Best Ever Albums

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:50:45 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/22/2015 19:50

permafrost wrote:

Yeah, that's where I thought you might be heading with it, but do you think that there is any merit to pondering the objective qualities of music (not to say universal abstract qualities, but more using objective in the sense of "corporeal," "physical," "the sound waves themselves,") that pique interest and do not in ourselves individually? Do you think there's some amalgamation of cultural and these aforementioned "objective" factors that can create something of a mosaic against which our subjective evaluations fly, or do you think we engage otherwise?

To bring it to the park analogy and to simplify a bit, after going to enough parks or listening to enough music, do you think there are musical proxies to mountain ranges that can be taken in and acknowledged as being beyond the scope of one trip? What do you think the impacts of that are on our tastes and preferences? Or yours in particular?

Yes, but I think they're very hard to pin down. From the purely quantitative standpoint, there are mathematical techniques that could give you a measure of "complexity" in a particular piece of music and these could, in turn, give you a pretty good idea of how much effort a human would have to expend to pick out the patterns. This certainly wouldn't be a good measure of "quality" for any practical purpose, seeing that it ignores lyrics, emotion, cultural context, etc., but it might give you a very crude measurement of the extent of the mountain ranges in our analogy.

However, I tend to treat the properties of music as purely subjective in casual conversation. It's very difficult to determine ahead of time whether I can expect universal agreement on any particular aspect of my experience with it. What's more, I find I tend to be more "interested" in lyrical mountain ranges (e.g., Bob Dylan, Joanna Newsom) than complexity in the melody/arrangement... and I don't know how I would even begin to quantify lyrical depth.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:35:31 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:35

sp4cetiger wrote:

Yeah, I was a little hesitant to use the park analogy for this reason, but I wanted to keep it simple for fear of obscuring the main message. Yes, the judgement is still subjective, so some people might find Beyonce Presley State Park to be more interesting than the other, but the question is not about the park/music itself, it's about the feeling we get after or during our experience of it.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Tap — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:32:59 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:32

I don't really get this dichotomy. I listen to the stuff I listen to because I enjoy it. This is fun, exciting music

Link

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:28:57 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:28

permafrost wrote:

While I appreciate your analogy and largely agree, allow me to play devil's advocate and pose the following question: with a park, there is some quantitative way of demarcating the space you have to explore, but with music, that's a lot blurrier. For example, with pop music, I think that - and this might just be the '80s post-modern media studies sympathizer in me - there might be as yet unexplored depths in anything I listen to and that cultural norms influence me to find something "interesting" or dismiss something as "merely enjoyable" (again to briefly erect this as a strict-ish binary). However, when I read Armond White review Tyler Perry or Adam Sandler films, I might disagree with his interpretations a lot of the time, but I can see that there is a dimension of extreme depth that can be teased out by the right critic or appreciator. But maybe this line of thought just delves into my personal grappling with what I "allow" to interest me and what I don't. I shun academics who find free jazz to just be cluttered noise that can be set to the side and dismissed as uninteresting, but I also tend to be completely unmoved to further dissection after I listen to about 99% of indie rock albums.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Applerill — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:27:00 GMT

Author: Applerill

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:27

permafrost wrote:

However, when I read Armond White review Tyler Perry or Adam Sandler films, I might disagree with his interpretations a lot of the time, but I can see that there is a dimension of extreme depth that can be teased out by the right critic or appreciator. But maybe this line of thought just delves into my personal grappling with what I "allow" to interest me and what I don't.

I can summarize this well though in a Sun Ra quote that he used when confronted by musicians about the "corniness" of disco numbers he was handing out: "What you call corny is someone's hopes and dreams. Don't be too hip."

I love you already, Bro. You really "get it". Also, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is one of the most narratively bizarre films I've ever seen, and y'all should get on that.

I guess that there really is a difference between "interesting" and "enjoyable", but we shouldn't have the difference affect our listening. The mind and heart are both sexual organs, so if they give you a boner, it's all good.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:14:23 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:14

While I appreciate your analogy and largely agree, allow me to play devil's advocate and pose the following question: with a park, there is some quantitative way of demarcating the space you have to explore, but with music, that's a lot blurrier. For example, with pop music, I think that - and this might just be the '80s post-modern media studies sympathizer in me - there might be as yet unexplored depths in anything I listen to and that cultural norms influence me to find something "interesting" or dismiss something as "merely enjoyable" (again to briefly erect this as a strict-ish binary). However, when I read Armond White review Tyler Perry or Adam Sandler films, I might disagree with his interpretations a lot of the time, but I can see that there is a dimension of extreme depth that can be teased out by the right critic or appreciator. But maybe this line of thought just delves into my personal grappling with what I "allow" to interest me and what I don't. I shun academics who find free jazz to just be cluttered noise that can be set to the side and dismissed as uninteresting, but I also tend to be completely unmoved to further dissection after I listen to about 99% of indie rock albums.

