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I was having a conversation with a friend about chipmusic that went as such (names and location redacted as to hinder bias)
"In <country> there seems to be a kind of higher average quality bar"
My contention is that music cannot be defined in terms of quality as I believe listening to music is a subjective experience.
I want to hear what everyone else thinks.
he was giving his subjective opinion
i wonder what the <country> was ;s
"In SWEDEN there seems to be a kind of higher average quality bar"
Fix'd ! 
these sort of conversations usually wind up pretty semantic/esoteric, but i personally think that "quality" depends on the ability of an artist to achieve his or her musical intentions, which is just another way of saying "technique" or "chops" or whatever. and it's certainly possible to rate a tracker musicians level of technique in a general way. whether its "good" or "bad" is completely subjective, but the level of technique isnt, and thats what i think "quality" connotates.
tl;dr: "good or bad" is subjective; skill less so
these sort of conversations usually wind up pretty semantic/esoteric, but i personally think that "quality" depends on the ability of an artist to achieve his or her musical intentions, which is just another way of saying "technique" or "chops" or whatever. and it's certainly possible to rate a tracker musicians level of technique in a general way. whether its "good" or "bad" is completely subjective, but the level of technique isnt, and thats what i think "quality" connotates.
tl;dr: "good or bad" is subjective; skill less so
To qualify it was not technical skill that was under assessment, but rather the creative output. i.e. "this artist produces quality songs" (paraphrasing)
well it depends on your definition of "quality" right? i do think that even though music is a subjective experience, it's still possible to identify objective components to a song that contribute to its subjective enjoyment (or lack thereof)..
in my mind, the "quality" of a song involves the following:
1) does the song have strong sense of melody?
2) how much sense does the song make, harmonically?
3) how interesting is it rhythmically?
4) the interplay of components 1-3 -- How complex was it? How much effort was put into it? Did it achieve the composer's intent?
5) X-factor: did the artist try to evoke something in the song? how well did he/she convey it? how did i feel after listening to the song?
My favourite songs have all of the above elements. But not all of the above elements needs to be satisfied, or even be present, to qualify a song as one that i like. A song could just be a simple melody, or have a minimalistic rhythm, but still be good. or it could just be a 10-minute drum solo. or it could be a joke song that made me laugh because the artist knew what it took to make me laugh.
Bad Music, to me, is flat-out Bad because it violates one of the above elements. An otherwise good song can be utterly ruined by ANY ONE of the following:
- a repetitive, cheesy or boring melody.
- using chords/progressions that don't make sense.
- typical, uninspiring rhythm, or a beat that fails to adequately keep time
- all the melody/harmony/rhythm is there but there's no harmonic/rhythmic interplay between them at all
- maybe all the elements are technically there, but i just got the feeling that the artist over-composed the song. or the song, for all its technical prowess, was ultimately uninspiring.
so there you have it folks, the yardstick with which i dispense severe hatred towards tunes and people
if i like it, i like it. there's no way to consistently quantify my opinions on music, heh.
one thing in particular that i think is that there are way more chip musicians in america and europe than australia, so statistically alone musicians in those countries have the bar set a lot higher for themselves.
but i dunno, i just make music that i like to make and listen to. if it turns out to be complex or cerebral then that's a bonus!
I think there IS a quality factor, regardless of how you like the output or not.
Quality is not "good song" or "bad song" or "i like it" or "i don't like it".
You can definitely tell when someone has invested some time and effort into making something, when someone has had training and studied about stuff and applies that to a composition. THAT is quality to me. It's the general sense of effort put into something.
There's also the sense of achievement. How well does a piece work in the environment it is supposed to be displayed at?
This sense of quality can be perceived even by an untrained listener, because these are universal values. I don't need to understand what the guy on stage is doing to know if there's been a process of development, learning, training, research and effort to make what I am hearing. You can also feel the vibe of what is going on. There's a certain energy that the author intended to pass along, because all this effort and work, creates energy.
Harmony, melody, rhythm... all technical terms known just to us, which don't really make sense outside of our bubble, yet the quality of the work permeates outside this bubble onto the common folk, demonstrating these are not the factors that create it.
At least this is how I think about quality. You can put this onto any other art expression. I have many examples in pictorial art of people whose work I totally dislike but I understand the quality and significance behind what they have done, and I really appreciate this.
one thing in particular that i think is that there are way more chip musicians in america and europe than australia, so statistically alone musicians in those countries have the bar set a lot higher for themselves.
This is a major fallacy, not statistics. Quantity does not imply quality, and no matter how many you have, doesn't mean the general bar is higher at all.
