Music - Art or Market?

[Súrion]

The Ultimate question in all aspects of music. I cannot answer this complete on one side, I can only give a balanced answer myself.

I was just in one of my regular visits to my own world, when I started thinking about this question. I not sure it can ever be answer for certain, because human nature always introduces both.

To me, music is a passion. It's an art, and I have relatively every taste in music, being a music student, I've tried to downplay my taste in certain genres and studied and respect many various aspects of music. When I compose music, or listen to music, or play music, I see it as an art, its the language of the world, the feeling in music, it says a 1000 words. Some pieces of music are so heartfelt, it probably can only be said as music, and words cannot describe such emotions. So to this, music is an art, it belong in the expressive arts, as there are very few better ways to express yourself than through music.

But what is art? " The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. - Dictionary.com"

I completely agree with this definition, but what really matters about art? It’s the passion. The creativity, music is for yourself, if you were to write music, its for yourself.

But human nature, if you are to write music, you want it to be heard, you want the thrill of performing it, to show others what you are capable of. Alas, my point emerges. there is so much money involved in music right now, that’s all it is for, its about idols, and commercialism. Do we really have many creative musicians in the present day? A good example would be Trivium (please no trivium fans hate me for this) but their new song "the anthem" is it creative? Yes they are expressing themselves, but its really just commercial, and I'm sure it will bring them money.

Classic composers such as Bach and Mozart were paid to write for others. That’s not an art, they are being told what to write, its just for entertaining people. Beethoven was the first composer who was paid to write what he wanted.

Modern musicians these days (sorry if I sound really old-fashioned) are only interested in getting better on their instrument/s. I know, I also fall into this category to some extent. Is music really about the art, or the passion anymore? Is there really any creative aspects in music these days? I personally think that being able to play good isn't what makes a good musician. I think it should be about there attitude, feeling, and passion for what they are playing. But again, human nature will just want others to hear it, to sell it even.

I'm now starting to feel as those I'm going in circles, its that hard a question to answer, so I'll stop writing for now. But what do you think? Is music really an art anymore? Was it ever an art, or is it just about to be able to entertain, and please the audience?

Surion

[Chez Daja]

I feel that it's both.

To do something you feel emotion from and get a pay-off for it. That seems like a bland and nasty way to put it, but musicians need to make a living, and what better way to do it then by expressing themselves musically?

Unfortunately, there are bands like Slipknot who seems to throw nothing into their music apart from attracting a bunch of kids who just think it's hardcore and take it seriously. So I don't think they, as an example, take music and composing seriously.

Unfortunately, anything sells these days, and so many people take this advantage by taking years and years to learn and get good at an instrument as well as understanding it, only to write music with passion at first, and then often lose that want to write anything with emotion later on.

Almost as if enthusiasm becomes non-existent for the composers after a few albums and so it becomes a want for money rather than putting their songs out there out of personal interest. A competition, if you will.

I feel music can be entertainment, but I hate music that is made to make money. Music is all about the passion, the feeling, the enjoyment of playing music infront of a big crowd, the way you can feel the musician's pain, happiness. Music is more than art or entertainment, it is a way of expression.

[Angantyr]

Interesting topic so let me begin...

In my opinion it depends on where you are looking from, all the aspects behind it and the cause for it. Money is just something that comes along with it as does anything remotely entertaining (or useful for that matter), and I think there is too much focus on it and less focus on the quality of it. There is just so many aspects in music from the variation of genres, theme, sound, instruments, emotion, techincal level, lyrics etc... which I feel people often forget.

I think the most important thing that determines whether it is an art or it is for money depends on the basis of the Genre. Though I wouldn't say it is entirely on this it depends on the founding fathers of the genre in question. For example a with Heavy Metal I will use Metallica as a prime example and their chosen path in Music. What I believe happened is in the begining they were serious about their music and the had serious reasoning behind their music and they wanted to show everybody their music, henceforth it was more of an artform. Each time they released a new album it was a way of expressing how they felt, eventually the recorded what is known simply as "The Black Album", this was the biggest turning point I believe in what changed them, many regarded this as the peak of their career (Though I reserve that for Master of Puppets, others have their own thoughts) and some record company saw this and wanted to buy them, after this they lost themselves to the money and it was no longer about the music, but I feel with the song "Unforgiven II" they still had a bit of what is left. This can be said about nearly genre replacing each album with and artist and Unforgiven II with the occasional band that holds true to the traditional meaning behind it.

