Theoretical Proof Pop Music Sucks

[deadpie]

Found this on someone's blog on last.fm -

It's not a secret that every musical composition in the most general form can be described by an acoustic formula. For instance, let's consider the following:

Y = X1 + X2 + X3 + , , , + Xn where Xi is a variable that in a given proportion and succession shows the quantitative form that represents all the acoustic qualities of any composition and let us describe it in musical notes. To go further , two probabilistic concepts should be taken into consideration. Firstly, the more statistical data you have, the easier it is to find out whether there is trend or not. Secondly, if there is a trend you can predict its future data with a certain degree of exactness.

People often say that pop music is the same. And from the mathematical point of view it's the truth simply because in a given point of time we can find an almost linear relation between the popularity of a given song in general or in a given genre etc and it's acoustic qualities. Proceeding from the previous paragraph we can be sure that there is quite enough statistical data to say that we can simply measure what acoustic qualities of compositions in a given period of time are trendy thus we can write a formula of pop music for a given period of time which can look something like this (only an example):

α = S1+ S2 + ... + Sn. But unlike the previous formula this formula has a certain degree of variability , thus it's not a determined acoustic interpretation of a given song but a formula that shows us most though not all possible proportions and successions of different acoustic qualities.

Firstly, there is no doubt we can prove that trendy music is trendy. Secondly, it seems like pop artists can feel the trend, they have an almost mystical understanding of probability of art. For instance, Lady Gaga managed to hit major charts simply because she intuitively managed to comply with the rules of the abovestated formula by writing several ridiculously popular songs.

On the other hand, people that devote themselves to a limited amount of genres and are proud of it, have nothing to be proud of. In fact, genres like power metal or symphonic metal have even less variable acoustic formula than GaGa has. The situation from this point of view is even worse for genres like raw black metal or funeral doom etc.

If we push this probabilistic concept of quality of music even further then academic composers create the best music, in other words their music can't be even observed as a formula . Moreover, academic music has been progressing and creating innovations for more than 1000 years and that means that it is continuously becoming more and more sophisticated and the theory is more and more complex. The greatest example of such fact is Iannis Xenakis. Many pretentious people say that art is art and theory is theory but they are wrong. As now you know that a musical composition is a formula then it's easy to comprehend that an average academic composer have better formal skills in or let's simply say better at creating formulas that an average amateur composer. Simply because of the skill. Somewhat similar thing with playing a musical instrument - if you have skills you play better.

To sum up, people are different ,thus for most of us originality is not equal to enjoyment so there is nothing wrong with listening to pop music ( no one knows what's good and what's bad anyway) but you should really think about what you are listening to if you want to call yourself a person with a good taste in music.

Edit: Read the quote if you're going to post in this thread. End of fucking story. Is it really that fucking difficult?

[Charleigh]

Lool. Isnt that just ignorance towards other peoples views towards music?

[BOBBY HILL]

dude who wrote that is a genius

[scuba steve]

Jesus I could not be assed with reading that lengthy piece. But when you say pop music what do you mean? Sure alot of the genre is just audio tuned nonscence even though some can get annoyingly catchy. What about bands like Coldplay they're technically pop.

[deadpie]

Lool. Isnt that just ignorance towards other peoples views towards music?

How about this.


If it's too long for you to read or too complicated for you to understand, then don't post in the thread.

It's not ignorant. That means you obviously didn't read it all or didn't understand what most of it was saying.

[CaptainObvious]

what the hell was the point of that? the mathematics was classic "YAY IM SERIOUS CUZ I USE MATH" bs that said nothing about anything, and the rest of it was rambling and inane. the only coherent points i picked out were that trained composers are better at creating songs than amateurs (generally, no fucking kidding), and that popular artists are better at making well-liked songs (a very subtle point... wait, not). and then of course he sums it up with another set of truisms that says nothing insightful.

a super reminder that 99.9% of blogs are vapid.

