[duminyricky]

Hi Everyone,

Just asking one of my patented way-too-broad questions, to see what people say: What makes great music great?

Incidentally we've moved back to Montreal; good to be back, but we still miss people out there.

[Imiweevierm]

Great Music = Mike Rud.

[duminyricky]

Cheque's in the mail, Jodi. Sure was great seeing and hearing you a couple weeks ago.

[Sanremogirl]

Great music is timeless and is never staledated and is as modern as tomorrow no matter when it was first played. Five examples(of what could be thousands) of music that will continue to inspire future generations:

(1)Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines: Weather Bird.
(2)Lionel Hampton: Hot Mallets.
(3)Duke Ellington: Cottontail.
(4)Charlie Parker: Koko.
(5)John Coltrane: Giant Steps.

[JonDopl]

What makes great music great?

Off the top of my head, I'd have to say composers, arrangers, musicians, and producers. ;-)

Al

[duminyricky]

Thanks for those marvelous replies guys. Let me see if I can challenge them a bit:

Al, and I know you were being a bit of a joker there, but also making a good point, what's the difference between the great music made my musicians, composers and arrangers, and not-as-great music made by musicians, arrangers and composers.

And Gavin, while I certainly agree ith what you've written, I want to know what is it about those musics that makes them all fit together under the term 'great'.

I swear to Christ I'm not making any particular point. Just opening up the question to see what people say.

[perpelverw]

Great music in any genre appeals to the universal spirit in everyone, enabling communication on a deeper level than that of everyday normal waking life. In some respects, this makes music more real than much of what passes for reality.

[duminyricky]

Yes, I think I know what you mean. There's really something in that.

[RafaelYV]

I'd have to say it's really about looks. If they look good they automatically make great music. Am I right people?

[Knillagrarp]

I always thought great art transforms you and informs you - teaches you a little bit about yourself.

And that it can stand the test of time. Bach's music was written 300 years ago yet every time I listen to it I feel he's re-explaining the universe to me.

Plus it has a good beat.

[MackBranon]

Great music often transcends mediocre performances - how many students have made Bach or Ellington withstand not quite accurate readings. It will also withstand drastic re-arrangements - Chopin's March Funebre to the various jazz readings of baroque literature are the most telling examples.

Good lights too, my agent tells me.

[duminyricky]

Wow. Thanks both of you.

Yes both of you make excellent points. The more I think about it, the stranger it strikes me that patterns of sound can do this. It really makes me think that some evolutionary stuff is involved, you know. Some stuff from way back in the history of the species.

I've been reading Dan Levitin's book about this ("This is Your Brain on Music") and today I just picked up Oliver Sachs' new one ("Musicophilia"). After all these years playing it, the mystery of music seems more profound to me than ever before.

Why, for example, do I feel God is talking to me when I listen to "A Love Supreme"? Me, a devout atheist. It just puts me in an inexpressibly spiritual state of mind. How does that feeling come about? I know science is beginning to find out a lot about the neurobiology of those feelings, but man, the idea that molecules could ever add up to that feeling --that's mind-blowing.

Any way you slice it, it sure makes me feel grateful to experience the phenomenon and the questions attached to it.

...and grateful for the company of the other music lovers.

[duminyricky]

Hi Terry! I never got back to you I just realized. Perhaps I'll try calling you soon. Stay well.

[indentKew]

Zal Yanofsky of the Lovin' Spoonful said three good things about rock and roll are: It's loud. You can dance to it. And it's loud.

But what makes music great is simply that it makes an emotional connection with the listener. Whether it's a Chopin nocturne, a guitar solo by Mike Rud or the Lovin' Spoonful singing Do You Believe in Magic, it has to hit you in the heart. And I think John Doheny might add, "...and no wanking..."

[duminyricky]

Yes, that's true. Are there any particular qualities shared by all the music we love, that is, shared by all the music that dependably makes that emotional connection, and missing from all the music we don't love?

What other variables are always present in a song when we say we like that song?

Also, even if we could identify these factors, isn't it the case that our relationships to various pieces are dynamic things, which change and grow from one listening to the next? If this is true, could it be that a song's connection to us is always somewhat provisional, and only as good as its last hearing?

