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Arch0wl 08-4-2013 07:07 PM

Choofers and music
 
posting this in CT because I don't want to shit up his AMA with this debate

I asked Choofers what, if anything, causes him to think negatively of someone regarding their taste in music

Quote:

Originally Posted by Choofers
When it comes to music, it's not really the genres of music other people listen to that I pay attention, it's the reasoning of why they listen to that certain genre. Music is art, so it bothers me when people listen to music so passively that they can't say why they like a certain style of music. I used to be like that, oddly enough. I've found that listening to music in different ways and with different mindsets opens me up to a plethora of different ideas.

this is a solid view and is more in line with most formalistic ways of viewing music, but I'd like to offer an alternative perspective for your consideration:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/...introspection/

the above article establishes that if you try to establish reasons why you don't like a work of art, these reasons will most likely be bullshit.

in case you don't want to read the whole thing, here are the critical parts of the article:

Is there a certain song you love, or a work of art? Perhaps there is a movie you keep returning to over the years, or book. Go ahead and imagine one of those favorite things. Now, in one sentence, try to explain why you like it. Chances are, you will find it difficult to put into words, but if pressed you will probably be able to come up with something. The problem is, according to research, your explanation is probably going to be total bullshit.

Tim Wilson at UVA demonstrated this with The Poster Test. He brought a group of students into a room and showed them a series of posters. The students were told they could take any one they wanted as a gift and keep it. He then brought in another group, and told them the same thing, but this time they had to explain why they wanted the poster before they picked. He then waited six months and asked the two groups what they thought of their choices. The first group, the ones who just got to grab a poster and leave, they all loved their choice. The second group, the ones who had to write out why, hated theirs. The first group, the grab-and-go people, usually picked a nice, fancy painting. The second group, the ones who had to explain their choice, usually picked an inspirational poster with a cat clinging to a rope.

This brings up a lot of concerns. It calls into question the entire industry of critical analysis of art – video games, music, film, poetry, literature – all of it. It also makes things like focus groups and market analysis seem like farts in the wind.

When you ask people why they do or do not like things, they must then translate something from a deep, emotion, primal part of their psyche into the language of the higher, logical, rational world of words and sentences and paragraphs. Also, when you attempt to justify your decisions or emotional attachments, you start worrying about what your explanation says about you as a person.

In the above example, most people truly preferred the lady over the cat, but they couldn’t conjure up the rational explanation why, at least not in a way which would make logical sense on paper. On the other hand, you can write all sorts of bullshit about a motivational poster.

In a similar experiment by the same psychologist who conducted the Poster Test, people were shown two small photos of two different people and were asked which one was more attractive. They then were handed a larger photo. They were told it was the one they picked, but it was actually a completely different person. They were then asked why they chose it. Each time, people dutifully spun a yarn explaining their choice.

Believing you understand your motivations and desires, your likes and dislikes, is called the Introspection Illusion. You believe you know yourself, and why you are the way you are. You believe this knowledge tells you how you will act in all future situations. Research shows otherwise.


---

this establishes that the reasons you give for liking something are probably based on

(a) your ability to articulate, for one

(b) your ability to bullshit, and/or

(c) your self-honesty, since you will be tapping into essentially arbitrary reasons for things

---

another point to consider is that all music preferences boil down to the visceral in some way or another, and layers of reasoning to justify your preferences are just detours to the visceral anyway

which is to say, it's a dualistic mindset that stigmatizes the visceral, by thinking that with enough complexity the visceral is somehow taken over by a higher faculty, but it's viscerality, all the way down, with the exception that complexity may add satisfaction to a problem-solving impulse in some people

in other words, added layers of complexity don't, to me, make something any different or "higher", they just make it more indirect -- like adding a forest maze on whatever path you're trying to walk.

infinity. 08-4-2013 07:27 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Pushpin vs poetry is a very popular argument within utilitarianism. I think in an academic case there must be some validity to it, but I think that valuing others music taste as lower does not apply. I'm on my phone and can explain this if need be,

