Piano World Home Page Forums General Discussions Musicians Welcome! I Hate Classical Music

At my school....

The kids were on a music camp this year and put all the music together themselves and over the top they had their own raps... which they wrote.


There's also Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park,
The Hilltop Hoods, Limp Bizkit. Rap isn't just the rapper, there is often a band attached.

Oh yeah, and the students didn't write about guns and money, they wrote about being aboriginal (it was a camp for indigenous students), their connection to the land and their people, their feelings and so on. Some of their music was really good and quite professional.

You say they *wrote* about being aboriginal, their land etc and then you go on to say their *music* is actually quite good. I don't know of any *music* capable of saying about one's origins or their land...

oh, you were talking about poetry, not music! my bad...

No need to be so condescending and sarcastic...read the rest of the thread and you won't miss the point.

They also wrote music to go along with the lyrics... The point being that some rappers are actually capable of creating music as well as rap lyrics. It isn't just the lyrics that make rap a style of music.

As for music being able to say things about feelings, well there is plenty out there... what about Smetana and the Moldau??
It might not say it in lyrics but the feel of the music- pitches, rhythms, dynamics etc. There is the woods, the peasants wedding, the hunt. And before you say anything, yes you can kind of tell there is peasants etc around by the music, not just from some blurb at a concert telling you so.

People tend to be comfortable with what they know and tend to stick with what they know.

Hence people liking the kind of music they like and not really giving other music much of a chance.

Though it's true not everyone is going to like every kind of music or every piece of music within a type of music. We all have our own personal likes and dislikes.

Also at a certain age, people tend to want to continue to listen to the music of their youth. That drives me crazy. All the radio stations I listen to for popular music, play so many ancient pieces of music in between - I want to hear NEW music. Not ancient stuff from the 60's and 70's and 80's whatever!

We could debate classical and rap and other things about music all day long and we'd still all never agree on anything.

Jeanne W

I tended to critically and foolishly eliminate much music when I was young, thereby depriving myself of years of pleasure. One of the joys of aging is that I find I am much broader in outlook, willing to listen to and sometimes appreciate much that I would have rejected in my youth. One of the keys to this freedom was the elimination of all negative extra-musical association. For instance, I didn't like Bach for years because of irrelevant associations with Bach the man and what other people said his music was all about. Once I allowed nothing but the pure sound to enter my mind and gave myself the freedom to respond unconsciously to it, I began to like it very much.

Of course the method doesn't work if you just simply do not like the sounds per se, as is the natural right of any listener, but so many people seem to unnecessarily reject large regions of the musical landscape for reasons which have nothing whatever to do with its actual sound. They might harbour negative visual, social and historical images or avoid a type of music because somebody they respect musically tells them it isn't any good.

Jeanne, if you've never listened to a particular piece of music before, be it from the 60's or from the middle ages, it's entirely NEW TO YOU. In fact, it's newer than stuff you've been listening for the past year, say...

Our worldly existence is absolutely relative...

Actually, lyrics don't make any style of music at all. Music is music, poetry is poetry. Completely distinct arts.

So, you know peasants use certain kinds of rhythms, melodies and particular instrumentations and so whenever you listen to sections going like that in the middle of a symphony, you're able to identify the composer is talking about peasants, right? Same for birdsinging in the voice of a violin or flute.

But that only works insofar as you have contextual knowledge of those things. If I'm from a country where no nightingales live and I've never listened to them, I wouldn't know music featuring it is referring to birds. Similarly, the same about peasants from some distant countries or from ancient times.

Music can't say anything by itself, without some contextual knowledge. It can talk directly to your heart and only that.

Actually, though John Williams music is largely Wagnerian-influenced, the Jaws theme is actually "inspired" by the beginning section of Stravinsky's magnificent and revolutionary music for the ballet "The Rite of Spring/Le Sacre du printemps". It was the music that actually brought "art" music to the 20th century. If you haven't yet, I urge you to listen to a recording of it. Pick the original orchestral version, not the piano transcription...

Williams was also "inspired" by it for some of the music for even Star Wars, notably the Tatooine theme.

yeah, like playing the 3 chords while stoned or/and playing the guitar with the teeth...

I love Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saens, and so many others. That stuff hits me right in the heart!! WOW!!

The stuff that really turns me OFF to classical, and I suspect this is true of many other people, is hearing huge orchestral arrangements of classical, where there's this tiny little piccolo solo, played so softly that you have to crank the stereo to barely hear it, and then BOOM!!!!!! HERE COMES THE TIMPANI AND THE HORNS AND THE HUGE STRING SECTION AND IT'S BLOWIN' ME BACK AGAINST THE BACK WALL AND RATTLING THE FRIGGIN' WINDOWS!!!!!