[duminyricky]

Thanks for the kind words about my guitar playing!

[indentKew]

I guess if I knew that I'd be able to crank out a never-ending succession of tunes that would sell a million. But it's an elusive quality or set of qualities, and you're right Mike -- they do change over time. Songs that I went moony over 20 years ago sound sappy or trite now. Perhaps my tastes have changed, or I've just heard more music and have more criteria with which to judge.

But most of the music I like I just like. Could be I'm a sucker for a diminished fifth, or that lyrical way Cam Ryga has with a saxophone, or the way Mike Rud knows not to play too many notes. Or maybe it is all just surface looks after all!

Wish I could be profound and deep... but alas I'm neither.

[LarryG1978]

I'm surprised no one has addressed this in the context of age. A while back there was one of those "death of the CBC and their aging demographic" threads, and a lot of people were peddling the idea that once the CBC's 'aging demographic' died off, that was pretty much the end of it. Unless of course they got smart and starting aiming their programming at young people. Guy Macpherson and a few others argued that this was ridiculous.

I kind of got the impression that a lot of folks didn't get that, so I'll just quickly rehash it. My apologies if it seems like I'm belaboring the obvious:

'Demographics' are not fixed and immutable. People age, so an 'over 65 demographic,' for instance, does not 'die off,' it is replaced by younger people who age into it. The assumption of most programming pin-heads is that people's musical tastes are formed in their adolescent years and never change.

I suppose for some people this is true, otherwise we wouldn't still be listening to 'Satisfaction' and the other 25 songs that 'classic rock' radio apparently believes comprise the entire canon of the 1960-70s. This does not bode well for the future. I for one am glad I'll be six-by-six by the time the 'sixty year old Green Day fan' phenominen hits the bricks.

Guy has mentioned here a number of times that he has 40ish friends, long-time die-hard rock fans, who are starting to find that stuff a little unchallenging and are now coming to him asking for advice on what to listen to in jazz. There are any number of radio formats in the 'soft rock-new country' mode that are basically attempts to reach audiences whose tastes and concerns are no longer those of the very young. The attraction of love songs from the 'Great American Songbook' (Gershwin, Rogers and Hart etc.) is, I think, in large part due to the fact that it addresses adult areas of the heart, areas not served by the two-note range of the rock love song. That stuff is all about either angst and suffering( and trying to escape from same), or wanting to be happy. Jazz and blues is about acceptance of life's conditions, and where love is concerned, it becomes about someone else's happiness, sometimes even at the expense of your own.

To me, the beauty of artists like Miles and B.B King and Muddy Waters is that their music is accessible on multiple levels. I dug that stuff when I was a kid because of the flash and style, the coolness factor. I mean, come on. Miles. The cars, the suits, the chicks. This stuff is crack to a 13 year old boy. But as I grew older I started to get more of the depth behind the surface, and the music grew with me. It was grown-up stuff that gave me a preview of the adult condition and when I grew to adulthood, insight into the adult condition.

Led Zeppelin isn't like that. Once in a great while, I'll trip over, say "Whole Lotta Love" on the car radio and let it play. It's fun, but it'll always be about being young, and I'm not young anymore. I have a different interior life now than I did when I was 15, and Led Zeppilin doesn't speak to that. Listening to that stuff is always an excercize in nostalgia, whereas great art always speaks to where you are right now.

[JonDopl]

Quote:

[MackBranon]

[quote=John Doheny;9776] The assumption of most programming pin-heads is that people's musical tastes are formed in their adolescent years and never change.

Music therapy literature is full of studies that indicate just that point - people will repeatedly go back to the music of their youth, particularly that of 14-25 years of age. It makes me glad that my parents gave me the benefit of an excellent musical education which spanned Bizet and Bach to Ray Charles and Henry Mancini and Miles Davis and Oscar.

I know most people, especially non players, don't have that advantage. Which is why as a community we should be putting the heat on school boards to keep music in schools. If that were the only thing Wynton ever did, it would be worthy of huge acknowledgement.

Too often the nostalgia factor outweighs the merit factor. Can't remember how many times I've been at a gig where somebody explains (usually very drunenly and carefully) the virtues of a Paul Revere tune as a piece of organ virtuousity.