Here's How: 1994 - Music Diaries - Forums : Best Ever Albums

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

This is definitely one of the most unique scoring systems I have ever encountered. If it's all an addition of other musical reference points with lots of decimals involved, where does the system start? What albums are foundational? And what do you do when a piece of music is really novel and has fewer reference points?
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Repo
BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

baystateoftheart wrote:

This is definitely one of the most unique scoring systems I have ever encountered. If it's all an addition of other musical reference points with lots of decimals involved, where does the system start? What albums are foundational? And what do you do when a piece of music is really novel and has fewer reference points?

Don't fall for it! He's just making this stuff up as he goes along obvs. Wink

#randomexactness

Tha1ChiefRocka
Yeah, well hey, I'm really sorry.

Location: Kansas

noisybeast wrote:

numbers

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Got it. Yeah - I wasn't a huge fan at first, then it grew on me and I dig it, but it didn't like launch into amazingtown either. I don't have a good sense of comedy (we as the questions!) sometimes, so you are joking on the numbers, but your overall review is what you thought? I personally found the arrangements of guitar and bass intriguing. Few were writing in drop D like that in the 90s (for bass anyway). Some claim Radiohead or Muse ripped him off and I can see that, but I also feel like I'd rather listen to them before I put on Grace unless I'm hankering for something new. Anyway, to each their own. I just find the why fascinating.

Looking forward to more how.

NoisyBeast
Lefty

Gender: Male
Location: Phoenix

baystateoftheart wrote:

This is definitely one of the most unique scoring systems I have ever encountered. If it's all an addition of other musical reference points with lots of decimals involved, where does the system start? What albums are foundational? And what do you do when a piece of music is really novel and has fewer reference points?

Great question! It's ALL foundational Very Happy

and it happens to work really well (for me) because I'm reviewing albums from each consecutive year in chronological order, while keeping track of all the scores from the beginning. So I'm not typically rating an album by the sum of it's individual tracks, but trying to capture more of an impressionistic view in broad strokes. Jotting down ideas as the album plays on. Which other artist does it sound like? This can vary from one song to the next. Sometimes the instrumentation grabs me, other times it's the vocals, or lyrics that capture my attention.

It's probably fair to say that every artist is inspired by the ones that arrived before them. I'm presuming that would be entirely unavoidable; whether an artist is directly inspired by (or intentionally paying homage to) other artists by emulating a specific sound or style... or it may occur on a more unwitting subconscious level. Now it feels like I'm bullshitting... so let's try another example.

Mellow Gold by Beck

Fun album, and a novel one as well! I was never a fan of "Loser", and hadn't heard this album in it's entirety until last week. It's kinda goofy and abstract in it's lyrical imagery. So I began thinking of a couple other absurdist albums with which "Mellow Gold" could be compared.

1992's "Pure Guava" by Ween = 92.7672 (minus 3 points, because Ween succeeds in tickling my funny bone with more accuracy) = 89.7672

1991's self-titled debut by Mr. Bungle = 81.3587 (plus 3 points because I enjoy Beck's nutty sense of humor just a smidge more) = 84.3587

And what else? I like to try finding at least a few points of reference, so for the sake of pinning down one more...
Nirvana's "In Utero" from the previous year. There isn't much reason to choose this album except that I know where it sits in my 1993 chart, and it has a rating number assigned to it (87.4552)... and both artists had songs on Alternative radio in 1994. So, what do I think of "Mellow Gold" compared with "In Utero"? I don't like it AS much, so I'll deduct a couple of points = 85.4552. In hindsight, I probably could have picked something more imaginative, like an early Bob Dylan album or something like that. But, whatever.

89.7672 + 84.3587 + 85.4552 = 86.5274 259.5811 / divided by 3 = 86.527
But, I did notice there's just a tad amount of filler on "Mellow Gold", or maybe some ideas work a little better than others... minus one point.
86.527 - 1 = 85.527

So there it is. That's how I decided on the rating for "Mellow Gold".
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Last edited by NoisyBeast on 09/12/2019 13:07; edited 1 time in total

NoisyBeast
Lefty

Gender: Male
Location: Phoenix

Tilly wrote:

Don't fall for it! He's just making this stuff up as he goes along obvs. Wink

#randomexactness

LOL! LMFAO Very Happy

There's some truth to the statement! It's an intuitive process, that could seem as though it's all down to randomness and chance. But I'm satisfied with the results, and usually find that everything shakes out in the charts pretty well. Having several years of practice... developing this technique, I've sort of trained my ears to recognize those patterns which help me identify the "right" reference points. Not saying this system is the only correct way to do it, but I know when I hear the "certain something" that switches on a proverbial light bulb. Idea

When I hear a song by Rancid, and it sounds like The Clash... my instinct to make the comparsion, and most likely guarantee The Clash will come out on top; since they did it first and far better.

Jameth

I make poor use of the 21 possible grades that BEA allows me to use...I don't know how I'd fare grading on your scale of 0-1,000,000.

NoisyBeast
Lefty

Gender: Male
Location: Phoenix

Jameth wrote:

I make poor use of the 21 possible grades that BEA allows me to use...I don't know how I'd fare grading on your scale of 0-1,000,000.

it's still on a scale of zero to one hundred Razz

but even when I started adding the decimals, it didn't take long to find multiple albums were clustered together at 75.5... or 83.25, for example. So it became necessary to fine tune the numbers after rating several thousand albums. d'oh!

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Interesting. So do you only use albums released before the album you’re considering as reference points to compile the rating?
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Jameth

Fair enough, I just think 101 (or even 21) values are enough to get the job done. I'll reserve the use of seven significant figures for chemical equilibrium or scientific notation. Laughing

I have a bunch of albums clustered at 80/100 and 90/100, and with an average rating of 80/100, I tend to grade albums like tests when I should probably start by awarding whole stars, ignoring the numerical grade, and fine tune from there. I'd like to get my average down to 60 or so. But I guess there's no going back for you, with over 8,000 ratings. Shocked