Overheard at a convenience store this evening

[Soundfield]

Composing seems like it was too easy for Mozart, like giving a kid dot-to-dot pictures. .

Only if you were to believe the largely fictional Mozart portrayed in the “Amadeus” film. The reality was very different, as set out in his private letters….

….an extraordinary record of the life and struggles of a truly extraordinary man.

 

[JonUrban]

Music is so personal that you really can't judge it from another's point of view. If you could, we'd all be listening to the same stuff, and that's not good.

I cringe when I hear an interview with a "modern artist" when I hear them say they go into the studio, the producer puts on some beat loops with a backing track he came up with, then she starts singing whatever comes into her head to that beat and that's the song. I don't know why this bothers me, but in my mind, the producer is just as much the songwriter as the artist in this case.

I suppose sitting down at a piano or guitar and creating the melody and lyrics to me is more pure songwriting, but who am I to say. If a good tune comes out of a beat/chord box, who cares? If people like it, and it is loved by many, then that's the way of the world.

Crank it up!

 

[aludra]

Yeah Jon, somehow singing to a loop track does not really constitute songwriting in my book.....I mean sometimes it can be cool...but can you get away with an unplugged concert with beat loops? You can be unplugged with an acoustic guitar or piano....but that's so old fashioned isn't it!

 

[windhoek]

Only if you were to believe the largely fictional Mozart portrayed in the “Amadeus” film. The reality was very different, as set out in his private letters….
View attachment 55562
….an extraordinary record of the life and struggles of a truly extraordinary man.

Yes, perhaps I've been influenced by Hollywood. But my feelings remain... along with pair of sharp pencils. Harsh, perhaps, but true.

 

[JonUrban]

Yeah Jon, somehow singing to a loop track does not really constitute songwriting in my book.....I mean sometimes it can be cool...but can you get away with an unplugged concert with beat loops? You can be unplugged with an acoustic guitar or piano....but that's so old fashioned isn't it!

I admit that coming up with the verbiage and melody (no matter how melodic it may be) is in a sense writing, I just feel that the person who put together the loops and the instruments in the track is just as much a songwriter as the "artist".

At least in my mind anyway. Without that track, artist cannot do his/her thing.

 

[Circular Vibes]

All I can say is that I always bought music because I enjoyed it and felt that in 20 years I'd still enjoy it. I learned this early as I bought my first LP, the Grease soundtrack and in 6 months I was so sick of it that I gave it to a girl at school. I was about 8 or 9 years old and never bought stuff without thinking of the long term enjoyment again. That album cost $6.98 back then and my allowance was $2 weekly. Todays music doesn't pass the same test very often for me. Now that radio doesn't really have a top hits format like in days past, I really don't have a "normal" way to hear new stuff. I am not really a Youtube user much like my nieces and nephews. I miss going to the local record shop and buying the latest singles or anticipating the latest LP release of a favourite artist. QQ has sort of replaced this for me. The big thing that bothers me is that as I get older I am listening to the lyrics more and todays topics upset me. I like that big hit from Billie Eilish but the lyrics and video bother me. I feel the same way about Ed Sheeran. The death of the 45 killed my interest in new music.

 

[doity]

And sophistication is no measure of greatness either: Mozart may well have been one of the most skilled composers ever, but almost everything I've heard by him makes me want to shove pencils in my ears!

Never been a big fan of Mozart either. To me it is good background music at best. But JS Bach is a different story. To me his compositions are the basis of so much good music from his era going forward. A true pioneer in a way that can be said of only a select few ever in music.

 

[mandrix]

The local radio station here is Country. That's OK, although I don't listen to the radio much unless I'm in my wood shop. I'm a longtime Country music fan, but it took some time to get adjusted to the "new" Country and find that there are still artists I can listen to. There's a "Classic Rock" station I can pick up but it's the SOS I got burned out on years ago. I mean Robert Palmer is OK and all but I get tired of listening to the same old one or two songs. So yeah, ditto on not having a whole lot to listen to on the radio these days.
I'm actually actively digging up old recordings of jazz & rock favorites of mine on DVD. Usually the video is bad, is in stereo (but I'm sometime surprised!). e.g. I recently found a live film/recording of a concert in Japan in 1995 with Lee Ritenour & Larry Carlton. Video bad/sound good, surprisingly. I've got a few samples burned for my Dr. even.
Mike Stern, Robben Ford, David Sanborn, Steve Gadd, Charlie Daniels, Roy Buchanan etc are still entertaining me all anew with each acquisition.

 

[popshop]

Slightly off-topic, but Got My Mind Set On You is a cover, originally from 1963:


Also I would say that there is always good music being made, it's just harder to find now because there is so much more music in general.

 

[furui_suterioo]

New country to me sounds just like modern pop/rap except using "country" instruments and subject matter. Speaking of country, I was listening to Underground Album by David Allan Coe, it is the dirtiest/funniest country album I've heard in a long time, course it can't be played on the radio.

 

[j9]

Also I would say that there is always good music being made, it's just harder to find now because there is so much more music in general.
[/QUOTE]

This!

