Do you REALLY like music?

[thegurgi]

In my Design 3-D class, we listen to the radio. And sometimes it gets into discussion about the "music" we are hearing. One girl insists she loves all kind of music, but then proclaims that classical music makes her fall asleep and she can't stand music in other languages. Is it really MUSIC she loves?

Does she truly appreciate the blend of instruments? does she appreciate Key Changes and building layers of sounds leading to it? Does she focus on what's the most important part of the music, being THE MUSIC? Or is all the matter's to her the lyrics.

YES. She doesn't like MUSIC, she likes lyrics. Something she can understand and follow. I watched her, and she sings along only focusing on the LEAST important part. the lyrics.

And when i think back, there are a lot of people like this. TONS of them, who think they like MUSIC, but only truely focus on the lyrics. Not just this girl, bit it then turned out that 75 percent of the class was the same way. And i here this lyric driven crap in my dorm.

My thing is that:

Lyrics should only enhance a song, not make it. A great song should be a balanced, structured, blending of harmonies that move together and flow. It doesn't matter if it's voices, instruments or both. IT would be great.

But now, Lyrics have become so saturated to come to the point that it's only the words that matter, and this is backwords. it's NOT music in a sense, just a poem that has had sound come behind that can be changed at will.

I am speaking PURELY out of the American Public, and this may not apply to other areas. but i am getting sick of it. What ever happened to MUSICAL INTEGRITY! What ever happened to people appreciating the symphony?

I mean, i remember at the last grammy's when they played a great medly of GERSHWIN's symphonies. It was beautiful, and it got a good reception and a standing "O". and then almost right afterwards JA RULE and ASHANTI came on and peformed and when they were finished they got even more applause then Gershwin and a standing o. and there is something wrong with that. and most of those people were just screaming because of who they were, and not because of "The music"

I guess i'll have to realize it's not about music anymore, it's not music. it's industry. it's no longer an art to be respected in this country... something cold and cheap and easy to produce and not to be appreciated. It's why at my school the music program had a 150 dollar budget for both band and choral. And why the music programs are failing all over the country.

Music has been diluted to be something that isn't worth anything, and has ruined it for those who truely care about it.

:: SIGH ::

american's really can be that ignorant. and a lot of them are.


sorry for the rant... but, i'm bothered by this all.

[Echoed]

In one moment, I'm listening to Britney, and then, AFI, and right after, the Kronos Quartet (with compositions by Clint Mansell), a bit of Diana Krall, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, Beyoncй, Our Lady Peace, Emma Shapplin and Infected Mushroom. I'll relax to some Chopin and flip to some Punjabi MC or Prodigy, get annoyed half to death by Chingy, but listen to him anyway and finish off with some Sarah McLachlan, or acoustics by Robert Michaels.

I think I like music. :P

~Echo.

[onegai]

I could safely say i like music.
I appreciate all forms of music, classical music being a fourite of mine. Lyrics are important, but not for music, merely for message. And i tend to find classical music can express this very well without any lyrics.

[thegurgi]

YAY! Please more of you restore my faith that there are people who like music !

[QueenBee]

Hmm.. well I donno.. I guess I like MUSIC.. I listen to all sorts of music and artists.. But for example, in Prostye Dvizheniya, they make music out of their voices by singing "ah"'s and "ooh"'s and make melodies out of it.. And I just melt when I hear that I love songs with alot of drums etc. 'cause it sounds so powerful.. So I guess it is the music.. Or is it? o.O

[thegurgi]

all that matters is that understanding the song isn't a necessity. And drums are music... a cadence is still music and requires a lot of skill. [excessive and unnessesarry drums, however, are annoying as HELL, haha]

Queenbee, you like music.

[coolasfcuk]

Lyrics should only enhance a song, not make it. A great song should be a balanced, structured, blending of harmonies that move together and flow. It doesn't matter if it's voices, instruments or both. IT would be great.

But now, Lyrics have become so saturated to come to the point that it's only the words that matter, and this is backwords. it's NOT music in a sense, just a poem that has had sound come behind that can be changed at will.

hmmm... I have a different thinking....

