Mass Producing Mediocrity?

[Cordelia]

What a great thread. I wish I had something to add, but just wanted to say thank you (to Per Lichtman especially) for the interesting and thought provoking responses.
Nice way to start my day.
Carry on...

On which continent do you live?

The North American one.

Working night shifts.

[jancivil]

this discussion reminds me of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin.
And a whole area of thought, cf. Theodor Adorno.

The 'aura' is lost. Kind of a weird area of examination... which is hard to credit, almost, in the "postmodern" era. The whole Warholian thing rebels against that aesthetic.
The magic of an art object, some indefinable mystery quality which isn't found in reproductions of artifacts, which to me if you compare recordings to live events, yes.

Personally I'm very happy to be in good enough condition to live and work in media that allow this sort of quick gratification. I have a similar situation as Vurt described, there was no money for instruments or recording equipment. I learned about making a part fit over another part with two cheapo cassette recorders.

We thought we had some shit going when we scored a Teac 4 track and some shitty mics.
What you have today as far as hearing a whole score, you had to be a millionaire, I mean literally millions of dollars to do, I'm talking 20 years ago. It's fantastic.


Whenever you hear me objecting to something in tech, it's about people who want a computer to do the groundwork, 'tell me what key I'm in, what chords I'm playing,,, I don't have to do my homework', basically...
which is the same as a person in university paying someone to do their homework, the football hero conning some girl to do it'. You won't learn it. The diff being, football hero or rich kid isn't necessarily going to try and present himself as having done something, and that paper isn't in anyone's face probably as if something actually happened we should take notice of.

And, these people who don't do the groundwork musically are the type of personality that gravitate towards things that will satisfy peer group approval, ahead of making anything objectively according to, hey art for art's sake. And the laziness inherent in that level of decision making will mean 120 BPM, quantized subdivisions of 2 and 4 and little to nothing else, and 4/4 rules ok.

So, the sheer amount of shit aspiring to a certain level of mediocrity and not even making it, is going to be geometrically higher as a result.

So, you take the bad with the good










"some old melodies... 4/4, an aura, an aureola"

[Per Lichtman]

I think over the yeas, less than 3% of the material had sections at 120 bpm. However, a lot of house music sounds good at 126 bpm, and I frequently use 142 bpm for electronica track.

I would say that over 80% of my tracks are done in 4/4, with many of the rest in 3/4 or 6/8, with 5/4 coming shortly thereafter. I haven't done much in many other signatures yet though (e.g. 7/8) because I'm currently focusing more on thematic structural development rather than rhythmic variation and process.

[jancivil]

Ok, nothing wrong with any anything, generic, out of the box behavior, per se, my point is, in that rambling sort of post I tried to make one...

Hmmmm.
When something is really made that easy, to where you open up an application, and there are conventions prefabricated for you... some people (and this isn't new, the whole thing of rock groups, in it for, it's a thing, girls of a certain type are impressed, every body thinks you're cool, this behavior is a fact of life, and you're going to see it more is all) are going to gravitate towards an easy path.


I have never said, 'x beats per minute, that's what I'm thinking'. I am entrained to the clock to some extent, I mean I can count down from 10 purdy accurately, I was a messenger and I could give you terrifically accurate ETAs... , or, necessarily, 'I'm going to do 7/4' here. Sometimes an idea is obviously 'in 7/4', or a steady basic rock thing 8 beats to the bar, a lyric which is going to scan a typical way like that, and you know what you know.

But, I'm not normal, and have no expectations that anyone is going to think I'm cool, or I'm going to get lucky cause of my rocking teenage sound, you know.

[eduardo_b]

When something is really made that easy, to where you open up an application, and there are conventions prefabricated for you... some people are going to gravitate towards an easy path.

Does this mean something easy results in mundane, banal works whereas difficult is the path to innovative works of excellence? I'm sure there are times when this proves true, but some people are more than capable of achieving great things without an arduous process, whereas others may struggle but achieve nothing of significance.

[Per Lichtman]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to play pool, drink and do other leisure activities while he notated the inner voices of many of his works and could easily remember a piece after he first heard it, without having to exert great effort. Since he is considered one of the most talented composers that ever lived, I would have to say that making things easy for someone does not stop them from creating great work.

[G&L_player]

Given the recent discussions in the Music Theory forum on technology and its ability to substitute for musical knowledge,

D'ya think?

I've been putting this one down, and getting ripped for years. Thanks, for the backup. Technology and business is no substitute for the experience of mapping the real spiritual elements of music to and through the human body.

G&L

[G&L_player]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to play pool, drink and do other leisure activities while he notated the inner voices of many of his works and could easily remember a piece after he first heard it, without having to exert great effort. Since he is considered one of the most talented composers that ever lived, I would have to say that making things easy for someone does not stop them from creating great work.

