The Trash Heap of the Heapers' Hangout

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  • for example, a song that starts its verse in minor, but has a very restless melody.  then for the refrain, it adds texture (i.e. volume), changes to the major key, and has a more triumphant melody.  there is a clear change in mood; it has become more confident.  i can feel that, even without any knowledge of lyrics.

    incidentally, one of my favorite songs derives its dramatic meaning largely from the contrast between a timid, plaintive verse in a minor key and a glorious refrain in the parallel major.  and then it goes back to the timid, plaintive verse in that same minor key, but surprise, it does NOT go to the refrain.  it goes to the bridge...and the bridge is just as loud and impassioned as the glorious refrain, but it is dark and stormy.  it churns and struggles through the bridge for a while, and THEN arrives back in the parallel major key for the refrain.

    THAT...is not just a single idea.  that...is a far more meaningful journey, a change in ideas.

    so, yea, not just harmony and melody.  tonality and form, too.
  • but how do i know to "expect" the refrain" where i do?  well, for example, i take unconscious cues from the harmony.  the harmony defines the phrasing -- where one phrase ends, for example.  then i know that the next idea is coming up.  it's like moving to the next paragraph.  it's a cue like that.

    what the next paragraph says is up to the writer.  it is up to the writer to disappoint my expectations, to leave me hanging, to satisfy them, to satiate them or to do whatever.

    all of these little things determine the journey i experience in going through the music.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i see.  Thanks for the elaboration.  Barring the odd song, j-pop just hasn't clicked with me, but i can see where you're coming from there.

    i don't know how far harmonic structures play a role in determining what i listen to, since i'm not sufficiently aware of them... the Absolutely (Story of a Girl) thread last night made me realize that i lack the language to describe what it is i like in a pop song, or even for me to say with confidence whether there's any logic to my preferences.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:18:20
    and i don't get these cues from some of the music i listen to.  a lot of pop, for example.

    this is when i find it boring or unmeaningful or hard to connect to.  j-pop and anisong too.  lots of songs i have little interest in or don't like.  i don't unconditionally love them at all.

    the only reason i say i like them more on average is because i've been able to find more stuff i like, there.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch

    incidentally, one of my favorite songs derives its dramatic meaning largely from the contrast between a timid, plaintive verse in a minor key and a glorious refrain in the parallel major.  and then it goes back to the timid, plaintive verse in that same minor key, but surprise, it does NOT go to the refrain.  it goes to the bridge...and the bridge is just as loud and impassioned as the glorious refrain, but it is dark and stormy.  it churns and struggles through the bridge for a while, and THEN arrives back in the parallel major key for the refrain.

    THAT...is not just a single idea.  that...is a far more meaningful journey, a change in ideas.

    What song is this, by the way?  i should like to hear it for myself.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:23:31
    i don't usually have random pop playing on my radio but sometimes late at night NPR has random jazz selections and i've found myself trying to develop a new "sense" of a different set of cues.  Because if i just apply the cues i know, i only get a little bit of sense.  and i can tell this.  i can tell that i'm not feeling, say, levity, when the music is trying to suggest levity.  well, usually, i feel a little bit -- but nothing to the same degree as someone steeped in it would.  so i just basically have to nurture that feeling, and walk further down its path.  or something like that.

    look, i understand that the music i don't find meaningful is meaningful to others.  but i just don't understand how.

    it's just like listening to a foreign language.  i know it means something to someone else.  i just don't know _how_ it means that.  applying the cues i know, is a little like using my knowledge of similar-looking words and Latin roots (if it's a Romance language) and inferring some little bit of meaning, but that meaning comes in bits and pieces; i have to rely on guesswork to connect them.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:40:05
    Tachyon said:

    incidentally, one of my favorite songs derives its dramatic meaning largely from the contrast between a timid, plaintive verse in a minor key and a glorious refrain in the parallel major.  and then it goes back to the timid, plaintive verse in that same minor key, but surprise, it does NOT go to the refrain.  it goes to the bridge...and the bridge is just as loud and impassioned as the glorious refrain, but it is dark and stormy.  it churns and struggles through the bridge for a while, and THEN arrives back in the parallel major key for the refrain.

