to do with success." Further, although I'm talking about being good musically, that doesn't necessarily mean being a good player, it also reflects writing skill.
I know what you said. I think when someone IS good and they're additionally not bad at presenting, either and have a presence in a number of areas, and working with someone else with a following... EG: w. this result: Rastop and Amy Coleman doing Gershwin Summertime (a fantastic record) has 800-something views since Nov 2013; that being competitive as to views and exposure involves more than "good".You must be aware of things that do get millions of views that would be hard to call good, since you referred to Rebecca Black.

Again, I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of views. Views are a proxy for engagement at some level, yes, but there are way too many factors to start talking about why Amy Coleman has 800 and Rebecca Black has whatever many. That is a fantastic video, BTW, and by that I mean the videography, but not just the videogaphry, great production, great guitar playing, and she has an interesting, albeit strange, style. If nothing else, thanks for pointing it out.

Now, I don't think that you can seriously argue to me that good doesn't matter given what just happened. You just introduced me to a video using the internet in exactly the way that Albini was talking about. You're very much into rastop and you have communicated this to someone who does not really share common music interests with you for the most part, but, is still somewhat picky about what they're willing to listen to on a repeatable basis and has some minor elements in common with you. I like the video a lot and it will become a part of some of my playlists. That's how it works. Truthfully, I'd prefer to have a non youtubed version of the track, but, I can't be bothered to store music that isn't DJ music on any particular device. Still, the video is weird, you like "weird" stuff, Zappa, QED, I sometimes like weird stuff. I don't like her cover of honky tonk women, for example, too much weird, not enough, oh I don't know, sauce, or something. But I would roll my eyes and move on if "I" didn't think that the summertime video was good in some way, if it didn't connect to me on "my" understanding of what's good.

That said, it won't connect to a lot of people. Putting aside that she's homely and they're both old and not yet famous (you can be old as long as you get famous first), the track is very laid back and there aren't enough glory notes in either the singing or the guitar playing for "most people." If you want big numbers, you have to pander to that fat part of the bell curve where all of the people with bad taste hang out.

Also talking about good when you went to make 'objectively good' suspect doesn't work for me. Is JS Bach objectively good, would you say?

This is a can of worms that I don't want to get into. Any measure that you come up with is going to be contextual. I've argued this before and I think that it's true that the only measure of good that we can apply that is somewhat objective is whether a work meets the constraints of the intent. Intent can mean almost anything here but it provides a measure to which we can evaluate objectivity. If you say that a work is a fugue, or a house track, then we can evaluate the work with respect to what is expected of those styles. If you say that your work evokes a particular emotion, then we can expect that, independent of listener, that the emotion is evoked in some statistically relevant way.

John Tesh may indeed have 'writing skill' but it's a hack's skill set. The whole point I was making, while you chose to go around it, was that popularity involves a whole lot of other factors than musical good. I said that with a Beatles, it does involve musical good. I do not agree that popularity requires it per se.

Of course, I never said otherwise. I'm taking issue with the statement that "good doesn't have much to do with it", I. In any case, to whatever extent good mattered before, it matters more today. You can't just rely on being a big fish in a little pond because no matter which pond you're in, there's a global audience, and people are pickier than they were because they can be. I certainly am, I don't listen to FM radio at all. Rastop and Amy Coleman don't have many listeners/followers on the youtube, but if they sucked, I wouldn't have even listened to the entire thing, let alone play it several times in succession.

Twenty years ago you probably could have convinced me to go to a local show where they, or a less polished version of them was playing just because it wasn't "the beatles", or, I might have purchased their record based on a one or two sentence recommendation from someone who gave me only the slightest indication that they understood what I liked in music, e.g., a store clerk. Today, it has to be more than "not the beatles", I have to really like it and, moreover, it has to compete with the other things that I really like. There's no way I'm buying a record until I'm sure that I want MORE than the youtube experience.

But, when people really like things, they buy more of it and spend more on that particular artist. I believe that you said that one of your fans gave you something like 10x for one of your records, yes?

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 01, 2015 1:56 am

ghettosynth wrote: there are way too many factors to start talking about why Amy Coleman has 800 and Rebecca Black has whatever many.

That is exactly my point in indicating that thing. I don't know if I said 'good doesn't (much) enter into it', but I think I didn't. It isn't what drives popularity through itself. I did take issue with 'not trying hard enough' and what looks to me like that tying into 'good is what reaches people', as axiomatic per se.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 01, 2015 2:06 am

John Tesh reaches a lot of people, and I think what he does is <never good>. I'm only using him since I believe you know quite what I mean in at least this case.

The 'good' of Rastop and Amy 'Summertime' may have something to do with 800 vs say 8 views, but not as much as either of their presence on the 'net already and in combination.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 01, 2015 2:17 am

ghettosynth wrote:
Also talking about good when you went to make 'objectively good' suspect doesn't work for me. Is JS Bach objectively good, would you say?
Any measure that you come up with is going to be contextual.

