What kind of music do you find most unappealing?
 

Just a little poll I wanted to post purely out of curiosity. It'd be interesting to see how the results are distributed among users on the site.

The question is:
If you had to pick one of the two general categories, which kind of qualities would you say has the most probability to put you off towards a given piece of music?:

a) Banality, contrivance, cliché or sentimentality (etc.)
b) Abstraction, dissonance, "cacophony" or abrasiveness (etc.)

edit: Or differently put; which one annoys you most, if at all? /edit

Feel free to explain your preference, but no there's no obligation to do so. The poll choices will be public.

I chose the first option (shocker).

When I looked at the thread title, I was thinking passionless music would be my answer. I guess that falls into the the first category since lack of passion and effort can push you towards cliches; there's a lot of abstract/dissonant music that fits that bill though. Familiarity is nice, but so are surprises, and the second category just has a greater amount of good music under it.

No NOTA so I can't vote.

True. I know of course the options don't represent everything that one could conceivably dislike in music, but it sort of represents two "camps" of music listeners, of which one thinks that "ugly" equals bad, or rather that the most supreme goal of music is to be conventionally beautiful.

A follow-up question to the users (like me) who choose the first option:
Would you agree that an experienced listener who has explored a wide range of music will generally tend to pick option a)?

.

;)

One thing to note is that I don't consider abstraction or dissonance to be negatives, but all of the words you used for the first category would be words I use to negatively describe music.

It wasn't clear enough. You're basically saying "Do you like boring uninspired music or creative experimental music". Obvious bias put into it.

It's more likely, but I don't think it's a general rule since exploring things doesn't mean enjoying, appreciating, or understanding them. Plus, there are still people who will explore and keep an open mind but at the same time don't want to remain exploring and have a niche that they stay comfortably in. So in short: kinda.

also true. It may be a somewhat loaded question, but I know that plenty of people would rather listen to something they were well aware was clichéd over something that "hurt their ears".

For future voters, keep in mind that I'm not thinking about something like distorted guitars or "heaviness" when I say abrasive, but full on chaos, atonality/pantonality or altogether rejection of recognizable pitches and such. Also, off-key singing and very loose/amateurish-sounding stuff like f.ex. The Shaggs could possibly also fit into category b).

edit: It's also worth noting that although the two categories are not mutually exclusive in all cases, I feel the overlap is fairly negligible. You could argue that one option having more apparently subjective terms will skew the poll in favor of the first option, but I honestly couldn't find any good objective descriptors to box in the kind of music I had in mind. Although few will probably admit to preferring "contrived" music, maybe they would if they absolutely couldn't stand the latter option...

I'm principally perturbed by pretty people performing a pastiche of popular puppet performances to placate the plebian peasantry.

The genre I find unappealing is Heavy Metal, mostly the sub-sub-genres of Metal. Not the early bands that made up "heavy music" (as Dunn put it), e.g. Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Zeppelin & Sabbath. Most Metal bands fall under the first option i.e. Banality, contrivance, and cliché but not sentimentality. There is no sentimentality in Metal, unless it's some Hair Metal power ballad, but those can be incredibly cheesy that it negates any sentimentality by being so unbearably contrived.

I'm sick of ****ing fiends ferociously fracking for fossil fuels endangering earths' ever elegant essence probably procuring pretty petty profits of crappy computer coded credit card currencies.

:offtopic:

I just realize how absolutely annoying alliteration can be. http://www.mothershideaway.com/forum...ies/thgaah.gif

Already, all bears being born caress carefully dear darling elders for fear gregarious gruesome giants hunt inside joyous kennels looking more maliciously, nightly, narrow-mindedly or orifices possibly perturb purchasers; quietly, quivering, reach radius said to tell tales under unlikely variants, variably vomiting wherever wormly Xavier xenophobically zippered zzzzzzzly.

