The effect of breeding on musical tastes. by philosophuck on The Pipeline at IndieMusicPeople

The effect of breeding on musical tastes.

There are some things in life I don't understand. Exactly what kind of convoluted world is this freaking earth, anyway? Where excrutiating songs can be heralded as great works and great works fall thru the crevasses like mercury? I know they say it's all subjective but the person who first said that liked his Grandma Gretchen singing or should I say warbling Battle Hymn of the Republic. The man who shot Liberty Valence was most definitely not the greatest of them all. When the masses like vile-smelling garbage, how can you protest properly? Can you call them liars? Can you call them blue eyed duplicitous tricksters with ulterior motives? When they seemingly convince themselves that donkey dung is alluring treasure should you lock them up and give them morphine? If we sent all the taste-challenged morphous mongrels to Gitmo, would the smog clear and the wholesome obvious truth set the good music free to inspire more of the same?

It should not be anyone's life purpose to encourage tripe scrapple. But how wrong is it to dam the tide of mediocrity? Can somebody stand guard and call in the men in white suits the next time somebody reveres a steaming pile of fungus? It's a dirty job because it requires you to listen.

(The above is an excerpt from my book The Power of Positive Negativity)

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Roach up your nose

7/5/2008 8:43:57 AM

There are always going to be varied degrees of what may be deemed as quality within art of every form... and I understand that frustration ~ why is it some musicians get financial support, and promotion where others don't?... and why do people accept it?

BTW, your link doesn't work. :-)

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Richard Scotti

7/5/2008 9:20:05 AM

So many questions, so little time. I try not to get over wrought about why bad songs become hits, or why bad thngs happen to good people, or why people vote against their own interests or why the good die young, or why reality TV is getting sicker and sicker and more and more poplular, or why the "Legally Blonde" movie was made into a Broadway musical. Some people are more easily bainwashed than others.

Advertising tells those people what to buy and what to watch and who to vote for and they follow these instructions because they have trouble thinking independently and they are bascially programmed to think and act a certain way. The establishment reinforces stereotypes like "hippies do this and Gen X does that, or all young people hate 60's music etc ect.. This is the divide and conquer strategy that is used in advertising as well as politics. By dividing people up into little categories like "soccer mom" or "blue collar worker" or "Baby Boomer", it is much easier for the powers that be to pit people agaginst each other so they can't acheive the solidarity they need to fight the system.

Avoid generalizations and breakdown stereotypes as much as humanly possible. In advertising and politics you are being sold something. Examine the product before you buy. Think independently. The more new thinking there is, the less crap can be pushed on people. Don't let other people define you and don't let the establishment define you as a demographic. As far as bad music being praised or good music being ignored...well, maybe some people just have different standards. (would you believe...crappy taste?)

There are cool and uncool people in every age group, every race, every profession. If everyone or everything was cool, we wouldn't be able to measure coolness because we wouldn't have a standard to measure it against. I believe that as a society we are entering a new era where there is going to be massive change. It starts as a change in thinking and leads to action. Some people will get it sooner than others. I believe that young people coming up now will be the new
"greatest generation" and will save the world with "new thinking". But anyone can get involved in this peaceful revolution no matter what age they are. We will never have a utopia or a perfect society, but we will have change and I believe it will mostly be for the better. The logic you seek will return. It all starts in the mind.

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Ansel Denny

7/5/2008 9:28:21 AM

Hello, new poster here responding to a recent other thread asking for new posters.

I'd say it has become taboo for music theorists to ask why we like what we like: our seekers have forgotten what they are searching for. To be sure, we can't account for tastes, in general, because people have various preferences. But this means only that we have to find the causes of this diversity of tastes, and this in turn means we must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.

If explaining minds seems harder than explaining songs, we should remember that sometimes enlarging problems makes them simpler! The theory of the roots of equations seemed hard for centuries within its little world of real numbers, but it suddenly seemed simple once Gauss exposed the larger world of so-called complex numbers. Similarly, music should make more sense once seen through listeners' minds.

In other words there's a lot more going on than meets the eye of the beholder and the eye of the beholder of the beholder if you can grasp that mirror against mirror tunnel concept

Ansel Denny

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7/5/2008 11:59:35 AM

I'm still trying to digest the ' snake eating itself ' theory, as well as the 'dog chasing it's tail' theory, I have completely abandoned ever grasping the 'flatulence verses helium' theory quite some time ago due to a dangerous circle-jerk twitch that was manifesting on the right side of my face thus making it impossible for me to toot my own horn.

And, there was that issue with the half shaven poodle that lived next door that was always telling me to kill people as well, but I figured that was just a coincidence.

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Steve Ison

7/5/2008 4:11:16 PM

"I'd say it has become taboo for music theorists to ask why we like what we like: our seekers have forgotten what they are searching for. To be sure, we can't account for tastes, in general, because people have various preferences. But this means only that we have to find the causes of this diversity of tastes, and this in turn means we must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption"

Hi Ansel This is the best book by a mile i've read that deals with some of those things..Ian MacDonald was such a beautiful, brilliant writer...

If you (or anyone else) knows of any books roughly on this subject (not too overly intellectual or stuffed with unapproachable music theory) PLEASE point them my way as i really want to understand it more...:)

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