Music or Lyrics?
Okay - New Game. What draws you to songs first? The music or the lyrics?
MUSIC - no question about it. The music HAS to work for me. Good lyrics are a bonus but not necessary for me to be attracted to a song . . . of course a super fantastic voice (like our fearless? leader's) is part of, or an extension of, the instrumentation.
MUSIC - no question about it. The music HAS to work for me. Good lyrics are a bonus but not necessary for me to be attracted to a song . . . of course a super fantastic voice (like our fearless? leader's) is part of, or an extension of, the instrumentation.
Comments
Gah, can you tell it is lunchtime for me...
Which is why I have issues finding music I like.
Good lyrics attract me; good music keeps me listening.
ETA: Both need to be at least competent. I will turn off a song with good lyrics but bad music; ditto good music / bad lyrics. Obvious, but I might as well say it.
But, it takes lyrics to develop a relationship.
Of course, sometimes, plain beats are so good, that I fall back on them like a mistress.
In the same way, great lyrics, alone, can make for wonderful friendships.
Someone wiser than me said, "The Beatles are for above the waist, and The Rolling Stones are for below the waist."
This is pretty much my philosophy on why/how/when I enjoy music.
I'll be more clear, but for your edification, I guess, I meant "starting a thread" to mean "starting a new discussion," which you'd already done. That is, first thing you do is open up a discussion you started, then add a poll. (Basically, LaDeDa, if you're reading this message, scroll all the way to the top and look to the left -- there should be a box in the left sidebar with an "Add poll" option.) Sorry I'm having trouble making myself clear today.
Most of the time the first several times I hear a song, I don't really listen to the lyrics closely, and when I do, it makes the song even more incredible. An example that's a JoCo song: I had been listening to Not About You, and I liked the music. When I really listened to the lyrics, I said to myself "Holy bejesus, this is brilliant."
And if I were to just read the lyrics for most song, they wouldn't really make much sense without the mood that the music sets.
Point is, lyrics are important, but music must come first.
@Bry: Do lyrical flaws such as "Garfield was assassinated in 1882" - which are simply not factual - irk you like that? Because they kind of do me. I feel like I should be less pedantic, but I can't help it.
Somehow, that lyrical gaffe nearly killed my love for the entire band.
Uh, just some questions...
It's something that you bury
Way down the estuary
Sharp and incendiary
Locked in a box of lead
I said.
Kudos for working in the word "estuary" guys, but WTF does any of that even mean? Still, I love that song. Also, the one REM song I've found that I really enjoy is "Stand," the text of which is pretty inane. Actually the whole song is inane, but I guess I like "the beats" or something. It's just fun. I also feel like I'm the only JoCo fan who enjoys "So Far, So Good." Kinda fluffy, but it's pretty.
I like abstract imagery in music like the stuff David Lynch did with Julee Cruise. The Cocteau Twins is one of my favorite abstract bands. Just try to find a coherent sentence in any one of their songs.
ETA: I usually find that Moxy Fruvous songs have both, though I was confused by Boo Time and kept meaning to look up the lyrics.
A new favorite JoCo line comes from "Drinking With You" -- "You would think that we've danced around each other long enough to know where to stand." Brilliant . . .
Anyway, I ended up with an 80%:
Pitch discrimination - 78.3
Musical memory - 76.6
Contour discrimination - 83.1
Attention - 77.4
Musical/visual abstraction - 79.2
ETA: Shit, I only got a 69.4% on their "tonedeaf" test, which is barely normal...
ETA,A: And I can only reliably differentiate tones 3.9 Hz apart. That is not good enough.
Total score: 75%
Pitch discrimination: 68.1%
Musical memory: 76.0%
Contour discrimination: 79.5%
Attention: 75.3%
Musical/visual abstraction: 72.9%
ETA: Does anyone have the URL of the rhythm test? All the links I can find go to tonometric.com. By the way, the pitch test is at http://tonometric.com/adaptivepitch/
EATA: and my result was 1.2Hz. I noticed that I seem to recognise ascending pitches immediately, and whenever I needed to replay it several times, it was decreasing.
And the other two? Well, let's just say I took them with trepidation. I don't like the name "Tonedeaf test", since it sounds pretty damn judgmental, and in retrospect it was a memory test more than anything else. I am actually pretty insecure about my musical memory. See, I have some degree of perfect pitch (not as in the Mozartean "This violin is a quarter-tone sharper than it was yesterday", but the more pragmatic "Yeah, that's an F-sharp, give or take a few Hertz"), and that has always interfered with some other skills I should have developed. For instance, learning a performance from a recording is the easiest to do if I jot down the melody and chords as fast as I can write, whereas other people probably develop better memory, from where they can analyze at their leisure. Of course, having the "perfect pitch" label also made we very scared of finding out that my pitch discrimination skills aren't really that hot. Oh well. I got 91.7 on ToneDeaf and 0.975Hz on the other one, which only puts me in the 74th percentile for pitch. That pretty much confirms my assumption that my pitch is far from "perfect".
I think part of the test *is* working out what their rules for the shapes are, since they have that abstraction score, which (looking at the description) is basically that.
(oh yeah, got 100%, don't mean to brag >.>)
And i got 58.3% in the tonedeaf one. I am not surprised with wither result.
Rhythm test: 80 %
Tonedeaf test: 80.6 %
Visual test:
Pitch discrimination: 100 %
Musical memory: 100 %
Contour discrimination: 95.2 %
Attention: 97.8 %
Musical/visual abstraction: 100 %
I wonder how they give you less than 100 % on everything if you answer everything correctly? Judging on the time it takes you to answer?
