Why most people don't like jazz • Hacker News Board

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#111

Post by talktalk » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 6:50 PM UTC

aristoxenus wrote: post #15

keyist wrote: post #6

An interesting corollary is that jazz musicians tend to not have as striking an image when it comes to their marketing. Compare what you first visualize when you hear the names KISS or Flava Flav versus say Brad Mehldau or Keith Jarrett. EDIT: This is probably due to jazz musicians taking themselves more seriously and wanting to be known more for their music than anything else. If a jazz artist enlisted Dir En Grey's…

Have you noticed how much more sophisticated Lady Gaga's music is than the rest of what's popular these days? Her popularity has nothing to do with that. It's the way she throws in catchy verbal chants and is equally brilliant at visual and personality branding. And she as a great name.

I would have to disagree re: Lady GaGa's music.

I find her visual image and brand are very well executed and interesting. However, the quality of her music is just not up to snuff. If you compare her tracks to those of other contemporary pop producers such as The-Dream, Xenomania, and Richard-X, you will find that there really is much room for improvement.

That being said, I am almost certain that GaGa will get her act together and start collaborating with better producers and she will become one of the true great pop artists of our time

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#112

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 6:55 PM UTC

stan_rogers wrote: post #69

bryanh wrote: post #5

Not that I entirely agree with this article, but as a jazz musician, it definitely interests me. I am curious though; when was the last time everyone listened to an entire album while doing nothing else? (no driving, surfing, working, etc...)

Earlier today, in fact. But it's not so much the attention span thing that gets in the way (I play reeds, by the way) but the intellectual masturbation of a lot of jazz that turns people off. I've yet to run into anybody who turns their nose up at, say, Dave Brubeck's "Time Out", which is certainly rhythmically sophisticated but tuneful, or Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue" (an album that's usually the first up for vis…

Jazzer, drop your axe: it's jazz police! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6asMGoX2DY

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#113

Post by sp332 » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 6:56 PM UTC

talktalk wrote: post #105

sp332 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wynton Marsalis says "When the music stopped being about dancing, people stopped listening." I never completely bought it, but I like the sentiment anyway :-)

Dance music is alive and well, it just doesn't sound like jazz anymore. Being a type of music that emphasizes the here and now (that is, the dance floor), why should the music producers use production techniques and instruments of a bygone era? Also, if we're looking at the big picture of "the story of american music", disco very much comes from the same lineage as jazz.

Read it again: he said music, not jazz. Anyway, (e.g.) square dancing is still fun :-) And I know a few drummers would like to have a word with you about "instruments of a bygone era."

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#114

Post by mbubb » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:02 PM UTC

snitko wrote: post #3

It's not the problem of lyrics vs words in the first place. It's a problem of lack of musical education. Give a person a guitar or a piano and within a year she starts paying attention to the composition and performing skills. And her tastes may change dramatically too. So in a sense, I consider "listening to words" not as an alternative point of view, but rather a lack of musical training. Sure, words may simply be…

Yes but I also think that in some cultures people sing more and informally. ot just education but also general attitudes towards singing.

For me growing up the only time I would sing would be in church - the essence of drudgery.

Working and traveling in Asia - I was exposed to people singing pubicaly a lot more. In Korea it seemed pretty common in parties or general gatherings for people just to sing. And NorReBangs (karaoke) as a common destination.

This was so foreign to me as an American. It was hard for me - fun but awkward.

Traveling in Mongolia, I stopped in gers and people would stand around and sing and ask me to sing.

This doesnt make people from these countries automatially better musicians - but I think in my particular upbringing it was really uncommon for people to casually sing. 'If you were not good at it you shouldnt do it' - was the fallacy that I internalized.

I remember my wife, when we were dating, and I were walking through a bohemian area of Seoul full of street musicians, etc and she spontaneously got up in a little outdoor ampitheatre and sang a song she liked. I thought this was great but was so outside my reference...

Japan - despite its proximity to Korea - is a pretty different culture in many ways but I felt the writer was also talking about a comfort or naturalness with music which was not the result of education but culture.

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#115

Post by CodeMage » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:02 PM UTC

snitko wrote: post #3

It's not the problem of lyrics vs words in the first place. It's a problem of lack of musical education. Give a person a guitar or a piano and within a year she starts paying attention to the composition and performing skills. And her tastes may change dramatically too. So in a sense, I consider "listening to words" not as an alternative point of view, but rather a lack of musical training. Sure, words may simply be…

I'm not so sure it's all about education. I've always thought it had a lot to do with "listening talent", that thing which people refer to when they say "He's got a good ear."

Of course, this is just my own theory based on my own, personal (and therefore anecdotal) experience. For example, to enjoy a song, I first need to like its music. If the lyrics are in a language I understand, then I need to like them too, but I'm more forgiving in that aspect. I've always thought that this is because I have a rather decent ear. Even though my voice often lacks the capacity to reproduce the music correctly, I can distinguish sounds well enough that I can reproduce at least the main melody on a keyboard.