[deadpie]

what the hell was the point of that? the mathematics was classic "YAY IM SERIOUS CUZ I USE MATH" bs that said nothing about anything, and the rest of it was rambling and inane. the only coherent points i picked out were that trained composers are better at creating songs than amateurs (generally, no fucking kidding), and that popular artists are better at making well-liked songs (a very subtle point... wait, not). and then of course he sums it up with another set of truisms that says nothing insightful.

a super reminder that 99.9% of blogs are vapid.

"Yay I'm serious cuz I use math"? Seriously? Why is your name Captain Obvious when you make some of the worst points ever? It's not rambling. It's only rambling if you want it to sound like rambling. That's like if someone doesn't agree with someone else's points, they'll just make themselves cloud the reasons as garbage because they know it should be garbage in there mind.

Music and math go together very well. I'm quite sure that's why he mentioned Xenakis, who was a very experimental composer and music theorist.

And I like how even though you agree with some points you still try to make him sound like an idiot, which is fucking dumb as fuck. Like, that's me saying, "Oh, that's obvious that (insert answer here) is correct so you're an idiot for having to point that out". OH! Captain Obvious implies we shouldn't point out the obvious, yet claims to be the one that points out the obvious in smart clever ways, which he does wrongly most of the time.

Did you ever study theory of probability? I am operating with very basic concepts of theory of probability. I think I haven't done any mistakes and I have theoretically PROVED that pop music is trendy or in other words pop music is a huge statistical acoustic formula. That's why it sucks. And how can I judge others' preferences? E.g Some girls like raw sex and some like "calm" sex, how can I judge them? If you think that's my provement is nonsense then explain, otherwise your evaluation of my article is nonsense.

Also

>Implying last.fm is a blog.

[CaptainObvious]

"Yay I'm serious cuz I use math"? Seriously? Why is your name Captain Obvious when you make some of the worst points ever? It's not rambling. It's only rambling if you want it to sound like rambling. That's like if someone doesn't agree with someone else's points, they'll just make themselves cloud the reasons as garbage because they know it should be garbage in there mind.

It's not that I disagree with his argument, it's that no coherent argument is apparent. As follows:

Music and math go together very well. I'm quite sure that's why he mentioned Xenakis, who was a very experimental composer and music theorist.

because music and math are substantially interrelated, that does not mean that all uses of math when discussing music have meaning. And that's the problem here. He sprinkles some math in, but it is at best so vague as to mean nothing, and at worst outright BS. The point of all of his math-esque meandering is that songs may be more similar or more different when compared by some criterion that captures the overall character of a composition. That's all well and good, but it accomplishes little to nothing: the meat of that problem is defining the criteria by which one classifies something as massively free-ranging and variant as world music, while determining the relationship between whatever variables one uses to quantify the character of a song, and things like the song's popularity.

So, this guy says:

Y = X1 + X2 + X3 + , , , + Xn where Xi is a variable that in a given proportion and succession shows the quantitative form that represents all the acoustic qualities of any composition and let us describe it in musical notes. To go further , two probabilistic concepts should be taken into consideration. Firstly, the more statistical data you have, the easier it is to find out whether there is trend or not. Secondly, if there is a trend you can predict its future data with a certain degree of exactness.

People often say that pop music is the same. And from the mathematical point of view it's the truth simply because in a given point of time we can find an almost linear relation between the popularity of a given song in general or in a given genre etc and it's acoustic qualities. Proceeding from the previous paragraph we can be sure that there is quite enough statistical data to say that we can simply measure what acoustic qualities of compositions in a given period of time are trendy thus we can write a formula of pop music for a given period of time which can look something like this (only an example):

α = S1+ S2 + ... + Sn. But unlike the previous formula this formula has a certain degree of variability , thus it's not a determined acoustic interpretation of a given song but a formula that shows us most though not all possible proportions and successions of different acoustic qualities.

Firstly, there is no doubt we can prove that trendy music is trendy. Secondly, it seems like pop artists can feel the trend, they have an almost mystical understanding of probability of art. For instance, Lady Gaga managed to hit major charts simply because she intuitively managed to comply with the rules of the abovestated formula by writing several ridiculously popular songs.