Arch0wl 08-4-2013 07:37 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
yeah I have a book that is a compilations of essays in Aesthetics and I'm pretty sure I ran across it in there

side note, almost every argument I've heard for objective aesthetics has been ridiculous, at most you could say it's inter-subjective but even then I find a lot of people go through a lot of twists to make inter-subjective mean objective-lite

infinity. 08-4-2013 08:57 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arch0wl (Post 3952207)
yeah I have a book that is a compilations of essays in Aesthetics and I'm pretty sure I ran across it in there

side note, almost every argument I've heard for objective aesthetics has been ridiculous, at most you could say it's inter-subjective but even then I find a lot of people go through a lot of twists to make inter-subjective mean objective-lite

yeah, but in some cases it gets kind of spotty.. (not thread relevant but) in cases of someone who legitimately lacks mental capacity in comparison with one who does not, a natural assertion would be that the person with higher mental faculties has the ability to appreciate greater pleasures, and therefore has a higher potential/actual utility

but it makes it difficult for big group / societal obligatory political philosophy.. like whose to say what person experiences more utils? what's it like to be a bat?

in this thread it's pretty much just blatant pretension, claiming that some music is on a different level than others, which may be true at some levels, but it's a slippery slope until it's all (music, genre, whatever) valuated and categorized

Arch0wl 08-4-2013 09:03 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by infinity. (Post 3952245)
what's it like to be a bat?

nice

Reincarnate 08-4-2013 09:15 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 


You like what you like.

Sometimes there's a rationale behind it, and sometimes there isn't. Asking people why they like something is risky because now you're forcing that person to introduce a shitload of biases and conflicting variables that have no relation to the underlying drivers for that particular preference. You're asking someone to defend the ineffable.

In many cases I suspect that certain preferences are just hardwired into the brain based on its structure. It's not a very sexy answer, but I think that's a big part of it. For example, I've always loved black licorice. A lot of people hate it, but even from a very young age, I could never get enough of it. The feeling I get from eating it is probably the same feeling someone else gets from eating something they love that I hate. But if you asked me to defend my preference, I'd have no fucking clue what to tell you. "When I eat this licorice, some chemicals shoot off in my brain that make me want more."

It's like trying to explain what a banana tastes like. It tastes like a fucking banana. Explaining something that occurs on such a base level of utility-interpretation is pretty much impossible with words, since much meaning will be lost, forcing us to come up with bullshit in hopes that we fill the gaps with something that'll satisfy whoever is asking the question.

Nullifidian 08-4-2013 09:59 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Here is another interesting theory from an evolutionary standpoint: http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutto...of_beauty.html

Aside from the above, Choofers viewpoint is similar to mine. But rather than listening to the reasoning of why they like a certain genre, I'd rather listen to the reasoning of why they absolutely don't like a certain genre. I don't care about why you don't like a particular song (I don't really question their reasons to why they like something, to each their own). But why someone would dislike an entire genre is a weird notion in my mind because from my experience, I have not found a single genre where I didn't like a single song of. What I usually get from that is that they're either too lazy to explore, narrowminded or scared about what others might think because every genre in existence has their gems as far as I can tell.

Reincarnate 08-4-2013 09:59 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
OH, and also this



If you haven't seen this yet, then fuck you, watch it


"When you explain a 'why,' you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise you're perpetually asking why."

"I'm telling you how difficult a 'why' question is. You have to know what it is that you're permitted to understand and allow to be understood and known and what it is you're not."

"I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands; I should be in trouble. [...] And secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain. So I have cheated very badly, you see. So I am not going to be able to give you an answer to why magnets attract each other except to tell you that they do."


Quote:

Originally Posted by _.Spitfire._ (Post 3952282)
Here is another interesting theory from an evolutionary standpoint: http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutto...of_beauty.html

Yeeaaaappp -- preferences obviously fall within some variance due to the nature of mutation (and other environmental influences), but there are always going to be general trends. For example, "Why do we like fresh fruit instead of rotted, dead fruit?" Well, the agents that liked rotted fruit didn't last very long. The ones preferred the fresh fruit survived more easily due to the chemical utility of the fruit itself, and therefore any mutation that streamlined/facilitated this process was favorably selected for. Apply that concept to just about everything and it helps explain our utility profiles.

Nullifidian 08-4-2013 10:25 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3952283)

Reminded me of this stand up of Louis C.K. lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2ZsoYWwJA#t=7m14s

moches 08-4-2013 11:34 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Just adding my two cents to this:

What the article above touches upon is something that always bothers me; I write reviews for albums and read a crapload of other people's writing in that time, and sometimes it bothers me how some things are just taken for GRANTED. Of course pop music is shallow and superficial, of course Kanye West is SO brave and important, of course nothing Nickelback does deserves even the slightest iota of respect. It's a lazy way to approach criticism and I try to stay away from it.