On the other hand, I've noticed that most people who have less-than-decent "ear" tend to focus more on lyrics than on music. My theory is that if you can't distinguish well enough one melody from another, your won't be able to enjoy songs based on their music -- it's sort of like expecting a blind person to admire a painting.

I think the weakest link in my theory is the fact that I'm basing it on my "anecdata": among all the people I know, those with "not-so-good ear" are more frequent than those with "decent ear". It would be interesting to see what other people's experiences when it comes to that.

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#116

Post by CWuestefeld » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:03 PM UTC

swannodette wrote: post #61

The state of music commentary on this thread is low enough to be insulting and pretty much validates the article. I find it humorous that a website that draws people dedicated to abstract thought can have such a mediocre understanding of music and music history. Do yourself a favor, find a piece of music that you think you don't like. Sit down and listen to it 50 times without distraction so that you know all the cha…

Sit down and listen to it 50 times without distraction so that you know all the changes, turns, asides, tensions, contractions, contradictions, and undulations.

In college I had a minor in electronic art. We'd sit through each other's performances and then comment on all the various artistic work that went into them.

The elephant in the room was that it was all BS. I couldn't count the number of times that someone told me "I appreciated the way you used X to emphasize Y". In truth, nothing had been farther from my mind; it just worked out that way.

So I think that a huge portion of what you're interpreting in the changes, turns, etc. are just happenstance. It's just that our minds are such incredible pattern-recognizing machines, and are so malleable, that it's trivially easy to spot some pattern and rationalize a whole lot of noise (in the information processing sense) into spurious meaning.

How else to explain someone deciding that Ursa Major looks like a bear?

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#117

Post by hkuo » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:05 PM UTC

I used to be a huge jazz fan. I discovered it around my senior year in high school and just started eating it all up. While other cars were blaring rap music and Guns and Roses, I would be playing John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

So I can speak from personal perspective on how I lost interest and give my 2 cents on why it's lost popularity. It's actually pretty simple. There's just nothing new. No innovation. That's it. I enjoy the melodies when I hear them and there are appropriate times when I will put it on, but it is what it is and nothing more these days.

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#118

Post by tjr » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:06 PM UTC

prewett wrote: post #75

The reason why I don't like jazz is that my ears can't find any pattern to it. There's no melody, except at the beginning and end of the piece, so the notes just sound random. So to me the music is largely indistinguishable from noise. Once I discovered that jazz is apparently about the chords it made more sense. (The notes appear to be unimportant as long as everyone is in the same chord)

Those seemingly random notes are improvisation. Depending on the arrangement and/or preferences of the individual player, yes, those notes may be based on the chord progressions... or based on a particular scale or mode ("modal jazz")... or pulled together from a catalog of memorized melodic fragments... or some combination of all of the above.

In general, players who are also proficient composers tend to be the best improvisors. Players who are only players can be good improvisors, but their improvisations tend to be more on the mediocre / less inspiring side.

Unfortunately, it sure seems to me that we've had less and less good jazz composition over the years, which might explain why more and more jazz improvisation sounds rather lousy.

On the other hand, some improvisation made by expert jazz players really does sound very strange on purpose, e.g., the "Science Fiction" recordings of Ornette Coleman. You might like it, you might not, but either way, it's pretty far out there.

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#119

Post by billybob » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:06 PM UTC

prewett wrote: post #75

The reason why I don't like jazz is that my ears can't find any pattern to it. There's no melody, except at the beginning and end of the piece, so the notes just sound random. So to me the music is largely indistinguishable from noise. Once I discovered that jazz is apparently about the chords it made more sense. (The notes appear to be unimportant as long as everyone is in the same chord)

Yeah, whenever jazz sounds random to me, I dislike it. I love stuff like Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk," because the tune is odd enough to be interesting, but my brain can catch it and I can sing along in my mind, whistle it later, etc.

If I listen to a whole song and have only vague impressions, no tune, then I feel like I've wasted my time.

But perhaps I'm just unsophisticated.

Re: Why most people don't like jazz

#120

Post by talktalk » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:08 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #113

talktalk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dance music is alive and well, it just doesn't sound like jazz anymore. Being a type of music that emphasizes the here and now (that is, the dance floor), why should the music producers use production techniques and instruments of a bygone era? Also, if we're looking at the big picture of "the story of american music", disco very much comes from the same lineage as jazz.

Read it again: he said music, not jazz. Anyway, (e.g.) square dancing is still fun :-) And I know a few drummers would like to have a word with you about "instruments of a bygone era."

I should clarify that by "instruments of a bygone era", I really mean "acoustic instruments speaking the language of bebop, swing, etc."

While I agree that square dancing and other folk dance traditions can be fun, they can not by any means be considered "contemporary". Their appeal these days is that of nostalgia and fondness for these bygone eras.