The problem is that this is all so vague as to accomplish little of import. He proposes that one could model the popularity of music via some numerical stochastic model of compositional qualities. That's fair enough, but he just stops there. That's not proof of anything, and it indicates superficial fluff use of math. The devil of that problem is defining the criteria and their weighting. What is one of the experimental roles of a site like Pandora? Exactly this problem. But simply flourishing one's hand, throwing down a couple of simple equations and then moving on is nothing. But move on this guy does, to yet more insightful heights:

Firstly, there is no doubt we can prove that trendy music is trendy.

...hmm, A->A? Yup. Tautology. Meaningless.

Secondly, it seems like pop artists can feel the trend, they have an almost mystical understanding of probability of art. For instance, Lady Gaga managed to hit major charts simply because she intuitively managed to comply with the rules of the abovestated formula by writing several ridiculously popular songs.

Popular artists make popular songs, and Gaga is popular because she made songs that conform to tastes. Fine, but these are still basically inane points unless they're leading somewhere.

On the other hand, people that devote themselves to a limited amount of genres and are proud of it, have nothing to be proud of. In fact, genres like power metal or symphonic metal have even less variable acoustic formula than GaGa has. The situation from this point of view is even worse for genres like raw black metal or funeral doom etc.

OK, so here at least he says something interesting regarding comparisons of the characteristics of genres. This at least is not general fluff, and I actually agree with him regarding power and symphonic metal (being a fan of both). So this is one legitimate point. But it is disconnected from the rest of the piece.

Then:

If we push this probabilistic concept of quality of music even further then academic composers create the best music, in other words their music can't be even observed as a formula . Moreover, academic music has been progressing and creating innovations for more than 1000 years and that means that it is continuously becoming more and more sophisticated and the theory is more and more complex. The greatest example of such fact is Iannis Xenakis. Many pretentious people say that art is art and theory is theory but they are wrong. As now you know that a musical composition is a formula then it's easy to comprehend that an average academic composer have better formal skills in or let's simply say better at creating formulas that an average amateur composer. Simply because of the skill. Somewhat similar thing with playing a musical instrument - if you have skills you play better.

This is all fair enough. But at the end, what does it say? "Educated composers compose with more skill than amateurs." That's fine, but a) what relevance does it have to his argument? Is he arguing that pop is simplistic? That this is due to a lack of skill on the part of its artists and songwriters? What is the argument here? I was waiting with baited breath for him to tie this together in his "proof" (or at least hypothesize something, since clearly he and I have very interesting ideas about what constitutes proof), but all I got was:

To sum up, people are different ,thus for most of us originality is not equal to enjoyment so there is nothing wrong with listening to pop music ( no one knows what's good and what's bad anyway) but you should really think about what you are listening to if you want to call yourself a person with a good taste in music.

What? Pop can't be perfectly fine, tastes can't be equally valid, while at the same time a person should think outside pop to call their taste in music good. But that's not even the real problem here. The real problem is, where is the argument about pop music sucking? I can grasp some ways in which this piece might be setup for some kind of argument that pop music is derivative, simplistic, etc. etc. and therefore not good, but there's just nothing here. I'm not merely criticizing a lack of proof - there is more fundamentally a lack of argumentation!

And I like how even though you agree with some points you still try to make him sound like an idiot, which is fucking dumb as fuck. Like, that's me saying, "Oh, that's obvious that (insert answer here) is correct so you're an idiot for having to point that out". OH! Captain Obvious says we shouldn't point out the obvious, yet claims to be the one that points out the obvious, which he does wrongly most of the time.

Don't get too hung up on the username. Mainly I didn't want to get sucked into the massive tldr wall of text that just happened. *sigh*

Anyways, the point of that wall of text is as follows: while there may be some useful points in there, there is no coherent "theoretical proof that pop music sucks", nor even an attempt at arguing one on reading. The piece rambles, uses some math to vaguely hint at concepts that are not at all explored, and overall largely says nothing.

Have you ever read Postmodernism Disrobed (http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed)? Wonderful little essay by Dawkins about just this kind of thing. Maybe someone of this Xenakis fellow's musical mathematical stature might have something of substance to say, but this blogger clearly does not.

Also

>Implying last.fm is a blog.

