kimberlysteele | In Which I Complain About Music

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In Which I Complain About Music

Before I begin criticizing the state of music as I see it, let me first expose some of my own failures as a musician. I am only truly excellent in two areas of music and neither of them is performance. One: I have a profound grasp of music theory and an ear to match. Two: I'm extremely good at spitting out new melodies and harmonies, and a good proportion of them are catchy, including the zillion ones I compose for my cat and throw out. In every other aspect of musicianship, I consider myself moderately skilled to mediocre. I am a lousy sightreader, a middle of the road pianist, a semi-okay guitarist, a decent but unexceptional singer, and until the last decade, a late-blooming slow learner who was still learning certain Music 201 basics in her twenties because of a combination of mental blocks and sheer laziness. One of the reasons I am a good teacher of music is because I'm not a virtuoso performer. I still know what it is to struggle, and I don't have to delve that far into my past to remember being mystified by various realms of musical study.

Take any opinion of mine, on the subject of music or otherwise, with a grain of salt. I am not a concert pianist and my original music is obscure and unknown. Nevertheless, I reserve strong opinions about music.

Opera Sucks

There are some operas, La Boheme, for instance, that are intensely beautiful and moving. If you are given a synopsis of the story beforehand or understand sung Italian, there are operas that will change your life. The problem is one of "having to be there." Most of us cannot afford to see an opera. For one, if we live near a city where an opera is being staged by a great troupe of musical artists including a pit orchestra and opera singers, there is the problem of not being able to get the time off to make a night of traveling into the city as well as the cost of transportation, opera tickets, and a meal before or after. Operas aren't short -- if you have the privilege of seeing one, you'll need to stop and eat. It's no wonder that the dwindling audiences that used to partially fill the opera house and the symphony center were largely white, old, and well-monied. Nobody else had the resources to try opera, and opera, like symphonic music, is far better experienced live. Music is a largely etheric phenomenon. For those of you who don't know what the etheric plane is, consider it to be the plane of energy that is akin to the Force in Star Wars movies. The special energy of live music cannot be had any other way.

Another problem with opera is the singers. They're what Randy from American Idol calls "pitchy". I can sing loud and on pitch. It's a matter of projection. I know it's not impossible; the reason people come to me for voice lessons is because I know how to project without screaming or becoming pitchy. It's a technique. I'm not sure why so many famed opera singers pile onto the extra vibrato train, but they do, and though it raises the snob appeal of opera, for me it ruins otherwise lovely pieces of music. These singers have as good or better aural capabilities than I do, so why do they flail around the pitch like a bee closing in on a coneflower? Vibrato is like perfume: a little goes a long way. Kiri Te Kanawa bathes in Chanel No. 5 as far as my ears are concerned. I can tell her ear is impeccable but I cannot stand to listen to her. Renée Fleming is more pleasant; at least she hits the notes reliably with a minimum of vibrato. I do tend to enjoy Purcell and other early operas because their style doesn't mandate as much vibrato, but overall, the matronly, rooster crow warblings of opera singers make me cringe.

Museum Music

Most of the music we are expected to like and preserve is museum music. We are supposed to love everything Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, and Wagner ever wrote because they have been listed as the greats. I often find Mozart's pieces stilted or syrupy. I know I'm not allowed to say that. I can already hear the thousand rallying cries of "but that's the Rococo era and the neo-Classic revival" blah de blah. If you are enjoying this sacrilege, Haydn is boring most of the time. He has about two album's worth of great tunes and the rest is filler. What do you expect from a guy whose comfortable lifestyle depended on being a music mill for a pathologically bored prince? Wagner's music is awful to all except the chosen few who understand him, and I am not one of those chosen few. Don't even get me started on atonal music and any form of Musique Concrete. It's garbage and the people who write it are delusional. One of their delusions is that they are making music.

Sadder yet is the attempt to revive what is called classical music (I think Classic Music is a more fitting term, because like Classic Rock, it implies a vintage) via "new" composers. Yes, I have heard of Alma Deutscher. Have you heard of Marian McPartland? She's the kind of vital composer/educator I hope Deutscher becomes when she grows up.

The Music of Our Time

The music of our common era has always displeased me. Who knew the I-IV-V chord progression had so many iterations? Or the I-vi-IV-V? Layer that crap over an annoying beat and throw on some ear-shredding, autotuned vocals and you have a hit ad jingle ahem I mean pop song. Modern tunes ALL sound like ad jingles. Music has gotten so bad, the only way a pop star can glean a modicum of attention is via softcore porn in the form of music videos. I would not be even slightly surprised if the sleazebag influencers (I refuse to call them artists, they're not) creating this tripe resorting to full on X rated porno featuring penetration in order to shock jaded youngsters into watching their torpefying sexual antics. Cardi B keeps writing the same "song" over and over. She requires a team of producers to do what unknown teenagers do in their basements with freeware. Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us, her career will be over in less than a decade. Let's just hope she doesn't resort to the desperate antics I mentioned earlier in this paragraph as her youth fades.

