lacktheknack said:
RedDeadFred said:
Who said anything about garage bands?
Also, I'm sorry but a lot of the instrumentation in pop songs is not THAT hard to do. Seriously, play around with Garage Band (software for Mac) and you can come up with some pretty good beats. There are obviously exceptions to this. Kanye West for example comes up with genius and creative beats that require a lot of talent but so many pop songs just have a simple beat that's easy to dance to and then they but some extremely basic melody over top of it and add lyrics about going to clubs and having sex.
What about stage presence and charisma? They just don't seem as important to me. They only matter at concerts or for music videos but then that's not the music. That's the show built around it. Sure I acknowledge that pop artists are talented here but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the actual music.
As for simplicity of it, that's not necessarily the problem (ya I guess I kind of misspoke in my earlier post so my bad, I'll admit to the mistake). It's that the lyrics over top of it are forcing you to think about whatever shit they are talking about. Yes simple can be great but not when the lyrics are constraining what you can emotionally draw from.
For example, In C by Terry Riley is quite simple but it allows you to draw on whatever emotions you want because it doesn't have "Baby baby baby oh" sitting on top of it.
If you like this type of music I would highly recommend looking into the various minimalist types of music from the later 1900's. La Monte Young's Well Tuned Piano (playing off the title of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier) in particular is amazing. Regardless of your opinion on my post I would highly suggest listening to it. Probably not the whole thing in one sitting though:
Yes both of these pieces that I have mentioned so far are instrumental but there are simple pieces with words that can still illicit powerful emotional responses. Steve Reich's Come Out is a perfect example of this. It's mainly just a man saying "come out" over and over again. However, he has two recordings of it going at once and one is ever so slightly faster than the other. The two become farther and farther apart until you stop thinking about the words and just experience the unique sounds the piece offers.
As far as simple creating a more intense emotional response, well that's just a matter of opinion. I personally find more complex music more satisfying emotionally but both are great.
Lastly, you said music cannot get more simple than the same chord being played over and over. Well I'll see your piece and raise you John Cage's 4'33". 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Illustrating that even in silence, there music.
I picked garage bands because they illustrate my point.
I put more emphasis on charisma and stage presence possibly because I've been burned by poor live shows before. It really is part of musicianship, because they contribute to the entertainment value, and music really is about entertainment just as much as it's about art.
As for 4'33", touche. Although I would submit that the piece is overly pretentious and possibly even lazy. I certainly wouldn't sit down and listen to it more than once.
You dare call one of the most important pieces of noise/minimalist music pretentious and lazy?! Na I'm just joking. That's a pretty common reaction from non-musicologists. Heck, even among musicologist it's still a pretty controversial piece. So you're entitled to your opinion but I'd urge you to look into the piece more and time period around it's composition before you fully make up your mind.
John Cage is showing everyone that when all is silent, all you can hear are the sounds of the world around you and that even in that, you can find music. For example, you might hear the wind outside at a performance or the dull hum of the AC. This piece isn't quite as effective on your ipod but at a live performance it's a surreal experience. Having 500 people sitting in silence just listening to the world around for an extended period of time is pretty amazing. In 4 minutes and 33 seconds of focusing on just the soft sounds of the world around you, you'd be surprised at what you will hear.
It's important for the piece to be performed by a prestigious performer at a good concert hall. The audience is more likely to focus on the sounds of the world because their expectations of the performer are going to be higher. Plus, an audience at this type of place is going to be adamant about maintaining concert etiquette so no one will be disruptive of the ambient sound.
As for your first point, while I agree that those qualities are very important at concerts, for me, a piece needs to hold up outside of a concert setting where the only focus is the music itself. The spectacle of stage presence and good charisma can certainly elevate the entertainment value of music but it's not music in itself. If a piece of music great in concert but bad just when just sitting and listening to it, I would argue that the performer is more of a dancer than a composer.