El Huesudo II
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Feryl wrote:

You're operating under the assumption that no song is objectively better or worse than another, which I find ridiculous. Are you telling me that Call Me Maybe or Friday have the exact same worth as any other song? Preposterous.

Our perception has nothing to do with the state of reality. I'd need a lot more evidence to convince me that all songs are equal in quality. You can't say that because different people enjoy different songs differently, that makes all songs equally praiseworthy. It's an illogical leap.

The problem lies in where you apply objectivity in terms of music. Production? Composition? Performance? Technique? And even then, in what terms? If a song is made to be catchy and memorable and it does, isn't it objectively good for fulfilling its purpose, despite other criticism that can be done against it?

Also, what is "worth" in this case? Cultural worth? Intellectual worth? Sentimental worth? Practical worth? Would you be so cruel as to mock a young couple whose transcendental song is "Call Me Maybe"?

I mean, sure. I don't like Call Me Maybe. I don't like Friday. I don't like All About The Bass. I don't like many songs that air on the radio and have videos that get lots of views and that become viral. But I don't like Jingle Bells, and I don't like the Goldberg Variations, and I don't like Sakura Sakura, and I don't like music with heavy use of trumpets; am I gonna say they're all bad? Of course not, because who am I to say it?

Quality is in the ear of the beholder, in this case. To think otherwise is to succumb to sophistry. And to invite a discussion with people you can't understand, and who can't understand you.

Feryl
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Last edited by Feryl (Oct 11, 2021 7:25 pm)

Cortuor
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Honestly, the problem with this discussion is the concept that one of you has to be completely correct. The idea that in a conversation like this that one person is *completely* correct, or another *completely* wrong is ludicrous at best.

It is almost certainly, though I can't say, somewhere in between the extremes of "their is objectively good music and objectively bad music regardless of opinion", and "all musical value lies in the ear of the listener because of opinion and emotion." I don't agree that you can say that something is in all cases objectively less valuable than another, for instance, the music I composed years ago in 30 minutes is laughable, and it is valuable for that very reason. While yes, few people would ever want to listen to this music it is fantastic to bust out for nostalgic and comedic purposes with friends who were there when I composed it and when we thought it was genuinely good. In this situation something that is in many technical ways; mastering, instrumentation, composition, terrible we have still been able to get value out of it in the way of good times laughing at yourself with friends, something that technically good music can't do.

What I am trying to say is that while yes some music is "technically" better, and in a vacuum will always be found to be so, through means of more thoughtful composition, more diverse instrumentation, etc. other music that is possibly more emotionally stimulating through nostalgia or otherwise is valuable for a completely different reason, the lack of a vacuum and the presence of an incredibly dynamic world we live in. The most masterfully performed, technically proficient song to the most poorly performed, basic song have purpose and intrinsic value, to believe that their isn't a situation in which something is in someway valuable is short-sighted.

Everything has intrinsic value should it be properly applied by the person. Don't look for situations where something lacks value, rather the ones that it has an abundance of it in.

Last edited by Cortuor (Dec 24, 2014 6:27 am)

boomlinde
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Sweden
Feryl wrote:

That's quite a large bag of assumptions to pull from my tiny posts.

Almost as if you can guess every single thought coursing through my head. Nicely done, sir.

Did you read the post you responded to? I can't see where it mentions you at all. It does not make any assumptions about you.

Feryl wrote:

Our perception has nothing to do with the state of reality. I'd need a lot more evidence to convince me that all songs are equal in quality. You can't say that because different people enjoy different songs differently, that makes all songs equally praiseworthy. It's an illogical leap.

No one is saying that all songs are equal in quality or that they are all equally praiseworthy. You are the one making a leap. The discussion is about whether the qualities that make a song good are subjective or objective, and you keep setting up straw men like this instead of responding to the arguments.

Feryl wrote:

Why must art be entirely subjective?

Because we have no means to experience it objectively. You said so yourself: "Our perception has nothing to do with the state of reality."

Feryl wrote:

There must be a reason why some things are (for the most part) considered beautiful on a universal level, like mountain views, sunrises, and romantic love. It can't just be a mindless mess of subjective likes and dislikes...

Universal is not the same as objective. Every single being in the universe could share an opinion, which wouldn't necessarily make it true. I think that you fundamentally misunderstand what objectivity is. Otherwise, good non-argument. There must be, it can't be. Those will keep me awake at night.

Mrwimmer
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Los Angeles, CA

Chipmusic.org phi 101

sugar sk*-*lls
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nashville,tn

I'll jump in for a minute only cuz I spent a chunk of change and time studying philosophy. This is a really old argument going way back to Plato. The problem here is that the phrasing is missing qualifiers and results in vague statements.  It is possible to have objective measures that are subjectively created AND subjective measures that are objectively created. You can't make an argument some music is better than another. Better has to refer to a qualifier. You can argue one music is better than another AT something specific. What that specific thing is can be objectively or subjectively described and defined. The scope of this topic goes way beyond what can fit in this format. There have been some eloquent thoughts penned by brilliant thinkers in the topic. I can post some links if anyone is interested. Personally, I think the point is the discussion it  self-music is a communal enterprise, a metaphor for the human condition.

