DwnWthVwls

The problem I have with this is that although music is not clearly defined it still has qualities that prevent it from being completely subjective. As ninetales just said(I assume jokingly), "anything without a guitar in it is not music", is clearly bullsh*t.

How do you go about separating those kinds of opinions from "legitimate" ones?

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Machine

It is a hard case to make For either side and I probably shouldn't have said completely subjective as I have been proven wrong by ninetales, I wasn't thinking about that. I do however hold the position that it is subjective maybe not completely but to some degree.

Soulflower

I think it depends on what is being argued or debated.

For example,
If the debate is on who is the best singer in pop music, then the objective measures that will be used are vocal range, vocal strength, tone, endurance, etc. to determine who is the best. We use these measures to see how one is set apart from the other in a non subjective way.


I think if someone presents intelligent reasoning and rational for their opinion than it is legitimate one. If it can be backed by facts or some information that supports it, it makes the argument stronger.

Machine

Yeah I think that's fair.

Trollheart

And again, I have no problem with ambient music, much of which I love. I started listening to Solar Fields and thought (and wrote in my review) this is ridiculous! It's all one big long drawn out chord! All through the album. And it kind of is. But later I could get to appreciate what the guy was doing, and I got it.

Perhaps the thread title would be better were it to say "What do you think music is?" as, as many here including me have pointed out, there is no scientific carved-in-stone answer: it's all subjective and depends on your own preferences and points of view.

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Ninetales

Ok so there a couple different things being talked about here. So here's where im at on them. Machine, my first post wasn't really directed at you, more on Trollheart as he was trying to hide behind this barrier of "it's my opinion dude". Opinions can absolutely be shitty and his is. In my opinion.

The definition I like for what music is, is one that I think was basically mentioned earlier in this thread (maybe by grindy?). "Music is organized sound in time". It's simple and succinct and while being fairly loose in terms of what it encompasses, it's also not ambiguous. So that wind you heard on the walk home from school is not music, but Night Passage by Alan Lamb is. The heart of Trollheart's argument is based off arbitrary criteria that he personally values (and sometimes even those criteria are apparently misinterpreted to only include what he feels it is; "oh I don't hear melody->no melody=no music->this is not music". It's like saying carrots aren't a vegetable because it's orange, and I think vegetables are only green.

This (an entirely different beast), is also something id contest. Yeah sure vocal range or tone are things you can objectively measure, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. You can measure that someone has a baritone voice and differentiate that from a soprano, but that in itself has nothing to do with quality or who's the "best". Vocals, like all instruments in music, are not to be thought of in a vacuum. Some people have different preferences on what a singer should sound like, and it can(should) differ with respect to the context. Jandek may not have the best vocal strength or whathaveyou, but his voice works excellent for the music that he makes. So how can you compare him with Freddie Mercury? Who's the better singer? Using strictly "objective" singing terms to decide that isn't really a good argument, as it eliminates any sort of context that certain music is made for.

If youre talking about music and what's best, it is subjective. You can use measures if you want, but it's by no means an objective way to concretely decide this.

Frownland

If it's music when it's recorded, what stops it from being music when it's occurring outside of a recording?

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Oriphiel

Music is simply any sound that evokes a feeling in the observer. There are plenty of people who hear the sounds around them, and are especially moved by the ones that don't have order or structure to them. Then again, they must have order and structure to be defined as an existing phenomenon (sound) in the first place. Like I said, "You know it when you hear it", with an emphasis on "you". Half of all music is sound, and the other half is the listener; it takes both to make music, and if one half is estranged from the other, there is no reaction.

Instead of asking which sounds constitute the realm of music, you should understand that all sounds are potential music, should they reach the proper ear.

Soulflower

You're right. However, I am not suggesting objective measures is the only measure that should just be strictly used to determine what makes a good singer.I was giving an example of when objective measures would be appropriate to use outside of just subjective opinions since the poster wanted to know under what circumstances would it be appropriate to use objective measures.

Pet_Sounds

I think of music as similar to electricity, in that it's all around us, but needs to be harnessed. Random noises aren't music to me unless they've been organized.

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