Podcast Panel #11

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Richard Emsley - '...from swerve of shore to bend of bay'

Today's MP3 came without blurb or explanation from its shy submitter: it can be downloaded in full on that direct link or streamed at http://freakytrigger.co.uk

[Poll #1140876]

POLLS STILL OPEN: Keke Palmer! Natalia y la Forquentina! Avenged Sevenfold! and ending tomorrow Fleet Foxes!

POLL CLOSED: Trina ended up with a score of 6.44 with (I think) the highest NUMBER of votes so far (a still quite low 18).

HALL OF FAME: Lancelot Link's score of 7.2 is the highest (though it dipped after polls closed when dubdobdee voted.)

BUMF: To submit a track to the Podcast Panel send an MP3 to leagueofpop@gmail.com

Comments

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I like the arc of this piece. Not sure why you need to understand the compositional principles behind it any more than you would need to for anything else submitted to the Panel thus far. But that's a disussion for another thread perhaps.

[koganbot]

"Understand" might be the wrong word, but in general in many pop and rock and dance songs you know when something is going into a chorus or a break even if you're not thinking to yourself "It is going into a chorus or a break," or paying much attention to compositional principles, ditto for when something sounds dissonant in relation to the rest of the song, and so on, or when the rhythm switches up. Whereas there may be things in this piece that a trained listener would get readily that I wouldn't get at all, getting it not necessarily meaning "grasping principles" but a more general understanding, such as his hearing a change, or a surprise, while I'm thinking the whole thing sounds pretty much the same.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I think you are overestimatng trained listeners here (full disclosure: I am one). And while it is true that many pop songs have a common structure, pop critics don't tend to imagine (or at least never seem to admit to) barriers to general understanding in pop musicians that do deviate radically from those formulas - say, the Aphex Twin or Japanoise bands.

('pop' above used in its widest sense, inc. rock and dance, obv)

[koganbot]

So what you're saying is that trained listeners, when attending to a piece such as this, lean back and go "Oh wow"?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

They might!

Or they might say: sorry not feeling this at all, dude :(((((

But that's not really what I'm saying. What I'm saying is pop and 'composed music' (for want of a better term - a lot of pop is composed obv) shouldn't require different modes of listening or criticism.

(Jazz seems to me a slightly more tricky case; there do seem to be particular 'rules' there that you have to be initiated in before you can criticize it. But I'm no expert on this point and would be highly delighted to be told that that's nonsense.)

[koganbot]

Not different modes of listening but different knowledge of what's going on in different circumstances (and this can pertain within pop as well, since not every listener "gets" all pop in the same way, since not all pop is the same or has the same conventions either).

But I would say that pop doesn't assume a listener who's attending to the story that's going on in the music (may be inattentive, may be attentive to the dance beats, may be singing along, may be using it as excitement to lure customers into one's Hot Topic franchise, but is less likely to think of herself as following along on the music's compositional or anti-compositional adventure) but rather people who are using music in a myriad of ways; whereas the assumption in classical going back to Beethoven is of a listener attending to the music and shutting off his own activity while he's doing so. Of course, this probably misrepresents the classical listener, but the classical listener is probably complicit in this misrepresentation, in that you don't get a lot of commentary on classical and on modern-day serious music that says, "This is really good, especially as mood music, and it also makes a real good social marker and will impress the chicks."

[koganbot]

But of course no one should be required to listen to music in a certain way. I probably don't listen to Ashlee Simpson in the manner that a lot of other people do, since I pay way more analytic attention to what's going on in the lyrics, and some analytic attention to what's happening compositionally, and why shouldn't I?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Well, quite.

And I think you're overstating the extent of the divide in your previous post, even with all the caveats. (I also think the non-classical listener is the guiltier party when it comes to the misrepresentation that you mention.)

But what I'm mainly challenging in this thread is the assumption that, all other things being equal (and the Podcast Panel is a useful device for helping to level the playing field), composition X and pop song Y require - and in practice receive from those who devote their time to the respective genres - different critical faculties.

[koganbot]

Oh, I'm with you here, and especially not as it pertains to classical but to the idea that the rock fan listens to rock in one way and the pop fan in another, and we should aspire to the second when listening to pop. I'm not sure any poptimists would claim the second, but some might claim the first, that we listen to rock in one way and pop in another. Which may not be altogether false, that is, we can listen to both Cascada and Dylan in similar ways but many people don't.

That said, I think if I understood the composer's adventure in Emsley I'd do a better job of listening no matter how I end up using it, as mood piece or social marker or whatever. Just as if someone who grasps counterrhythm or knows it in his bones is going to do a better job of dancing to "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose" than someone who thinks that the beat is "confused."

[koganbot]

One too many "ifs" in the previous post.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one thing to remember about composed music post-webern was that -- even if any given piece did in fact share compositional principles or conventions with a given predecessor -- not only was there no agreed-on set of conventions and principles, but there was a fairly wild free-for-all developing never-before-used principles piece by piece (stockhausen probably furthest ahead of the pack in never staying still); so that the convention is that there as "no conventions" , with organisational choice structured ab novo every time (haha the latter true except when not) (some composers stick with their one principle -- their life's work to explore just that -- but it may well not be a principle anyone else is using)

so even someone FANTASTICALLY learned in the field may be at a loss when faced with a new piece, as to why what is where and what they SHOULD be listening for (it's also why you get a lot of "manuals for best use" with music of this kind) (but jeff's point is good -- i think the "manuals for best use" actually somewhat disguise what's actually going on when fans of this kind of music listen) (my listening is hugely shaped by the amount of recorded and live free improv i've heard -- one of the first things i'm noticing is "stuff improvisors could never have done: noise effects we can ONLY get from composition, music-reading and rehearsal"; and so my response to what's going on is milestoned by those effects)

(this is one of the things my xenakis essay was about, you'll recall) (or er not)