So many people making music. So, yes, if you're looking for new music of your liking, it just takes a little more effort to find it these days.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

The local radio station here is Country. That's OK, although I don't listen to the radio much unless I'm in my wood shop. I'm a longtime Country music fan, but it took some time to get adjusted to the "new" Country and find that there are still artists I can listen to. There's a "Classic Rock" station I can pick up but it's the SOS I got burned out on years ago. I mean Robert Palmer is OK and all but I get tired of listening to the same old one or two songs. So yeah, ditto on not having a whole lot to listen to on the radio these days.
I'm actually actively digging up old recordings of jazz & rock favorites of mine on DVD. Usually the video is bad, is in stereo (but I'm sometime surprised!). e.g. I recently found a live film/recording of a concert in Japan in 1995 with Lee Ritenour & Larry Carlton. Video bad/sound good, surprisingly. I've got a few samples burned for my Dr. even.
Mike Stern, Robben Ford, David Sanborn, Steve Gadd, Charlie Daniels, Roy Buchanan etc are still entertaining me all anew with each acquisition.

Man that stuff is all right up my alley boondocks

 

[jimfisheye]

Our local 'classic rock' station had both volumes 1 AND 2 of Freedom Rock! So it took a whole two weeks to get burned out on the station instead of just one.

Not everyone listens deeply to music. Those that don't really listen look for something popular to put on for noise. For when it's apparently time to put the music noise on because that's what people do. That DOES feel snobbish to say out loud but I think it's simply that. People find their comfortable brands and ask for only that like you do.

I'm told that most people listen to music for nostalgia. You consume the popular thing when it's current. Associate memories with that. Then years later you reminisce about that memory when you hear the song again. I have heard many people describe their listening habits as though this is the main thing or only thing going on.

 

[furui_suterioo]

I was really liking 100.3 The Sound here in LA, it was really getting good, they were playing album sides that I had never heard on the air before, even Uncle Joe Benson moved over from KLOS. Then they just up and said goodbye and disappeared a few years ago. I had just met Joe Benson right before they went off air the last time I won tickets to George Thorogood at the Greek theater. I was really disappointed because they were just getting good, KLOS only plays the same overplayed stuff, KEarth101 plays too much disco and 80s, and there are just as many commercials as TV. Sometimes I listen to 93.1JackFM but again, they also play mostly overplayed songs.

 

[windhoek]

I guess music is art, and, like all art, no matter how the artist intends their work to be received, people receive it according to their perceptual set if not the totality of their experience of life thus far.

One of my friends has practically no interest in music whatsover. She loves books and people and would gladly spend an evening doing something, anything with friends and family. She's been to concerts, of course, but that's not the raison d'etre of why she would have went: she simply loves spending time with the people who matter most in her life... and reading books.

Incidentally, her husband has a huge LP collection and is what you might call a proper music buff - the man knows his stuff. But Pauline, not so much. Is her life less rich than mine or anyone else's? Not a chance of it. She's one of the most socially-rich people I know and who simply has different interests to us here on QQ. She's not weird. She's not to be pitied. She's not a snob. She's her own spirit, following her own path just as we hope to do ourselves. Live and let live, I say.

 

[DuncanS]

I grew up listening to lots of different types of music (my father & grandmother were both incredible musicians) so it was Jazz, Classical, Big Bands, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald etc. and my father once listened to Hawkwind's "In Search Of Space" out of curiosity and could see why I liked it (he didn't! but as he said his parents didn't like his music), he liked my ELP though. So I was sort of taught to listen and to appreciate well written music, even if it didn't appeal to me. Its funny as I have grown older I now like things I didn't before. I would go down the pub to listen to a local band one night, at a rock gig the next, and then down to the folk club the next night, or even to a classical concert with my father. So I have never understood just listening to one 'type' of music. Its all music!

 

[doity]

That is funny about your dad liking ELP. Which reminds me of another Kiss memory from many moons ago. My neighbor used to play a lot of Kiss and AC/DC stuff but he got into Kansas a couple of years after I had. His dad who was kind of a hard ass but very artistic in his own right was pretty impressed with Kansas and was somewhat relieved that his son had veered away ever slightly from dumb/basic rock.

As far as someone saying that they only like one kind of music, I really think that context is the important thing here. If someone said that they only listen to say rock, or R&B, or jazz, or whatever that is a lot different than the guy I mentioned in the original post. There are so many variations in these and other genres that you could say that a person would be getting a well-rounded musical diet.

To me ‘House’ and ‘EDM’ and the like are nothing more than a computerized beat with random sounds thrown in. Sure it might take some talent to put it all together but to be someone’s sole musical intake is just mindless to me. But if it makes them happy........

 

[timbre4]

Music is so personal that you really can't judge it from another's point of view. If you could, we'd all be listening to the same stuff, and that's not good.

I cringe when I hear an interview with a "modern artist" when I hear them say they go into the studio, the producer puts on some beat loops with a backing track he came up with, then she starts singing whatever comes into her head to that beat and that's the song. I don't know why this bothers me, but in my mind, the producer is just as much the songwriter as the artist in this case.

I suppose sitting down at a piano or guitar and creating the melody and lyrics to me is more pure songwriting, but who am I to say. If a good tune comes out of a beat/chord box, who cares? If people like it, and it is loved by many, then that's the way of the world.

Crank it up!

Find me a songwriter, make sure he's alone
Bring me a cheeseburger and the new Rolling Stone
NEIL YOUNG

 

[wavelength]

I know what you mean that it comes off like that......but really. Likely there is some intelligent music out there somewhere but like you said most or all of what I hear is like ‘product’. Almost like a mass corporate sponsored dumbing down of the culture. The last new band that even caught my ears was probably 20 years ago and it was that guy that played the lap steel guitar like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray. Can’t remember his name.

Jeff Healey.

 

[doity]

Jeff Healey.

No I eventually looked it up because it was driving me crazy. Robert Randolph’s Family band.