Is your music better or worse than this?

[jancivil]

I'm asking people to express why they believe that their own work is better, or worse, and in what ways. Maybe that won't happen, but can we learn anything by thinking about it?

The Shaggs in terms of the alien-ness of the vocals relationship with the pedestrian beat/decoupling rhythm from certain considerations that would inform the reasons for rhythm...

I don't necessarily need rhythms to be coupled in a particular way. ...

However, I don't want to pretend to know precisely what you mean so either you can elaborate or not...

Decouple rhythm, conceptually, from the conventions that define and condition rhythm. Use of repetition, periodicity; is your cycle bound by meter, and to what extent? What happens if we erase certain boundaries... what if the cycle is easily felt as itself, and as fractally coherent but temporally perfectly elastic, and clockwork time is not a reason for resolution? Still, organic lifeforms may tend towards pulsation; so what is that, unconstrained by metronomic ticks... maybe there is a syntax based in another abstraction such as, donno, say a preferred hierarchy of urgency in expression so the rhetorical forms helped to shape the music but a type of musical normative was produced that's a musical value per se now.

So I lived pretty much in Chinatown for a bit, and SFCM was located kind of Chinatown West. 1980s. I could abstract the speech of Chinese persons on the 30 Stockton as rhythm since I comprehend zero of Chinese language, that's all it is to me. Around this time I encountered a sort of ideology of 'speech rhythm' (conversational, not declarative or recitative) as opposed to divisions of 'the beat' in a guy that found Johnny Guitar Watson's smack-talkin' guitar and the definitions in Varèse music to agree. So I came to enjoy some elasticity thru certain devices:

[ghettosynth]

I think that what makes it compelling though is the circumstances that surround its creation.

Their story is far more interesting than I had assumed to give it credit for. Still looking into it more, but so far this seems to be a perfect example of being a product of one's own environment.

Right, in fact, I don't think that it would have happened at all without the environment. Dad is a necessary part of this music. Without him, it would have ended, with someone else in his place to keep it going, it might not have been so isolated. The town, the economic state of the family, all unwitting conspirators.

To compare this to someones music being better or worse is an understatement. Not criticizing the thread title btw. Just saying that this runs pretty deep. So, thank you for sharing this story. I wouldn't have heard about The Shaggs otherwise.

No worries, I've learned that bland titles don't work on KVR except for a few specific things, so, if you want to get a conversation going, you need a touch of click bait.

Beyond that though, I didn't want to focus just on the Shaggs, I think that they're story is interesting but I find the assertion of "worst record ever recorded" an interesting point of discussion, and a bit of a hyperbolic claim.

[Aleatoriac]

Objectively measurable: yes, my "music" is worse than ANYTHING.

Don't believe me? I DARE you to try and survive my noises

[ghettosynth]

Objectively measurable: yes, my "music" is worse than ANYTHING.

Don't believe me? I DARE you to try and survive my noises

Some forms/styles seem to purposely challenge our ability to listen. Then we become acclimated.

All of my rather pointless experimental ramblings, which should not be confused for music, are out in the wild. I don't ever listen to them, the point was to create them. I'm rather amazed that anyone else listens to them, but many of them have a few dozen listens. More than could be explained by charity listens from my friends. Wouldn't be great to have statistics on exactly when people tune out? You could then perhaps optimize for either direction .

[jancivil]

Youtube measures time of the user's experience of a yt video in some way, by average maybe. We used to make answering machine tapes that would piss people off - like if your work called, what the f**k is this shit. My work only ever called to fire me so f**k them anyway. Wish I had some a them recordings today. "Beautiful music: All. Day. Long."

[deastman]

I had never heard of the Shaggs until about half an hour ago. I listened to a good portion of the album, and yes, of course it meets the standard criteria for being "awful". And yet, I found it strangely captivating. I think my brain enjoys struggling to make sense of the timing in the same way that I enjoy utterly chaotic glitch music. I also like the aesthetic of being deliberately out of tune and out of time, although that obviously isn't what was going on here. Anyway, its an intriguing topic.

[Aleatoriac]

Objectively measurable: yes, my "music" is worse than ANYTHING.

Don't believe me? I DARE you to try and survive my noises

Some forms/styles seem to purposely challenge our ability to listen. Then we become acclimated.

All of my rather pointless experimental ramblings, which should not be confused for music, are out in the wild. I don't ever listen to them, the point was to create them. I'm rather amazed that anyone else listens to them, but many of them have a few dozen listens. More than could be explained by charity listens from my friends. Wouldn't be great to have statistics on exactly when people tune out? You could then perhaps optimize for either direction .

Where is your music? I need a fix, dammit, and I'm in the mood for strange. Not my own, that's like masturbation or something.

RE: statistics - yes! Good idea.
I want to know exactly what I'm doing "wrong" so I can deliberately do more of it.

[harryupbabble]

Since you are using video to ask your question then I guess it's not so wrong to reply using video stats. Might as well, can't sleep.

Okay, so... at this time, the YouTube stats for that Shaggs video is 230,995 views and 1,738 of those people bothered to give it a thumbs-up but only 141 gave it a thumbs-down. About 228,000 people who saw it were neutral or didn't care enough to rate it? Still, it's a 17 to 1 favourable ratio.