Personally, I feel like there's a separation that should be made:

1. For judgments that pertain to the INHERENT quality of a work and use those supposed inherent qualities as signifiers (for example, how the word "pop" seems to be synonymous with fake sometimes), I think it's right to say they're...like, misinformed at best? Actively ignorant at worst. It doesn't get you any closer to understanding the true nature of a work to make neat little categories to separate human experience--this is important in a way that isn't! It sounds knowledgeable to dismiss something on the grounds of where it comes from, but it has no worth to me. It discourages actually widening the scope of one's understanding, which is why critical analysis is valuable to me.

2. On the other hand, EVERY work has structure/method, and this is where I think critical analysis has merit. Regardless of how I feel about black metal personally, I'm willing to acknowledge music from that genre depending on how well it uses the conventions and characteristics of its genre to express something, and I feel like this is where the focus of critical analysis should be. That's why Literature is so important; ideally, you look at works from the entire scope of human experience (historical, social, and cultural) and dig into HOW the author is expressing himself. If art is about an author holding up his book, a musician holding up his album, a painter holding up his work, and saying, "Hey, you should look at this," criticism in its ideal form is about how we can evaluate that claim.

Where my post falls apart, admittedly, is that the above two categories aren't always mutually exclusive: the author of the article Arch0wl posted in the OP, for example, cites a 19th-century review of Moby Dick:

Quote:

This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed…We have little more to say in reprobation or in recommendation of this absurd book…Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature — since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist.

- Henry F. Chorley, in London Athenaeum
It seems like there, his personal biases are informing his analysis of the structure. So maybe we're just doomed to go in circles.

I know this post is half-baked, but it's a lot to chew on and I still figured I might as well get my thoughts out there.

Spenner 08-5-2013 11:48 AM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Most times I can find specific reasons for liking music and art due to the fact of immediate associations, and by the triggering imagery and feelings I can feel in a subtle way due to the pace and sounds of the music, or to the colours/shapes/textures of art that affect more subtle things on the mind.

I'm sure there is at least a subtle association one can find to realize their taste for certain things. Either it reminds them of something, sparks certain flavours of things on their mental palette, etc. For me it's not hard to find why I like even the most abstract of things, and I would actually challenge someone to find something I cannot explain why I like, without a totally bullshit answer. I think it's just how much you are in tune with the way your mind delivers the specifics surrounding your taste profile. I understand that there is a point where your relation to the taste becomes purely an abstract attraction, but I don't think it's something that needs to be brought to planck length, for the same reason that the individual electron has no significance in the change in my taste <_< it's only the collective action of all of them working. There's a certain level where things start to not directly impact what drives your attraction.

Also moches that's a fine point made as well for someone who is trying to find a judgement that is based on structure and idealization due to a generalization (i.e. pop music, chocolate candy, horror movies, etc). I think that there's too many assumptions being made when someone judges something on the basis of it being part of a general group, and it doesn't make much sense to me, for the same reason I don't hate any one entire genre, or one whole class of movies, etc.

Jonlovesddr 08-5-2013 04:50 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
People will usually say they "dislike a whole genre" because they've never heard a song from that "genre" that they liked

Frank Munoz 08-5-2013 04:57 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
resentment towards a specific genre is racist.

Reincarnate 08-5-2013 05:42 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
I can pretty confidently say that I hate most country music.

Fission 08-5-2013 05:43 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
genreist

hi19hi19 08-5-2013 06:12 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
The problem is most people who are looking for a "critical review" look down on you when you say something such as "I just like it"

When honestly that might be the true extent of your analysis. Sometimes you just... enjoy something and you do it without thinking into it any more. But apparently that makes you some kind of plebeian or something

Jonlovesddr 08-5-2013 06:13 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reincarnate (Post 3952922)
I can pretty confidently say that I hate most country music.

i would say i hate country as a genre but i guess i'm not allowed to anymore

Frank Munoz 08-5-2013 06:29 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
I'm racist

Choofers 08-5-2013 09:55 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
I like art for reasons. You like art for reasons. I think your reasons are bad. You think my reasons are bad.

SuBjEcTiVeMaNiAz.

Jonlovesddr 08-5-2013 10:22 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
this is why i hate aesthetics and philosophy
there is no right answer

infinity. 08-5-2013 10:52 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonlovesddr (Post 3953095)
this is why i hate aesthetics and philosophy
there is no right answer

yeah but that's just your opinion mannnnnnnnnnnnn
the goal is to search for that right answer

Spenner 08-5-2013 11:10 PM

Re: Choofers and music
 
What I don't like is how someone who really does sit and listen to a piece of ambient music can still say that it's simply a boring drone. To me that just says they're unable to pick up on and follow the flow of the sounds, which is what people would do with any other more energetic music (generally) because it's easier to notice the pace of the transitions in sound. For me the beauty of ambient music is having the patience to feel the life and birth of the sounds in slow motion, getting a better view of the sounds that are normally gone in a second in most music. I suppose it's a different patience level that's required, and more of an attentive ear for detail/elaboration of the sounds.