Rap

Speaking of Cardi B, was there ever a whinier, lazier, greedier, or sleazier genre than American rap? When rap began, it was fun and edgy. It was the music of the people, not of the producers. Though swearing to a rhyme scheme to a looping ad jingle is more impressive than free verse or prose, like constant in-your-face sexuality, it's Dullsville. Any tune that contains rap these days has one or more of these three obsessive themes:

1.) Money. "I have more money than you, ha ha, I'm so rich."

2.) Cheap, exploitative sex.

3.) Ego. "I'm better than you because you're a loser and I'm not."

Sadly, these themes have spread to infect almost all pop music. Note to the would-be pop music artists out there: pick a theme that has nothing to do with money, sexual relationships, or how much better you are than your rivals, I double dog dare you.

Autotune

Autotune is everywhere in vocal music. It's in rap, it's in pop, it's in musicals, it's even in country music. If I am ever shot into space, I believe I will be able to detect the frosty, clipped chirrup of autotune from 15,000 miles before simultaneously freezing and exploding, I hate it that much. Like vibrato, autotune is fine in tiny doses, but does anyone ever use it that way? No. I am a professional at pitch-correction, and because I know how to do it, I know how lazy the modern audio engineer is when it comes to batch correcting vocals. Just make the singer do it again, for crying out loud. Hard drives are cheap, yet the economy with which tracks are autotuned makes me think these bigwigs are still working with analog tape decks in their rigs. How else do you explain that much editing on such a tiny bit of material?

Excuses

The above condemnation is a massive oversimplification of what music is out there. I may like to kvetch, but all in all it is a great time to be a musician. Never before has it been so easy to record your own music. There is a whole world out there beyond the two styles I complain about in this article, and I highly suggest you explore it. Within the two realms I described, there are great artists and performances. Beyond them lie entire realms of musical magic. If I have any hope of making musical magic myself, may the gods help me! That's why I'm going to wrap this up now, because my tunes have not yet learned to write and produce themselves!

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Yeah, pretty much all those things. I'm not as big on music theory, and have a different set of #1 music peccadilloes, but can only nod along. I have a minor sensory processing issue, and this makes "noisy" music-- music That has a lot of little sounds going on at once, particularly cymbals, snares, violins, and other stuff in that high, shushing range-- almost unbearable to listen to.

I hate the designation "classical music" because it's such a huge category, but people treat it as though it is a single entity: "I like classical music". Or "Oh, I don't really care for classical music". Invariably, it's Mozart they're thinking of, with his screeching violins... sigh. Nothing personal, Mozart: I have a hearing problem. I'm sure you're great. I liked your Requiem (but it would still be nicer without the violins).

I have a deep love for lots of classical music... but in very narrow bands: Palestrina, John Williams (brass-heavy), Bach's organ repertoire, and anything of his transcribed for acoustic guitar. Choral music. Most of what constitutes pop music for the last sixty years is... indecipherable noise. I like Jean Ritchie a lot, and some of the older country guitar-pickers: Merle Travis, Johnny Cash, Doc Watson... and more recently Chris Smither, for similar reasons. It's quiet music, not noisy.

Used to like Mahler a lot, but find I am not that depressed anymore, and have got out of the habit ;)

Have spent the last few years converting my strictly-mechanical music-reading skill (high school band) into sight-reading for voice, completely out in public and not by my own choice, which was absolutely mortifying for the first year or so. Never pictured myself as a vocalist, and never liked singing in front of others, so it's been a hair-raising sort of adventure.

You might benefit from wearing soft earplugs -- I wear them whenever my husband and I go to a movie, or at least I used to when movie theaters were still allowed. I have super-sensitive hearing and high frequencies are the worst. If I am exposed to a high sound for too long, I become irritated to the point of rage.

Yes, the term classical music is silly. It's used to refer to every form of orchestral music outside of soundtracks. I like Bach's restraint and mathmaticism/counterpoint. Bach's melodies weren't the main attraction of his music and that's why I think his music is so brilliant. By the time we get to Mozart, melody has to carry more weight as it's far more homophonic. Mozart's melodies are annoying. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Symphony No. 40, one of his few minor themes... not that great. I agree with you though, the Requiem was good stuff. Maybe if Mozart had the opportunity to age beyond his mid-thirties, his material would have further evolved towards the gravity of the Requiem.

I'm a fan of Saint-Saens. He was vastly underrated. So was Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.

I wish you the best on your musical adventures! Sounds exciting.

I've long regarded most female opera singers as engaging in controlled screaming, so it's interesting to hear you say this. One exception was Beverly Sills. Some of the tenors, on the other hand, are out of this world. It's the sopranos that ruin opera for me. I feel like a rube sometimes when I say this, as if I just must like opera, so to hear a music professional say this is very reassuring.

I'm very much in agreement with Kimberly on opera: I once got to see La Traviata live and it was fantastic. I cried. But it's just not the same in recordings-- the magic is gone.

I had the honor of seeing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. I needed a box of Kleenex, it was the waterworks. Rimsky-Korsakov was one of the greatest orchestrationists who ever lived. It is far different to experience it live. Think of the best movie you've ever seen in your life in a dark theater times ten.

