Choofers and music

[hi19hi19]

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]

Re: Choofers and music

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]

Re: Choofers and music

I'm racist

[Choofers]

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]

Re: Choofers and music

this is why i hate aesthetics and philosophy
there is no right answer

[infinity.]

Re: Choofers and music

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]

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]

Re: Choofers and music

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]

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.

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]

Re: Choofers and music

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]

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