Is some music better than other music?

[Allan F]

So the question is serious, but tongue-in-cheek too, because I think that to attempt to describe a hierarchy of genres is really to open a can of worms, unlike some of the music teachers I knew half-a-century ago, who would have said quite unequivocally that anything but Classical was trash.

 

I want people to think about and identify what makes one performance better than another and think about how much, or how little, these qualities depend on good reproduction to make themselves felt.

 

With the above clarification, I agree with you that there is no point or standard in saying that one genre of music is "better" than another. Snobs may feel otherwise. However, there is no question that there is music that is played better than other music. But that is a matter of of talent and dedication rather than taste or genre. Furthermore, there are technically proficient performances that can be contrasted with those that evoke a strong emotional response. There are guitar "shredders" who can play (pick a number) of notes per second but leave me cold. I much prefer a player who can convey far more with a single soulful bend.

 

Good music will be good music on any reproductive device, even if that is only a transistor radio. But, it can be enjoyed that much more on a good sound system. Pace, rhythm and tempo (PRAT) are an important part of music and some systems are much better than others at getting that right. A system that can accurately capture the timbre of an acoustic guitar or a saxophone, for example, draws me in far more than one that can't.

[petaluma]

This is better than all other music!

 

Wait wait wait, what I meant to say is this is worse than all other music.

[esldude]

I can see how complex and more expressive fits with classical refined music or most types of art. Then you have artists who accomplish more with less. Oriental paintings are sparse. Impressionist paintings accomplish more with less. I remember seeing a piece of 3 D art in a museum. Corners of a house, edges of a gable roof. A girl on a swing and a frozen lake outside. It all fit on a table top with room to spare. From a few feet away I got an overpowering sense of despair. The kind of despair of someone who has lost their lover and think life is over never to start again. I walked over to this near nothing of a piece, and the name of it was "House of lover's despair" with a short explanation of the background to the artist and the intent. It was exactly what I felt it was.

 

I have always felt good paintings are meant for viewing from only one spot. Poor paintings due to a lack of ability don't show this. Impressionist paintings might be thought less refined compared to earlier more realistic and detailed styles. Yet they show this effect too. I once saw a painting that had two correct spots. Tall narrow painting. Slightly left 4 feet away, you saw this busy street in a city with tall buildings. You got a feeling of being at home as if this were your city, all the little shops, vendors and people so familiar and comforting (even though all faceless and lacking any detail). Step straight away 25 feet, and those ground level details were lost to you. The tall, near shapeless building and a hint of a street left you with a feeling of trepidation. Like someone about to enter a city for the first time. A busy place not familiar to you and a uneasiness because of that. I imagine the painting was intended to hang at the end of a long hallway. So is that impressionist sparse style lesser art or more?

 

It was asked to think about this topic in how it relates to reproduction in our music systems. I can think of one illustrative example. George Winston's Winter into Spring. Solo piano that might not be everyone's cup of tea. I can get no enjoyment out of it unless it is played on a high quality wide bandwidth system in a quiet place with no distractions. The idea you could enjoy it in a car or over headphones and your phone is ridiculous. You must have a good system (or at least I must). So for most people this would be useless music.

 

Now if I break it down, 95% of my music I could enjoy over anything. Half of it I enjoy more over a nice system, half of it simply shows more shortcomings of the recording over a good system. So actually my system barely effects my musical enjoyment for the majority. Maybe 4% I can't significantly enjoy unless the system is pretty good or at least a good system significantly improves my engagement and enjoyment. Maybe less than 1% is actually useless to me unless the system is very good. Most of those are very sparse pieces of music with one or only a few musicians. Now I would like to enlarge that 5% where a good system is an enhancer.

 

However, today most music is compressed to heck and back along with other things so you don't need a fine system. The nuance a fine system would present is not needed. The music can still be good. It does remind me of a quote from Keith Johnson being interviewed back in the 1980's. He was asked if he ever used close multi-miking when he records. Dr. Johnson said the only reason to do that was to get exaggerated detail for playback over a poor system. Then he said he didn't make recordings for poor systems. I believe virtually all music is recorded today exactly for poor systems maybe very poor systems. And there is the thing many of us have noticed about accomplished musicians. They have the worst crap for hifi if they have anything at all. I think if they can hear much of anything from 100-5000 hz they don't need anymore.