    THAT...is not just a single idea.  that...is a far more meaningful journey, a change in ideas.

    What song is this, by the way?  i should like to hear it for myself.
    ALL IN ALL, track #14 from the album Melodic Hard Cure, by Melocure.

    i dunno if it's possible to find on youtube (a cursory search suggests "no").  try another site or something...i wonder if i can help...
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch

    it's just like listening to a foreign language.

    Quoting because this is such a good analogy.  That's exactly what it's like, trying to make sense of a song in an unfamiliar tradition or genre.

    Same sense of meaning, same difficulty in differentiating between aspects of that meaning that are presumably substantial to those steeped in it.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:32:35
    Tachyon said:

    i see.  Thanks for the elaboration.  Barring the odd song, j-pop just hasn't clicked with me, but i can see where you're coming from there.

    i don't know how far harmonic structures play a role in determining what i listen to, since i'm not sufficiently aware of them... the Absolutely (Story of a Girl) thread last night made me realize that i lack the language to describe what it is i like in a pop song, or even for me to say with confidence whether there's any logic to my preferences.

    it's difficult to describe how a song works.  really.  even for someone who knows music terminology.

    also if you happen to be listening to that song, note how the refrain doesn't just go to the parallel major -- it immediately becomes more even more glorious than that.  i know it does this by "tonicizing the dominant", as in it hints at the next "higher" key on the circle of fifths.  i cannot say why this is more glorious; i can just know that this feature is what has that effect.

    really, all knowing music theory does is to more easily allow me to distill and study the features that have these effects.  i cannot say why they do what they do.  it's almost like magic.

    oh, and then shortly thereafter, it pulls back, and gives a very, very strong IV to V half-cadence before starting the refrain proper.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i really don't understand what these words mean, Glenn.

    Or, i do, in theory, if i were taking a test i could supply answers, but i can't hear these things.  i don't recognize them when i hear them.
  • incidentally, the refrain actually primarily uses iv to I motion.  which it seems like i was flaming up there, but it's the proper dynamic balance between the two that is what really makes great music.

    in fact, one could say that it's like a plateau of stability, that glorious refrain.  and that's why it that harmonic sequence makes sense there.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:35:56
    Tachyon said:

    i really don't understand what these words mean, Glenn.

    Or, i do, in theory, if i were taking a test i could supply answers, but i can't hear these things.  i don't recognize them when i hear them.

    sorry, i'm just shitposting. :)
  • let me know what you think of that song, btw.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i do like what i'm hearing here, though.

    You have a funny definition of shitposting, i think.  At least, it's not what i would call shitposting.
  • edited 2014-12-01 13:39:20
    it's "shitposting" (with the quotation marks) when i want to tell someone that i don't mean to make them feel bad, by asking them to pretend that i'm just going on inconsequential some geeky loopy-scientist tangent about something i'm really into.

    basically, a little self-deprecation, in the name of courtesy/politeness.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    Fair enough.

    Anyway... the song is good.  The textures are familiar but it uses them in a way that is fairly novel to me.  It's upbeat and sweet in a way that isn't saccharine.  It feels light, like floating in places, but dark and power-ballady in others.

    If i try to put it in terms that are familiar to me, i'd say it has a progressive flavour.  i don't know how meaningful that description is in the context of j-pop though.
  • Unfortunately, I don't know what "progressive" means.  I mean, I've heard of "progressive rock"/"prog rock" many times before, but I don't actually know what it means.

    But yeah, I definitely like the power ballad aspects of the song.  And, for that matter, the contrast.  The contrast itself is a core element of that song.

    (and thanks to you i have become slightly more sure of myself in using the term "power ballad")
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    Prog is hard to pin down because it means different things to different people.  Like, there's definitely a prog 'genre', with a type of instrumentation and conventions associated with it, which you can hear in bands like, say, Barclay James Harvest, or Asia.  Then you would associate it with longer-than-average rock songs, the lack of the conventional verse and chorus structure, unconventional lyrical themes, freeform improvisation, classical influences, the use of electronic instruments like the mellotron within the context of a classic rock line-up, and the concept album.  Bands in this genre are taking their influence from experimental rock bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues, Caravan and Gentle Giant.  Ultimately i guess this genre has its roots in the psych-rock, psych-folk and blues rock of that period.

