[71 dB]

Consider yourself congratulated that you can find something that is not 100 percent to your taste, but not far.

Considering that "taste" is a multidimensional construction of abstract concepts, the probability of something being near someones taste is mathematically* very small compared to something being far unless someone likes almost everything, which certainly is not the case.'

* For example if we consider the "taste space" constructed by all music on this planet a 10-dimensional ball of radius R and my personal "taste space" is a 10-dimensional ball or radius r = 0.8*R inside it, the 10-dimensional volume ratio is 0.8^10 ≈ 0.107. This means that I can expect liking only about 11 % of all music in the World despite of undertanding /appreciating all 10 taste dimensions 80 % completely! If that is halved to 40 %, only 0.01 % of all music is to my liking. Of course this is a massively oversimplified example, but it illustrates that we can't expect to like everything! Liking just 1 % of everything is pretty good already!

 

[Mink]

I also struggle with jazz even when my dad is a jazz nut, but there is jazz that I like. Jazz can be harmonically extremely sophisticated which can make it demanding, but my problem with it is that often jazz is nothing but improvisation. I simply get bored after a while.

Huh? Sure, more modern jazz can be very well recorded, but older jazz has pretty bad sound.

Yep, those improvisations get on my nerves pretty quick as well, which actually is pretty weird, because improvisation should keep things fresh and not repetitive.
I think I don't like it when music doesn't suggest any direction or 'resolution'. A casual jamming is nice to set a mood, but don't expect me to keep focused and entertained.

True, the recordings of Charlie Parker didn't sound that great, but all those of Miles Davis and John Coltrane I have played sounded spectacular, in fact every Jazz album from the 60s up to now I have listened sounded great.

 

[bigshot]

The direction of some modern jazz improvisation requires some knowledge of music theory. It’s the same with certain ethnic music and modern classical. It all makes sense, it’s just a different musical language. A lot of things fly over my head, but that’s a lack in my experience, not something lacking in the music.

If you don’t understand it, it’s all Greek to you.

 

[Mangodango369]

On the topic of Greek haha why are so many brands using Greek mythology to name their products haha

 

[Steve999]

I am not always hip to @bigshot ’s style of discourse but in hanging in there and communicating back and forth with him a few years back I did learn some incredibly illuminating things about American music around the beginning of the 20th century, which in turn cast everything that came after in a fresh light. And I fact-checked like a demon. I had considered myself pretty well-informed on the subject and probably never thanked him like I should have because I was a bit irritated with him. So there you go. Just throwing that out there for what it’s worth to whoever is listening.

That being said I don’t have the nerves right now for a discussion on the merits of this back-and-forth. I’ll just say that my experience in matters concerning music has been that there is a pretty big payoff for effort and open-mindedness.

I like that the thread on greatest audio experiences has morphed into a passionate discussion of music!

 

[bigshot]

Art is a time machine to tell us how it felt to be alive in the past, and it's a time machine for the past to reach to our own times to pinpoint exactly who we are here and now. If you look at the history of civilization, religions come and go, political structures come and go, social structures come and go, but the arts are a constant. There are cultures that existed for many, many generations... scores of centuries... and all we know about them is the art they left behind to represent them.

Every one of us has a space of time here on Earth and then we're gone. And after another generation, everyone who ever knew us is gone. People get washed away with the tides, but sculpture, painting, dance, music, drama, storytelling, architecture... all the different ways we express ourselves... are eternal. With the passage of time, art is all that matters because ultimately, art is all that remains of us.

Our time on this Earth is short. If we become too busy and too occupied with everyday humdrum tasks to expend time and energy to engage with the arts, we cease to be human. We just become organisms, bots, placeholders. You can exist for a lifetime without the arts, but you can't live a life without them. Art is who we are.

That's what I believe all the way down to the core of my being. I've dedicated my life and career to it. I try to share my enthusiasm for artistic culture with everyone I meet. When I see people making no effort to engage with art, and judging it by "liking" or "not liking" it based on sheer willful ignorance, I feel profoundly sorry for them. I watched Robert Hughes' The Mona Lisa Curse today (https://animationresources.org/youtube-robert-hughes-the-mona-lisa-curse/) and it made me angry at modern culture. The rug has been pulled out from under art and it has been turned into an ephemeral commodity. I've been thinking about it all day, and I've come to the realization that art isn't dead. It's just migrated to parts of society it never inhabited before. Kind of like grass growing up in between the cracks of the sidewalk.

You don't have to appreciate all of the art in the world. You just have to appreciate as much of it as you possibly can.

 

[bigshot]

On the topic of Greek haha why are so many brands using Greek mythology to name their products haha

That's a puzzle isn't it? Like "What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"

 

[castleofargh]

That riddle was provided to you by the sphinx of Helheim. We’ll be back after the commercial.

 

[gregorio]

The direction of some modern jazz improvisation requires some knowledge of music theory. It’s the same with certain ethnic music and modern classical. It all makes sense, it’s just a different musical language.