[semente]

I think "classical" music uses more complex and expressive language and structures which can potentiatly trigger emotions that are spiritually and intelectually more elevated.

The same happens with literature, painting and the other learned arts when compared their popular counterparts.

"Classical" music is not exclusive to the Western (European) civilization and can be found in most civilizations from China to Iran, from India to Europe, where it distinguishes itself from the simpler traditional/popular songs and melodies which exist for entertainment purposes.

 

But across the times there have been plenty of times when "classical" composers visited popular music motifs for inspiration and the inverse happened with popular music as well (i.e. prog rock, rock operas).

 

Wow....you took the bait, hook line and sinker!

 

Intellectually more elevated, distinguished, etc.............

 

I didn't mention "distinguished". (in fact, since English is not my native language I had to look it up in order to understand were you were getting at...)

 

There's no doubt that music of all kinds can trigger emotions but some genres (with exceptions in all of them) "work" only at a more primitive or raw level of perception.

This is valid for music, for music, for cinema, for theatre, for dance, for literature...

[coot]

Interesting discussion.

 

Every once in awhile I que up on my laptop a YouTube of a classical work that is the same as a recording I have in my library and with which I am familiar. Funny thing happens. When I listen and watch the YouTube version my brain fills in the sound that's missing and as long as I don't concentrate on the sq itself, I feel almost the same emotion to it. I suppose WATCHING the performance makes up for a great deal of the missing sq, but I am always surprised by the result of this test - and pleasantly so.

[mayhem13]

I didn't mention "distinguished". (in fact, since English is not my native language I had to look it up in order to understand were you were getting at...)

 

There's no doubt that music of all kinds can trigger emotions but some genres (with exceptions in all of them) "work" only at a more primitive or raw level of perception.

This is valid for music, for music, for cinema, for theatre, for dance, for literature...

 

Please accept my apologies as English is not your native tongue.........and therefore I won't comment on your use of 'primitive' or 'raw' to describe music other than classical.

[AlainGr]

I can see how complex and more expressive fits with classical refined music or most types of art. Then you have artists who accomplish more with less. Oriental paintings are sparse. Impressionist paintings accomplish more with less. I remember seeing a piece of 3 D art in a museum. Corners of a house, edges of a gable roof. A girl on a swing and a frozen lake outside. It all fit on a table top with room to spare. From a few feet away I got an overpowering sense of despair. The kind of despair of someone who has lost their lover and think life is over never to start again. I walked over to this near nothing of a piece, and the name of it was "House of lover's despair" with a short explanation of the background to the artist and the intent. It was exactly what I felt it was.

 

I have always felt good paintings are meant for viewing from only one spot. Poor paintings due to a lack of ability don't show this. Impressionist paintings might be thought less refined compared to earlier more realistic and detailed styles. Yet they show this effect too. I once saw a painting that had two correct spots. Tall narrow painting. Slightly left 4 feet away, you saw this busy street in a city with tall buildings. You got a feeling of being at home as if this were your city, all the little shops, vendors and people so familiar and comforting (even though all faceless and lacking any detail). Step straight away 25 feet, and those ground level details were lost to you. The tall, near shapeless building and a hint of a street left you with a feeling of trepidation. Like someone about to enter a city for the first time. A busy place not familiar to you and a uneasiness because of that. I imagine the painting was intended to hang at the end of a long hallway. So is that impressionist sparse style lesser art or more?

 

It was asked to think about this topic in how it relates to reproduction in our music systems. I can think of one illustrative example. George Winston's Winter into Spring. Solo piano that might not be everyone's cup of tea. I can get no enjoyment out of it unless it is played on a high quality wide bandwidth system in a quiet place with no distractions. The idea you could enjoy it in a car or over headphones and your phone is ridiculous. You must have a good system (or at least I must). So for most people this would be useless music.

 

Now if I break it down, 95% of my music I could enjoy over anything. Half of it I enjoy more over a nice system, half of it simply shows more shortcomings of the recording over a good system. So actually my system barely effects my musical enjoyment for the majority. Maybe 4% I can't significantly enjoy unless the system is pretty good or at least a good system significantly improves my engagement and enjoyment. Maybe less than 1% is actually useless to me unless the system is very good. Most of those are very sparse pieces of music with one or only a few musicians. Now I would like to enlarge that 5% where a good system is an enhancer.

