And while great musicians are said to have that certain je ne sais quoi , music educators have to remove the ‘ne’ so we can use information for improvement.
And having ‘Star Quality’ as a metric is not helpful. Musicianship as a category can be helpful but only with the subcategories that define the aspects of musicianship.
In this thread we were talking about the term "PRaT" as a decriptive term for the way audio components sound. And I was pointing out that when it comes to home audio playback of commercial music recordings, Pace, Rhythm and Timing are dictated by the performers, not the electronics. Perhaps you are having an entirely different conversation, but I don't know why you are addressing me with it, because I honestly don't have a clue what you are talking about.
You will note he started by quoting you in this thread from the “color your DAC” thread. That is the start. But instead of quoting you he placed a “yes” somehow as your quote?
In this thread we were talking about the term "PRaT" as a decriptive term for the way audio components sound. And I was pointing out that when it comes to home audio playback of commercial music recordings, Pace, Rhythm and Timing are dictated by the performers, not the electronics. Perhaps you are having an entirely different conversation, but I don't know why you are addressing me with it, because I honestly don't have a clue what you are talking about.
And while great musicians are said to have that certain je ne sais quoi , music educators have to remove the ‘ne’ so we can use information for improvement.
And having ‘Star Quality’ as a metric is not helpful. Musicianship as a category can be helpful but only with the subcategories that define the aspects of musicianship.
That's exactly why the term is popular with audiophools. They can sound like they're saying something without actually being required to make a point. A lot of audiophile terms are like that. They describe their feelings about sound, not the sound itself. Or they create an analogy to irrelevant things like sports cars, wine, colors of the rainbow, temperatures or diaphanous fabrics.
And while great musicians are said to have that certain je ne sais quoi , music educators have to remove the ‘ne’ so we can use information for improvement.
And having ‘Star Quality’ as a metric is not helpful. Musicianship as a category can be helpful but only with the subcategories that define the aspects of musicianship.
Those are great questions and make for some good discussions!
I’m been really busy lately but here are some things that immediately came to mind.
Analyzing compositions by starting with:
SHMRG - Sound, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, Growth
Over the years I think there should be another category for ‘forethought’ / planning / intention.
For example, John Cage’s 4’33” intentionally does not use harmony, melody, rhythm, or growth, but there is sound and plenty of human intention.
Or Philip Glass and his minimalism which has plenty of sound, harmony (even if implied contrapuntally), and rhythm.
Structure (or lack of if that is the intent) is another aspect. Does there need to be structure? Probably but not necessarily. But organization helps the human mind to latch on to something.
Balance of structure - such as use of golden mean and Fibonacci sequence. Many pieces of art, music, cinema, use these mathematical ratios.
Pacing of structural elements and their overall relationship to the structure
Counterpoint (as a subcategory of harmony)
Novelty to the listener while still retaining thematic anchors
But short pieces can have plenty of everything. There are lots of pieces less than 2 minutes long that have plenty of everything.
what else….. great pieces endure time endure time - every composer has had clunkers but those have gotten weeded out over the years. And plenty of composers and pieces are not part of our collective repertoire or are just collecting dust in a library.
For a great performance:
The musician has technical abilities that no longer need conscience effort. The brain can then enter a ‘state of flow’ - similar to a meditative state this can be seen through brainwave measurements. This can often be something like “wow they make it look easy!”. Kenny Werner wrote a great book called “Effortless Mastery”.
Attributes of Musicianship:
Tone
Rhythm
Intonation
Dynamics
Phrasing
Fluency of Technique / Physical mastery
But having a sense of the bigger picture of the piece - knowing the details but also being able to tell the story as a whole.
Oh wait I forgot:
If there are definable attributes for these things how transferable are they from live performance to recording ?
Interesting question and I think part of that discussion may be philosophical. But we all enjoy our recordings, right?
So, yes there is always something to a live performance.. But how much is visual or social or just the ritualistic experience vs actual sound is debatable.
How far are they degraded or enhanced by equipment used for listening ?
Another good one!
That I’m not sure. There are plenty of recordings 50-100 years old that people thoroughly enjoy and often reference.
With modern equipment I think the sound is there albeit without the subtle human changes that can vary in a performance. But again, we all have our favorite recordings!
I'm saying it's a joke and Cage was seeing what he could get away with. It's an experiment to see how gullible and dumb music critics can be. The same thing went on in the fine art world too, beginning with Andy Warhol and getting progressively worse and worse until you had a porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey selling for millions of dollars. It's degradation of art. It's precisely the reason that contemporary fine art and classical music has become marginalized in modern society.
The phenomenon of spontaneous synchronization is found in circadian rhythms, heart & intestinal muscles, insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas, ambling elephants, drummers drumming, menstrual cycles, and fireflies, among others.
This has nothing to do with our discussion, still it’s fascinating.
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