The last sentence is interesting, because it’s both correct and completely wrong. To rephrase your sentence, we could say that: “It all makes sense, provided you understand and appreciate that some, much or all of it is specifically designed to not have or make any sense.” - So, the result for the listener is either:
A. Just listen to it as a sound experience, without trying to make sense of it.
B. Try to make sense of it but expect to be frustrated.
C. Make some sort of sense of it but realise it will only be your personal sense, which will have little or nothing at all to do with the composer’s intended sense (or lack of it).

“A” is very difficult to achieve in practice. It appears we are preprogrammed to try and make sense of aural stimuli. “B” is the most common result, which is why it only appeals to a minority of people. “C” is probably the most common result amongst those who do like it and sometimes is the actual desired result. The composer might intend for you to make up your own meaning or “sense”.

From the early C20th, but with roots far earlier, the evolution of modern classical music was the breaking down and rejection of all the rules of the language of music. And, the same is broadly true of experimental (“Free”) Jazz from the late ‘50’s, which was partially/largely inspired by modern classical music. So, without any of the structure, “grammar” and ALL the other rules required by the definition of “a language” we can correctly argue that it’s not a language. Although, we could argue that it’s a language with whatever rules (or lack of them) any individual composer chooses. Either way, I’m not sure we can really say modern classical music (or Free Form Jazz) is “a musical language”.

Ironically, as you mentioned him, one of the modern forefathers of this evolution of modern classical music was Charles Ives. Although, Ives’ works are not without meaning or sense, they certainly confuse, further break down and reject some/many of the rules of the “language of music” but they’re only the ancestor or first step of what was to come post World War II, with the likes of John Cage, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Boulez and many others.

G

 

[gregorio]

Like "What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"

That’s easy; two people who get really smashed during brunch.

G

 

[bigshot]

I’ll clarify… I was referring to some modern jazz and classical, not all. Bird and Coltrane were the ones mentioned in the post I was responding to. I acknowledge that as a non musician this isn’t my area of expertise. There’s a lot there that flies over my head. There’s music that is understood directly on a primal level, and there’s music that requires analysis to appreciate. Both are important. And there’s clearly music designed to be random and deconstruct established forms.

The most interesting thing about Ives for me is how he overlaps musical structures like a collage. He isn’t random like some, and he isn’t complex for complexity’s sake like Alkan. It’s several things coming at the listener at once, sometimes from different distances and directions. That’s a lot like what modern urban life feels like to me. I also greatly appreciate how he was dedicated to his art, even when the rest of the world wasn’t interested in his work. As you say, there’s a lot of irony in his life… especially since he wasn’t acknowledged as a genius until decades after he had stoppped composing. Ives is a bit of a sphinx himself, at least to me.

There’s another way to approach art beyond your three choices… kind of like selecting all of the above. When I look at The Pieta, I can appreciate it on a purely emotional level, understand what it means on an intellectual and cultural level, and my perception of it will be exactly what the artist intended. Some works cut through to reach us on every level at once.

Whether and how modern forms are seen and interpreted by people in the future won’t be known until the future, but I’ll bet there will be some great things that pass the test of time. The 20th century was pretty remarkable. The deterioration discussed in Mona Lisa Curse is certainly real, but humanity has a way of finding an outlet to exprsss itself. For centuries that meant work sponsored by the aristocracy, government or church. But that’s changed. Art is part of everyone’s life now. That may not be so good for museum art and concert hall music, but it is good for art expressed through popular culture like Jazz and cinema, the two greatest creative contributions to the 20th century.

 

[Whazzzup]

I woke up, turned on rosehardt

 

[gregorio]

The most interesting thing about Ives for me is how he overlaps musical structures like a collage.

That’s not the most interesting thing for me, because that’s a very old and almost done to death technique. Counterpoint, the dominant composition technique for around a century during the Baroque period, was based on the overlapping of musical structures (melodic lines), typically two but sometimes as many as three or four concurrently. What’s different about Ives is that he is not bound (or even concerned) by the traditional rules of harmony and rhythm when overlapping, unlike Bach and the other counterpoint composers, who complied very strictly with them.

There’s another way to approach art beyond your three choices… kind of like selecting all of the above. When I look at The Pieta …

My three choices were not a “way to approach art” in general. As you stated; “I was referring to some modern jazz and classical”. Specifically, some genres of Modern classical music and Free Form Jazz, although it might also apply to some modern genres of other art forms, abstract art for example. The Pietà obviously isn’t a modern art form genre, it complies with traditional concepts of art, just as music complies with the rules of the language of music before the Modernist composers.

G

 

[bigshot]

Okie dokie. I’m not arguing with you, just clarifying what I was saying.

 

[Mangodango369]

That's a puzzle isn't it? Like "What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?"

needa google the answer for this lol brought me down a rabbit hole on ancient puzzles