The Schwa Sound
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8/17/2008 9:31:24 PM
How to love bad music
There is the question we all like to answer, “What are your influences?” and we pretty much put our favorites. But it’s true that the music you hate has influenced you, the music you hate has been stored away in your head and when you go to songwriting you do anything you can to avoid sounding like the music you hate! So if you read back, say, lyrics that you wrote and think, “that is toooooo sappy” it’s because it reminds you of sappy lyrics in bad songs you’ve heard and so you throw it out. So bad music influences us in a backwards/negative kind of way, but influences almost just as much as what we love.
I remember when I was a kid my dad and I were in the car and he went in the store while I sat and fiddled with the car radio. I found a rock station and when my dad returned he didn’t notice I had changed the station….until… Zep’s Rock & Roll came on and my dad growled, “ damn hippy music!” as he punched the button back to the news. Thirty years later that same song is being used to sell Cadillacs. What was once on the fringe is now mainstream.
The most famous example of the bizarre becoming the standard is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. At the first performance the audience rioted and was yelling and protesting so loudly that the dancers couldn’t hear the orchestra. They had come to see a pretty ballet with pretty music and the dancers looked like they were dressed in canvas bags and the music struck them as absolutely chaotic and completely incomprehensible. But The Rite of Spring has become a touchstone piece. What was once hated is now mainstream.
Elvis was hated as a young whipper-snapper who made girls scream. But many Americans changed their mind when Ed Sullivan put his hand on Elvis' shoulder and said, "This is a fine young man, yes a fine young man." After Ed's endorsement, Elvis slowly became mainstream.
Our ideas of what is good and bad can sometimes change.
There have been lots of groundbreakers that were hated at first. Some bad music is just bad and it always will be. Some others have just been ahead of their time. Hated by some and loved by some, it was only later that they were understood.
We’ve all been stuck in an elevator of a doctor’s office listening to something we hate. Next time try to remember what it is that makes it sooooo bad and then when you go to write your next great song you will know just what to avoid. Then you can use the influences that you do like to craft the song into what you want. That way you learn how to enjoy bad music.
For example, click this, whoooo really bad, see for yourself! : http://www.iacmusic.com/artist.aspx?ID=120091
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