No Accounting for Taste - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Lowkey

Gender: Male
Age: 27

people care about what other people like more than they should

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Lowkey wrote:

people care about what other people like more than they should

Very true.
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RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Gowi wrote:

Pushing this to the top of the deck since perspectives three years later might find the conversation interesting or prove a viable discussion. But to echo myself here, I still very much believe in the This argument can be simply summarized as "A valid opinion is an educated opinion" ideology.

Fantastic discussion, thanks for bringing it back. Anyone know how to quickly find if I replied to this before without reading it all again?

Also VERY much liked SquishypuffDave's recent comments.

Applerill speaks to pluralism, so me likey that aspect.

Also I don't think this is a discussion about what people like in a teenage peer pressure way, rather a philosophical discussion on whether "high art" exists, is valued higher, or was/is that just a social construct, etc. If it were a discussion about caring , it wouldn't be as interesting as it is.

I think my quick opinion on whether or not an "educated opinion has more value" isn't that the high culture is or should be valued more, a value system on someone's ability to be "cultured/educated" is a bit backwards. I think this all stems from more colonial thought processes which attempted to separate themselves from the heathen/savage. It is kind of a fruitless exercise. A large part of the message of Post-colonialism is to find value in non-Western values, including the arts. Just because another culture isn't as "educated" or refined through "western religion" doesn't make their value any less.

Having said that, I do agree that if all you listen to is Britney Spears and all you watch is re-runs of Friends, you are limiting yourself. Does that make the value of Britney Spears or Friends less... idk, to be honest. Value systems are too complex for me to understand. Also, does it really matter if they do or don't try and listen to more music... stretch themselves with the music they listen to? It's kind of like getting on to me for not knowing trigonometry very well. I suck at it. An elitism of knowledge in this day and age is a laughing matter... not one person could truly be the "Gebildeter Mensch" or Renaissance Man these days... it was easy in those days because they had very limited collective knowledge like we do today. If you were to just read, not understand, but just read every article in Wikipedia (which is totally the source of all truth, right? ahhaha), it'd take you 568498 years (I never make up statistics).

So I suppose it comes down to what value does art really have (according to many German philosophers/artists, art/mythology was to replace religion in the 1800s) in our day and age? Is it just entertainment or does it have other value to it and why?

Meanwhile there's Netflix binge watching and video games that are part time jobs...

Muslim-Bigfoot

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Bottom line is values don't exist in the physical world. All value-judgments are based on implicit principles that we choose to take for granted. Objectivity in the realm of values can only be meaningful in an axiomatic sense (i.e. if you agree on the principles that you're gonna take for granted); Beauty in areas other than music has been shown to be somewhat objective (in the sense that there's consensus on those principles and what they entail in some comparative cases); in mathematics you'd be very hard pressed to find someone that thinks proof of sum of angles in a triangle is 180 as beautiful as Brouwer's fixed point theorem (if you found that person though, you'll have no argument that he's wrong because as we said there are no values in the real world and he's simply not playing the game as you'd expect him to). Also a game of chess played between two newbies ending in a ladder mate is definitely no match in beauty to a positional masterpiece by Karpov taking down his very skilled opponent without him making any apparent mistakes. Of course to see the beauty of latter cases you gotta know some math and chess. I don't think there's a similar situation in popular music tbh.
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"I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."

undefined

my taste is correct and proper and all others are those of heathens and scoundrels

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

dividesbyzero wrote:

my taste is correct and proper and all others are those of heathens and scoundrels

Truth with a capital T. Laughing

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:

Bottom line is values don't exist in the physical world. All value-judgments are based on implicit principles that we choose to take for granted. Objectivity in the realm of values can only be meaningful in an axiomatic sense (i.e. if you agree on the principles that you're gonna take for granted); Beauty in areas other than music has been shown to be somewhat objective (in the sense that there's consensus on those principles and what they entail in some comparative cases); in mathematics you'd be very hard pressed to find someone that thinks proof of sum of angles in a triangle is 180 as beautiful as Brouwer's fixed point theorem (if you found that person though, you'll have no argument that he's wrong because as we said there are no values in the real world and he's simply not playing the game as you'd expect him to). Also a game of chess played between two newbies ending in a ladder mate is definitely no match in beauty to a positional masterpiece by Karpov taking down his very skilled opponent without him making any apparent mistakes. Of course to see the beauty of latter cases you gotta know some math and chess. I don't think there's a similar situation in popular music tbh.

Yup.

The bolded statement though... does that mean DSOTM=...Baby One More Time, or it just isn't significant enough to matter? Not that I really have an opinion, just trying to clarify yours. In other words, what do you mean by popular music?

Great chess analogy.

Muslim-Bigfoot

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

sethmadsen wrote:

Yup.

The bolded statement though... does that mean DSOTM=...Baby One More Time, or it just isn't significant enough to matter? Not that I really have an opinion, just trying to clarify yours. In other words, what do you mean by popular music?

Great chess analogy.