Realistically I think it depends how creative someone is, depicting whether or not they can appreciate most ambient music if it's fairly abstract. Otherwise they really can just illustrate it as a boring drone (still very shallow IMO). The magic happens when you can depict the music visually, in a flowing way that is giving birth to an atmosphere, to a space, where thoughts follow the pace of the music, where you can explore things on your mind with that pace, etc. For the person that really gets entranced by music, I think faster pace music does the same thing, and that it can stimulate the pace at which thoughts are forming, being that the response to the pace of the music is a stimulated one. That could be a naive judgement, I have no scientific proof of this, just an innocent eye from my own experience.

I also think that the power of suggestion plays a huge role in how people can buy into music that, if there were no suggestions made, would be a pretty uninteresting composition. Luckily most of these suggestions are right in the song in the lyrics. This is something that the individual has to digest though; just like listening to a song of a different language won't trigger the same imagery that's depicted in the lyrics. Songs from Enya (for example) don't necessarily need to be heard lyrically, they have an impact on their own with just the sounds of the words.

Honestly I don't listen to a lot of lyrics in music, because I find they suggest an impression of the song that is too far from what I find is most ideal for enjoying it. However most people probably prefer the impressions empowered by the lyrics in the music they listen to, being that it's the reason why some people even listen to music. Everyone's got their own thing though.

Arch0wl 08-6-2013 06:19 AM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonlovesddr (Post 3953095)
this is why i hate aesthetics and philosophy
there is no right answer

while there may not be a definitive "right" answer, there are definitively "wrong" answers, and moreover, the lack of right answers stems from the methodology -- when you involve complicated questions and a lot of inductive reasoning, you will of course have difficulty getting to a right answer. complete certainty only exists in formal systems

EzExZeRo7497 08-6-2013 06:59 AM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Spenner (Post 3953133)
What I don't like is how someone who really does sit and listen to a piece of ambient music can still say that it's simply a boring drone. To me that just says they're unable to pick up on and follow the flow of the sounds, which is what people would do with any other more energetic music (generally) because it's easier to notice the pace of the transitions in sound. For me the beauty of ambient music is having the patience to feel the life and birth of the sounds in slow motion, getting a better view of the sounds that are normally gone in a second in most music. I suppose it's a different patience level that's required, and more of an attentive ear for detail/elaboration of the sounds.

Realistically I think it depends how creative someone is, depicting whether or not they can appreciate most ambient music if it's fairly abstract. Otherwise they really can just illustrate it as a boring drone (still very shallow IMO). The magic happens when you can depict the music visually, in a flowing way that is giving birth to an atmosphere, to a space, where thoughts follow the pace of the music, where you can explore things on your mind with that pace, etc. For the person that really gets entranced by music, I think faster pace music does the same thing, and that it can stimulate the pace at which thoughts are forming, being that the response to the pace of the music is a stimulated one. That could be a naive judgement, I have no scientific proof of this, just an innocent eye from my own experience.

I also think that the power of suggestion plays a huge role in how people can buy into music that, if there were no suggestions made, would be a pretty uninteresting composition. Luckily most of these suggestions are right in the song in the lyrics. This is something that the individual has to digest though; just like listening to a song of a different language won't trigger the same imagery that's depicted in the lyrics. Songs from Enya (for example) don't necessarily need to be heard lyrically, they have an impact on their own with just the sounds of the words.

Honestly I don't listen to a lot of lyrics in music, because I find they suggest an impression of the song that is too far from what I find is most ideal for enjoying it. However most people probably prefer the impressions empowered by the lyrics in the music they listen to, being that it's the reason why some people even listen to music. Everyone's got their own thing though.

This is almost exactly how I feel, haha. Personally the reason why I don't really listen to a lot of lyrics in music is because it already gives you an idea of what to visualise, and that you'll most likely visualise that instead of something else, since most tracks can be interpreted in more than one way to begin with. Limiting the amount of ways to interpret music is... pretty unfavourable to say the least, since the interpretation of what the musician is intending to do is not really ideal for every listener.

