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Help settle the ongoing musical argument
Andrew and I are arguing. Surprise! It must be a day that ends in Y.
It's a slight tweak to the same topic we've been chewing on for six years: The merits of "old" music (1970s-1990s) versus millennial (post-2000) music.
The locus of tonight's bout is whether emerging music has the same degree of stylistic variation as that of previous decades. Andrew argues that new music is just as innovative, while I say the Law of Diminishing Returns is evident in the way modern music recycles more than it innovates. Andrew counters that all modern forms are structurally rooted in blues/jazz, to which I say the degree of change from Miles Davis to Metallica is by far greater than Metallica to Protest the Hero.
Help settle it.
It's a slight tweak to the same topic we've been chewing on for six years: The merits of "old" music (1970s-1990s) versus millennial (post-2000) music.
The locus of tonight's bout is whether emerging music has the same degree of stylistic variation as that of previous decades. Andrew argues that new music is just as innovative, while I say the Law of Diminishing Returns is evident in the way modern music recycles more than it innovates. Andrew counters that all modern forms are structurally rooted in blues/jazz, to which I say the degree of change from Miles Davis to Metallica is by far greater than Metallica to Protest the Hero.
Help settle it.
Post edited by Jason on
Comments
Do I need to bring this back out again?
My snap judgment is that Jason is being an old man. Bye.
Let's look at premillenial psychedelia. I'll give you an example from each decade, 1960-2000.
60s
70s
80s
90s
So yeah, a pretty cool progression over the course of about 40 years. Now, let's see some examples of what has happened to psychedelia from 2000 to 2012.
2004
2006
2007
2009
2012
So within a decade, you still have this tremendous progression and evolution of a style just as you did back when prog, punk, and psych started to intermarry back in the 80s. You can see that the Flaming Lips have almost entirely switched gears from their earliest acid punk stuff. This is also only a small slice of what I personally consider "psychedelia;" if you include stuff like dream pop, certain types of electronic music, and various indie pop groups that I purposefully left out because I felt they were borderline, you can see how even just this one genre is rapidly and wildly evolving constantly.
There is still rapid innovation in music, you just need to look beyond the usual stuff to find it; typical rock won't get you there. Forget about the difference between Metallica and Protest the Hero. You should be discussing the differences between Metallica and Pelican.
I'm really excited to be alive right now. In my opinion, some of the best and most innovative music ever is being made today.
TL;DR(or listen): You're just not as hip to new things as you used to be.
Yes, I fully admit that my musical tastes might not be as large as they should be, but I honestly believe that great musical innovation is taking place in the 21st century. Just gotta look to find it.
See, we just got some test results back, and...
You have a terminal case of old.
Think about this logically: Until the 90s, you couldn't really get a performance-grade synthesizer without paying relatively a lot. In the 80s, it probably didn't make any sense unless you were a professional musician or built your own. Now, 20 years later, I can get a Microkorg XL --the same vocoder/microsynth that Daft Punk uses for some of their tracks--for $300. When you get into DAWs and sample engines, the possibilities become limitless. The jump in technological availability to the average individual around the year 2000, coupled with the use of high-speed internet as a way to facilitate instant collaboration, has ushered in a hitherto-unknown rate of musical evolution. [] Told
[] Untold
[X] Old & Told ~_^
Also, just fuck already.
Also: The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin all suck.
Here's a protip: all art is derivative. The Big Bang was the only true work of art in history.
And Ethan Frome is shit.
Right, I think that covers it.
Also, in terms of old music, we have the benefit of looking back through a filter of time. There was lots of crap mixed in with the good stuff. Without the internet, a lot of music stayed in the garage, but i think it's safe to assume that it had a greater or equal crap ratio than published music. Now, with the music industry and its industrial rate of "music" production, it's possible that home-brew now has a lower crap ratio. I don't know.
It's hard to comprehend the current ratio of awesome music output because there's no set time frame to reference. Any kind of gut feeling will be based on the weird way brains perceive time. Plus, knowledge of good songs is still localized, despite the best efforts of the internet. You can't rush a good marinade.
Then, there's the fact that what you appreciate in music will be informed by the roots of your appreciation of music. I was raised playing bach and listening to prokofiev, so I appreciate tonality (or very well placed atonality), complexity of themes / interplay, and arpeggiation. I listen to jazz like a jealous neighbor, and enjoy disco-house-dubstep derivations (because i really liked disco growing up).
EDIT: Wasn't done, accidentally posted. The big difference is that now with audio editing software and the internet to be used for sharing, the mash-up has risen. Songs that are completely derivative of other songs, but become separate works unto themselves. These can be very good, but whether or not they're an artistic revolution or not is yet to be determined.
Like basically I'm saying that you can argue something like Switched On Bach is literally unoriginal compositionally, but the tech used in its creation, the concept surrounding it, and its contextual tone lead to it being received and understood entirely differently than (but of course in relation to) traditional Bach pieces.
Derivative images are more annoying to me than sounds honestly. I see it a lot w/ local bands who just try to hop on the look/feel train of some other more popular band, as if thats the key to success.
I feel that with most art, you take the good parts of old art and add new awesomeness on top of it, creating something great. With musical sampling, it is more common for a great song to be sampled only for some hack to shit all over it and make big $.