I can summarize this well though in a Sun Ra quote that he used when confronted by musicians about the "corniness" of disco numbers he was handing out: "What you call corny is someone's hopes and dreams. Don't be too hip."

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Fri, 22 May 2015 14:07:06 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/22/2015 18:07

This still seems pretty muddled to me. I can understand how "interesting" and "enjoyable" would be an unimportant distinction for someone who spends most of their time listening to albums they've heard 100 times before, but I doubt that's the case for many of the folks here.

Maybe part of the problem is that the terms sound as if they're describing the music itself, when in fact they're really subjective descriptions of one's experiences. No music is intrinsically interesting or enjoyable, it's only such as the listener takes it. With this in mind, it's hard for me to understand how someone would have trouble distinguishing when they found something interesting as opposed to merely enjoyable.

To clarify how I'm thinking of these terms, I'll try a non-musical example. Suppose you're lazing about on a sunny Sunday afternoon and it suddenly strikes your fancy to take a jaunt about the countryside in a state-sanctioned natural preserve. There are two local preserves, both of which you've visited once before, and both of which have something positive to offer. In the first, Beyonce Presley State Park (named after the buck-toothed mountaineer of local folklore), there is relatively little space to traverse in your proposed jaunt, but your previous experience was highly pleasurable and you're sure that a repeat visit would yield similar felicity. In the other direction down the highway can be found Joanna Zappa Coltrane National Preserve, a vast mountainscape that you were only able to get a small taste of in your previous visit. Although you enjoyed your first visit well enough, what really urges you to return is the many yet-undiscovered pleasures that could lie in wait in some hidden valley or spring.

Which park do you visit? Does the answer change after 10 or 20 visits?

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

craola — Thu, 21 May 2015 18:34:39 GMT

Author: craola

Posted: 05/21/2015 22:34

WiLD BRiDLeD wrote:

The albums I've listened to the most have lost a lot of the "interesting" factor to me because I've already stolen every fruit from the table, hyper-analyzing them to death. I still find them quite enjoyable, but what made them interesting on the tenth listen was the depth of the mysteries - the parts of the album I still didn't quite understand (be it from production, writing or technical skills).

On the other hand, the level of enjoyment I have for albums I've heard once is relatively low, and the only way to get to the truly "enjoyable" level is to be interesting enough for me to get there.

So the music I find most "enjoyable" is the same music I find most "interesting", but the catch is that in the end, it's more enjoyable than interesting. So...it's a catch-22. It's both, but it's neither.

TL;DR: Norman Bates is right.

Life is hard, man.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

meccalecca — Thu, 21 May 2015 17:30:40 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 05/21/2015 21:30

Norman Bates wrote:

1. I don't want to sound too positive, but I don't think so.

It's all good. I mean, there's obviously pleasure in experiencing something interesting no matter what.

I guess I'm kind of thinking of things that may be more interesting in theory than execution

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Norman Bates — Thu, 21 May 2015 17:27:05 GMT

Author: Norman Bates

Posted: 05/21/2015 21:27

meccalecca wrote:

Norman, Have you ever heard a record that you felt was particularly interesting, but left you with very little desire to return again for the sake of pleasure?

On that note, 4'33 is something that takes this to the extreme in that it's exceptionally more interesting than enjoyable.

1. I don't want to sound too positive, but I don't think so.

2. I don't even agree with you on 4'33. I think that, among its admirers, the sheer idea of 4'33 existing and being designed as it was is a pleasure and an enjoyment. I don't particularly enjoy 4'33 (not any more than I would enjoy four and a half minutes of silence at home, and probably less), but then again I'm not sure I found the idea interesting more than 4 minutes and 33 seconds in all in my whole life anyway.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:44:23 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:44

permafrost wrote:

Surely, no single term can gather up any substance without loads of (stated or unstated) context, so I'd agree that if one were to reduce all music to a spectrum between the two or to choose one or the other to describe a piece of music, much less their "taste" as a whole without any sort of elaboration, it would be quite silly, but isn't the point of discussion to provide that context?

Failing that being of interest to you, what terms (or otherwise summarized factors) do you think are more relevant in serious discussions to understand taste?