SketchMan3
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NC in the US of America

One thing i will say about pop music... it's much easier to appreciate if you've had experiences that relate to what the songs are talking about and can identify with it. People can identify with shallow stupid uninspired uninteresting things... people often are shallow, stupid, uninspired and uninteresting. wink

Feryl wrote:
El Huesudo II wrote:

But in things so subjective like the quality of mainstream vs non-mainstream music, especially considering the multiple factors that are involved in the experience of enjoying a piece of music, there's no wrong or right. No one is wrong for enjoying that dumb "all about the bass" song (for example), and no one is "in the right" for saying music is worse now because people hear that instead of, say, Mussorgski's Cum Mortuis In Lingua Morta.

This isn't an argument... it's an assertion skirmish.

You're operating under the assumption that no song is objectively better or worse than another, which I find ridiculous. Are you telling me that Call Me Maybe or Friday have the exact same worth as any other song? Preposterous.

Our perception has nothing to do with the state of reality. I'd need a lot more evidence to convince me that all songs are equal in quality. You can't say that because different people enjoy different songs differently, that makes all songs equally praiseworthy. It's an illogical leap.

You kind of missed the point of the assertion you're responding to... Our perception has a lot to do with the value we place on things. Regardless of whatever objectivity you can pull out of your hat, that will never change. Our reality is as we perceive it to be. Everything we do, see, think, dream... is influenced by our experiences and our perception of said experiences. You could, hypothetically, argue that a Liszt piece is objectively superior to an Earth Wind and Fire single... but if it doesn't touch something meaningful in the listener's mind then it doesn't have much value to that individual. Whether you like it or not your criteria for "good" aren't really every going to matter in the grand scheme of individuals enjoying music.

"Equally praiseworthy" and "of value" aren't the same thing. And it doesn't matter two figs to an individual whether he's the only one in the world who likes a song that everyone else considers objectively worthless. And that is perfectly fine. At the end of the day, all that matters to the individual soul is the individual's perception of everything around the individual.

Last edited by SketchMan3 (Dec 24, 2014 5:19 pm)

Feryl
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[removed]

Last edited by Feryl (Oct 11, 2021 7:25 pm)

Feryl
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[removed]

Last edited by Feryl (Oct 11, 2021 7:24 pm)

El Huesudo II
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Feryl wrote:

I'm talking about things like "in things so subjective like the quality of [...] music, there's no wrong or right" and "quality is in the ear of the beholder [...] to think otherwise is to succumb to sophistry." If one musical taste is never objectively worse than another, then how could all songs be anything but equally praiseworthy, if their worth is completely defined by the listener's subjective experience?

Because we still have the freedom of though required to know if we wish to praise it or not. We still have the freedom of taste to like or dislike something, and the escape of something "not being our cup of tea".

There's no need to praise music, after all. We're free to do so, as we're free to try to communicate why we like something (even though some people would see it as a justification instead of an explanation). But we're also free not to do it.

Feryl wrote:

What I meant was that our perception alone cannot alter reality as such. For example, claiming that Call Me Maybe is a masterfully complex piece of songwriting cannot make it so. But we do have a means to judge certain qualities of music (as sugar explained) as better or worse than others, don't we, using intelligence and objective factors of quality, like technical expertise, complex songwriting, and intelligent structure? Otherwise, what's the point of expressing opinions or writing reviews?

Except in this case, you're pinpointing the subject of discussion about the song; you're selecting the area of objectivity... Call Me Maybe is NOT a masterfully complex piece of songwriting, and very few people would dare to call it so. But you're coming off as someone who only judges music in regards of the complexity of its composition. Is that somehow different to the people who would judge it for its monetary success? Because in that regard, Call Me Maybe was a hit. I don't need to start a discussion between those 2 polarizing views to predict the kind of fight that would ensue.

Feryl wrote:

What does your perception do to you / others around you / other people's perceptions? Is it more important to align your perception of the world as it really is (outside of yourself), or as you wish it to be? What if a murderer perceives himself doing good by killing innocent children? Is his perception all that matters, or is it important for him to align his perception with basic moral law, as determined by others?

Except perception is all that we have. We have no way of experiencing anything without our perception of what is; there's no exchanging. At most we can only try to imagine what it's like on the other side, but that's just a mental simulation. It has limits.

And please refrain from using analogies with shock value on this discussion. This isn't a debate about morality, this is a debate about art; there's no need to invoke debate techniques from other topics into this one.

Fearofdark
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Brighton/Southampton

Are you telling me that Call Me Maybe or Friday have the exact same worth as any other song?

I didn't read any of this debate but I just wanted to chime in and say that I like both of those songs a lot - while both have flawed lyrics, they are both also deeply catchy, accessible feel-good pop songs and Call Me Maybe also has notable production and instrumentation which I really like.
Certain songs are worth more to me than others, but of course, ones perception of worth when it comes to music varies from person to person.

