7 ms·

Perhaps I'm being a tad too pedantic in this followup, but can you elaborate further? It's difficult for me to square how every style of music is equally sophis

Perhaps I'm being a tad too pedantic in this followup, but can you elaborate further? It's difficult for me to square how every style of music is equally sophisticated. I'm taking sophisticated to roughly mean 'complex'. I'm not promoting classical music as superior to folk, but can we not reasonably say that a Bach fugue is more complex than Simon and Garfunkel? Using two Eurocentric examples to control for bias.

the_cat_kittles 10y ago
absolutely not, in the abstract. you are probably using harmonic and motivic ideas a metric of complexity. but whos to say you couldn't use timbral and dynamic qualities as the primary yardstick? in that case simon and garfunkel would "reasonably" be more complex.
- beat 10y ago
  That's a good point. Musical styles are inherently rule-driven. There are certain givens that are very strictly limited. For example, every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes. European classical music is rhythmically crude and primitive. I spent a couple of years studying the frame drumming of the central Asian steppes with a good teacher. The concept of "time signature", a basic European idea, goes right out the window. If you're doing something best described as "17/16 with the occasional 13/8 counter-rhythm", you start to understand how crude European rhythm is. Yet it's actually easy to play! That's because it's not a "bar", it's a seqeuence of phrases that may be two, three, or four subdivisions long. Memorize the sequence and it's pretty straightforward. Likewise, equal temperament severely limits European melodies. Arabic and Indian music are far more melodically complex. But if you measure every other culture by the values of your own, they all look worse.
  - gjm11 10y ago
    > every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes. I can't disagree with the overall idea that traditional European classical music is pretty simple rhythmically, but the statement above is just flatly false. For instance, I have here a copy of the first book of the Wohltemperierte Klavier, Bach's big collection of preludes and fugues. Prelude no 3 is in 3/8. Prelude no 4 is in 6/4. Prelude no 8 is in 3/2. Prelude no 9 is in 12/8. Prelude no 11 too. Prelude no 13 is in 12/16. It's still all 2s and 3s in various combinations (though there's a little bit of 5/8 in Handel) and, again, I'm not disputing that this stuff is rhythmically much simpler than your central-Asian frame drumming. But it's also not all 3/4 and 4/4, nor is it just a steady stream of quavers.
    - beat 10y ago
      Coming from the perspective of knowing central Asian, Arabic, and some African rhythms, arguing that 3/8 is tremendously different than 3/4 is a little silly to me. Virtually all classical music is just square feel, polka feel, waltz feel, or triplet feel. And it's not just the time signature, it's the simplicity of it. Arabic music is mostly 4/4, but is far more rhythmically intricate. Blues is mostly 12/8, but the feel is far different. It's kind of like arguing a Buick is better than a Chevy to someone driving a Tesla.
      - gjm11 10y ago
        I didn't argue that it's "tremendously different". I agreed that typical Western art music generally has pretty simple rhythms, and that other musical cultures often have much more complex ones. I said explicitly that time signatures in Bach are all 2s and 3s. But what you actually said was, in so many words, "every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time". And that simply isn't true.
gardano 10y ago
Take a gander at (classical Indian) Raga. It's not harmonic-centered, but it's incredibly complex.
- visarga 10y ago
  Yes, but can the same be said about cheap popular music?
  - gardano 10y ago
    That's a good question. In most cases, no. I'd counter that Sidney Bechet or Muddy Waters 12-bar blues can be sophisticated without being complex
- kefka 10y ago
  Glad you mentioned this.. All I can say is Damn, that's awesome. I didn't realize some types of progressions and styles were Raga. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wra4p4zARw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wra4p4zARw
  - gardano 10y ago
    I remember the story my composition teacher told… He was at a raga concert, and admitted to feeling totally lost. As the piece progressed, about 30 minutes into the performance, everybody in the audience sighed a breath of satisfaction, and nodded and smiled to each other when the cycles had reached conclusion. At that moment he realised that there was so much more to music than he realised, and that the audience was much more capable of concentration, too.
- arjunbanker 10y ago
  If you like electronic music and are interested in exploring the raga form, would recommend checking Charanjit Singh's 1982 album "Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A)
beat 10y ago
Complexity takes different dimensions. Take American folk music, for example, something I know well. The songs and melodies are very simple. The performance is incredibly sophisticated. Addressing both individuality and tradition simultaneously, expressing the emotional content of the lyrics effectively... doing folk music is really, really hard. If all you're doing is counting notes, Bach is more complex. If you bring expressiveness into it, the Carter family trounces Bach. And if you want to hear Bach ruined, just plug the notation directly into a midi sequencer with no human involved in the performance. Music is both intellectual and emotional. Measuring only the intellectual aspect is a disservice to music. The emotional and cultural roles of music matter. This is often lost in "music theory". I remember a long time ago, watching Peter Gabriel perform at a charity concert for human rights. A quarter million people in the audience, and he got them to do a sing-along of the chorus to "Biko", a song about the death of South African activist Steve Biko, who was beaten/tortured to death in police custody. Peter Gabriel was sitting on the edge of the stage, swinging his legs, providing minimal guidance. A quarter million people raised their voices together. How is that less sophisticated than a Bach fugue? You raised the example of Simon and Garfunkel. "The Sound of Silence" will last in human society as long as Bach does. It will still be heard centuries from now. That's sophistication.