First of all - I will just say that I will not list a bunch of 'Classical' composers and say I like music, 'cause I like to listen to them. We are talking about something so subjective - it is just not as simple as night and day And at the other hand- What is really 'music', as in the thing you are talking about.... it could be viewed as pure mathematics - wouldnt you agree? Really bizarre....But, that's not the point....

*gathering my thoughts*

OK - I actually responded here to say: Have you heard of Tristan Tzara??? The Dada movement/Dadaism??? I think you should reseach that a little..... that whole rebelious movement looks at 'words' and lets say, any sort of writing in a completely different way that you think about it
The words become the sounds..they become the harmony...

Here is a Dada poem for ya:
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
howl howl howl howl howl howl howl howl
Who still considers himself very likeable

So think of words/lyrics/whatever differently too.

ufff, finally to add... half of those rap songs you talk about... it is so hard for me to understand what they are saying at times... that lyrics dont really matter at that point it is all sounds to me

[haku]

I used to listen to songs in English many years before i actually understood that language. I've always considered voices to be instruments, a part of the music itself. If the singers are good, you don't need to understand the words to get the emotions they're expressing. Too many people only listen to songs in their own languages, they hear and understand the words, but do they really get the emotions?

[kishkash]

no one mentioned BOLERO! w00t u go bolero [my fav classical piece since forever...literally]

p.s. i like music

I can't NOT not listen to it all the time...if i turn on the TV the first place it goes is Muchmusic. I can't drive a car without the radio or a CD. I can't study without some music in the background. I work with music on ... i live music LOL.

[haku]

Originally posted by kishkash
I can't NOT not listen

Wow, that's a lot of "not"...

[Disengage]

I don't think you have to like all genres to "truely like music." I mean if a certain sound rubs someone the wrong way, then that's as far as it goes. It doesn't mean they do not like music at all. And all a "genre" really is is just breaking down music into categories that share a similar sound or style. So if someone just isn't into the overall sound of a certain genre of music, it doesn't mean they "don't really like music" or anything. I agree that lyrics shouldn't completely make a song. I mean by definition I think there has to be some criteria based on sound for there to be music. However, I do think lyrics can play an important role... maybe even enough to break a song. If all of t.A.T.u.'s lyrics were about white power, I definitely would not care for them. While I might think the tunes are catchy, hearing those lyrics along with it would just turn me off too much to like them. I guess this is different from the girl in your class who dislikes all music in other languages, because she's not actually getting any kind of message from the lyrics if she can't understand them... so in this case she would really only have the sound of it to judge. So yeah, maybe you're right about her... but I don't think that disliking a certain genre or liking/disliking a song because of the lyrics necessarily means that someone "doesn't really like music."

[coolasfcuk]

I used to listen to songs in English many years before i actually understood that language.

haku I guess I was trying to say something in those lines up there.... but with different example, and not very nicely articulated...

[freddie]

Originally posted by haku
I used to listen to songs in English many years before i actually understood that language. I've always considered voices to be instruments, a part of the music itself. If the singers are good, you don't need to understand the words to get the emotions they're expressing. Too many people only listen to songs in their own languages, they hear and understand the words, but do they really get the emotions?

That's so true. I remeber listening to Girl From Ipanema in brazilian by Antфnio Carlos Jobim for ages and I don't speak a word of it, yet I somehow understood the melancholy emotions in that song. When I heard the Frank Sinatra version it was almost exactly like I pictured it.
The same with Edith Piaf's "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien". Powerful emotions hide in the raw passion of the spoken word.

But otherwise...yeah I'd agree that we put AWAY to much emphasys on the lyrics while the music is suffocating in eternal loops and special effects (rap, R&B). The whole rap thing has become to big right now, to the point that it really hurts the creativity of music and what it represents.

[kishkash]

im gonna sound like an idiot ... but im gonna say this anyway...

lyrics used to mean nothing to me...still don't really..unless they are so obviously crappy its unavoidable LOL. I never listen to the songwriters "message" in the music through the words.

Classical music was never about lyrics...it was about music. I listen to all songs the same way. So i carried that over to mainstream. The words are a byproduct for me...a way for me to sing the song LOL.