I think the theme of the band plays an important role in peoples opinion of the band, though sometimes I feel it takes away the raw emotion. Well to be honest it varies from band to band, but I would say my personal favourite bands have less of a theme and more of unique sound. It is good for bands who use it in a productive manner to develop their music, a good example of a band with a theme which I listen to is the band "Wintersun", though I doubt much people have heard of him (formerly from Ensiferum), his music and the theme of Winter work together perfectly, the whole sound sounds really cold and has a beautiful feeling of ice towards it. In keeping with the theme of Winter allow me to mention a bad example of a band with the Theme in question, this band is none other than Immortal, they also use the theme and started the cheesy but well known amoungst BMers saying "Grim and Frostbitten Kingdoms" and while I do somewhat like their music there music is more or less a joke.

Another important aspect on labeling it as an art would depend on the sound it produces, and whilst I never specifically said this, it is part of the reason I dislike bands such as Slipknot and Marylin Manson. Slipknot is popular because they made a sound which some would consider "Angsty and Cool" when in fact it is merely a generic take off from bands like Slayer and Pantera ruining the meaning behind what they created it for. The sound is what tends to capture me a lot, in the opening riff if I like the sound of the guitar and vocals I will probably get into the band whether its popular or not. I am not an expert on instruments sounds but I notice that the variation in the instruements you play has a large aspect on the sound, and if you listen to a cover you can see just how much differant that instrument has on the overall sound, so I assuming when chosing an instrument the sound should be amoungst the biggest thing to keep in mind for what you are wanting to do.

I think what really seperates a song sounding generic or sounding like an artform is the emotion put into playing it. This could be partly why emo has become a new popular trend, ultimately at the same time destroying the emotion in music... oh the Irony. But yeah if you look at the most popular peices (which tend to be the Power Ballards, well... kind of hard to explain but the music that has so much feeling put into it) you can clearly see that it is deprived from various emotions developed through the music. When I look through my playlist and compare the bands that I listen to and even the songs I can clearly see that the songs which seem to have the most emotion are the ones I listen to a lot and the ones that are lacking tend not to. I would say this plays a huge roll in whether a band is art or not, this is probably why the popular music scene gets heaps of one hit wonders but after a while they fail to impress. One thing I do notice is sometimes that emotion you get when you listen to a song can make you look like an ass but at the same time I know the feeling that goes with it.

I think the technical level does play a role in the whether its an art or not BUT if there is too much focus on it, there becomes a lacking aesthetic value to the music. Somebody who is more experianced with the structure of music can comment on this but I have always seen music as a pattern with noise, the reason I bring this up is because if we could literaly see the music we would see the flow it goes in, if we saw a song/pattern with a lack of technicallity it would just look like rather bland picture, rather boring. Now if we saw a song which was incredibly technical it may look quite spectacular but if it doesn't go together perfectly it can look just like a mess. A good example of a the boring bland picture imo would be most of the rap I heard, to some it may be catchy or something drawing towards it but to me it sounds extremely bland, generic and no articulate value towards it. Then on the otherside you get some Classical, a composer like Chopin (Who in eyes seems to have a very technical way of playing though I can't be certain) can play with absolute percision on some of the most intense sounding music I have ever heard and still acquire an amazing sound, then you get composers like Furtwängler who in my view sound incredibly boring (though this is after 1 or 2 listens so perhaps a bad example but to name bad Classical is quite hard to do). It partly depends on who you are and what your interest says but I believe the technical level gets too much attention. Kind of like too much colour destroying and image.