- apalmer 10y ago
  Seems like you are reading into this much greater implications than is intended. Classical music is in general much more complex and sophisticated than pop music. This is undeniably true by any rational yardstick. Whether its better or not is completely a different question.
  - beat 10y ago
    Simplicity is sophistication as well. It's a more difficult form of sophistication than complexity, really. It's easier to add elements than take them away.
    - apalmer 10y ago
      Definition of sophistication from dictionary.com (of a person, ideas, tastes, manners, etc.) altered by education, experience, etc., so as to be worldly-wise; not naive: a sophisticated young socialite; the sophisticated eye of an experienced journalist. 2. pleasing or satisfactory to the tastes of sophisticates, or people who are educated, cultured, and worldly-wise: sophisticated music. 3. deceptive; misleading. 4. complex or intricate, as a system, process, piece of machinery, or the like: a sophisticated electronic control system. 5. of, for, or reflecting educated taste, knowledgeable use, etc.: Many Americans are drinking more sophisticated wines now. By any of these 5 distinct definitions classical music is more sophisticated than pop music. I understand that you do not like the connotations, but you have to use a word to mean what it actually means...
squeaky-clean 10y ago
What's important to one style of music, and "sophisticated" or "complex" may be irrelevant in another. It's hard to compare. Take a Bach Fugue, where the notes and harmonies are very important, and 'complex' with lots of rules, patterns, intertwining melodies. The specific instruments used doesn't always matter, most pieces could interchangeably be played on piano or harpsichord or organ and sound as beautiful. Then let's look at something like Scary Monsters by Skrillex, where the entire drop is pretty much just a G with a small melody coming in every 4 measures. There's not much melodic complexity going on there. But the sound production, synthesis and processing is insane. After that song came out everyone was trying to figure out how to make a talking bass that sounded like that. And even years later, barely anyone has figured it out, I've only heard really famous synthesists like Rob Swire get a close sound. Is a Skrillex drop as complex as a Bach Fugue? If you're just comparing the arrangement, or the melodies, not at all. But the Skrillex song isn't about the melody as much as the texture and dynamics. Bach didn't specify precisely what harmonics should exist in the instruments playing his music. Skrillex probably could not write a Fugue to the standards of Bach's best. But I bet if you sat Bach down in front of a laptop with an FM synthesizer, he couldn't create a "sick drop" either. It gets entirely too subjective at this point. A lot of people will disagree with me that the production and synthesis techniques should be considered part of music theory or composition. But I think they're concepts that you couldn't replicate certain music without. In my opinion the palindromic structure of a Boards of Canada album is on par with something like Bach's Crab Canon. They just get there in totally different ways.
- baddox 10y ago
  You seem to be implying that audio production is a component of music theory. This is something I had never considered. Normally I would not be thinking of audio production when I talk about music theory, but I certainly am not dogmatic about that. Things like timbre and dynamics are (I believe) usually considered part of music theory, so I suppose one could include all aspects of audio production as well.
  - komali2 10y ago
    In modern music, "audio production" is arguably more important than any other aspect. If we judged your average top 10 hit by the same standards (melody, harmonization) that we did a Bach piece, no modern music would be considered "good" (le wrong generation, I get it). But these songs are popular and drive a multimillion dollar industry, so they must be doing something right. I would point straight to production quality and technique. Why is Dr. Dre so popular? He's a decent rapper but he doesn't really have much content volume. He's who he is because he's one of the best producers in hip-hop. He made a career, a legacy, and an industry out of just being really good at production.
kazinator 10y ago
Simon and Garfunkel absolutely depends on performance; it doesn't have the same musical content as a Bach fugue. A somewhat poor, though adequate, performance of a Bach fugue with an instrument that doesn't have great tone will still convey a great deal of Bach's meaning. A performance by average vocalists of a Simon and Garfunkle tune, backed by some average lounge band will just be a laughable farce. It can't be saved by the musical content, because that is there in insufficient quantity. Pop music is all in the nuance and tone that doesn't get notated in sheet music. The result is that performing a convincing cover of some pop music requires a very high musical standard. Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  I think you've got something there. Bach solved a very difficult musical problem of his time brilliantly... how to transmit rich musical meaning using only a pen and some paper. Simon and Garfunkel had the luxury of using an LP instead and so transmitted in a totally different way. There's just no way you could write down what “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is supposed to sound like on paper beyond the barest (rather uninteresting) form. Medium, message etc.
  - kazinator 10y ago
    That said, music practice after Bach did acquire more tricks in the notation to indicate performance. There are more constraints on how to play Chopin or Beethoven, say.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time." Sure, you can get pleasure from that, but at the highest level classical music is very much about interpretation. People may think that classical music is about following the notes exactly, but it's not quite true, the way the player interprets a piece is what brings a piece to life (or not), and these subtle touches are not directly transcribed in the sheet music.

