Why is it that most of the "music" community has become fixated on sound design, timbre, and production? I love hearing new sounds, but that shit has nothing to do with musical ability. Most of the people I talk to in music circles will say shit like "classical music is boring" but they don't understand why. Is it because people listen to music passively now? I literally can't fathom how someone can listen to something as beautiful, accessible, and ubiquitous as Mozart and call it "boring." I don't think people actually listen to music anymore. People don't compose anymore. They just put random chords in midi and hope to God they get something out of it. I don't think people like music anymore. It's all just noise to them.
I'm not saying you have to know advanced music theory to "get" music. You don't need theory at all. But humans throughout all of history have been able to sense melody, harmony, tension, resolution and so on. And yet no one gives a shit about this anymore. Does anyone actually like music?
>But humans throughout all of history have been able to sense [...] harmony Definitely not true, this is an almost exclusively Western, fairly modern concept.
David Jones
I guess I'm mistaken here, but this seems to have been the constant for people raised in western society.
Either way, has composition not been a "thing" for all of human history? Whether it's western or Eastern notions of harmony and melody, people have /listened/ to music that had a direction musically in terms of tension and resolution.
Dylan Wright
Ironically enough it's all fault of the guy you posted. Beethoven led to a world where how music sounds is more important than how it's written and what it's trying to say.
Matthew Adams
I definitely don't think beethoven neglected the "what it's trying to say" part of music. It's was more expanding the bounds of the purpose of music. But assuming what you said is true, how music "sounds" is closely linked to how it's written. I don't deny something like timbre is extremely important to the composition, but in isolation its not as good.
John Bennett
Beethoven was so much about what the music was trying to say he took it away from being purely about the music. He should've been a writer instead.
Ethan Lewis
Yeah, I'd rather listen to Merzbow than Mozart.
Adam Morgan
Good post, though I'd say Shoeman was the real driver of romanticism. >Either way, has composition not been a "thing" for all of human history? That depends on how we define composition. Westerners are so far the only people that take it to autistic levels of detail and complexity.
Jayden Campbell
Because sound design and timbre is the most interesting frontier in music right now, it is also the least documented from a formal point of view so there is the most room for creativity here.
James Carter
>what it’s trying to say Beethoven was a pioneer in program music and romanticism, what are you even talking about? Prior to him, music almost always existed for its own sake. Outside a few isolated cases western instrumental music had no ‘meaning’ beyond aesthetics evoking particular emotions and showing off the virtuosity of the composer and players.
Leo Hernandez
Maybe it is, but it shouldn't be. I know there are some artists that combine design with composition but people neglect to recognize the songwriting skills of these artists, and it deincentivizes a lot of new artists from exploring that essential component.
Levi Wood
Timbre has always been important.
Noah Campbell
Of course, but not in isolation.
Carter Scott
The medium in which a form of music is disseminated is necessarily going to fundamentally shape the nature of that music. Folk music is transmitted through memory and improvisation techniques, hence traditional folk musics tend to center on strong simple melodies and repetitive rhythms.
Classical music in the modern sense was only possible because of developments in how music was written and then later disseminated in print allowed that level of musical complexity. Beyond instrument and the fairly rudimentary tools of dynamic indicators etc. timbre just isn't going to factor in that much as a variable part of the music.
Timbre, sound design, and production being a central feature of music is just a product of the fact that music has shifted from being disseminated via notation to via recording. Attention to those elements isn't an inherent "dumbing down" in terms of complexity or richness, just a shift in focus. I suppose in a more abstract sense the shift in medium also entails a shift in definition; music stops being simply the art of notated/memorised/improvised melody, rhythm, and/or harmony, and broadens to any art exclusively or primarily utilising sound as a medium, because recorded music as a format allows for such an approach.
Also, if you don't like pop music, don't listen to it? There's lots of people still composing complex composed music; classical and jazz is still a thing, there are entire massive industries revolving around it.
Nolan Kelly
>Because sound design and timbre is the most interesting frontier in music right now Sure, but why not experiment with all that shit *while retainining* 500 years of progress in exploring harmony?
Zachary Gray
i just like shit i can strum along to. maybe sing a bit also when drunk enough
Carter Morales
>Beethoven was a pioneer in program music and romanticism That's exactly what I'm saying. Program music is a shitty idea that robs music of what it can say completely abstractly. Just like said sometimes Beethoven might as well have been a writer: for a musician that isn't a compliment. >music almost always existed for its own sake Yes that's why it was absolute and free. Music had its own unique language. Beethoven tried to connect it to our human language. The fact Beethoven pretty much pioneered program music (not really true looking at things like Von Biber's mystery sonatas but I digress) is exactly part of the reason he focused more on what music sounds like than on how it's written. Now music doesn't say anything on its own, the 'idea' it must represent does, and the music will be submissive to that instead of being absolute.
Isaac Fisher
It's rare to find a man of taste, who actually knows what he's talking about, on Zig Forums. If you're still in the thread, I salute you for knowing your onions. I've been on what feels like a one-man anti-Beethoven crusade for decades now, sadly he's about as close to sacrosanct as a composer can be. Having said that, I sperg out myself when people make even the slightest criticism of Haydn or Mozart, so I'm not exactly whiter-than-white myself.
There can be music like this, but it will be niche. If your music has complex harmony and complex timbre it's going to be difficult to listen to for most people, even people who are into music.
Nicholas Peterson
It doesn't necessarily need to be complex harmony, just GOOD writing. I'm tired of listening to experimental artists and it's just one note of sound design for hours.
Cooper Allen
Define "good" writing? What exactly do you expect?
Lincoln Moore
we made all the good art already, all we have these days is rip-offs of old art or shitty new stuff that no one will remember
Julian Reed
music that will be remembered and acclaimed for hundreds of years, like beethoven's ninth
As many people before me have noticed about our current times, melody is not prized at all right now. Harmony, timbre, and production are what's valued. I think this is due to the ease of modern music creation (DAW MIDI rolls). It is simply EASY to focus on these things and nothing else
hopefully the pendulum shifts
Jose Cruz
I think you’re confusing popular music with academic music.
Post-Schoenbergian classical is not enjoyable to laypeople. It isn’t designed to be either.
Jace Martin
Can't disagree, although the score being the definitive product is actually a huge plus for me. I just love that it contains no needless or random information and allows for different manifestations. It's like a story or a screenplay.
Hunter Cruz
that's literally what development in an art form is.
people make shit tonnes of art at any given time, most of it gets forgotten, people make work derivative off the good stuff, rinse, repeat. the vast majority of bestselling novelists from the early 20th century are totally unheard of today, and Joyce or Woolf were not among them.
Thomas Collins
You're in no position to cry about shit because who the hell are you to say what crap or masterpiece will be acclaimed in the next hundreds of years. Let time do its job
Brody Parker
what's good modern music that'll be remembered in 2200?