Along with Technicallity I think the lyrical aspect plays a huge role in what the type of music is, and as above some people focus too much on it. For this instance I will comment on both Lyrics and Vocals. I think trying to Rhyme is not an essential part in music but can go either way really, if it goes together with the music with a smooth flow it fits adds a certain element towards that music which I guess would be labeled as "Sounding Catchy" to some. But at the same time if you are just putting words together without taking a serious look if they fit together it can sound like gobbedy gook. Lyrics I believe are drawn from the emotion which is built up in the music effectively developing from it, hence why I believe if you can't make lyrics wouldn't it be better just to take them out all together? As for Vocals this is where it gets interesting, in my view to have the most amazing voice is not entirely what vocals are about, what I think it depends on what you are trying to make the music soundlike (which obviously is drawing (playing) your art), you can't just put a vocalist on a song and expect the song to sound absolutely amazing, you have to put it together with the music. A good example of this would be my favourite kind of music: Black Metal, a lot of the kvlt kiddies with their Bedroom BM bands just assume because growls are rough and raw anybody can do them, though they are relatively easy to do they forget to mix the depth and tone of their vocals along with the flow ultimately sounding like a stupid retarded Orc or something. I believe the vocals plays one of, if not thee biggest parts in mordern music, and this is why I say if you can get them to fit then don't use them, instrumental music is just as good and at times can be easier to listen to.

The desire to get money off their recordings seems to be the main purpose for a lot of these bands to form but I think they forget to be true to the music which ironically destroys the value of the music making it less likely to be able to produce Money. At the same time I feel it is okay if a band gets money in the process of developing the band but should not be the main focus on the development of the music in question. For the sake of giving a band that most people know a good example: Tool, in my opinion they are one of the few decent Metal acts today that isn't ruined by the desire to get money, they have quite a unique sound which incorporates most of which I mentioned above. I am not saying everyband should copy them if they are to be sucessful but they are one of the few acts that are popular which I consider worthy of my time to listen to and perhaps even give them some money by buying their albums.

Looking at the popular bands and comparing them to the more underground bands you can obviously see that the majority of the Popular market swings to the money making side and the Underground music is about the art but as I stated with bands such as Tool this is not always the case. A fine case of a band which is supposedly Art which I have to disagree with is Iron Maiden, don't get me wrong they make fairly decent music but for the most part they are the most overrated Metal band ever. I like some of their songs but I find some of their songs like "The Trooper" and "2 Minutes 2 Midnight" to be incredibly boring, Seventh Son was probably the last album of any worth but I don't see why they get so much credit for their older albums. I believe the true meaning behind music is an art form due to the mixture of paragraphs above, working together to develop some of the most beautiful man made creations. It is a shame that people are so focused on the well know bands because there is so much great stuff out there if you dig a little bit, and I am not just talking about Metal, I have a nice selection of Scandinavian Folk Music which reminds me of the music on games like Final Fantasy IX. And it is a shame some people don't appreciate music as much as I do. I hope this helps as it took me ages to write up.

PS: Guess what I was listening to when I wrote this

[Walter Sobchak]

When I was in a couple of bands, we always played at shows where we didnt get paid, but we didnt do it for arts sake either. We did it to get sex. But when we got regular sex, we started to shift more towards making more poppy music to bring in crowds and make friends. After this was accomplished, we wrote our best music. Nevertheless, it was still for sex, but we didnt have to work as hard.

While all bands are in it for something monetary, there is a difference. If they choose to play the music they like, good. The line is drawn when they make music that they dont like, for the sake of getting famous.

[SourBreak]

The majority of music begins with the art, but usually after a video or a tour, most bands will turn way too commercial. Dragonforce says this for me.

I 'used' to listen to Valley Of The Damned, when they released Inhuman Rampage, they made a video. It's so obvious people only like Dragonforce because of their insane solo's and also because they can also solo with their finger over the fretboard instead of under it. All the the fans these days only look upto bands who can solo so little runts can say "Woah! Look how fast he's going and how it looks". I hate people like that, who only care about how fast a guy can play and not what musical aspects he's used to come up with that riff or melody.

Basically, from the mouth and words of Mike Porrtnoy on the Score Dvd, "The music to start off with was only fun before the music industry got involved".

Music isn't about solo's or videos, music is about progression. Everything progresses from some musical development, I asked a guy not so long back "What is an arpeggio was..?", he didn't know despite the fact he said he knew everything about metal.

That's why I tend to think mine and Cruicky's (Dante) band Nekrobobsledder won't do shit for the musical industry in the extremely unlikely event if we got signed. We won't do gigs at places we don't like, we won't do videos...we won't do shit.

Music is about art, not some crappy video which gets the ball rolling. The ball is only really rolling when a band realises they can play together.