I think it's very unclear ( Wink

). In case of math and chess there's a close relation between skill and beauty that doesn't translate to popular music as strongly; but skill still matters and I think here you can argue for some level of "relative" objectivity. I mean if I pick up the trumpet right now you should be able to decide very easily who's the better musician, me or Miles Davis. But also skill isn't everything, so it has been argued regularly against Miles Davis' technical ability but you can't argue aesthetically based on that point. I think in other forms of music this relation between skill and beauty is stronger (in modal traditions of central Asia and middle-east); if I listened to Shashmaqam or qawwali and made an album of my caricature imitation of the singers of those traditions, a listener in the west that doesn't "know" anything about Shashmaqam may like my imitation and upon hearing the real thing prefer my rendition but I would consider that a parallel to a novice in chess appreciating smothered mate more than Shirov's Bh3 (a move best engines in the world still have trouble to find). Of course I can't argue against this person's enjoyment of my imitation because clearly viscerally he's enjoying it more than the actual version but I guess you see what I'm saying. If you made people in Uzbekistan listen to my imitation, they'd burst out laughing and they're the ones that know about Shashmaqam and have listened to it their whole lives.
_________________
"I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:

sethmadsen wrote:

Yup.

The bolded statement though... does that mean DSOTM=...Baby One More Time, or it just isn't significant enough to matter? Not that I really have an opinion, just trying to clarify yours. In other words, what do you mean by popular music?

Great chess analogy.

I think it's very unclear ( Wink

). In case of math and chess there's a close relation between skill and beauty that doesn't translate to popular music as strongly; but skill still matters and I think here you can argue for some level of "relative" objectivity. I mean if I pick up the trumpet right now you should be able to decide very easily who's the better musician, me or Miles Davis. But also skill isn't everything, so it has been argued regularly against Miles Davis' technical ability but you can't argue aesthetically based on that point. I think in other forms of music this relation between skill and beauty is stronger (in modal traditions of central Asia and middle-east); if I listened to Shashmaqam or qawwali and made an album of my caricature imitation of the singers of those traditions, a listener in the west that doesn't "know" anything about Shashmaqam may like my imitation and upon hearing the real thing prefer my rendition but I would consider that a parallel to a novice in chess appreciating smothered mate more than Shirov's Bh3 (a move best engines in the world still ...le to find). Of course I can't argue against this person's enjoyment of my imitation because clearly viscerally he's enjoying it more than the actual version but I guess you see what I'm saying. If you made people in Uzbekistan listen to my imitation, they'd burst out laughing and they're the ones that know about Shashmaqam and have listened to it their whole lives.

Ok, so I think you are basically saying the old beauty is in the eye of the beholder adage? Almost harkens back to the Reader Response idea of its the interpretation that matters.

But in this situation of Uzbekistan culture vs an interpretation of it... (back to the original question from Gowi)... does it matter? Is it all the same? Is the Uzbek way of looking at it better than the uninformed/uncultured? (am asking everyone)

In other words, to a 5 year old, you or I playing the trumpet might actually be an amazing thing, right, because to them, they haven't really heard a trumpet before.

So is becoming "cultured" (learning theory/scales/form, etc.) increasing the value of the trumpet experience? To be cultured do you have to be a master and have perfect knowledge and form, or can you be "good enough" and still be considered cultured? I mean Jazz is a perfect example of this because the whole base of jazz (almost... at least from what my 5th grade history class taught me) was that it wasn't the extreme perfection of culture... rather the antithesis of it (meaning they broke all the rules of what it mean to be cultured, which I guess this goes back to that whole value system argument).

Kurt Cobain is considered by many one of the greatest "artists" of our time and was terrible (more or less) at both guitar and singing if you compare him to the metal community (they'd make fun of him all the time for it - not being in tune and the such). Yet as a better artist (in my opinion), he connected with people with emotion instead of the predefined intellectual I can hit a high C because I was castrated metal heads (totally uncalled for but I said it cause I'm a terrible human being).

Muslim-Bigfoot

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

sethmadsen wrote:

Ok, so I think you are basically saying the old beauty is in the eye of the beholder adage? Almost harkens back to the Reader Response idea of its the interpretation that matters.

But in this situation of Uzbekistan culture vs an interpretation of it... (back to the original question from Gowi)... does it matter? Is it all the same? Is the Uzbek way of looking at it better than the uninformed/uncultured? (am asking everyone)

In other words, to a 5 year old, you or I playing the trumpet might actually be an amazing thing, right, because to them, they haven't really heard a trumpet before.

So is becoming "cultured" (learning theory/scales/form, etc.) increasing the value of the trumpet experience? To be cultured do you have to be a master and have perfect knowledge and form, or can you be "good enough" and still be considered cultured? I mean Jazz is a perfect example of this because the whole base of jazz (almost... at least from what my 5th grade history class taught me) was that it wasn't the extreme perfection of culture... rather the antithesis of it (meaning they broke all the rules of what it mean to be cultured, which I guess this goes back to that whole value system argument).

Kurt Cobain is considered by many one of the greatest "artists" of our time and was terrible (more or less) at both guitar and singing if you compare him to the metal community (they'd make fun of him all the time for it - not being in tune and the such). Yet as a better artist (in my opinion), he connected with people with emotion instead of the predefined intellectual I can hit a high C because I was castrated metal heads (totally uncalled for but I said it cause I'm a terrible human being).

No, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a one sentence oversimplification and that's what I'm trying to avoid. I think what I'm trying to say is that context defines our words: "better", "objective", etc. I think in the game of "listening to music as a pop product" you couldn't really object to the guy that likes my imitation. But in the game of "listening to Shashmaqam" you probably could, since what he is doing is not participating in the game properly as he isn't playing the game of "listening to Shashmaqam" at all.
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"I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."