the_cat_kittles 10y ago

absolutely not, in the abstract. you are probably using harmonic and motivic ideas a metric of complexity. but whos to say you couldn't use timbral and dynamic qualities as the primary yardstick? in that case simon and garfunkel would "reasonably" be more complex.

beat 10y ago
That's a good point. Musical styles are inherently rule-driven. There are certain givens that are very strictly limited. For example, every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes. European classical music is rhythmically crude and primitive. I spent a couple of years studying the frame drumming of the central Asian steppes with a good teacher. The concept of "time signature", a basic European idea, goes right out the window. If you're doing something best described as "17/16 with the occasional 13/8 counter-rhythm", you start to understand how crude European rhythm is. Yet it's actually easy to play! That's because it's not a "bar", it's a seqeuence of phrases that may be two, three, or four subdivisions long. Memorize the sequence and it's pretty straightforward. Likewise, equal temperament severely limits European melodies. Arabic and Indian music are far more melodically complex. But if you measure every other culture by the values of your own, they all look worse.
- gjm11 10y ago
  > every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time. For the most part, it's just a steady stream of eighth notes. I can't disagree with the overall idea that traditional European classical music is pretty simple rhythmically, but the statement above is just flatly false. For instance, I have here a copy of the first book of the Wohltemperierte Klavier, Bach's big collection of preludes and fugues. Prelude no 3 is in 3/8. Prelude no 4 is in 6/4. Prelude no 8 is in 3/2. Prelude no 9 is in 12/8. Prelude no 11 too. Prelude no 13 is in 12/16. It's still all 2s and 3s in various combinations (though there's a little bit of 5/8 in Handel) and, again, I'm not disputing that this stuff is rhythmically much simpler than your central-Asian frame drumming. But it's also not all 3/4 and 4/4, nor is it just a steady stream of quavers.
  - beat 10y ago
    Coming from the perspective of knowing central Asian, Arabic, and some African rhythms, arguing that 3/8 is tremendously different than 3/4 is a little silly to me. Virtually all classical music is just square feel, polka feel, waltz feel, or triplet feel. And it's not just the time signature, it's the simplicity of it. Arabic music is mostly 4/4, but is far more rhythmically intricate. Blues is mostly 12/8, but the feel is far different. It's kind of like arguing a Buick is better than a Chevy to someone driving a Tesla.
    - gjm11 10y ago
      I didn't argue that it's "tremendously different". I agreed that typical Western art music generally has pretty simple rhythms, and that other musical cultures often have much more complex ones. I said explicitly that time signatures in Bach are all 2s and 3s. But what you actually said was, in so many words, "every Bach piece, and every similar piece from other composers, is written in 3/4 or 4/4 time". And that simply isn't true.