Back to the original topic at hand; love of composing and music in general is a huge driving force for me. Every time I felt like quitting (which has been a *lot* of times) or times where I go through a slump, listening to music and trying to reconnect with what I loved about it the first time helped. Comparing oneself to others in the sense of "this guy's better than me" is something I personally try and avoid - in my mind, "they're doing their thing, I'm just doing my thing, which is different from their thing."

Last edited by Fearofdark (Dec 24, 2014 6:04 pm)

SketchMan3
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NC in the US of America
Feryl wrote:
SketchMan3 wrote:

At the end of the day, all that matters to the individual soul is the individual's perception of everything around the individual.

But perception alone isn't enough, is it? What does your perception do to you / others around you / other people's perceptions? Is it more important to align your perception of the world as it really is (outside of yourself), or as you wish it to be? What if a murderer perceives himself doing good by killing innocent children? Is his perception all that matters, or is it important for him to align his perception with basic moral law, as determined by others?

Yes, It is enough. At the end of the day it's whatever is in the individual's head. Nothing else matters. Unless you perceive it to matter.

:3

And yeah.. original topic.. imo.. if you want to keep making music then go ahead. if you don't... stop.

sandneil
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i also like call me maybe

regarding the original question i think the only things ive ever been good at in my life have been things i did a lot and tried hard at and tried to improve at. i also dont think theres ever been a thing in my life where i wasnt pretty shit when i started out *flexes the movie dad bicep*

so by all means give up but what are you going do next and what are you going to do when thats hard too

menthes
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"If you can't distinguish between good or bad in the arts they disappear. There's no point in hanging a painting on the wall when the bare wall looks just as good. There's no point to symphonies when scratches from the record or hum from the record player sound just as good."

Last edited by menthes (Dec 24, 2014 8:57 pm)

8BIT KIDD
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New Zealand

JUST MAKE SOME TUNES!

boomlinde
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Sweden
Feryl wrote:
boomlinde wrote:

Did you read the post you responded to? I can't see where it mentions you at all. It does not make any assumptions about you.

Huh? "Look, I used to be like you. I thought I was pretty good at arguing [...] as smart as you think you sound [...] you're going to sound like an asshole [...] be nice to people [...] there's a lot you could be missing"

I'm sorry, that does make a lot of assumptions about you. For some reason I thought that you responded to the post below yours.

Feryl wrote:

I'm talking about things like "in things so subjective like the quality of [...] music, there's no wrong or right" and "quality is in the ear of the beholder [...] to think otherwise is to succumb to sophistry." If one musical taste is never objectively worse than another, then how could all songs be anything but equally praiseworthy, if their worth is completely defined by the listener's subjective experience?

A song could be worse than another on a subjective basis. Do you imagine that people judge music objectively? There are things that we can know objectively about pieces of music based on how we define the terminology, but these knowable qualities, like "how many notes are there", "what scale is it", "how many beats are there per bar" etc. are not the qualities we judge music by in terms of how much praise it deserves. I have no idea how acknowledging that is to succumb to sophistry, but I'm sure that there is a rational basis for that suggestion.

Feryl wrote:

What I meant was that our perception alone cannot alter reality as such. For example, claiming that Call Me Maybe is a masterfully complex piece of songwriting cannot make it so.

Good, we both agree on that. If you establish a definition of musical complexity, I'm sure that you can find songs that are more or less complex, but there exists many such definitions.

Feryl wrote:

But we do have a means to judge certain qualities of music (as sugar explained) as better or worse than others, don't we, using intelligence and objective factors of quality, like technical expertise, complex songwriting, and intelligent structure? Otherwise, what's the point of expressing opinions or writing reviews?

Even if you think that the point of expressing an opinion or reviewing music is to establish or maintain some sort of objective means to judge things, you still have to agree that these things fail horribly at that. People often express opinions because it's nice to have them acknowledged by your peers. As for reviews, in a good review the judgement is usually given some context in terms of the basis of that judgement. If there was an objective basis for judging music, why would reviews be more than a score? The score itself would be indicative of whether you will like it or not.

Technical expertise, complex songwriting and intelligent structure are neither objective qualities nor necessarily part of the definition of "good" or praiseworthy music. Let me explain where I come from. The way I see it, objectivity only exists in theoretical and and limited systems for which we define the rules in such a way that truth is inferable by means of the definition of the system. The prime example is of course something like mathematics. Math can be used to model things, but you can't really use it to prove anything outside its own system. You can create a mathematical model of a real world thing, but you can't know your model to be true or consistent. Whenever you observe something that is consistent with your model, you can only know it to be true for the instance that you observed. More importantly, there isn't much basis for the idea that we can observe reality objectively, so even in the instances we observe something, we can't know our observation to be true. From this point of view, the idea that music is somehow objective is ridiculous.

Feryl wrote:

You're correct in that example, but what I'm trying to say is that these things seem to indicate some objective standard of beauty that the human person is normally able to see and respond to (as in the sunrise example).

Unless you agree that the notion that they indicate some objective standard of beauty is another non-argument that doesn't support anything you've said, I think that you'll have to explain how they indicate that. I mean, is there any more to indicate that these are even universal to more than the small fraction of humans in your cultural vicinity that share your opinion? There are a lot of interesting theories on why some things seem beautiful to humans in general in fields like evolutionary biology.