I hope that made SOME sense *feels like she was rambling*

p.s. Haku...i added in one NOT to many lol...if u make a decision tree to work out the meaning of the sentence, u'll realize it was wrong [got a little not-happy] pffffffft.

and yah CaF I've heard of Dadaism and its pretty kewl...just never really got into any of that.

Relating music to mathematics makes perfect sense if u think about it. Each impulse/wave can be represented primitively as a mathematical equation characterized by a sinusoidal wave. Speech is the same way

OMG...looks above...im like TOTALLY rambiling in that last paragraph *realizes what a nerd she sounds like and slaps herself* LOL

[thegurgi]

disengage I'm not speaking about genre's... i'm talking about focus. What do you focus on? The words and meaning or the sound? and i would consider THE SOUND to be the music.

and i'm glad freddie agrees with me.

oh, and i completely forgot to mention EMOTION. so thanks for mentioning that haku

also to KishKash
I get that whole thing, except it doesn't have to be music. just, silence drives me crazy [even to sleep i need some kind of white noise]. If i went DEAF, i'd probably literally go insane.
When i hear music, i focus on it, even if it's music i don't like [for instance, right now my neighbor is playing rap music, and i'm listening to it, and slightly focused on it (all i hear is the beat and faint rapping, which isn't the rapping from the song but my neighbor rapping along)]

Oh, And Coolasfcuk, music is mathemetics, think about the first thing you see on your Music, the Key [Treble or Bass] and then The Time, 3/8? 4/4? It's all just numbers, the director counts the beats in that same pattern, 1/2/3/4. Music: The only math i like! and when i talk about the WORDS, i AM speaking in a general mode. And i know DADAISM very well, in fact, in My singing group, we did it. It was fun and sounded great.

[goku]

I do like music. I use programs which you may be familiar with, (Reason, Sound Forge, Fruity Loops) and program my own songs. None of my music has lyrics, it's just based souly on the rythm, sound, layers, etc...

However, I don't agree with your argument in that lyrics take away from the song. Most of the time, what are songs? Songs are poems, and poems can be read aloud without other music. And there are artists who I think are wonderful, and they just sing alone without music. I agree that people who say they like music usually don't, though.

And did Echoed say she was listening to AFI? Haha, they are one of my favorites!

[thegurgi]

Goku, i didn't say that Lyrics Take Away from the song. I said they should ENHANCE the song and not BE the song.

And when people sing A CAPPELLA, it's very great, and actually very hard. One year in chorus we sang all the songs in A cappella, and it's art in itself. That's the instance where the voice is the essential instrument. And in that point, the lyrics still don't matter, the emotional and the melodies and harmonies are important. The lyrics just extenuate the importance of the emotions. They solidify the emotion of the voice and melodies. It can be a wonderful thing.

And just to make myself more clear.
Lyrics aren't bad. I love lyrics, and i love when they work. But what i am talking about is when they LYRICS become more important then their accompianment. when they Lyrics become what the listener focuses on. Or Just a Lryic and a Beat. It's basically a poem, yes.

i'm also speaking about Musical Integrity too.

oh, and i don't listen to a lot of Classical music either, but i appreciate it, and being a classically trained singer and can play the cornet, i know this genre pretty well. [some songs that are sung are considered CLASSICAL, classical doesn't mean that it's a symphony, it mostly means the age it comes from]

[goku]

Sorry for mis-interpreting you there thegurgi.. Now I completely agree with you.

I took 8 years of piano, and in those wonderful years I got a good dose of all types of music. Classical may be one of my favorites to play, actually. I listen to Bach or Mozart every now and then.

[crni]

i most cetrainly like MUSIC
i can listen almost all of the genres of music...from dance, trance, goa, techno, house, rock, metal (trash, black, death), DnB, trip hop, hip hop, ambiental, classic, some jazz...i think the only genres i don't like are punk and blues...
english, german, russian, french...it's all good...it totally doesn't matter what are the lyrics, as long as the feeling is good

[taty994945]

i like music but get bored pretty easily. sometimes its better to have silence