gardano 10y ago

Take a gander at (classical Indian) Raga. It's not harmonic-centered, but it's incredibly complex.

visarga 10y ago
Yes, but can the same be said about cheap popular music?
- gardano 10y ago
  That's a good question. In most cases, no. I'd counter that Sidney Bechet or Muddy Waters 12-bar blues can be sophisticated without being complex
kefka 10y ago
Glad you mentioned this.. All I can say is Damn, that's awesome. I didn't realize some types of progressions and styles were Raga. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wra4p4zARw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wra4p4zARw
- gardano 10y ago
  I remember the story my composition teacher told… He was at a raga concert, and admitted to feeling totally lost. As the piece progressed, about 30 minutes into the performance, everybody in the audience sighed a breath of satisfaction, and nodded and smiled to each other when the cycles had reached conclusion. At that moment he realised that there was so much more to music than he realised, and that the audience was much more capable of concentration, too.
arjunbanker 10y ago
If you like electronic music and are interested in exploring the raga form, would recommend checking Charanjit Singh's 1982 album "Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB4RYBpwV0A)

beat 10y ago

Complexity takes different dimensions. Take American folk music, for example, something I know well. The songs and melodies are very simple. The performance is incredibly sophisticated. Addressing both individuality and tradition simultaneously, expressing the emotional content of the lyrics effectively... doing folk music is really, really hard. If all you're doing is counting notes, Bach is more complex. If you bring expressiveness into it, the Carter family trounces Bach. And if you want to hear Bach ruined, just plug the notation directly into a midi sequencer with no human involved in the performance. Music is both intellectual and emotional. Measuring only the intellectual aspect is a disservice to music. The emotional and cultural roles of music matter. This is often lost in "music theory". I remember a long time ago, watching Peter Gabriel perform at a charity concert for human rights. A quarter million people in the audience, and he got them to do a sing-along of the chorus to "Biko", a song about the death of South African activist Steve Biko, who was beaten/tortured to death in police custody. Peter Gabriel was sitting on the edge of the stage, swinging his legs, providing minimal guidance. A quarter million people raised their voices together. How is that less sophisticated than a Bach fugue? You raised the example of Simon and Garfunkel. "The Sound of Silence" will last in human society as long as Bach does. It will still be heard centuries from now. That's sophistication.

apalmer 10y ago
Seems like you are reading into this much greater implications than is intended. Classical music is in general much more complex and sophisticated than pop music. This is undeniably true by any rational yardstick. Whether its better or not is completely a different question.
- beat 10y ago
  Simplicity is sophistication as well. It's a more difficult form of sophistication than complexity, really. It's easier to add elements than take them away.
  - apalmer 10y ago
    Definition of sophistication from dictionary.com (of a person, ideas, tastes, manners, etc.) altered by education, experience, etc., so as to be worldly-wise; not naive: a sophisticated young socialite; the sophisticated eye of an experienced journalist. 2. pleasing or satisfactory to the tastes of sophisticates, or people who are educated, cultured, and worldly-wise: sophisticated music. 3. deceptive; misleading. 4. complex or intricate, as a system, process, piece of machinery, or the like: a sophisticated electronic control system. 5. of, for, or reflecting educated taste, knowledgeable use, etc.: Many Americans are drinking more sophisticated wines now. By any of these 5 distinct definitions classical music is more sophisticated than pop music. I understand that you do not like the connotations, but you have to use a word to mean what it actually means...