    But the term also gets applied to acts as diverse as, for example, Kate Bush and even Radiohead, which don't really have any direct connection to that sound.  These artists are sometimes called crossover prog, since they work within the conventional radio formats but do creative and experimental things within them (these are sometimes more creative than bands that wear their prog credentials on their sleeves).  There are also artists like Genesis who started out unambiguously prog and moved in a more radio-friendly direction later on.  i guess that's the sense in which 'ALL IN ALL' sounds progressive to me.

    It's more complicated than that, though.  Broadly, if a band or musician takes rock as a starting point and then incorporates two or more of the following: influences from other genres, particularly jazz fusion and the Western classical tradition; significant deviation from conventional pop song structures; a high degree of virtuosity, improvisation or experimentation; unusual lyrical themes; long songs and song-cycles or concept albums... chances are they're prog, or someone thinks they're prog, which amounts to roughly the same thing.

    Sorry if this is too vague.  i'm not very good at defining music precisely.
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    What's post-rock, then?
  • edited 2014-12-01 14:21:08
    no, that was a good description.

    a little hard for me to place exactly what that "means", since I only kinda know Asia, Pink Floyd, and (barely have heard of) Moody Blues and Radiohead.  by "know" i mean "I think I can think of one or two songs of theirs that I've heard".

    but i think i see where it's going.

    regarding genre labels, honestly, I think that there's far too much fine-granularity in all these genre labels especially as compared to 'classical', which uncommonly gets split into 'baroque', 'classical', 'romantic', and 'avant-garde' or something, but if we're talking about these very specific styles with such granularity, we'd pretty much be making "romantic piano sonata", "lieder" (i.e. "german art song"), "baroque keyboard suite", "classical symphony", "pointillism", etc. individual genres
  • ...which actually might not be a bad thing, come to think of it.
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    I don't think anyone is actually good at classifying music.
  • Not that there aren't tropes that are distinct to certain musical cultures and traditions, but there's no such thing as a proper division between the more broader musical categories. Musicians and composers borrow too much to allow such a thing, especially in this day and age. 
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    Actually, i think for the most part genres were created by reviewers, fans and bands, and most genre debates are the result of conflict between these groups.  Marketing execs would love to be able to just sell everything under the one label; it would make their job a lot easier.

    And i'm not sure about post-rock... i think of Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but it's not really a genre i'm greatly familiar with.

    Generally i'd associate it with less bombast and less virtuosity than prog, and an even greater abandonment of traditional song structures in favour of meandering ambient instrumental pieces.  But there are definitely prog compositions that could be described that way, e.g. King Crimson's The Dream/The Illusion.
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Monday morning's lecture was less painful than I feared

    Off to the temp agency to see if I can get a job
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    Good luck!
  • i'll talk about music genres for a second when i get off mobile
  • oatmeal porridge.

    i disliked this as a kid.

    now, it is something i treasure.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    oatmeal a day keeps the yeerks at bay

    looking forward, naney
  • RE: Prog: Tach hit the nail on the head, i have nothing to add.

    RE: Post Rock: Post Rock could be seen as sort of rock with the rock taken out of it. you have rock instrumentation, but without the structures or emphasis on riffs that you have in rock music, instead there's an emphasis on texture and gradual development that owes a lot to Steve Reich and the like.

    which makes it a lot like prog in some ways, but prog is BIG and FLASHY with lots of virtuosity and complex structures and all of those classical and jazz infleunces and stuff whereas post rock tends to build around simple ideas, usually with an emphasis on subtlety and draws upon a different set of non-rock influences like dub and electronic music
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    I just realized that as far as the material I've read on the subject goes, my final essay for Philosophy of Religion is closest to Sam Harris's position.

    Kill me.

    God damn you case for the epistemic authority of mystical states of consciousness, why do you have to sound so weak to me.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    So i was not quite right, but not entirely wrong about post-rock, it seems.