Holy cow... It's louder and more obnoxious than heavy metal ever was!!

My first exposure to Debussy, for instance, was an album of his music being played by an orchestra. It sounded horrible. It really did... I swear, I've never heard anything more cacophonous in my life. Yuck.... It was horrid. It took me a long long time before I gave his music a chance, but when I heard it performed by a piano soloist, it was so beautiful, my eyes welled up with tears.

I think there are people who need to open their minds and actually listen to other forms of music with great solos in them etc, not just what they are comfortable with.... not mentioning any names of course, but they have posted on this page and may have made reference to stoned rock musicians.

And my apologies for assuming that people might know a little about other cultures. The peasant dance is not just due to the peasant rhythms and harmonies, it is also the general roughness and dance feel of it. If you know the country the composer is from and the approximate area he is describing you'd have a fair idea of what the music is doing. So yes, it does involve a very small degree of insight.... I wouldn't say it speaks to my heart, rather to my intellect.

Rhythm is a factor in both music and poetry.


As for the Jaws theme... I did not know that.
but it does bare a great resemblance to parts of the ring cycle.
The Rites of Spring is one of my favourites, I could listen to it day after day after day

I guess it all depends on how you define music - If you go with Varese you will subscribe to 'organised sound' which does open the field enormously. 20th century classical music( Western Art Music) was criticised and derided for not 'being music'. We all have our favourites and while different genres require different levels of technical competence they are all expressions of human experience and emotion. (And you have to hand it to those who make a fortune on very little - but that's a social problem [Media?], not a musical one)

Yes, indeed. To me, serial works sound like richly structured, formaly written streams of noise.

Frank W. you made me laugh! I know exactly what you're talking about. A lot of classical music is impossible to listen to, for instance, at work, where I play CD's at my desk, but keep the volume level down. Some I have to constantly crank up louder to hear the quieter sections and then turn down WHEN THE DRAMA STARTS. This kind of music is best heard at home where I can appreciate the change in dynamics.

Something came to me the other day about this ---what I have to say could possibly be akin to blasphemy or heresy or whatever, at least to some people, but I'll say it anyway....

In a recent thread PW member said his view is every piece of music should have soft and loud parts and a climax, if you will. The idea being that music that is soft and melodious and maintains an even tempo throughout quickly gets boring.

It came to me, could it be that people who have become accustomed to those VERY DRAMATIC TYPES OF CLASSICAL music have become somewhat desensitized? The result being they cannot appreciate a simple, but beautiful piece of music that maintains a quiet elegance throughout the entire piece?

I'M AFRAID NOW.

Please try not to be too hard on me, Fellow PW Members.



Jeanne W

I agree. To explain a little...

The radio station I LOVED changed their format. Up until about 2 years ago, they played mostly tasteful new music and threw in a couple of golden oldies every so often.

Then I read in the newspaper a study that concluded a certain music mix was the most successful for radio stations. And I guess "my" radio station was one of many who changed to that new format.

New Format=75% old music / 25% new music.

If I wanted to hear OLDIES I'd listen to an OLDIES station. And they never play anything obscure, only those songs that make you groan when you hear them YET AGAIN.

GROAN.

I'm getting off my high horse now. Promise.

Jeanne W

P.S. I guess that music is new to any younger people listening. But I think that really they are catering to the people in my age bracket, most of whom DO WANT to hear those old tunes.

THE DREADED DOUBLE POST

I replied to myself!



Sorry.

There is just one type music......it is the music you like!
Wether it is classical,jazz, pop, or contemporary music.

By the way: Music is a way of living. Nothing more, nothing less.

The discussion made me laugh.

Have fun.....by listening to your own music. It is no use to try and convince each other.

Greetings,

Johan B

I had to laugh at the comments which read like "rap is not music , it's poetry or 'just words' or some other such nonsense..." as though the human voice can not be a musical instrument. I'm not a rap fan, but even so, it's not hard to figure out that the human voice can take the role of any instrument including a percussion instrument.

You don't have to like it (I don't), but unless you have your own personal definition of the word "music" that no one else is privy to, you have to admit that it is, in fact, music.

As to what is "good" music or not, "good" has,is and always will be defined as "what the speaker likes". Period.

well, sure. Except, of course, that in rap the human voice isn't used as a melodic instrument to any reasonable degree. They don't actually sing, they talk to a rhythm and that's about it.

...which is why I added Now, I suppose a person could try to make the case that percussion is not music, and the corollary that drummers are not musicians, but that person would not be me.