What Bryface and Akira said. I don't agree with notion that just because music is a subjective experience, it's completely impossible to evaluate quality of music objectively. I (like most people I'm assuming) can listen to music I don't like and still say whether the song is good or bad. Even if the song doesn't "do it" for me, I can tell that whether the musician is skilled or not, and whether the song is skillfully made. But of course, these other two gentlemen expressed it much more eloquently than I.
Yeah it made a lot more sense the way I was thinking of it and if I tried to articulate it how it sounds in my head then it would probably make me look like more of an idiot. Sorry for using the word "statistically"!
Also: I don't think that it's impossible to objectively "rate" music, but at the same time I don't have a consistent set of standards or criteria on which to judge the subjective or objective experience because my brain is full of fuck. Or something.
Last edited by Victory Road (Mar 4, 2012 10:51 am)
Even if the song doesn't "do it" for me, I can tell that whether the musician is skilled or not, and whether the song is skillfully made.
I have to disagree with this point, though (and on using the words "good" and "bad", I think that's the usual problem that irritates some people )
I don't know if it has to do with actual SKILLS, rather with EFFORT and EFFECT of that effort. They are different things.
The "skill rating" is something you can apply, but not people who don't make chip (or any) music. "Quality" permeates even to those who really can't tell if the person is "skillful" or not. Getting technical is not the way to define if there is an inherent "quality" in music or not.
I know at least one person whose tracker abilities are not what one would consider "skillful" yet he makes brilliant music of an enormous quality.
Last edited by akira^8GB (Mar 4, 2012 10:58 am)
Been thinking about this since I saw it posted earlier.
I'm not going to touch on the argument of whether music quality can be judged, as that seems to be covered quite well above. However, hears my 2p:
A country may appear to have a higher overall quality of output for a number of reasons as I see it:
1) The main output of that country are a few artists that just happen to produce high-quality tunes (unlikely as it is).
2) The opposite is that the countries that you are comparing it against, like gun-toting, fat, lazy, over-confident countries (not mentioning any names of course ) have a LOT of producers, some good, but the majority bad, producing something like "My First LSDJ Song (2)" (Get the reference? 
). Additionally, as they are over-confident, they feel like they don't need to expend that much effort into the production of their pieces to be considered good, and leave them half-arsed finished.
3) The "friend" in the OP hasn't heard enough music from the country that appears to have an overall higher-quality output compared to other countries which makes their output seem high-quality.
4) The major chip music forums (as far as I can tell anyway) are in English and aimed at English speakers. It is thus difficult for non-natives to make a name for themselves in the community, so they may have to make their music do the talking. Ergo: the people that stand out from this "high-quality output country" obviously have high quality music. Think of the opposite: as a native english speaker, you don't even have to have the best tunes in the world to make a name for yourself in the scene, you could just be a really active forum member. Therefore the community could be filled with artists that have mediocre tunes, but are very active.
Rushed these out before I lost them. Hope they make sense.
/cheaps
If music wasn't subjective, John Cage's 4'33" would never have been accepted by anyone. I tend to think it's a bunch of nonsense, but that's what makes it subjective. Obviously those who attended this performance don't agree with me. Even though I see it as a bit of a joke, I can appreciate it as being one of the strongest arguments for "music" being defined as such because of human perception.
My position is that there seems to be some differing opinions on what defines "quality music" and this in and of itself reinforces the notion that it's a subjective judgement. The traits that I value in music may differ from someone else's and I don't think my framework for judgement is any less valid than the next persons.
Sure, there is a finite set of criteria to judge music on however I might weight some criteria higher than others in my judgement. The next person might have differing weightings throughout his criteria and so forth.
Thanks for everyones thoughts, I love to hear more people weigh in. 
It could be to do with wealth as well - in certain countries, more people have access to WWW/Internet, and more access to things like Game Boys, Amigas, etc - in countries with more wealth, it's much easier for someone to try something like chipmusic, upload a few tracks, then decide it's not for them and move onto the next hobby.
In poorer areas, much more of an effort may be made in acquiring said resources, and utilizing them.
Do you think everyone has an equally valid opinion on if music is good or bad? I think you can have a totally valid opinion on if you like music or not but good or bad seem to require a bit more authority. Music isn't an exact science, but neither for example is history. I want someone to have at least a vague grasp of ancient Rome before I was expected to take their opinions on the merits of Libby over Herodotus seriously.
Likewise if someone isn't able to agree a concert pianist with 30 years experience is a better musician than a pianist with 1 week of lessons is "better", does their opinion have merit?