But basslines are comprised of notes, unlike hits on a hi-hat. And melodies are made of notes.

Fair enough. My point still remains that they are all elements of the beat as a whole, correct? Idk, how it is for other genres but when you hear people say "That's a dope beat" they are talking about the entire product. They might go on to say "The bass line is sick" or "I love the snares" or whatever else but the "beat" is all inclusive.

Not to mention that he completely ignored my question, accused me of something I didn't do, and then acted like the condescending ass he usually is. I asked a question to promote discussion and admited in the very first sentence of my post I am naive to the topic.

My question is why he insists on this conversation in the first place. If there's one thing this forum seems to hit people on the head with, it's that arguing why a particular form of music sucks donkey balls is fine, but trying to invalidate it as music is just arrogant close-mindedness. Trollheart regularly toes this line, but he's always clear that he's arguing his own subjective opinion and not objectively attacking it's relevance as music.

How the hell was I condescending?
I wasn't questioning his or anybodies definition of the meaning of the word melody I was just curious as to why in DYCDTTS case when he talked about it he didn't mention what I considered for the most part the most melodic part of that music.

If I didn't have an answer your question it's because I wasn't disagreeing with you and felt that if his definition of 'beat' is what you say it is and different to mine then DYCDTTS can tell me that if he wants to and clarify my question himself.

And I don't recall criticising you for saying anything, all I said was that the dictionary definition wasn't needed in this case because I wasn't arguing that point.

Well if you didn't mean to be then that's my problem and I read it wrong so I apologize, but in my limited experience you have a tendency to come off sounding cranky so I immediately read it that way. I've been sick and miserable for the past couple days, my fault.

You're right that it is used that way colloquially in hip hop circles, but that's not what the word "beat" means in a general musical sense. The beat is what you bob your head to, it's simply the underlying pulse of the song. Melodies are sequences of notes that work with the framework of the beat, but that doesn't mean the whole shebang is all "the beat".

I never said anything about rap being minimalist, it was you who first used the term.

Right, and I already said it is the lack of melody in the vocals that I do not like.

Bump.

I said in response to a couple of the videos on previous pages that the background instrumentations of the songs were actually OK. But if I wanted to listen to an instrumental melody, I'd just listen to an instrumental.

IMO something is lost if the person singing (or, "singing") a song does not actually sing notes but just "talks" some words (to a beat/instruments). It eliminates an entire avenue of emotional content and richness.

Imagine, for example, a song like the one below "sung" without notes - just reciting the poetry as in a poetry reading. Even keep the background instrumentation if you want. It might still be nice, but by not singing the melody so much would be lost. Notes add texture and emotional depth. You might still get a sense that it's a sad song, but it's just not the same. It would just be a guy talking, even if it's kinda nice talking.



So when I'm listening to music I don't just want some guy reciting poetry to me, I want something more than that. As I said before, rap is basically just poetry spoken to a beat (and instruments). If I wanted to listen to poetry, I'd go to a poetry recital. But when I listen to music, I want ... music. As in someone singing notes (presuming it's not an instrumental, of course).

I never said you did. I was just responding to the fact that you seemed to be equating "simple" with "primitive" here:

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:

Yes.

You're more on target here. But remember my reason: Since I focus on something with notes more than something that's just words, in a "mixed-mode genre" with both background notes and foreground speaking, my mind is automatically going to pay attention to the background notes and (try to) tune out the foreground speaking. That's not always easy, so the foreground speaking "gets in the way" of me trying to listen to the background notes. If the singer decided to sing notes instead of just speaking, I wouldn't tune him/her out because he/she is actually singing notes, which I automatically focus on anyway.

What do you think about this?

That was definitely better than Denny's Drums, and I can see the art to it and its appeal, but to be honest I found myself paying more attention to the "athletic prowess" aspect of the performance than to the musical qualities of the song they were playing. :laughing:

Well, honestly, the physicality is definitely part of the performance. It's almost like a kind of dance. I own several of their albums, and while I enjoy them, they're not even close to as good as seeing them live.

Well obviously I'm not going to listen to the whole 45 minutes, but my impression from glancing over it was ... it's like listening to an audio book with the narrator's voice going through some special effects.

Meh.

I have nothing against poetry, or an audio book, but at least neither of those have the pretension of trying to be music. They're just ... poetry and fiction. If they put music in the background I'd probably be distracted.

Here's my favorite poem. Nothing wrong with this. Here I can pay attention to the words themselves.



However, once you place some music in the background - especially a piece of music I like (here, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata), I find myself distracted and pay as much, if not more, attention to the background music as I do the poem. This is the same experience I got when listening to the rap songs someone asked me to review a few pages ago.

^
Here. Listening to that 2nd version of The Raven, was to me just about the exact same experience as listening to this song here. I found myself focusing on the background music and tuning out the words in the verses (and when the refrain kicks in when they actually sing notes I perk up and pay attention to the foreground).

Well it's a natural effect that changes the voice in the Lucier piece. I consider most things music and I would say the same for I Am Sitting In A Room.

listing what you like man, you can't change the people opinions.

Since I really dislike both genres I'll at least objectively say why I don't like both. The majority of the rap I have heard, including odlschool rap, always sounds really negative. Not just the lyrics, but Asian rap I can't understand feels negative. Its in their tone, their beats, and the melody of the song. I do like positive rap, and really need to find more to listen to. I know alot of people who say they hate rap, but I can list these same rappers I like, and they almost always like them. Most Gorillaz stuff, The Roots, and the Jazzier Diggy-Mo' songs are the only rap artists I really like.

For mainstream pop theres too much studio tricks. Alot of them just come up with one cool sounding thing, and repeat it do death. Or really pile on the voice enhancers to the point that they sound like Vocaloid. I'm not saying every single one of them are bad, but it feels like the producers are making the music, and the artists are just singing what they are told to sing. Theres a reason the only 'mainstream' pop I listen to is Asian stuff, like Flow, and Yui. It would actually be cool if someone could find mainstream pop that I liked, just so I could say theres a good one out there.

I want to laugh at the fact that people are dissing music by saying the artists look stupid though. Seriously, anyone that believes that go look up Visual Kei, and look at their outfits and tell me their looks influence their music. They all play a similar style, but thats the culture of Visual Kei, and has little to do with their outfits.

I think people are particularly critical about the "downfall" of hip hop because its a relatively young genre and frankly the disintegration is its quality and meaning is easier to trace than with other musical forms. I don't think that's because rappers are less talented from other musicians, but due to another factor, which makes producing quality rap harder than producing passable material in other genres. Allow me to explain:

Rap in its traditional form is dependent on quality lyrics which tell a story about the realities of life in the neighbourhoods that first spawned the hip hop movement. Or it requires rappers to have a unique talent for writing incisive lyrics about broader social and political realities. The problem is that creating great rap requires a connection with reality that other genres, such as rocknroll or pop, don't necessarily demand. In fact, many rock artists have produced great music by positively de-connecting with the world or discussing this very subject (e.g. think about the hundreds of rock songs that are about taking hallucinatory drugs...). In contrast, rappers need to retain a connection with the realities of life where they came from and, well, rap about them with some rawness and flair. Rap producers/song writers need that same connection with the streets and plain simple real life. The issue is they don't. That's the difference between the era of artists like Tupac and the present day, dominated by artists like Kanye West. Tupac's music retained its brilliance because he retained his connection with the tough life of his past. It ultimately cost him his life, of course. Kanye is an artist who may have had equal natural ability to Tupac in the rap stakes in theory but quickly lost touch with the real world. That is reflected in the quality of his lyrics, which have been pretty poor since the release of his first, moderately good, album.