I phrased it incorrectly. I think either of the terms can spark discussion pretty well and that someone utilizing it can very well be in a serious music discussion. It's not like I think these terms should never be used or anything. it's just that what's important to me is the subsequent explanation of these very broad terms. Just like any form of discussion, things become irrelevant or relevant depending on what's being discussed so I was extremely premature with the quote "Essentially, i find these two terms to be irrelevant in any serious discussion or attempt to understand someone's taste". It's a wrong statement that I made because of my lack of time while creating it.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:37:54 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:37

permafrost wrote:

In other words, an interesting album will stay interesting for a long time, and there is some kind of pleasure that can be derived from confronting it time and time again.

I once had a drummer whose day job was as a graduate student in psychology. He said he had been studying an effect (I don't remember what it was called) where human beings have a tendency to develop a greater affection for things the harder they've worked to appreciate them. He then seemed frustrated at the possibility that his love for certain types of complex music may actually be an "artifact" of this effect. In other words, it seemed to him that there was nothing special about the music itself that made him love it, but rather his pleasure came from the work that went into understanding it.

And this makes evolutionary sense, right? Nature ought to reward us after undergoing great effort to understand a complex system. Certainly this could be considered a kind of "enjoyment," but it's noticeably different from what seems like the more emotional response we have to, say, pop music. Is this the way that others here are distinguishing these two terms: interesting vs. enjoyable?

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

meccalecca — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:32:11 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:32

Norman Bates wrote:

'Interesting' is 'enjoyable'.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

meccalecca — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:29:07 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:29

permafrost wrote:

You really summed up my own response to Happy's statement.

We can surely elaborate in more detail in what may make something interesting and enjoyable to ourselves.

For instance, what's interesting will vary from person to person, and a lot of the time it will be dependent on previous listening experiences. The first dub album you ever hear will likely be interesting even if it's not a particularly great or innovative one, simply due to the context that it's the first you've heard.

My own personal enjoyable of albums is wide ranging and set off by a multitude of variables, but lyrics and relatability do often play a major role. I've often stated that extremely aggressive forms of music fight against my personality, therefore making them less enjoyable than much more mellow music.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Norman Bates — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:24:50 GMT

Author: Norman Bates

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:24

'Interesting' is 'enjoyable'.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2015 16:13:21 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/21/2015 20:13

Happymeal wrote:

Not extremely intrigued by the topic, but I will state that those broad descriptions are not as important as elaborating upon why one used them. Essentially, i find these two terms to be irrelevant in any serious discussion or attempt to understand someone's taste.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2015 15:43:18 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 05/21/2015 19:43

Not extremely intrigued by the topic, but I will state that those broad descriptions are not as important as elaborating upon why one used them. Essentially, i find these two terms to be irrelevant in any serious discussion or attempt to understand someone's taste.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Applerill — Thu, 21 May 2015 15:38:30 GMT

Author: Applerill

Posted: 05/21/2015 19:38

Actually, I'll really say what I think.

Even though I think you can make almost any kind of music "interesting" and "enjoyable", music is often made with a particular side of this spectrum in mind. Whether we treat them this way or not, some albums were made with the intention of being "broccoli" (in terms of knowledge and insight, not necessarily making you a better person), and some have been made simply to give sensory pleasure.

One thing I worry about is that too often we j(or at least I do 😢 ) judge music purely on the latter; instead of looking for substance in any music we're listening to, we act like mice in that famous experiment with the pleasure button, pressing the button over and over until we die of starvation.

Both of these sides are important in music listening, but I feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice by clinging to much to just one side.

So to answer the question, I try to mix it up with both, and even take "entertainment" albums for analysis and vice versa.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

Patman360 — Thu, 21 May 2015 15:28:45 GMT

Author: Patman360

Posted: 05/21/2015 19:28

meccalecca wrote:

There's definitely a lot of stuff I don't love but find really interesting. And because it's interesting in some way, I'm more likely to come back and give it more listens and see if it clicks.

I'm relating to this somebit, stuff like Natural Snow Buildings or Burial give off this vibe to me and as result I'm still extremely willing to check out their new releases and go back and relisten to them, etc. And I guess I would find some genres to be same, jazz being the standout one.

I also feel though it can be difficult to distinguish between both though, personally I could see myself referring to all the albums on my overall chart as both interesting and enjoyable, albeit with varying ratios of interest to enjoyment I guess. Enjoyment is the more important of the two to me naturally, but I'll always lean towards an album that can keep me interested as well as being enjoyable at the same time.

Re: "Interesting" vs. "Enjoyable"

meccalecca — Thu, 21 May 2015 15:22:50 GMT

Author: meccalecca

Posted: 05/21/2015 19:22

Applerill wrote:

Only uninteresting people are uninterested.

I believe you have this a little mixed up.

Interesting people can make anything interesting, but that doesn't necessarily make everything interesting by nature.