Mozart was a Freemason and incorporated the real spiritual elements of music within his offerings. These can take as long to learn (or longer) than actually making sounds with the aid of a music devise- no kidding.

http://www.freedomdomain.com/freemasons/mozart01.html

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/moz ... flute.html

http://www.curledup.com/mozartfm.htm

[jancivil]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to play pool, drink and do other leisure activities while he notated the inner voices of many of his works and could easily remember a piece after he first heard it, without having to exert great effort. Since he is considered one of the most talented composers that ever lived, I would have to say that making things easy for someone does not stop them from creating great work.

*It was easy for Mozart because he had improbable talent*, what in the WORLD does that have to do with the availability of a sequencer to give you a result for relatively no effort?! Did he get that facility out of having an easier keyboard than the other guy? what are you even talking about?

You have got to be kidding me.

[vespers75]

but some people are more than capable of achieving great things without an arduous process, whereas others may struggle but achieve nothing of significance.

In the end though, isn't it really the 'listeners' that decide if something is 'great'? Of course there are musicians that often think their own material is great...as they made it, and often have an ego to feed. But also, 'great' is subjective among the 'listeners'. There are some that might think a one note drone is great, while another may think its just shit. This is applicable to any kind of music really...there will always be those who feel some things are great, and others who will think the same things are garbage. Most non-musician listeners could care less how much effort was seemingly put into a song or what the 'process' was, so long as they are enamored of the results.

[Per Lichtman]

I am not addressing that point. But just as many people listening today are unaware of how those elements may have influenced his music, there is also no way for us to know what each person puts into music or where it comes from.

I have several tracks that were composed in the wake of the news of my best friend's self-inflicted gunshot wound and the process of rebuilding my self-identity and strengthening my own relationship to spirit, but people would be quite unlikely to hear that in the tracks in question.

All of this is actually a really end-around: the spiritual elements influenced his composition, provided tenants for it, but they were not the tools he composed with.

The original post I made was directed at whether somebody would compose a better work because they had to work harder, and would thus stop producing good work once they got good enough to have an easy time expressing their ideas. Because if that's not the case, then an over-focus on whether tools make it easier to compose or not is really a distortion. The Mozart example rather ably demonstrates that somebody can compose great work even when the technical process is very easy for them: it does not hinder creativity or accomplishment.

[jancivil]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to play pool, drink and do other leisure activities while he notated the inner voices of many of his works and could easily remember a piece after he first heard it, without having to exert great effort. Since he is considered one of the most talented composers that ever lived, I would have to say that making things easy for someone does not stop them from creating great work.

Mozart was a Freemason and incorporated the real spiritual elements of music within his offerings. These can take as long to learn (or longer) than actually making sounds with the aid of a music devise- no kidding.

http://www.freedomdomain.com/freemasons/mozart01.html

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/moz ... flute.html

http://www.curledup.com/mozartfm.htm

Good point; but even the MECHANICAL elements, the nuts and bolts, you have to do some actual work, get your hands dirty, learn the grammar, nothing worthwhile comes without it.

And, I'm pretty sure big of Wolfgang struggled with some details of counterpoint before a thing was finished.
At any rate, the tools didn't suss his work out for him, of that I'm quite sure.


For example, I can improvise freely in totally convincing dodecaphony, but I go in and work the thing til it's done. And I got to there by some brain-wracking days and boring ass all-nite research into what went on in that grammar.


But, hey one can stick with Trance and sound real convincing with your arpeggiator and your prefab beats in a box, and whole lotta peoples think you done good. That's fine, but not everybody's convinced; and when you come in a room and say, 'what key am I in', some people might not think you're the coolest dude in the school you know.

[Per Lichtman]

jancivil: You can't have your cake and eat it too. Pick one.

1) Mozart was so skilled that much of his work was completed without having to expend great effort on several technical aspects (almost as if those aspect became transparent for him... almost as if he were applying a set of rules so consistently that he could have codified them and set them up to save time for himself so he could focus on creative work rather than mechanical notation that was so obvious to him that he could multi-task it).

2) Mozart struggled and his music was great because he struggled. If it had been easy for him, he wouldn't have written great music.

Pick one and defend it. My remarks were entirely aimed at disputing the validity of the second one.

[vespers75]

the experience of mapping the real spiritual elements of music to and through the human body.

G&L

WTF? Would someone like to show us the, uh, mapping for the "real spiritual elements" of the human body?

With that New Age talk, you think you'd be discussing John Tesh instead of Mozart.

[Per Lichtman]

Also, in Mozart's case, his aural gift preceded his intellectual understanding the workings of music. He could hear a piece once and remember it long before he had a strong music theory background. Some people are just plain going to have an easier time than other: no amount of hard work will make the process as transparent for someone without innate ability as some unique individuals can reach even before they start to greatly apply themselves, let alone where they end up after they have applied themselves.