As I’ve mentioned in this space before, stereotypes can be evil inhibitors of progress, but we all carry them around with us. In the spirit of intervention, I thought I’d throw a few things I’ve heard lately out into the road (and maybe under the bus).
- People of a certain age think louder music = better performance. This was actually pointed out to me a couple of days ago, and my mouth was half open to object, but then I promptly shut it. After all, I’m the sort of girl who goes to the symphony and wishes those 60 musicians were just so much louder. I think I appreciate subtlety, but I also love music cranked to 11. Did the amp stunt the eardrums of everyone born after 1975?
- Play it again, Mr. Carter. Whether it’s Top 40 radio or an iPod on a constant playlist loop, most ears love the repetition of songs. John Zorn tracks? Not so much, apparently. I had a recent letter from a Counterstream listener: “In the past 8 months, you’ve played the same Zorn track three times between 5 and 6 a.m. Please rotate your programming.” Well, then. When I love a song, I listen to it over and over again. However, I have never done this with a piece of “new music” unless I was reviewing a recording. Like working at the Dairy Queen and ingesting no ice cream, sometimes I think I avoid getting addicted because new music is my job. Secretly, I’ve often wondered if this makes me a fraud.
- Who’s afraid of the Internet? Writers, it seems. First, the freakin’ bloggers were going to take the pros out of the game. Now, the commenters criticize them to the point that they flee from the public persecution. The Internet is a dangerous playground. Not everyone always gets where you’re coming from and the whole scene can get pretty crass. We could all just be Minnesota nice, but is there something to be gained intellectually when you know your fellow readers/writers won’t hesitate to take you down a peg? Is that what a world that types 5 billion words every minute needs?
- The Long Tail might save us from obscurity, but it may hang us first. Chris Anderson gave us hope that even if we didn’t sell a million records up front, our Best of Beethoven albums might come out ahead over a period of many years. Well put that confetti back in the tube, kids. The dude may have had things all wrong.
In my opinion…
Re: loudness
1: You made me feel old; my guitar amp stunted my hearing, but i was born in ’71.
2. I think you want it louder because the venue is too large. Hearing acoustic music in enormous halls causes problems. Especially for chamber music, but sometimes for larger groups too… We are now accustomed to hearing chamber music in spaces that are way too big for the instrumentation.
Re: Play it again syndrome
I think “popular” (for lack of a better term) music works nicely on repeat. Short songs that you can listen to closely, or not, and still enjoy hold up well in many different contexts. However, “serious” (for lack of a better term) music makes you, the listener, work harder – and therefore functions differently. Subsequently, we consume this music differently – privately, and in social / public contexts.
just my two cents… and I don’t think you’re a fraud. You just consume this “new music” stuff differently, as one should (in my opinion). After all, if it functioned the same way for us as more popular forms of music, it would be more popular(!) and we wouldn’t be doing all of this hand wringing about how to find an audience and how to market what we do, etc., etc.
1. Louder is only better if you are already deaf.
Many musicians have significant hearing loss, even if they are young.
2. more complex emotional states/ more difficult emotional trajectories are ones that take more psychic investment, and hence are less appealing to repeat over and over. Simple pleasures are more repeatable, whether we’re talking sex, food, music, or drama.
I think the mp3 format and iPods have actually done more to desensitize people’s hearing than any single amp.
I think repetition has more to do with ritual and one (or a group’s) person’s perception of time and space. Michael Veal’s recent and (in my opinion) important book on Jamaican Dub music discusses repetition as a component not only to making music but to navigating your (and your culture’s) past, present, and future. Listen to James Brown with these ears. Through speakers (not via an iPod).
P.S. What Zorn track are you playing? Have you heard “Pueblo” from his Filmworks CD? Zorn has said he’ll put that track on at home on “repeat” for long periods of time…
Molly adds: I get that. In my own case (and probably for many others), the need for repetition usually comes out of a nostalgic need for the emotional state (not “my boyfriend left me” drama, but a more encompassing, total mindset package sort of thing) I associate with the music. And sometimes it’s really not about the art but about the company in provides.
As for the Zorn, not sure what track was getting to him, but playing something every 30 days and it still getting a hot reaction like that–pretty intense.