As much as I hate the lack of musical notes being employed in modern pop music. I still have to go with option A over option B

I like my music to have melody even if it's cliche sounding revival genres. You can go a long ways with simple sentimental, or melancholy sounding tracks. Oasis was a good example of this. They were average and ordinary, almost banal, but they knew how to make good use of sad sounding melodies.

As for the dissonant, I can listen to Skinny Puppy on a good day, but I'll take a pass on mathcore, and most progressive rock.

Option A is more of a turnoff to me I guess. Not that there isn't some music I like that's a little cliched or sentimental, but overall, though I may not always be in the mood for an Albert Ayler or a Throbbing Gristle, the Whitney Houstons and Tim McGraws of the world consistently make me want to punch something.

I find music as a whole to be unappealing.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel too. Certainly there are days where I don't have the energy to listen to something really challenging, but I do whenever I'm in the mood.
Towards the "a)"-stuff, there are some clichés I find more tolerable than others, I can even enjoy some of it at times, but I would definitely say that, for me personally, both Pop balladry and a good chunk of certain Metal sub-genres are among the worst offenders in this category, though a lot of modern "indie" is guilty as well.

Thanks for your perspective. It's interesting to hear from the other point of view as well. (Oh, and btw I'm not saying that sentimentality, or at least a strong presence of sentiment necessarily denotes cliché.)

Just curious, how do you feel about something like this, for instance?:

Allow anyone to annoy you accordingly with alliteration as absolute as they are allowed.

Ki warely welies on whimsical writings without wesorting to waging whetoric.

No love :(




This took quite some time to do and I wish I had that time back now.

Man, I don't ****in' know. At the very least I am not at all turned off by a) whereas I am often repelled by b), but I guess b) makes up most of the music I listen to, so... I don't ****in' know, man.

Not even that fucking song from Titanic?

That song has about twenty seconds in total of being mildly entertaining, but the rest of it falls short of all of those categories since "boring" wasn't included in the OP.

I think it fits squarely under the category of "banal".

But it doesn't suck cause it's unoriginal, it sucks cause it's just dull. There's no particular way to describe its dullness other than just being dull.

fyi there is an "etc." in parentheses in the poll options, so that could fit under there, but words like "boring" or "dull" can go both ways, (or potentially apply to both a and b) depending on your subjective taste, so that's why I din't include them. Giving an answer to the poll would be more about for what reason you think it's "dull" or something like that. I would be bored by "My heart will go on" for the reasons listed under a) (or associated terms), which in turn edges me towards giving the first answer to the poll.
So it really comes down to whether you dislike it for those kind of reasons or different reasons altogether. If the former is the case, it would depend what puts you off the most between something like the Titanic song and for example the Penderecki piece I posted on the previous page.

It's dull because of how unoriginal it is.

But even the original would have been dull.

Can't decide either, I know it's a matter of taste but to me both can sound equaliy ****y or good. Non of these qualities turn me of per se.

Abrasiveness side of things I like less than the sentimental side, just because if you don't have anything nice to sing, don't sing anything at all. Also, swear words which are out of place and unnecessary. Unless, you know your point that you're portraying in the music.

Excessive profanity ftw!

Experimental music that thinks it's doing something new or different when in reality it's just as bland and uninspired as any of the conventional music they think is bland and uninspired. Like, recording a bunch of random noises at the park, lazily slapping them together with heavy distortion and releasing it as a 'song' under the guise that you are pushing the limits of what music can be. Nah, you're just a lazy ******* with a recorder.

I'd have to agree. There's a point when the experimentation needs to end and makin some actual cohesive **** with your abnormal music skills. But on tge other hand, while lazy, I still like it 90% of the time.

Well it's like, if all these experimental artists sound the same then can we actually call it experimental? They aren't really experimenting if they are imitating other people's style.

b) Abstraction, dissonance, "cacophony" or abrasiveness :)

like who, for example? Not saying you're wrong, I just cant think of artists that do this off the top of my head.