Found this on someone's blog on last.fm -

I guess.

[deadpie]

It's not that I disagree with his argument, it's that no coherent argument is apparent. As follows:

Then you must be missing the point of it all in the first place.



because music and math are substantially interrelated, that does not mean that all uses of math when discussing music have meaning. And that's the problem here. He sprinkles some math in, but it is at best so vague as to mean nothing, and at worst outright BS.

It's enough to get his point across. In his way, that's how he wants to do it. Sure, he didn't have to use equations, but why not? Nobody has really done that yet, so why not just take the debate somewhere new? And it's not bullshit. You're not reading it right then.


The point of all of his math-esque meandering is that songs may be more similar or more different when compared by some criterion that captures the overall character of a composition. That's all well and good, but it accomplishes little to nothing: the meat of that problem is defining the criteria by which one classifies something as massively free-ranging and variant as world music, while determining the relationship between whatever variables one uses to quantify the character of a song, and things like the song's popularity.

The criteria would be quite obvious. Look at the relations inside of pop songs and the structure of them. Usually it's A verse, hook, chorus, verse, hook, chorus three more times. Also, using some very bad synthesizer and the lyrics are usually on the same topic; relations, love, sex, break up, partying, etc. It's things like this that build up the criteria. If you listen to the top 40 it's mainly like listening to the same song but just a different vocalist and even if the beats are different and such, it still all flows and feels the same. It's never experimenting and none of the pop artists are making themselves differ from the others.


The problem is that this is all so vague as to accomplish little of import. He proposes that one could model the popularity of music via some numerical stochastic model of compositional qualities. That's fair enough, but he just stops there. That's not proof of anything, and it indicates superficial fluff use of math.

Yes, he's a theory and even though it is, he says it's proof because he believes in it, which he is allowed to do. In this case, it's still a theory but a damn good one.



...hmm, A->A? Yup. Tautology. Meaningless.

It's the creation of making pop music that is meaningless, not his idea. Unless some pop artist somehow makes a way to sound completely different then others, which would likely make the trend of others to sound exactly like that one, which is a cycle of mainstream music that happens allot, then the experimentation wouldn't of been as important. So the idea is that if none of these pop artists can make there own way of sounding different then others, then they aren't original, making them all fit in the same criteria, proving they all sound the same, and thus it all sucks.



Popular artists make popular songs, and Gaga is popular because she made songs that conform to tastes. Fine, but these are still basically inane points unless they're leading somewhere.

You're missing the point that is right in front of your face. Can you really not see the point? Come on! Please tell me you're not trying.


OK, so here at least he says something interesting regarding comparisons of the characteristics of genres. This at least is not general fluff, and I actually agree with him regarding power and symphonic metal (being a fan of both). So this is one legitimate point. But it is disconnected from the rest of the piece.

If it's disconnected from the rest of what he's proving then why did you say his comparisons of other genre's were interesting? The comparisons were put in for a reason. You don't need to be spoon fed the reasons to points to see them. Well, I guess some people do need that, which is pretty sad.


This is all fair enough. But at the end, what does it say? "Educated composers compose with more skill than amateurs." That's fine, but a) what relevance does it have to his argument? Is he arguing that pop is simplistic?

There's different definitions that could go for simplistic music. Yes, good music can be simple, like in a minimal way for example. But as in simple he just means the ideas to create the music are too obvious and the creation of it all is just concrete. It's flat and there's just not much to it. It has relevance to say that something is better than pop, which makes pop lower than the educated composers, thus making it 'suck' or just not good in my words.


That this is due to a lack of skill on the part of its artists and songwriters?

Yes.


What is the argument here?

That pop music sucks. Was that not obvious enough?


I was waiting with baited breath for him to tie this together in his "proof" (or at least hypothesize something, since clearly he and I have very interesting ideas about what constitutes proof), but all I got was:

Is that not good enough? I think it sums it all up really well without having to be too complicated for others to understand.


What? Pop can't be perfectly fine, tastes can't be equally valid, while at the same time a person should think outside pop to call their taste in music good. But that's not even the real problem here. The real problem is, where is the argument about pop music sucking?

