Hi everybody,
I'm kind of experiencing an existential crisis in my taste in music and thought that you who know a great deal about music might answer a couple of questions that I have.
First of all, let me say that I'm interested in music only from a listeners perspective as of now, so how complicated something is to play is not something that really concerns me, I just care about what reaches my ears.
There have been a couple of questions that have been bothering me for a while and as I find myself constantly reminded by them I thought it might be a good idea to get educated about this.
First of all, on what sort of ground can judgments about music be made? Most people—as far as I am aware—only experience music emotionally and thus the value of music is only what it makes them feel (oddly, some emotions that are normally seen as negative emotions can be nice when evoked by music, e.g. sadness). Is there anything more to music than the emotional effect? Remember that I'm looking at this solely from a listeners perspective. If there is nothing more to music, musical value becomes subjective and there is then no way to say that some kinds music are better than others (not that there is anything wrong with that). There was a time when I justified my taste in music by thinking that it was better that other music, but I was quite naive then (I probably still am, as I know next to nothing about music).
But then, at times I find myself aware of certain patterns that I find to be beautiful. For example when two different melodies appear to chain together and produce something quite different than the melodies apart. Or when melodies are a continually changing whole that almost seem to be drawn to something. If I'm not mistaken here, this phenomena is completely different than the melodies themselves, it is rather something
like the form of music.
These sorts of things make me yearn to understand more about music, there is most certainly a manifold of these patters that simply elude me. Would it heighten my enjoyment of music to learn about these things?
Sometimes I hear how people educated in music lament the poor state of popular music and I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that my taste in music might be crappy, in fact I expect it to be so. My ignorance about the subject seems to demand just that.
So what kind of music should I look for? What should I learn? As I have no intent to learn to play music myself, is it impossible for me to learn more about the subject? Or is really enjoyment in music purely subjective?
I'm kind of experiencing an existential crisis in my taste in music and thought that you who know a great deal about music might answer a couple of questions that I have.
First of all, let me say that I'm interested in music only from a listeners perspective as of now, so how complicated something is to play is not something that really concerns me, I just care about what reaches my ears.
There have been a couple of questions that have been bothering me for a while and as I find myself constantly reminded by them I thought it might be a good idea to get educated about this.
First of all, on what sort of ground can judgments about music be made? Most people—as far as I am aware—only experience music emotionally and thus the value of music is only what it makes them feel (oddly, some emotions that are normally seen as negative emotions can be nice when evoked by music, e.g. sadness). Is there anything more to music than the emotional effect? Remember that I'm looking at this solely from a listeners perspective. If there is nothing more to music, musical value becomes subjective and there is then no way to say that some kinds music are better than others (not that there is anything wrong with that). There was a time when I justified my taste in music by thinking that it was better that other music, but I was quite naive then (I probably still am, as I know next to nothing about music).
But then, at times I find myself aware of certain patterns that I find to be beautiful. For example when two different melodies appear to chain together and produce something quite different than the melodies apart. Or when melodies are a continually changing whole that almost seem to be drawn to something. If I'm not mistaken here, this phenomena is completely different than the melodies themselves, it is rather something
like the form of music.
These sorts of things make me yearn to understand more about music, there is most certainly a manifold of these patters that simply elude me. Would it heighten my enjoyment of music to learn about these things?
Sometimes I hear how people educated in music lament the poor state of popular music and I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that my taste in music might be crappy, in fact I expect it to be so. My ignorance about the subject seems to demand just that.
So what kind of music should I look for? What should I learn? As I have no intent to learn to play music myself, is it impossible for me to learn more about the subject? Or is really enjoyment in music purely subjective?