 

However, today most music is compressed to heck and back along with other things so you don't need a fine system. The nuance a fine system would present is not needed. The music can still be good. It does remind me of a quote from Keith Johnson being interviewed back in the 1980's. He was asked if he ever used close multi-miking when he records. Dr. Johnson said the only reason to do that was to get exaggerated detail for playback over a poor system. Then he said he didn't make recordings for poor systems. I believe virtually all music is recorded today exactly for poor systems maybe very poor systems. And there is the thing many of us have noticed about accomplished musicians. They have the worst crap for hifi if they have anything at all. I think if they can hear much of anything from 100-5000 hz they don't need anymore.

 

+1

[AlainGr]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]17226[/ATTACH]This is better than all other music!

 

Wait wait wait, what I meant to say is this is worse than all other music.

[esldude]

Interesting discussion.

 

Every once in awhile I que up on my laptop a YouTube of a classical work that is the same as a recording I have in my library and with which I am familiar. Funny thing happens. When I listen and watch the YouTube version my brain fills in the sound that's missing and as long as I don't concentrate on the sq itself, I feel almost the same emotion to it. I suppose WATCHING the performance makes up for a great deal of the missing sq, but I am always surprised by the result of this test - and pleasantly so.

 

I have noticed this same effect. It even works with classical piano solos. Now a video of a pianist playing isn't watching paint dry, but there isn't all that much going on. Yet it can cover a multitude of sonic sins to still be engaging if I like the music.

[TubeLover]

 

It was asked to think about this topic in how it relates to reproduction in our music systems. I can think of one illustrative example. George Winston's Winter into Spring. Solo piano that might not be everyone's cup of tea. I can get no enjoyment out of it unless it is played on a high quality wide bandwidth system in a quiet place with no distractions. The idea you could enjoy it in a car or over headphones and your phone is ridiculous. You must have a good system (or at least I must). So for most people this would be useless music.

 

I completely agree about this George Winston recording. On average, or less systems, it is translated with harshness and no real sense of the recording or performance. However, you have clearly have never heard a pair of good headphones, with an equally good headphone amplifier, fed by a quality source. And I say that as a "speaker" guy, overall.

 

JC

[esldude]

I completely agree about this George Winston recording. On average, or less systems, it is translated with harshness and no real sense of the recording or performance. However, you have clearly have never heard a pair of good headphones, with an equally good headphone amplifier, fed by a quality source. And I say that as a "speaker" guy, overall.

 

JC

 

Actually, that is a recording it never occurred to me to listen to on headphones. I'll have to give it a try.

 

Now if you are referring to headphones in general, I have heard some that are pretty good and far prefer speakers. What would you consider a good headphone, and equally good headphone amp?

[semente]

Again you are mistaken for the words primitive and raw were used to describe emotions, not music.

[semente]

Please accept my apologies as English is not your native tongue.........and therefore I won't comment on your use of 'primitive' or 'raw' to describe music other than classical.

 

The above post was a reply to this one.

[bluesman]

Again you are mistaken for the words primitive and raw were used to describe emotions, not music.

Ahh - but there's one instrument that unites emotion with music through primitive rawness (personally, I feel I'm being generous in using the term music, although I recognize and respect that others love bagpipes):

 

 

Unfortunately, the sensations evoked in me by such raw, primitive sounds require amelioration that's more medicinal than mechanical........

 

[christopher3393]

Would you like haggis with that?

[semente]

Ahh - but there's one instrument that unites emotion with music through primitive rawness (personally, I feel I'm being generous in using the term music, although I recognize and respect that others love bagpipes):

 

 

I like the sound of bagpipes.

In fact, I like the sound of all acoustic instruments I have ever listened to.

[bluesman]

Would you like haggis with that?

No thanks - I just don't have the stomach for it.

[bluesman]

I like the sound of bagpipes.

In fact, I like the sound of all acoustic instruments I have ever listened to.

I've had some unpleasant encounters of the bagpipe kind over the years, so I may be prejudiced - but I encourage anyone who wants to test the accuracy and limits of their equipment to use bagpipe recordings (of which I actually have a few).

 

Rufus Harley was a Philadelphia-based saxophonist (sadly now deceased - he was a cool guy & I had the pleasure of playing several gigs with him over the years) who morphed into the self-described "world's first jazz bagpiper". He was a very fine musician who really got a lot of music out of those things. One night he candidly admitted to me that he made the switch because he realized that he was just another sax player, but being a jazz bagpiper made him unique and really helped his career.