I have to repeat myself a billion times. BECAUSE IT ALL FUCKING SOUNDS THE SAME.


I can grasp some ways in which this piece might be setup for some kind of argument that pop music is derivative, simplistic, etc. etc. and therefore not good, but there's just nothing here. I'm not merely criticizing a lack of proof - there is more fundamentally a lack of argumentation!

You can't truly prove something that goes down to opinion, but that's the fun of this all. You have to think of music from a point of view where there's the ones that would rather close there ears to anything that sounds bad to them and the others that are willing to listen to something new. Music taste isn't an opinion. Why? Because if music taste is subjective, then there is no good or bad music. So that makes everyone wrong.


Don't get too hung up on the username. Mainly I didn't want to get sucked into the massive tldr wall of text that just happened. *sigh*

Implying my wall of text is bigger than yours.


Anyways, the point of that wall of text is as follows: while there may be some useful points in there, there is no coherent "theoretical proof that pop music sucks", nor even an attempt at arguing one on reading. The piece rambles, uses some math to vaguely hint at concepts that are not at all explored, and overall largely says nothing.

It's an argument. You're giving an opinion on it and I reply with my opinion, making it a debate. His idea is the core of the debate, or in other words the subject.

Also, I'm not going to explain what it says again. I've already done that enough.


Have you ever read Postmodernism Disrobed (http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed)? Wonderful little essay by Dawkins about just this kind of thing. Maybe someone of this Xenakis fellow's musical mathematical stature might have something of substance to say, but this blogger clearly does not.

He does because he just said it, so yes, he does have substance on this factor. The fact he used Xanakis as purely an example should hint that as proof that music is related to math in very many ways.

To say postmodernism is meaningless is to say experimentation is pointless and goes nowhere. That's fucking ridiculous and anyone who thinks that needs to be raped by a fucking donkey and fucked in the eye socket.

[BOBBY HILL]

>mfw music does these things to people

[Peace God]

>math

[Magus]

>math
I will use mathematics to show you what I have quoted is awesome.

lf(x) = h[1^2+(1+h)^2+(1+h)+(1+2h)^2.... 1+(n-1)h)
=> [n+h[1+2+3... (n-1)] + (1+2h)^2 + [(1+2h)^2....(1+(n-1)h)^2]

[Peace God]

And I will use math to show you that the area directly below my previous post is awesome:

∫(my previous post) dx = fuckin awesome!

...........................................................................

I do agree with the guy on a lot of things though, pop songs do a have a lower degree of variability than other genres. But for me, the main reason that pop music sucks is that, almost by definition, pop music's goal is to cater to the largest audience and widest range of people possible...by doing so, they're effectively diluting the hell out of their music in order to please everyone.

[JunkBondTrader]

Okay, I haven't attempted to deconstruct all your posts because I really just have a problem with these two main points:

That pop music sucks. Was that not obvious enough?

If this is the absolute truth then surely it can be applied to any genre? I'm not a chart pop fan myself but I can understand how the music I listen to must all sound the same to other people who don't share my tastes.

I have to repeat myself a billion times. BECAUSE IT ALL FUCKING SOUNDS THE SAME.

As I mentioned, this can be said about just about any genre, which the author himself actually states. The only possible exceptions I can see are truly experimental pieces of music, which I personally don't care for. I'm into alternative, not experimental music, which is itself part of the mainstream, that I freely admit. But the last time I attempted to listen to free jazz I wanted to cover my ears up.

Sure, you can mathematically measure music, but you cannot quantify someone's taste in music, nor can you quantify someone's talent, or if you could you could really only do it by measuring their popularity compared to other songs which listeners had also heard. Surely, writing catchy songs that people like to listen to is the ultimate point of music, not being totally original and unlistenable just for the hell of it?

[CaptainObvious]

Okay, I haven't attempted to deconstruct all your posts because I really just have a problem with these two main points:



If this is the absolute truth then surely it can be applied to any genre? I'm not a chart pop fan myself but I can understand how the music I listen to must all sound the same to other people who don't share my tastes.



