If you re-read the quote, you'll realize I neither said nor implied any such thing.

It looked like you did, but I'll take your word for it.

I'm curious, are you opposed to people making rhythmic sounds with their mouths, even if those sounds are not words? Would you object to beatboxing of some kind in an instrumental song?

I'm not opposed to anyone doing anything. I just don't like it.

There is a difference, IMO, between someone using their mouths as a genuine percussive instrument, and someone rapping. Someone using their mouths as a percussive instrument is usually a sort-of background thing and does not interfere with the main focus of the song, which in the case of an instrumental would be the instrumental melody. Vocals are also used as background "instruments" all the time (many harmonies, counter-melodies that just go "doo wop" or something like that, etc). Nothing wrong with that as long as they don't overburden the main melody.

But once someone starts saying words, as in rapping, they are clearly telling us the focus of the song is supposed to be on what the singer is mouthing. In this post here, for example, in the 2nd song I said I thought the instrumentation was interesting, but shortly after the singing began I tuned it out because there was no melody in the singing, and I found myself still paying attention to the background instrumentation. But this is kind-of annoying because I feel myself compelled to ignore what is clearly supposed to be the focus of the song in order to try to listen to an aspect of the song that I do like (which, unfortunately, is the background stuff). Eliminate the rapping and I would probably like the song as an instrumental. Or, turn the rapping into something melodic and I'd probably like the song. In the absence of those 2 alternatives, I feel the rapping gets in the way of the music. As I said before I do not like someone merely yakking away at me.

So is it the words themselves that you find distracting or is it just that you don't like percussion in general to be the focus? Can you enjoy an instrumental song where the drumming is the focal point? What about a hip hop song that's in a language you don't understand so that you can simply listen to the voice as a lead percussion instrument and not get bogged down in words? I bring up that last question because sometime I enjoy listening to foreign language music for that very reason (both singing and rapping), because I want to enjoy the voice simply as an instrument.

What do you think of something like this (assuming you don't speak spanish):



Or this (if you don't speak Russian):

It is the words without a melody I find distracting, not words themselves.

I am attracted to notes more than words. If you have a composition with both notes and spoken word, I am automatically going to focus on the aspect of the composition with the notes and will mentally tune out the part with the spoken word, even if the aspect with the spoken word is supposed to be the focus of the song. However, it becomes annoying to find myself doing this, as it seems to me the spoken word part "gets in the way" of trying to listen to the notes.

On the other hand, if you have a composition with two aspects, both of which contain notes/melody, then I will focus on whichever of the two seems to be the focus of the song. In the case of a song with both a melodic singing line in addition to melodic background instruments, it is usually going to be the vocals that the song asks the listener to focus on, and in that case it is easy for me to oblige.

Someone already asked me about rap in foreign languages. You'll have to re-read that post.

But it does seem to be the fact that they are words rather than simply sounds that bothers you though, since other non-melodic components of the music, such as drums, don't seem to bug you at all. This comes back to a question I asked that you didn't respond to: Can you enjoy an instrumental song where the drumming is the focal point?

That was where my mind went. I linked a few songs in another language a couple pages back and he still didn't like it. I'm interested to hear his answer to this drum question.

Drum solos can be OK at times, but it's usually not something I'm going to be interested in. In the case of drums in most songs, it is because they are background elements that it doesn't bother me. If it was a song with the drums mixed overly loud, to the point where it was drowning out the vocals and the rest of the song, then yes, that would be annoying too.

I'm still not sure you understand. The words themselves do not bother me, it is speaking those words without a melody that bothers me. In fact, as I said in the post I linked above, words aren't even that important to me in a song - if the words of my favorite song were nothing but, "You are a mother-f*cking a**hole" over and over again, I would probably like the song just as much as I do now.

Since words are unimportant to me while notes/melody are the overwhelming reason for my like of music in the first place, and you have a genre in which the focus of the song are words which don't even have a melody, how on earth am I going to be interested in that genre?

BTW I suspect that most people who don't like rap dislike it for the same reasons as I, though they probably couldn't explain their reasons for their dislike in as much detail as I have here.

Here we go: A drum solo from one of my favorite bands.



The question you would likely ask me is, do I like this song? My answer is, when I listen to this album in my car I usually skip it over. As a one-off thing I suppose it has a bit of novelty value, and perhaps if they used a more skilled drummer with more interesting beats/rhythms, I might not always skip it over. But since there aren't really any "notes" in the song it's not very interesting to me. (disclaimer: I know drums technically have "notes" but they're not really "note-y notes," if you know what I mean).

I think that may actually be the divide here. I absolutely love percussion and am perfectly happy listening to music which is entirely percussion, while it sounds like you're much more focused on melody always being the centerpiece.

I think you may be misunderstanding me actually. I do understand that it's not the content of the words that you care about and that's not what's distracting to you. All I'm saying is that there seems to be a thing for you where you feel that a word coming out of the mouth of a person in a musical context must be sung as a note or you find it distracting. It doesn't matter what that word is, it's simply the fact that it is a word rather than an abstract sound.

Eh. I love the Beach Boys, but I'm not much of a fan of that track either. What I'm talking about when I ask the question I was asking is actual percussion-based music, not a rock band doing a drum solo on one track. I mean something like this, which I've seen live, and which was literally one of the most gut-wrenching live musical experiences of my life: