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norrin_radd
george & jonathan
revengineers

The quality of music is an interesting concept.

There is plenty of music in the world that has the intention of being bad/abrasive/jarring/offensive. A lot of the artists producing this kind of music manage to create songs that are very, very bad. In doing so, said artist achieves their goal. Doesn't that make it skilled or good, in the sense that it has achieved its goal?

I think one of the key differences in the landscape of the chipmusic world are these goals. It seems to me that people in different places often end up moving towards a common goal in varying fashion, but that goal will be very different from what a group is subconsciously (or very consciously) working towards in another location. This means that if you start comparing artists from different places against each other too specifically, you end up comparing apples and oranges.

...And while tracking (or coding) skill is (in my opinion) reasonably objective - how many sounds an artist can allude to have in a composition at once, how detailed instruments are, the accuracy of a snare envelope, dat bass, yada yada - a lot of these things can often mean nothing in a live setting. If your goal is not to alienate an audience with your changing time signatures and complex dissonant melodies with 3000 instruments in LSDJ you've blown it no matter how fantastic your tracking is. If your goal is to have a room full of people singing your lead melody and you've composed your drums with nothing but a 808 kit and they're singing... You've won.

tl;dr:
• different groups have different goals.
• tracking/coding skills can be judged somewhat objectively
• ...but that doesn't matter because if often has no bearing on an artist's goals.
• I'M OVERTHINKIN' IT.