As I mentioned, this can be said about just about any genre, which the author himself actually states. The only possible exceptions I can see are truly experimental pieces of music, which I personally don't care for. I'm into alternative, not experimental music, which is itself part of the mainstream, that I freely admit. But the last time I attempted to listen to free jazz I wanted to cover my ears up.

Sure, you can mathematically measure music, but you cannot quantify someone's taste in music, nor can you quantify someone's talent, or if you could you could really only do it by measuring their popularity compared to other songs which listeners had also heard. Surely, writing catchy songs that people like to listen to is the ultimate point of music, not being totally original and unlistenable just for the hell of it?

Yeah, this is also true. My main objection is to how the author of the blog post that starts this off makes such an incomplete, poorly substantiated argument and tries to bolster its apparent insight with appeal to math that is so vague as to be meaningless. But that objection to the mechanism of the argument does not even address the fundamental concern that the argument itself is entirely subjective. Many self-styled music critics say things like "but pop mostly sounds the same, is keyed the same, uses the same structures, etc. etc. etc." Yet listen to anything, say, from the tone row techniques of Schoenberg, and it's immediately obvious that aesthetic enjoyment does not necessarily derive from novelty or complexity of theory. In fact, I would argue that so long as one enjoys music for its innate qualities (as opposed to, for example, the girls that listen to Justin Bieber songs because they're all thinking, deep down, about having him in their vag), one cannot possibly go wrong. If my aesthetic criteria assess simplistic melodies of the kind common in pop nowadays to be the most enjoyable, and if my reason for listening to music is enjoyment, how could pop possibly be "theoretically proved" deficient?

[deadpie]

Yeah, this is also true. My main objection is to how the author of the blog post that starts this off makes such an incomplete, poorly substantiated argument and tries to bolster its apparent insight with appeal to math that is so vague as to be meaningless. But that objection to the mechanism of the argument does not even address the fundamental concern that the argument itself is entirely subjective. Many self-styled music critics say things like "but pop mostly sounds the same, is keyed the same, uses the same structures, etc. etc. etc." Yet listen to anything, say, from the tone row techniques of Schoenberg, and it's immediately obvious that aesthetic enjoyment does not necessarily derive from novelty or complexity of theory. In fact, I would argue that so long as one enjoys music for its innate qualities (as opposed to, for example, the girls that listen to Justin Bieber songs because they're all thinking, deep down, about having him in their vag), one cannot possibly go wrong. If my aesthetic criteria assess simplistic melodies of the kind common in pop nowadays to be the most enjoyable, and if my reason for listening to music is enjoyment, how could pop possibly be "theoretically proved" deficient?

Sure, you can 'enjoy' pop, but that's only because you've probably enjoyed it because you haven't explored anything outside of the radio, nor would you want to because most people are too lazy to want to do that in the first place.

I think this sums my point up pretty well -

it really aggravates me to the point where I think society really is brainwashed and dominated by pop music.


And JunkBondTrailer, I don't know about you, but for me, I get bored of listening to music that is structured the same. This should be way fucking obvious, but I'll say it anyways - Experimental music is the only way for music to ever change. Music won't ever evolve without experimentation. I like to think of your idea as what Ted Kaczynski thinks of the world; which means who cares and everything should just be destroyed.

I mean, music might as well be destroyed if nobody is going to ever give a shit about music that is different and everyone just sticks to what they hear on the radio, shutting themselves off from the majority of what music sounds like. Fuck, this is why I have such a deepen rage against the mainstream. There's so many interesting things to listen to if you dig deep, but of course most of these people are too fucking stupid to give a shit.

[Sage]

Found this on someone's blog

Might I ask what it was you were searching for that brought you to this blog post?

[deadpie]

Might I ask what it was you were searching for that brought you to this blog post?

I wasn't searching for anything. It was on the right of some artist's profile for blog entries related to the artist and I was interested in reading it.

I don't know where you're trying to go with what you're saying nor do I think it matters.

[Sage]

I don't know where you're trying to go with what you're saying nor do I think it matters.

I was just curious is all. That and you're kinda cute when you're paranoid.