ETA: A few more observations: Although the electronic presentation of the tests allow for some interesting measurement techniques, there is a really big variable in terms of the playback equipment used by the subject. Pitch differentiation is especially susceptible to the frequencies used, and the only scientific absolute would be measurement using sine waves on equipment with no perceptible harmonic distortion and even frequency response. Imagine that your playback system has a really sharp (high-Q) resonance at 500.1 Hz that perceptibly tapers off at 500.2 Hz. You'd be reliably hearing the 0.1Hz pitch difference as an n dB amplitude difference. Now I do suspect that such a selective resonance is highly unlikely even on the crappiest of playback systems, but the point does hold theoretically.
ETAA: Wow, I just found the link to relevant papers. There is some interesting stuff there.
A half step on the piano is from one key to another without any other keys between them: C to C# or B to C. I have no idea what the difference is in Hz. In traditional Western Music, this is the smallest interval although Charles Ives did some nifty things with retuning the piano into Quarter tones (halving the half step) Most instruments beside the piano are fully capable of producing sounds between the half steps (strings in particular) Twentieth Century Composers who broke with tradition (Arnold Schoenberg around 1912 followed by many others) found that audiences couldn't "handle" the complete break from the major/minor key system and it is interesting to read about the reaction of audiences upon hearing premiers of works such as Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." Our ears have changed, collectively speaking, to tolerate more and more dissonance.
My son and I conducted a fun experiment asking the question of why we react emotionally to certain sounds, music. Is it nature or nurture?
More than you asked for, I know . . . .
Thankfully, I have never had to play anything involving quarter tones. I would likely be incapable of this.
Dantes: Get thee to a microphone. You are a musical miracle.
Borba: I wish I understood your post. I barely passed physics 101. But I liked it!
I agree with Borba that the "tone deaf" test is more about what I would call tonal memory than actually testing pitch discrimination. A note about the term "tone deaf." This is a phrase that gets bandied about pretty glibly. Very few folks are actually tone deaf, meaning that they are incapable of discriminating between pitches, unless they have some sort of auditory processing problem. Not being able to carry a tune is an entirely different matter and can actually be corrected with directed practice. In my experience, I find that relative pitch (what I think you're calling Mozartean) is more pragmatic and useful than perfect pitch. Just my two cents as someone who does not have perfect pitch but does have good relative pitch. To me, it seems more useful to know, say, whether the third of the chord is tune rather than whether it's an F#. (Strangely enough, I can pretty reliably sing a D out of thin air, but I couldn't necessarily name it if it were played. Why a D, you might ask. From performing Haydn's Kyrie from the Lord Nelson Mass, which opens with repeated octave Ds.)
Also, any advice on just how to go about getting better at hearing pitch'd really be appreciated...
As far as getting better at hearing pitch, there are plenty of ear-training software programs available for recognizing intervals and sight-singing and such. I'm running out the door right now, otherwise, I'd poke around the interwebz and post some. Also, performing in an ensemble and having to tune with other human beings on the fly is invaluable.
My vocal range is not very good though. ;(
And I also don't think I know how to use my singing voice perfectly.
Colleenky, can you teach me please?
The relationship between adjacent semitones in the equal-tempered scale is a geometric, not linear one, i.e. the difference in Hz grows as the frequency goes up. About the only absolute thing we've got in Western music is the octave, which is a simple relationship: If note x is n Hz, the octave above x is 2n Hz. In equal temperament, this octave is simply divided into twelve equal slices, which means that the relationship is a ratio of the 12th root of 2 (approx 1.059463094). Simply put, multiply a number by that twelve times and you've doubled your original number.
I make a point of mentioning the number, since nothing in either the decimal representation or the description "12th root of 2" has the numerological significance that would have pleased theoreticians from Pythagoras onwards. It's bloody arbitrary, although some intervals are close to mathematically elegant relationships, e.g. the perfect 5th (7 semitones), which is not too far from the ideal of 3/2.
This kind of links in with my take on absolute ("perfect") vs relative pitch. Sticking with the game of equal tempered tuning, there is no absolute except the 12th root of 2: specifically there is nothing magical about the point we decide to use as a tuning anchor, typically A440. Generally speaking, Western music is a game played with the numbers 1-12 (the number of notes in the scale) and the relationship between those numbers. Nice whole numbers, integers. Now if there is such a thing as perfect pitch, that would mean that you'd have to play the same game without the ability to move the A440 anchor, i.e. you might be dealing with 1.03, 3.09 etc. I surmise that it would drive one mad. Just listen to a couple of JoCo songs, and note how the tuning often drifts between songs. This isn't wrong per se: two consecutive songs in D major may well be a few Hz apart, but by convention we still agree that it's D.
In that context, I'm really happy I don't have absolute pitch - I can tolerate those drifts and recalibrate without hassle, within reason. "Within reason" in my particular case could easily be a quarter tone. On a good day, and given enough time to adjust, I might allow a semitone drift without more than a feeling of discomfort. But beyond that it's just impossible to play the game, and I have to assign note names closer to the correct ones. When I sang in school choir, this used to play merry hell with me, since the conductor would often take things down a tone to rest our voices, which meant I had to do conscious transposition from sheet music (it's a bit easier from memory, when the melodic shapes have been internalised). Imagine being told to speak, but to substitute one letter higher for every word you want to say. Similarly, I've often found myself accompanying a singer on a digital piano and being asked to transpose the song lower/higher, which is trivially easy to do if it simply entails pressing the Transpose button. However, I am physically incapable of doing that, because the feedback loop between my fingers and my ears goes mad.
This subtopic is touching on neurology now. Has anybody here read the Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia? I haven't yet, but I just put it on my wish list.