2. music
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Music is sound, sound can be music

It was hard to make a title that fit what I wanted to talk about. Reading the thread about the deleted Hip-hop/Rap thread was an interesting window on some of the mindset here (some of which was unfortunate and depressing too but that's the world we live in....). What struck me was the attitude that if it's not played on a traditional instrument it's not music, or it just "sucks" in some way.

First, many instruments today, lots of brass ones especially or guitars didn't exist until the last 100-200 years. Do they not make music?

But you have to learn to use it skillfully, so I read. Knowing how to read and write music surely qualifies one yes? Talented even, if your can write complex pieces?

Ok, then. 25 years ago I worked with early digital audio systems using sequencers and MIDI. My partner graduated with honors from Berklee college of music and was a composer. He wrote some amazing work without touching anything more than a mouse and keyboard. Was it music?

10 years later I worked with another person who did incredible work in sound collage and electronic music. They did use a controller that is essentially a piano keyboard but it only sends note data to the system. She could play wonderfully on a real piano but often used non-linear editing and manipulation to produce innovative soundscapes. Was it music?

There are other examples where people do all sorts of experimental things with sound and not a single traditional instrument is ever used. Is it art?

My point here is if you don't like something that's fine. It doesn't make you a bad, stupid, or ignorant person. Neither are you those things if you don't understand why people create things or how they choose to do it. Of course, you are free to say what you like, that's your right. But don't be surprised when you are considered ignorant and intolerant when all you have to say is negative and derogatory remarks.

Life is too short to spend energy on things you don't like. Move on past and participate in the things you enjoy and let others enjoy theirs. Or maybe open you mind and give something more than a cursory glance if curiosity gets you, explore, read, listen and learn. You may decide it really isn't for you, but then again you might.
jet88

Showing 1 response by burrell

burrell
2 posts
 

@frogman This idea that rap is, “not music” is simply incorrect. 
Personal preferences and opinions aside, saying it is “not music” is simply incorrect.

One could say, “I don’t like rap music.”  To say it doesn’t qualify as actual music is incorrect.

These incorrect statements can be debunked on a few levels:

1) When people say it, “has no melody,” that is incorrect.  Countless rap songs of the last 30-odd years feature a distinct vocal melody sung by a vocalist during the choruses. 

2) A rap song that isn’t occupied by a distinct vocal melody for 1/3rd to 1/2 the song is still music.  Why?  Because every rap song ever features the rap vocal over…whuddya know…music. Music being defined here as: a percussion track, a bass track, a chord progression featuring musical instruments playing notes/chords, perhaps even backing vocals singing a distinct background vocal arrangement.

3) Is avant-garde music “not music?” Is John Cage not music?  Is Einstürzende Neubauten not music? What kind of definition of music holds any water? To just call it, “art”…I mean, I guess that works in an extremely broad way.

4) Is James Brown music?  The music that accompanies Mr. Brown’s vocal, on many occasions, is as repetitive and simple as the looped sample in a rap song.  The lead vocal, in turn, very often features little melody, but instead sort of a speak/sing approach.  We could point to many other instances of this.  Dylan, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and on and on.  The instrumental arrangements on many such songs by these artists can be extremely primitive.

”Who Do you Love?” by Bo Diddley, 1956, one single chord the entire song, no bass, with very little variation in the percussion arrangement, very primitive guitar fills, and that’s it :

”Tombstone hand and a graveyard mind / just 22 and I don’t mind dyin’…Rode a lion into town, use a rattlesnake whip / Take it easy Arlene, don’t give me no lip”

Plenty of folks in 1956 said, “this primitive garbage, this Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, it ain’t even music. It doesn’t even have melody, blah, blah, blah…”

“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Dylan, tons of James Brown songs, chrissi lipo etc., etc…

I guess that’s not music.

So how do you categorize rap if its not a music. In that way you will also say hiphop and rock is also not music

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