More Noise!
Jul. 28th, 2012 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kent_allard_jrMy experience with music is typical: My interest peaked around age 18 and my tastes haven't changed much in 25 years. Luckily my tastes weren't typical for an 80s teenager, so I haven't been listening to Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston for a quarter century (thank Zeus), but I wish I'd picked up a little more over the years.
When Kimberly met me she liked my jazz collection -- standard stuff from WWII to the mid-60s -- and that's what we've listened to together ever since. On road trips, though, she prefers the radio, and that's when I really listen to contemporary pop music. My reaction to it has surprised me.
I don't have the stereotypical reaction of a cranky old man. ("Their music is just noise!") Instead I find it ... bland. Pleasant enough, but boring. It's as if nothing new has appeared since the Clinton administration.
Sometimes we'd switch to the classic rock stations, which endlessly recycled the same four-dozen songs from the late-60s to the Disco era, with Nirvana thrown in for the under-40 crowd. God knows I never want to hear "Freebird" again, but even with the endless repetition I got the impression there was a lot more variety in what I was hearing. More experimentation with instruments, more complex harmonies, more contrast in volume.
These were just vague, uninformed impressions, but I'm happy to hear they've been scientifically validated. I'm sure the study has issues -- commentors point out it doesn't measure rhythmic innovation, where hip-hop may shine -- but it confirms I wasn't completely imagining things.
When Kimberly met me she liked my jazz collection -- standard stuff from WWII to the mid-60s -- and that's what we've listened to together ever since. On road trips, though, she prefers the radio, and that's when I really listen to contemporary pop music. My reaction to it has surprised me.
I don't have the stereotypical reaction of a cranky old man. ("Their music is just noise!") Instead I find it ... bland. Pleasant enough, but boring. It's as if nothing new has appeared since the Clinton administration.
Sometimes we'd switch to the classic rock stations, which endlessly recycled the same four-dozen songs from the late-60s to the Disco era, with Nirvana thrown in for the under-40 crowd. God knows I never want to hear "Freebird" again, but even with the endless repetition I got the impression there was a lot more variety in what I was hearing. More experimentation with instruments, more complex harmonies, more contrast in volume.
These were just vague, uninformed impressions, but I'm happy to hear they've been scientifically validated. I'm sure the study has issues -- commentors point out it doesn't measure rhythmic innovation, where hip-hop may shine -- but it confirms I wasn't completely imagining things.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-29 03:24 am (UTC)I have my theories about why, too - it's easier to get a record produced and recorded, now, and the music business benefits most from just churning out repetitive pop that takes very little time to produce. Innovation can't be done quickly, so that's what we're hearing, and it's influencing amateur musicians because we're drowning in it. You play what you hear, and the more people's ears are saturated with uncomplicated pop, the more we like it, and the more it influences our tastes.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-29 04:17 pm (UTC)I was a music major in the late 80s and one surprise, looking back, is how the synthesizer was never used to its full potential. I thought, at the time, that it would simulate instruments that never existed, so music could be written for them. Instead it was treated as just another keyboard and was out of fashion by the end of the decade. It was one avenue of innovation that, as far as I could tell, was never fully exploited.