Topic: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Well, I don't agree 100%f the guy in the video, but I agree that our times it's quite awful, and not just in music.

Watch the video and tell me if you agree with hin or disagree, and why :


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII


Technology can bring things closer to people that otherwise would have no access to a real expensive instrument. That's why pianoteq helps.
But technology made easy to copy things, create fast, instead of the old way of dedication. And the many too simple digital versions of instruments, with not real feeling and no great adjusts setting, also tends to make things, simpler, closer, faster, lacking soul.
In these terms complex  softwares like pianoteq make a difference, while simple or poor softwares tends to made things poor or reduce the "wings for exploring new sounds".

In terms of poor creativity and the pop beats getting mediocre, the crap lyrics, the market domain by couple people composing hits, and sound compression and others, and the consumer itself anxious and distrated, with million music files in the tip of a finger, I complete agree.

Last edited by Beto-Music (08-08-2018 01:20)

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

I think most of his argument is nonsense. Low end popular music has always been dire. The music I detest most is bad popular music from the first half of the twentieth century.

The music I love the most is music I didn't like when I heard it first. Has great music never grown on him?

I detest modern pop music, but I always thought 99.99% of music was crap anyway.

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Tiresome. 

Today's music is not yesterday's.  Tastes evolve.  Beatles fans generally tired of Guy Lombardo.  Guy Lombardo fans grew tired of the Andrews Sisters.... and what about Stephen Foster?  We're so way far down the Suwanee River, that it's literally water under the bridge - but it is the only one of his songs that anyone now remembers.

What about 1967, when Sgt Pepper's was so important, as this reviewer reminds us?  The TOP singles on the Billboard Charts included:

I'm a Believer (The Monkees)
Kind of a Drag (The Buckinghams)
Ruby Tuesday (The Rolling Stones)
Love is Here and Now You're Gone (The Supremes)
Penny Lane (The Beatles)
Happy Together (The Turtles)
Somethin' Stupid (Nancy Sinatra & Frank Sinatra)

...and that's just the first four months.    Don't forget other classic hits from later that year such as Windy (The Association), The Letter (The Box Tops), To Sir With Love (LuLu), and Incense And Peppermints (Strawberry Alarm Clock), along with some better known hits from The Doors, Aretha Franklin, and the Young Rascals.  And this is just the very very TOP of the Billboard Chart for the weeks of that year - we are completely ignoring the hits that came in #2, #3, ... well, you get the picture.  Fabulous music, all.  Right?  Way better than bad modern pop like Adele, Jack Johnson, Maroon 5, Shawn Mendes, Lady Gaga, etc. (Hint of sarcasm should be evident)

I am convinced that every generation, as it ages, is convinced that THEIR music was better only because history (as well as their memory) filters out the bad stuff - no one remembers it.  Sure, I too love Sgt. Pepper's - I too have a thing for that Lovely Rita Meter Maid.  But if you forced me to listen to The Monkees, LuLu, and The Box Tops all day I would surely go mad.

Dumb argument.  In the days of Mozart and Hayden I am sure that there was a lot of truly dreadful music written that history has [thankfully] forgotten.

- David

P.S.  If you want to see a nice discussion of how even modern music has complex chord structures, check out this lecture by Aimee Nolte on why "Remember Me", the simple-sounding theme from Disney's Coco, is masterfully crafted (and won the Oscar this year):

https://www.aimeenolte.com/teaching-mus...-for-music

Last edited by dklein (08-08-2018 03:18)
- David

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Dunno, a lot of those songs that you listed are good stuff, man. So yes, today's music is largely crap compared to how the Billboard was back then. Composing and arrangements were on a whole other level than what's out there today, by and large. Today you literally have to go outside of mainstream to find interesting stuff, whereas back in "those days" the mainstream had a metric shitton of - excellent stuff. Particularly in the 80s. You don't have to agree, but that's the truth.

Last edited by EvilDragon (08-08-2018 11:05)
Hard work and guts!

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

And architecture - glass and concrete high-rise buildings .. such and music ..

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Dunno I find some glass buildings looking extremely cool.

Hard work and guts!

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

but some modern tracks are also good ..  last Jon Hopkins for example

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Absolutely!  Calatrava comes to mind - I am near Florida Polytechnic University :

https://goo.gl/images/1p2U3F

Last edited by dklein (08-08-2018 12:19)
- David

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Time will filter out the best musical samples from our gap.

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Thank you all for the comments.

Time it's a very good judge. I agree.

"Pretty woman, walkin ' dow the street.
Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet
Pretty woman..."

People will always remamber that, the nice lyrics, the melody, the good accoustic plaing, the envolving vocals.
I don't think it would be fair to put all pop in the same basket and label as crap, just because it's not Beethoven or Mozart. Pop can vary really a lot in quality.
Even the Monkeys singing "I'm a Believer" have some soul, some special feeling, that actual "techno-beats" have not.

Consumers got worse too, as are in general anxious people looking for immediate instant "sparks of endorphine or serotonin".
Worldwide globalized industry wants and needs cows. It's more garantee.


Look this "tape keyboard" (in 16:53) :  https://youtu.be/PC6j_Hh8ChA?t=1013
Creativity... it's also inspired by difficult situations...
Easy things... easy ways... could that reduce creativity ?

Last edited by Beto-Music (09-08-2018 01:07)

Re: "Why modern music is awful ?" Do you agree ?

Beto-Music wrote:

Easy things... easy ways... could that reduce creativity ?

Yes, I think it can. But not as a necessity. Sometimes an idea sparks really fast and if you have a very easy way of getting it down, whatever your workflow is, is beneficial.

Of course, what a lot of people today are doing is just taking a sample, slicing it up, copying stuff around, adding stutters, whatever. It's hard to find something truly creative, especially in electronic music. That's not to say it doesn't exist. Just that it's hard to find

Hard work and guts!