Back to the topic though, I definitely agree with the article. Though part of my preferences would be influenced by the environment around me, I wouldn't give an arbitrary reason such as "because it's popular" for anything I'd like. In fact, I couldn't really think of a proper legitimate reason. When people ask me why I like obscure genres such as drone and shoegaze, I just respond with a shrug or simply an "I don't know, it just clicks with me"-esque statement. Most of the time when people explain why they like a particular genre of music, chances are I'll either get very vague answers (It's enjoyable to listen) or ones that are uncertain (It's catchy, I guess).

People who want "serious reviews" are just reading "I like it" or "I don't like it" with arbitrary reasons to begin with, I personally don't think that anyone can fully explain why an album/genre is great to them without making it sound a little nonsensical to others; a part of it at least. Personally a positive review of an album with lots of reasoning isn't much better than a review saying "This album is great". Even for negative reviews, giving a reasoning on why you dislike something might come off as narrow-minded or uncreative, but explaining why you don't like an album/genre in words is almost impossible to begin with. You just don't like it. Though, reviewing isn't useless, since you're giving your own evaluation and opinion on the album to begin with.

I don't know, everything is objectively beautiful (or everything is not beautiful) I suppose, it really depends on how someone would interpret it. Although you might have influences from popular culture and such, no one person would agree with every single preference you have. Even if that's possible, the reasoning would probably be different.

tl;dr subjectivemanias

Arch0wl 08-6-2013 07:09 AM

Re: Choofers and music
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by _.Spitfire._ (Post 3952282)
rather than listening to the reasoning of why they like a certain genre, I'd rather listen to the reasoning of why they absolutely don't like a certain genre.

a friend of mine asked me this when I talked about why I have never been able to like Radiohead and the closest reasons I can give are that:

(A) I tend to be completely unaffected by songs that heavily lack rhythmic activity; while I can, at times, get into ambient music, if there is no serious rhythmic activity I tend to lose interest in a song. "rhythmic activity" is something of a vague concept since anything with at least a sequence of one note after another note has rhythm, but the easiest way I can describe it is that there are simply more rhythms in the song

(B) I tend to like rhythms that have varied and large "energies", as opposed to rhythms that are repetitive, light and "small"

some explanation on (B). by "energy" I mean the structure of rhythm's influence on human emotion as well as bodily movement, were you to synchronize human movement to the rhythm, or the things a structure of rhythms compel a person to do/feel.

a great deal of songs by indie bands have rhythms where the most your body is compelled to do is tap your foot or bob your head; if you actually got up and danced to the song, the most you would do is lightly bounce or do that white guy dance gesture where you're kind of moving your shoulders side-to-side. it's almost low-energy on purpose.

Radiohead is this by default; there are a couple of songs from, say, Kid A that are pretty upbeat, but every Radiohead song has some characteristic, either in the rhythms or in the character of singing or the chord progressions or whatever, that just strike me as inward-looking and defeated -- like you're curling up into a ball after you made some massive failure in your life. further, the timbre of the drums in almost every Radiohead song are very Classic Rock, which have very understated snares that feel like the energy equivalent of someone tapping their finger. compare this to, say, industrial snares or break beat/core/whatever snares or SGX snares or dubstep snares or anything, which have large snares that feel like someone is pounding the floor with energy. the only song on Kid A that varies from this is Idioteque, and the drums of that are completely negated by the synth chord progressions that make me feel like someone just got called a bad name so they're in tears begging me for a hug, and a vocal style that reminds me of someone who got rejected on a date so they're at home taking a bath with candles

this is essentially the difference between someone who says very non-whiny things but delivers them in an extremely grating and whiny way, and someone who says very whiny things but says them assertively and with vigor

compare this to something considered archetypally whiny, like Linkin Park circa 2000-2006. the content of the lyrics may contain whiny things, but imagine if it were sung in a foreign language you didn't understand. everything else about the composition is aggressive and high-energy, from the guitars to the character of the drums to the way the lyrics are delivered to the chord progressions. everything is like an explosion, even if the lyrics are asinine.

I can't understand anything the singer in this track is saying, for example. it could be that he's singing about how his mom wouldn't give him enough allowance to buy an XBox for all I know, but everything else about the song is non-whiny and more like a blast of energy.

I think this sufficiently articulates why I like certain music over others even if that music is considered "bad" by people who suppose an objective scale in this domain, but if pressed I could go further into detail

Arch0wl 08-6-2013 07:21 AM

Re: Choofers and music
 

this is how I feel listening to almost all indie rock or alt-rock like Radiohead, and I hate this feeling


this is how I feel listening to brostep with a sick drop, enormously satisfying feelings

while obviously this is a really crude comparison I think it gets the point across well enough


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