There's a discussion on Quora where I chime in about opera:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-young-people-seem-to-hate-opera

Of course we get a bunch of opera defenders. The one who I found the most aggravating was the degree-bearing snob who wrote a TL:DR wall of text expounding upon his outrage at anyone who criticizes opera or opera singers. What he was saying from his ivory tower is that we plebes aren't permitted to dislike opera, and if we do, we ought to shut up because dissenting views that differ from the salary class are not allowed.

I disagree with you, opera's projected vocals are technically not controlled screaming, but that does not make the timbre of operatic vocal techniques any more pleasant. The snobby dude I mentioned above tears down Charlotte Church because she doesn't blast down brick walls with sanity-crushing soprano vibrato saw-grinding. He's obviously jealous of Church's ability to convey emotion without her audience wishing they were deaf.

Edited 2020-08-27 03:37 (UTC)

I've taken all of a single semester's worth of guitar class.

That said, I think the true revival of classical music happened in the world of heavy metal. I know this is a very weird claim on its face, as the roots are clearly folk. However, something happened a couple of decades ago with musical experimentation in the metal world that gave rise to bands who, knowingly or not, have resurrected the spirit of older composers with life and dynamism.

I don't want to go on an unsolicited list of bands, but what I can say is that I feel your complaints regarding some popular composers, but that if there's a kernel of life to enjoy in those old styles then it still exists in dark corners of dive bars, occasionally exploding out onto large stages backed with a literal symphony.

Interesting. I think you're right, but it also went a couple of other ways. Opera became musical theater. Our great-great-grandparents saw The Barber of Seville and Carmen, our grandparents saw Crazy For You and Top Hat, and the kids nowadays want to go see Hamilton.

Some of it went to church music, and I mean the big mega-churches like Cavalry and Compass that have an entire musical staff of New Age/Rock musicians of considerable skill.

Jazz at least never lost its improvisational forms. In my opinion, improvisation is what keeps music alive. Without it, why bother? The reason pop music, including the stuff played by Billie Eilish in concert, feels so dead is because it is all pre-canned, no improvisation at all, there's no noodling or scatting.

I had a few years of piano as a kid (befitting my family's lower middle class but aspiring to the middle class status), but my real musical talent is somehow asorbing the lyrics to a crazy, random variety of songs. I don't know when or how I learn the words, but I can usually sing along to just about any American music from the 1920s through the 1970s that comes my way--even if I don't remember ever hearing it before. I almost never know the artist or song title.

I'll admit, I do sometimes enjoy modern pop songs, or those from my youth, when I'm in the mood to dance and be joyful. My real preference, though, is old school country-western, nothing more recent than the 1980s, with runners-up in the blues, gospel, and some jazz (before it got all crazy).

-lp

I have so much trouble remembering lyrics! From the sounds of it, Ip, I think it's possible you were a musician in a past life, or perhaps an orator of some sort who had to memorize long passages of verse and/or prose. I like a great deal of modern pop as well -- I know I came down on it like a ton of bricks for the essay but much of it is fun, refreshing, and enjoyable.

You know, I hadn't thought about the orator idea before, but based on some skills that come quite easily and instinctively to me, and have for a very long time, that makes a great deal of sense...

-lp

Point well made about the etheric power of a live performance. I have stayed in a concert where Ligeti was being played, to my own surprise. Any more thoughts on this?

As for super strength vibrato, I understand that it is thought to be required for being heard over a large orchestra? Possibly more necessary for high voices to carry? As a non-vibratorial soprano I have tried harmonising with a male guitar busker and similar public performances in non-concert hall type spaces and been told people simply can't hear me. No, I dislike it too, especially in its more robust manifestations.

Before COVID hit, it was possible to go to a movie theatre and see operas. I never got around to trying it that way-- Has anyone seen an opera in a theatre, and was it as good as live opera?

If anyone ever wants to try a short opera, I'd recommend Lakhme by Delibes. Stupid words (but its in French anyway, so you can ignore them!), great music, done in 30 minutes.

Edvard Grieg has some good pieces that are even good on You Tube. I'd recommend Solveig's song, here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8AD75_sNJM

I haven’t seen you on the Archdruid sites in a long time!

I have been so swamped... I miss interacting on JMG's sites -- I did pop in a couple times on the latest Open Post. I've got so many music projects right now, both paid and labors of love, I haven't had the time. Thanks for noticing!

I have pretty much no musical talent whatsoever, so my opinions on the topic aren't worth much, but I agree that opera is best experienced live. I'd say that is true of anything in the theatrical realm (which includes opera, for me). I have limited experience with opera, though - one summer spent working in the office for a small local opera house, before which I'd never had any interest in opera whatsoever.

When it comes to non-theatrical music, I mostly prefer the produced version, delivered (ideally) in a private setting where I don't need to partake in anyone else's energy. (Orchestral music is also nice in a big theatre or auditorium, but quite possibly only because it's generally polite to stay in your seat and not interact with your neighbors at that kind of concert.) I do wonder if my lack of musical talent and knowledge is what puts my preferences more in the realm of what's familiar - and perhaps that might translate to why "the masses" also seem to prefer hearing the same three or four chords ad nauseum.

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In Which I Complain About Music

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Not a musician

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