Who is Paul McCartney?

[Bertram Henze]

A single blast on a car horn is a noise, often a harsh one. Hit the horn twice - beep beep! - and you have produced music, through the use of rhythm, and it's a good bit less harsh. That's why I nearly always do this; it's much more pleasant while still sending a message.

Gershwin in American in Paris - everybody can be an orchestra

[JEStanek]

I know this is likely just adding fuel to the fire but, it's funny.



He has, to date, not made a Bluegrass tune. They are either too complex or the market too small.

Jamie

[journeybear]

It's funny, all right - the finished product - but it's also sad - the process, the simplicity of it. This really illustrates how little goes into the music, and why it is so successful. It is so easy and cheap to make -especially compared to music produced by bands, with real people and real instruments, and thus real expenses - and it feeds on familiarity. It's no wonder the market is flooded with these songs. The only difficulty is making something stand out from all the other songs that sound so much the same. That's why so many practitioners work so hard on the non-musical aspects - fashion, dance moves, dancers, stage set-up - and showmanship often becomes more important than the music itself, which is so easily digestible it has no staying power. That doesn't seem to matter, as just like a city bus, another one will be coming right along.

[DavidKOS]

That was the hoax of the last century, this apparently is the hoax of this century although I think the Sony Hack is still better than this one.

Yes, that's right, the hoax of last century....

[Jeff Mando]

5 year writing a rap song illustrates many good points about the differences between having fun, being silly, being creative, being artistic, whether it is art, craft, or horsing around! The grown-up version is identical, just really a matter of intent--if you put on your beret, your sunglasses, and sneer--you MAY be an artist! ....(dunno, do people still wear berets?)

[M.Marmot]

. They are either too complex or the market too small.

Jamie

Lets see ... establish a standard beat, play a simple chord progression, delegate the rest of the composition between strings and bass, and then tell us all about your problems?

Market must be too small.

[Mike Anderson]

A single blast on a car horn is a noise, often a harsh one. Hit the horn twice - beep beep! - and you have produced music

Hmm, I beg your leave to disagree - in the strongest possible terms. What the horn-beeper has done is produce a harsh noise twice.

It's occurred to me that rap is the logical endpoint of a music-industry culture that has been all about a progressive democratization for the last half-century, to the point that non-musicians and people with no discernible musical ability are encouraged to enter the industry and make noises that, although superficially resembling music, are not music at all. If a tone-deaf person, or a person with no sense of rhythm, or a person who cannot sing on key even if a loaded gun were held to their head and their life threatened makes a recording of noises, that does not make those noises music - witness the many rejectees on American Idol. The fact that many of those encouraged to do this actually become fabulously popular, sell millions of records, and get richer than God does not make it music, either.

Am I saying that democratization of music is bad? That people with no ability should never pursue music? No - but the democratization of the music industry is bad, and that's why most popular music is bad enough to make a vulture retch. Some might say "But I'm a musician, and I love lots of this stuff!" Well then, they might have to consider the possibility that they're a lousy musician with cloth ears and bad pitch, which hardly makes them unique among people calling themselves musicians in the last half-century.

Some might also say "Oh, you're one of those chops snobs, thinks jazz fusion rules!" Nope - I couldn't give a damn about chops except insofar as they do a good job of supporting the music being made, and I hate fusion because it's utterly soulless, the democratization of the once-great art known as jazz. It's really pretty simple: music that is made for the primary purpose of making money is garbage. Note please that I didn't say "music that is made professionally, as a career" - again, it's "for the primary purpose." Sorry: I hate it when I have to rewrite, but I can see the out-of-context criticisms coming long before they're committed to type.

There's nothing "cool" about hating rap, either, I think that's a totally spurious argument and am left scratching my head over the whole notion. People hate rap because of exactly the criticisms leveled here: it requires no musical ability to make it, it is formulaic and dull, it is (mostly) ugly and aggressive and much of it extols a barbaric, parasitic, blood-drunk lifestyle and lest we forget, can therefore take the blame for a lot of terrible behavior on the part of the stupid, hormonally driven young males who patronize it and emulate its practitioners.

YMMV, but I could care less. I could hardly spend 4 decades listening and playing and thinking and obsessing music without coming to some kind of conclusions about how vitally important it is to the human spirit, and above all that life is too short to waste it listening to crap.

[journeybear]

Hmm, I beg your leave to disagree - in the strongest possible terms. What the horn-beeper has done is produce a harsh noise twice.

It's still music, by definition. Very rudimentary, of course, but still music.

[Scott Tichenor]

This coffin has a few too many nails in it. Time to move on.