 

I'm not a fan of the droning that personifies bagpipes for most of us. But Rufus's music is well worth a listen. He led or was featured on about half a dozen Atlantic albums while I was in college in the mid-60s. Here are two YouTube videos (the second one with Coltrane, who reportedly loved Rufus' playing):

 

[video=youtube_share;1zvRV9DSNzM]

 

[video=youtube_share;ZmaicurzPb0]

[petaluma]

No thanks - I just don't have the stomach for it.

 

We have a piper down...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJMfbrFEric

[wakibaki]

Sparse.

 

[esldude]

Sparse.

 

 

Well, perhaps not surprisingly, I do have that recording.

[senorx]

Ironically, I posted this recently (last night) in a different thread, but I think it is totally true of the topic of this thread:

 

I think this is why sq is still, in the end, subjective, even given the number of measurements available and the accuracy with which they can be made with today's technology. There are far, far too many variables that can and/or do effect an individual's perception of "good," many of them unique to the listener, and I imagine many of them unknown, to "measure" sound "quality."

 

Unfortunately, IMO, this is also the reason that a subjective review is of limited (notice the lack of absolutes) use to anyone other than the reviewer. Objective measurements are at least done using metrics that are pretty well defined and agreed-upon, whereas there is absolutely no subjective metric that is defined OR agreed-upon. Unfortunately, the measurements we can accurately take have limited utility in determining whether a particular listener will think something will sound "good." This whole area has been discussed (at length) in at least two books that I'm familiar with, although neither are about audio per se:

Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises (economics) and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig (about a failed attempt to define "quality".) Any calculation for which we have too little information, too many variables to control for, and too few agreed-upon definitions will forever remain ultimately subjective. Can you define obscenity for anyone but yourself? I think sq falls into the same category.

[senorx]

I think "classical" music uses more complex and expressive language and structures which can potentiatly trigger emotions that are spiritually and intelectually more elevated.

The same happens with literature, painting and the other learned arts when compared their popular counterparts.

"Classical" music is not exclusive to the Western (European) civilization and can be found in most civilizations from China to Iran, from India to Europe, where it distinguishes itself from the simpler traditional/popular songs and melodies which exist for entertainment purposes.

 

But across the times there have been plenty of times when "classical" composers visited popular music motifs for inspiration and the inverse happened with popular music as well (i.e. prog rock, rock operas).

 

 

The arts, for all but the artist, are entertainment. Classical is not meant as entertainment? I'm obviously missing something.

[semente]

Have you tried googling "art vs. entertainment"?

 

One of the hits I get has an interesting quote:

 

We need the arts to awaken us to the realities of the Kingdom of God. To awaken the fullness of our human potential and to help us realize that.

The main difference between the arts & entertainment:

Entertainment gives you a predictable pleasure. Art gives you pleasure but leads to transformation. It awakens you rather than just satisfies a craving.

[gmgraves]

Is some music better than other music?

 

If no, then why bother with multiple takes in the studio?

 

If yes, then is Rock & Roll better than Country & Western?

 

 

Now that's a loaded question if one was ever asked here!

 

Depends on what you mean by "better". Is Beethoven's "9th Symphony" better than the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations", for instance? By virtue of it's length, complexity, and the amount of talent and work required to realize it, the answer is a resounding yes, of course it is. But if your own personal taste tells you that you like "Good Vibrations" and don't like Beethoven's 9th, then absolutely the former is much better. The fact that I would question the taste of anyone who put the Beach Boys above Beethoven is irrelevant (for the record, I like "Good Vibrations", Just not as much as I like Beethoven). One's taste is one's taste. That's why a more objective set of criteria is needed to judge the relative "goodness" of music. Perhaps we could apply something like the J. Evans Pritchard scale for judging poetry (from the Dead Poet's Society):

 

Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.: "To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter."

 

There is and was no J. Evans Pritchard, PHD, it was a fictional construct for the screenplay. But if there were, Robin Williams' characterization of the scale as "Excrement" would, indeed be accurate. You can't judge art that way. You also can't use individual taste to make judgements as those judgements are non-tansfereable. There must be a better way to judge whether a piece of music is good or bad, but nobody has ever come up with a method that transcends taste.