periurban
100+ Head-Fier
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I don't quite know how it arose on this forum, but there is a huge discussion going on in various threads relating to musical complexity.
Various genres of music are being assessed or argued over on the basis of "complexity" or "simplicity" as if it is somehow possible to define the worth of music by such an assessment.
The premise upon which such arguments are based is entirely fallacious on several counts.
1) Genres are a crock. If a classical piece is played on electric guitars by leather clad bikers in front of an audience of 10,000 pogoing nutters, is it still classical music? If a rock piece is played by four tuxedo clad university graduates to an audience of grey haired conservatives who applaud politely, is it still rock?
2) Complexity has nothing to do with the value of a piece of music. The simplest piece of music that could ever be written (aside from silence, which has been done) would be a single note played using an unmodulated sine wave. If I composed such a piece, no-one would pay any attention (quite rightly), but if it was to be discovered that Beethoven had written it, suddenly the "piece" gathers an infinite amount of complexity it never had before.
3) Context is everything. It's incredibly easy to write an immensely "complicated" piece of music that is utterly meaningless. With modern technology I could create a dense soundscape consisting of harmonies, progressions and structures that Beethoven could only dream of. The total polyphony available to him was, maybe, a couple of hundred notes. For me, there is no limit. But who'd care if I wrote such a piece?
4) Music exists entirely in the mind of the listener. Some have said that complex music appeals to people of a higher intelligence. But no music or sound has "complexity". That only arrives (as if by magic) when our brains interpret the data. There is no complexity in the data itself. In effect, the entire "complexity" of any sound can be represented by a single wiggly line on a piece of paper (or in a spiral groove on a plastic disc). A wiggly line that moves around a lot may indicate musical activity, or it may indicate chaotic noise, but only the brain can interpret which is which.
If it was possible to mathematically quantify taste and preference it would have been done by now. It isn't, and elevating a particular piece of music, or an entire "genre" (whatever that means), on the basis of an arbitrary and subjective assessment of the nature of vibrating air molecules isn't going to help.
Let's proceed from here on the basis that everyone is entitled to hold their music dear to themselves, and that whatever they get out of it shouldn't have to be justified or argued about.
Various genres of music are being assessed or argued over on the basis of "complexity" or "simplicity" as if it is somehow possible to define the worth of music by such an assessment.
The premise upon which such arguments are based is entirely fallacious on several counts.
1) Genres are a crock. If a classical piece is played on electric guitars by leather clad bikers in front of an audience of 10,000 pogoing nutters, is it still classical music? If a rock piece is played by four tuxedo clad university graduates to an audience of grey haired conservatives who applaud politely, is it still rock?
2) Complexity has nothing to do with the value of a piece of music. The simplest piece of music that could ever be written (aside from silence, which has been done) would be a single note played using an unmodulated sine wave. If I composed such a piece, no-one would pay any attention (quite rightly), but if it was to be discovered that Beethoven had written it, suddenly the "piece" gathers an infinite amount of complexity it never had before.
3) Context is everything. It's incredibly easy to write an immensely "complicated" piece of music that is utterly meaningless. With modern technology I could create a dense soundscape consisting of harmonies, progressions and structures that Beethoven could only dream of. The total polyphony available to him was, maybe, a couple of hundred notes. For me, there is no limit. But who'd care if I wrote such a piece?
4) Music exists entirely in the mind of the listener. Some have said that complex music appeals to people of a higher intelligence. But no music or sound has "complexity". That only arrives (as if by magic) when our brains interpret the data. There is no complexity in the data itself. In effect, the entire "complexity" of any sound can be represented by a single wiggly line on a piece of paper (or in a spiral groove on a plastic disc). A wiggly line that moves around a lot may indicate musical activity, or it may indicate chaotic noise, but only the brain can interpret which is which.
If it was possible to mathematically quantify taste and preference it would have been done by now. It isn't, and elevating a particular piece of music, or an entire "genre" (whatever that means), on the basis of an arbitrary and subjective assessment of the nature of vibrating air molecules isn't going to help.
Let's proceed from here on the basis that everyone is entitled to hold their music dear to themselves, and that whatever they get out of it shouldn't have to be justified or argued about.