Does Melody Even Matter??

[fmr]

Just to offer my take on the original question:

Yes, melody is an important part of a lot of music, but definitely not for all of it.

During the past ~100 years, with the advent of recording technology and the possibility of manipulating sound in interesting ways, there has been a lot of music that focuses on sound itself, instead of the notes it is playing.
Pierre Schaeffer and John Cage certainly weren't focusing on melodies for a lot of their music, for example, and neither do a lot of more modern electronic artists, and that's perfectly fine.

Music is a lot more then just a linear succession of pitches in time. Since we gained access to recording technology, the performance of said notes and the sound itself became equally as important. For example, lots of modern ambient and drone music can't even be really transcribed in a classical way, it would basically just be one long note, but that doesn't mean there can't be just as much "theory" involved, it just hasn't been studied nearly as much as functional harmony (for example) yet.

More important than Pierre Schaeffer (and his fellow Pierre Henry), and even more than John Cage, is Iannis Xenakis. His music is the epitome of a kind of music where melody and harmony are foreign concepts, and where the guidelines reside somewhere else (mathematics and physics, mainly). Not only in electro-acoustic works (which he also created) but also in his instrumental works.

Academic music has always been very slow at adapting to new developments. It always takes a lot of time until something is taken seriously (as can be observed in this very subforum all the time).

Dang kids and their stupid Jazz "music".

WHAT? Do you realize that you contradict yourself? First, you quoted two "academic musicians", and following that you say that academic music is very slow at adapting to new movements?

If something, academic music PRECLUDES anything else. Academic musicians started concrete music in late 40s and early 50s, and electronic music in the second half of 50s too, and never stopped evolving since then.

Jazz stays basically where it was 50 years ago.

[vurt]

BZZZT

it's a Japanese portmanteau of whale and gorilla, used to describe this one large man who worked as a grip early in production.

I wrote a whole Godzilla screenplay in 2008. It's kind of hilarious.

NAMELESS WHITEMAN
How could any animal survive such a beating as it's received from our military over the years?
It defies all logic.

I never would have pegged you as a Godzilla fan, just based on what you usually post here. I was actually just over at Kimono My House, lusting after some expensive figurines which I don’t need.

are you sure you dont need them?

[jancivil]

I have a Kimono. I'm wearing it.

[sleepcircle]

melody matters, everything matters
what you choose to omit has just as much of an effect on the sound of your creation as what you choose to include. just because some people omit melody does not make it irrelevant, because you would only know of the profoundly different feel that the creation had if melody existed in the first place. anyone who thinks that they can make this kind of decision (i. e. 'does melody matter?') free of that influence must realize that they've spent their entire life surrounded by melody and can only hear 'melody-less' music from that standpoint.



i saw a painting in japan, once, which was two huge screens, neither of which had much on them.

the screen on the right had a rocky outcropping on it.

the screen on the left was almost completely blank except for, very small and far away, as if we were looking down on it, an eagle flying through the emptiness.

i was immediately struck by a faint feeling--not of vertigo--but of being on the edge, nevertheless. you could feel the depth of the "abyss" in front of you sucking at you.


just like in visual art, negative space matters in music.
the problem comes when people think that just because you can do all of one thing or all of another, that the other parts must be 'irrelevant'

I think the idea of "irrelevancy"—that some part or other can just be thrown out because it's not needed any more, like some vestigial musical organ—is the idea that is REALLY useless.

[Deep Purple]

Kimono My House

That's a good album.

[vurt]

I have a Kimono. I'm wearing it.

is it pseudo silk?
are you also wearing bracelets of smoke, yet are naked of understanding?

[jancivil]

If something, academic music PRECLUDES anything else. Academic musicians started concrete music in late 40s and early 50s, and electronic music in the second half of 50s too, and never stopped evolving since then.

Jazz stays basically where it was 50 years ago.

I don't know at all what you want with the word 'precludes' there. It may be a translation problem.

Miles Davis in the early 70s did some very abstruse things with his bands, and Pete Cosey brought noise elements from electronics into it. Rhythmically speaking, it was free, it had elements of major complexity, shifting ground...

So there is an obvious problem with the statement (besides your ignorance of the subject), a sort of tautological problem. At this point can it be considered jazz? Jazz is a genre label, does it have a real definition, or limits, if so, founded in what?
Because there is the term "Free Jazz", in which 'swing' and elements where some will want to limit what it can be named figure, but it's a known term notwithstanding that objection. But the notion 'it' somehow stopped 'evolving' circa 1969 is rubbish. John McLaughlin came out of Miles' bands and pushed into things which hadn't happened in music; later than 1969. Cecil Taylor is never not a jazz artist, if you interrogate the marketplace. "Is it jazz?" It's just a label for putting records in bins in a record store at the end of the day. Maybe you put it in... what? Who cares.

[Lotuzia]

Kimono My House

That's a good album.

This thread ain't big enough for the both of us ......

[jancivil]

naked of understanding?

[vurt]

naked of understanding?

just so you know, im not insinuating anything.
its just lyrics.

marillion : misplaced childhood, before it goes silly with lavender and kayleigh

[jancivil]

It would have to be a poem or something, since you don't actually talk like that.

[vurt]

aye, love or hate fish, he can spin a good sentence

[IncarnateX]

I listened to the Verdi Requiem and also the Brahms one. Both achieved this sense of deepness.

Yes, many Requiems do that. I can recommend Cherubini’s Requiem too, which was the first I sung in highschool. But for exactly the reason above, one of my first interests in classical music were Requiems. At music school they found it pretty morbid but at least they gave me Mozart’s Requiem on vinyl as birthday present. Though, I am so sucked into Mozart that his will stay a level above others to me but it does mean you cannot hear the souls of the other composers as well. It is a discipline that transcends entertainment such opera, ballet or theater. It is about existence as such.

[Deep Purple]

Kimono My House

That's a good album.

This thread ain't big enough for the both of us ......

...and it ain't me that's gonna leave...

[harryupbabble]

...and it ain't me that's gonna leave...

Hahaha. Did you borrow those words from the first Led Zeppelin album?