    ^ i don't know the details of Sam Harris' views but so long as you're not advocating crusades against Islam or accusing all Muslims of violent extremist tendencies you're probably fine.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    (and i know you wouldn't say either of those things, of course)
  • kill living beings
    fuck startups
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Back from the temp agency

    They actually had a job I could have done just for today, but I couldn't accept it because I don't have work boots and have no way of getting any in the next three hours -_-
  • TreTre
    edited 2014-12-01 17:27:00
    image
    okay, so

    Amazon's got Bethesda games on sale and I'm trying to pick one because I'm buying Persona 4 Golden for myself as well and I feel like burning money, so: between Fallout NV, Skyrim and Dishonored, which one is the best deal for $5?
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    I feel like my ideas aren't good enough.
  • I've learned to tolerate drama...except on the boat

    Back from the temp agency


    They actually had a job I could have done just for today, but I couldn't accept it because I don't have work boots and have no way of getting any in the next three hours -_-
    Better luck next time, I hope!
  • You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
    Thanks AU
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    alternate universe
  • Somehow I smashed together these:

    General Video Game Thread
    Happy Engels Day!

    into this:

    General Election Day Thread
  • ...And even when your hope is gone
    move along, move along, just to make it through
    (2015 self)
    In 2017, production of all devices that use screens is halted when the computers realize that the last person who knew how to make screens died in 2013.  All internet servers shut down on May 16th.  On June 12th, Digital televisions die just as analog did.  On July second, all  chargers stop working, leaving only one battery life of time left for any device that must be chargers.  People make these few hours last, and save them for special occasions. Nobody alive knows how to actually make a computer; we need computers to make computers.

    In 2045, the second internet comes online.

    In 2067, the archives of the first internet are finally accessed, making the first internet accessible from the second.  The people, upon hearing this announcement, expect to be awed and inspired by the internet of 2016, and hail it as a rediscovery of a treasure trove of information; only to be discover by the huge amount of pointless drek and funny pictures/videos on it.

    In 2071, search engines are reinvented

    In 2077, production of all devices that use screens is halted when the computers
    realize that the last person who knew how to make screens died in 2063..
  • Aliroz said:

    In 2017, production of all devices that use screens is halted when the computers realize that the last person who knew how to make screens died in 2013.  All internet servers shut down on May 16th.  On June 12th, Digital televisions die just as analog did.  On July second, all  chargers stop working, leaving only one battery life of time left for any device that must be chargers.  People make these few hours last, and save them for special occasions. Nobody alive knows how to actually make a computer; we need computers to make computers.

    In 2045, the second internet comes online.

    In 2067, the archives of the first internet are finally accessed, making the first internet accessible from the second.  The people, upon hearing this announcement, expect to be awed and inspired by the internet of 2016, and hail it as a rediscovery of a treasure trove of information; only to be discover by the huge amount of pointless drek and funny pictures/videos on it.

    In 2071, search engines are reinvented

    In 2077, production of all devices that use screens is halted when the computers
    realize that the last person who knew how to make screens died in 2063..

    it keeps happening!
  • kill living beings
    they teach how CRT monitors work in introductory physics classes, y'know
  • edited 2014-12-01 19:04:55

    Tre said:

    okay, so


    Amazon's got Bethesda games on sale and I'm trying to pick one because I'm buying Persona 4 Golden for myself as well and I feel like burning money, so: between Fallout NV, Skyrim and Dishonored, which one is the best deal for $5?
    Haven't played Dishonored, but between the two, get Fallout New Vegas. Also, if you get New Vegas (not sure if it's on sale) get the ultimate edition. It's worth the extra price for the DLC. What platform are you getting it for, out of curiosity?
  • Yeah, we could easily get 80x25 green-screen text terminals back.

    Some days I'd prefer it.  The Internet was fun that way.

    Of course, this is wearing serious nostalgia goggles.
  • BE ATTITUDE FOR GAINS
    Morven said:

    Yeah, we could easily get 80x25 green-screen text terminals back.


    Some days I'd prefer it.  The Internet was fun that way.

    Of course, this is wearing serious nostalgia goggles.
    image
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