John Tesh may indeed have 'writing skill' but it's a hack's skill set. The whole point I was making, while you chose to go around it, was that popularity involves a whole lot of other factors than musical good. I said that with a Beatles, it does involve musical good. I do not agree that popularity requires it per se.
Of course, I never said otherwise.

I can't tell if you agree with that statement 'a hack's skill set'. The context to me has naught to do with it. Musicianship is everything. Tesh is a piss-poor musician. It can be the very best of whatever the hell he's trying to do, some new age vagaries, I don't even know; it doesn't matter. The thing you showed me on the joke thread was amazingly poor piano plonking. That's not good for anybody, even a small child presenting that can't be granted as good. For a lot of people, it's fine, they're mightily impressed. But he's just not good. "He's... tall..."

So, no. I have metrics for it that I may not be able to convey to you at all, but that this language works for you like that doesn't enter into what I think or what I would assert.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 01, 2015 2:27 am

And NB: 'Not Beatles' isn't anything other than to say, 'it does not have that je ne sais quoi' of Beatles (or for that matter, of a Rebecca Black). The cuteness, the narrative, the synergy of personalities people are for some mysterious reason super-fascinated with. I would not use 'Not Beatles' as a selling point in itself.
OTOH Frank Zappa loved marketing and chose to be the anti-Beatles in a certain sense and even specifically. He emphasized the physical ugliness of the Mothers. In itself, it's just a marketing ploy. It worked somewhat during hippiedom, in a kind of dialectic.

Marketing is not my thing, and I realized that a few yrs ago once I had 'finished product'. There are things I maybe just don't get.

I think we agree on more than you're realizing at this juncture. But 'the weird' of Zappa is not the appeal. The marketing to me is pure marketing. He's a composer. That's it.
The video Summertime is visually 'weird' and I think she's playing at being a bit naughty in a humid, southern decadent fashion and a bit David Lynch vibe, but it's a piece of music that I would promote purely behind the musicianship.

Zappa is weird to people I think are weird. He was a very sober and consistent guy.

notinterested · Post by **notinterested** » Fri May 01, 2015 6:41 am

jancivil wrote:John Tesh reaches a lot of people, and I think what he does is <never good>. I'm only using him since I believe you know quite what I mean in at least this case.

The 'good' of Rastop and Amy 'Summertime' may have something to do with 800 vs say 8 views, but not as much as either of their presence on the 'net already and in combination.

Tesh, filty cent, kantya worst, beiber, yanni.....

Or grunge, 80's hair metal, or rap metal, or whatever.

Nobody has any idea what they are talking about

I've heard your stuff....to be nice......"interesting" would be close enough. Being a bitter "I didn't make it so I'm going to play the whatever card" thing isn't working for you. Since you are kvr's "know it all" about every subject, turnabout IS fairplay

I personally admit. As much as I like making music, it's not generally something a lot of people are going to be enamored with. Pretty comfortable with that. But the idea that anyone on kvr "knows" what they are talking about is redunckulous. As was said in "man with the golden gun" "you (won't say it) don't have anymore idea of traffic control than a gooney bird"

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Fri May 01, 2015 9:26 am

i know what im talking about, not my fault if no one understands me!

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Fri May 01, 2015 10:02 am

NotInterested on a good day:

She Changed Her Mind · Fri May 01, 2015 10:32 am

It sure is not Frank Zappa. They would sell their old records (so called limited editions of 60s records like 'Cruising with Ruben and the Jets', 'Lumpy Gravy', 'We are only in it for the Money' etc etc) for 75-125 guilders in Holland late seventies. A small fortune.
For example: I could buy an ELO doubler end 70s (with the edge cut off from the sleeve) for 10 guilders. ELO was pretty popular then, while Zappa only was jerking around. As usual. My 2c lol
So once someone asked Zappa why they never had a hit record (read: WHILE you are plugging the heck out of your records...)?
They answered they didn't want to *approve to 'some format'*
Poor guy; too ignorant to understand a simple question.... of course: nothing but good from the dead

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Fri May 01, 2015 1:31 pm

EDIT: gonna add to this, now that I know who it is

notinterested wrote:
jancivil wrote:John Tesh reaches a lot of people, and I think what he does is <never good>. I'm only using him since I believe you know quite what I mean in at least this case.

The 'good' of Rastop and Amy 'Summertime' may have something to do with 800 vs say 8 views, but not as much as either of their presence on the 'net already and in combination.
Nobody has any idea what they are talking about I've heard your stuff....to be nice......"interesting" would be close enough. Being a bitter "I didn't make it so I'm going to play the whatever card" thing isn't working for you. Since you are kvr's "know it all" about every subject, turnabout IS fairplay

"turnabout", meaning time to feature your butthurt at people knowing you can't make points or sense.