squeaky-clean 10y ago

What's important to one style of music, and "sophisticated" or "complex" may be irrelevant in another. It's hard to compare. Take a Bach Fugue, where the notes and harmonies are very important, and 'complex' with lots of rules, patterns, intertwining melodies. The specific instruments used doesn't always matter, most pieces could interchangeably be played on piano or harpsichord or organ and sound as beautiful. Then let's look at something like Scary Monsters by Skrillex, where the entire drop is pretty much just a G with a small melody coming in every 4 measures. There's not much melodic complexity going on there. But the sound production, synthesis and processing is insane. After that song came out everyone was trying to figure out how to make a talking bass that sounded like that. And even years later, barely anyone has figured it out, I've only heard really famous synthesists like Rob Swire get a close sound. Is a Skrillex drop as complex as a Bach Fugue? If you're just comparing the arrangement, or the melodies, not at all. But the Skrillex song isn't about the melody as much as the texture and dynamics. Bach didn't specify precisely what harmonics should exist in the instruments playing his music. Skrillex probably could not write a Fugue to the standards of Bach's best. But I bet if you sat Bach down in front of a laptop with an FM synthesizer, he couldn't create a "sick drop" either. It gets entirely too subjective at this point. A lot of people will disagree with me that the production and synthesis techniques should be considered part of music theory or composition. But I think they're concepts that you couldn't replicate certain music without. In my opinion the palindromic structure of a Boards of Canada album is on par with something like Bach's Crab Canon. They just get there in totally different ways.

baddox 10y ago
You seem to be implying that audio production is a component of music theory. This is something I had never considered. Normally I would not be thinking of audio production when I talk about music theory, but I certainly am not dogmatic about that. Things like timbre and dynamics are (I believe) usually considered part of music theory, so I suppose one could include all aspects of audio production as well.
- komali2 10y ago
  In modern music, "audio production" is arguably more important than any other aspect. If we judged your average top 10 hit by the same standards (melody, harmonization) that we did a Bach piece, no modern music would be considered "good" (le wrong generation, I get it). But these songs are popular and drive a multimillion dollar industry, so they must be doing something right. I would point straight to production quality and technique. Why is Dr. Dre so popular? He's a decent rapper but he doesn't really have much content volume. He's who he is because he's one of the best producers in hip-hop. He made a career, a legacy, and an industry out of just being really good at production.

kazinator 10y ago

Simon and Garfunkel absolutely depends on performance; it doesn't have the same musical content as a Bach fugue. A somewhat poor, though adequate, performance of a Bach fugue with an instrument that doesn't have great tone will still convey a great deal of Bach's meaning. A performance by average vocalists of a Simon and Garfunkle tune, backed by some average lounge band will just be a laughable farce. It can't be saved by the musical content, because that is there in insufficient quantity. Pop music is all in the nuance and tone that doesn't get notated in sheet music. The result is that performing a convincing cover of some pop music requires a very high musical standard. Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time.

noonespecial 10y ago
I think you've got something there. Bach solved a very difficult musical problem of his time brilliantly... how to transmit rich musical meaning using only a pen and some paper. Simon and Garfunkel had the luxury of using an LP instead and so transmitted in a totally different way. There's just no way you could write down what “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is supposed to sound like on paper beyond the barest (rather uninteresting) form. Medium, message etc.
- kazinator 10y ago
  That said, music practice after Bach did acquire more tricks in the notation to indicate performance. There are more constraints on how to play Chopin or Beethoven, say.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "Whereas a five-year-old kid can play some passable Bach on the piano that we can enjoy as Bach, just by hitting most of the right notes from the sheet music at mostly the right time." Sure, you can get pleasure from that, but at the highest level classical music is very much about interpretation. People may think that classical music is about following the notes exactly, but it's not quite true, the way the player interprets a piece is what brings a piece to life (or not), and these subtle touches are not directly transcribed in the sheet music.