Compared to those stats of that Shaggs video alone, my music is way way way worse because my stats for my most watched video is 34,622 views with 17 thumbs-up and 42 thumbs-down.

Paranoia attributes such bad stats to having too much scrabble opponents that hates my guts because I made them hate me on purpose because it might be a good tactic to have scrabble opponents hate you. They will do their best to defeat you if they hate you. And that is good. At least that's my belief. Whether it's actually a great tactic I am not sure but I am sticking with it, for now. I need a new YouTube name that my scrabble opponents don't know about, to have more accurate stats on my music videos, maybe.

Anyways, assuming that the YouTube stats system is not corrupted too much, the Shaggs stats for that video is really extremely good in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down ratio. 17 to 1. Wow. 1 to 1 is already good, no? But 17 to 1?

Maybe it's just a matter of exposure. Suppose the Shaggs get watched by the Earth's entire population and all watchers are required to give either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down then I doubt the Shaggs's stats would remain at 17/1.

Of course, this is all based on people's opinions mattering. I guess it's possible that some music-makers pay no attention to other people's opinions since they probably think that music is subjective, and rightly so for thinking that? But me, I guess I can't totally ignore stats, especially accurate stats.

[jancivil]

Well, this Adele record 'Hello' has been viewed over one billion times there and I would say it's anything but a worthwhile musical experience. Your fallacy here is known as bandwagon fallacy, appeal to the people; argument ad populum. "But the general public..." "The general public voted for Hitler and likes Coldplay."

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

sick flow coming from the pastor's wife on this one.

Actually, that's brilliant

[do_androids_dream]

Considered the worst rock and roll album of all time

And yet it's far more engaging and interesting than a hell of a lot of what is considered 'good' music. Frank Zappa is only one of countless fans of this totally refreshing, landmark album.

[ghettosynth]

Considered the worst rock and roll album of all time

And yet it's far more engaging and interesting than a hell of a lot of what is considered 'good' music. Frank Zappa is only one of countless fans of this totally refreshing, landmark album.

Keep in mind here that I'm not judging this from a pure musical point of view. I'm trying to facilitate an interesting discussion. I think that from a point of view of "artists intent", it's fair to qualify it as bad and that's what I think people mean, i.e., it's really nothing like the Beatles.

I enjoyed it, but it is weird. It doesn't trigger goosebumps like some records do, it triggers something different.

[ghettosynth]

Well, this Adele record 'Hello' has been viewed over one billion times there and I would say it's anything but a worthwhile musical experience. Your fallacy here is known as bandwagon fallacy, appeal to the people; argument ad populum. "But the general public..." "The general public voted for Hitler and likes Coldplay."

To be clear, those kinds of statistics weren't the things that I was talking about. I want to know if people tune out in 10 seconds, a few minutes, or if they can stomach an entire track or more. This is especially interesting if you're relying on sonic surprise, does it keep people or drive them away. Again, not judging on goal here, I actually think there's a certain pride within the noise community of clearing a room. At the very least it's a filter for weed out those who aren't true scenesters, or something like that.

[harryupbabble]

Well, this Adele record 'Hello' has been viewed over one billion times there and I would say it's anything but a worthwhile musical experience. Your fallacy here is known as bandwagon fallacy, appeal to the people; argument ad populum. "But the general public..." "The general public voted for Hitler and likes Coldplay."

There is a difference between a country populous and a global populous. Obviously, one European country is not the world. The world wouldn't have voted for that sociopath? About Adele... sure it might be true that one billion people saw her Hello video but one billion is not the same as "Entire Earth's population". And of those one billion, how many gave thumbs-up and how many thumbs-down? And how many were "saw it, not even going to bother rating it"? Total views is not the same as thumbs-up.

It would be interesting to know what the "world" thinks of Coldplay's music. Watching is not the same as rating. I personally would give a thumbs-up to "Yellow" and another to "Clocks" if I have to. True, I clicked the Thumbs-up button for an all-time total of less than 10 for any YouTube video and none times the Thumbs-down but if I had to I would probably give a whole bunch of Thumbs-up to other Coldplay songs. Nothing bandwagonny about that since a lot of people seem to hate Coldplay's music anyways? And Cp are not "in fashion"? I can't do what Coldplay can do and at the same time I desire to do do what Chris Martin could do (write a complete pop song) and so I am not going to belittle them no matter. I could only admire and wish. It's true, other musicians can play their instruments much better than any Coldplay member but can these other musicians even write a complete pop song, lyrics and melody and all? And is it going to be better than Yellow? Great, they are financially set for life, maybe, like Chris Martin is? Who doesn't want that? Maybe songwriting is not that easy. People might be good at writing music but they suck at lyrics and vice versa. Not sucking at both is a feat. So hurray for Chris Martin in terms of "his thing" because he was kind of okay at it for a while there, to me at least. Just an opinion of course, like everyone's.

Okay I gotta go, my movement noises (not bowel) might be keeping others awake. Ciao.

[Zombie Queen]

"The general public voted for Hitler and likes Coldplay."

Nah, I think general public doesn't give a flying crap about music or politics, they just accept what is being pushed down their throats. Nobody's pushing Shaggs towards anyone and they are hard to swallow, so yes, the YT stats are amazing and they really are big.