What a dipshit. This is carrying some resentment from something I'm not really remembering? losing arguments all the time in all likelihood. Right. Debra called it, you never had game. Came in here doing broad snide swipes at a Music Theory thread, failing to understand what making a critique or what a point even the f**k is, then silly snide shit at the group in an Off Topic thread.
You have no idea who I am. The idea of me 'making it' is something I grew out of in my twenties. You, OTOH... I donno. Smells like projection to me. You aspired to mediocrity. I couldn't possibly care less what you think about any music. You would utterly lack the tools to appreciate my music. Your tastes and proclivities, in all areas of art, SCREAM mediocrity if you ask me. You must be really some kind of insecure to have to do this shit. What a punk-ass move and you did it a number of times, under a sock-puppet. Grow up, son. Find a pair of testes or ovaries or some shit. You couldn't walk one micrometer in my shoes.

I'm having thoughts here, just my opinion. How does this get to be about ME? It became about your resentment at knowing things? I don't pose that I know things, I know them or I don't. There's a whole lotta stuff in the world I don't know anything about. But I have opinions. This thread is people talking about their opinions of a situation.

Oh, wait! Good good, yer banned. Right-o. Yeah, ol' hibs actually lied about this being a straight account. Clearly not smart enough not to start talking about KVR history from a month-old account. I pity you.

Karma_tba · Post by **Karma_tba** » Fri May 01, 2015 1:50 pm

firepile wrote:The music producer, Shellac frontman and author of seminal 1993 essay, The Problem with Music, spoke in Melbourne about the advantages of the internet, the death of the major label system, copyright law and that ‘purple dwarf in assless chaps’

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/n ... ic-in-full

The reason Prince wore those "assless chaps" (funny I thought ALL chaps were "assless")....was so Steve Albini could kiss his ass!!! Steve"s whole career can't hold a candle to five minutes of Prince's career. He should be an expert on "poisonous" as he is just a ustabe spouting venom.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Fri Aug 17, 2018 11:41 pm

Karma_tba wrote:
firepile wrote:The music producer, Shellac frontman and author of seminal 1993 essay, The Problem with Music, spoke in Melbourne about the advantages of the internet, the death of the major label system, copyright law and that ‘purple dwarf in assless chaps’

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/n ... ic-in-full
The reason Prince wore those "assless chaps" (funny I thought ALL chaps were "assless")....was so Steve Albini could kiss his ass!!! Steve"s whole career can't hold a candle to five minutes of Prince's career. He should be an expert on "poisonous" as he is just a ustabe spouting venom.

I like Steve Albini's music. I don't like Prince's music. And Steve Albini was a more entertaining speaker than Prince ever was.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Minneapolis, but I just never understood the hype about Prince.

As we are sharing our opinions, then I thought I should give mine.

Karma_tba · Post by **Karma_tba** » Sat Aug 18, 2018 12:15 am

herodotus wrote:
Karma_tba wrote:
firepile wrote:The music producer, Shellac frontman and author of seminal 1993 essay, The Problem with Music, spoke in Melbourne about the advantages of the internet, the death of the major label system, copyright law and that ‘purple dwarf in assless chaps’

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/n ... ic-in-full
The reason Prince wore those "assless chaps" (funny I thought ALL chaps were "assless")....was so Steve Albini could kiss his ass!!! Steve"s whole career can't hold a candle to five minutes of Prince's career. He should be an expert on "poisonous" as he is just a ustabe spouting venom.
I like Steve Albini's music. I don't like Prince's music. And Steve Albini was a more entertaining speaker than Prince ever was.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Minneapolis, but I just never understood the hype about Prince.

As we are sharing our opinions, then I thought I should give mine.

Wow I'm astonished at the longevity of a statement I made 3 years ago!! You are entitled to your opinion...as am I.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sat Aug 18, 2018 12:59 am

Karma_tba wrote:
herodotus wrote:
Karma_tba wrote:
firepile wrote:The music producer, Shellac frontman and author of seminal 1993 essay, The Problem with Music, spoke in Melbourne about the advantages of the internet, the death of the major label system, copyright law and that ‘purple dwarf in assless chaps’

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/n ... ic-in-full
The reason Prince wore those "assless chaps" (funny I thought ALL chaps were "assless")....was so Steve Albini could kiss his ass!!! Steve"s whole career can't hold a candle to five minutes of Prince's career. He should be an expert on "poisonous" as he is just a ustabe spouting venom.
I like Steve Albini's music. I don't like Prince's music. And Steve Albini was a more entertaining speaker than Prince ever was.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Minneapolis, but I just never understood the hype about Prince.

As we are sharing our opinions, then I thought I should give mine.

Wow I'm astonished at the longevity of a statement I made 3 years ago!! You are entitled to your opinion...as am I.

What can I say, I sometimes get a bit tipsy and look through old threads.

I also love this interview, where he admits to not liking Led Zeppelin growing up, but is forced to admit that John Bonham is one of the greatest drummers of all time.

https://youtu.be/9Hhr6x4VRok

Priceless.

Steve Albini on the state of music industry