"People who write about music are just bitter that they themselves can't play it."

It just seems to be the knee-jerk reaction from an artist who can't handle constructive critiscism of their work.

i do love it when critics end up becoming the artists written about though and do a fantastic job of it (i never read Neil Tenant's reviews but i doubt they were as good as the Pet Shop Boys pop music)

Would it be pique if I said "yes"?

Note: frustrated /= pathetic

I have occasionally wanted to try making music (in the same way as I sort of wish I could cook more) but I've honestly never wanted to make records or 'be a musician'.

I would have sorta agreed with this a few years ago, but Tom & FT opened my eyes. Tom wrote something a couple of years ago, mabye it was on Blue Lines, I'm not sure, about why criticism matters & that essay changed my thinking. I can't remember the details, but it had something to do with criticism making private thoughts public, as a way to share experiences about something that you find terribly important (music, in this case.) Wanting to write about something that makes you happy & makes you think doesn't mean that you want to "be" that thing! It's about engaging with the music instead of the personality behind it (although the latter can be fun, too.)

(Also I think it's worthwhile and fun etc etc)

But doesn't this only to apply to someone who's noticeably successful at both? I think loads of people both play music and write about it: the difference is just that one of those activities actually goes somewhere and the other doesn't.

I refuse to address any further DeRogatissorrie allegations

Anyway, I'm frustated only in the sense that I have no patience and would like all the random songs and noises in my head to appear perfectly mastered and ready to go without me having to do anything else. But I have no patience, so I'll just write.

Side question: I've long had a pet theory that Siskel & Ebert's TV show is one reason there's such a glut of culture critics right now. (The other, obviously, is the glut of culture itself.) For an opinionated kid who liked to talk about what I liked and why I liked it at length, it was my favorite TV show. Any other critics have this experience, or something like it?

Anyway, if this were true, than musicians would make the best music critics. As said above, I'm also not sure if they do.

Sorry, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, it's part of the focus of my next column (well, that and being offered sexual favours for reviews) - WHY am I not better at writing about the people who MAKE music rather than the music itself, why am I shit at being on the receiving end of interviews, stuff like that.

I guess what I find more annoying are music crits who are frustrated *writers* themselves rather than people who geniunely love and want to gush about music. Though some of my fave critics ever have fallen into this category.

I can't concentrate and I've not had any lemsip in too long so I can't really comment.

He's jealous that he never made the top 40 -- just like all the phonies making "avant garde" music. Avant garde a clue is more like it.

Fair point, Tom. I suppose I need to be a bit more specific. What I meant by that is that if you're a musician, you can probably recognize and appreciate the technical aspects of playing certain bits of music more than the non-musically-inclined critic, thus you may become more sympathetic to the artist in question -- regardless of whether or not their music sounds like absolute dogshit. For example, if you happen to be even passably proficient at, say, thwacking the Chapman Stick (not a euphemism for masturbation....or is it?), you're probably going to lend a bit more creedence to the noodly, otherwise unlistenable shenanigans of Trey Gunn than would the average pair of ears, only because you happen to know from first hand experience that playing a Chapman Stick isn't quite as simple as playing, say, the Kazoo. Smell what I'm cookin'?

A lot of other folks have mentioned the issue of which pays better (being a musician versus being a music writer), but I really don't think that's as important. Regardless of your success at one or the other, the accusation that a critic is simply a "frustrated" musician still applies, even if you're raking it in (relatively speaking) like Anthony DeCurtis or J.D. Considine.

So maybe for me anyway the thread is more like "people who write about music on message boards are just bitter that they themselves can't write as well as [insert canonical music writer of choice]." Well, except that I'm not bitter. I just don't try to write professionally.

It might still be worth asking whether there are insights into music that a music writer can only get from (also) playing music. And by the same token, whether there are insights into music that a music writer can only get from NOT playing music. Maybe there are two sets of complementary insights.

The same principle might apply to cooking, writing, acting, football, whatever.

Hatred of critics as apology for artist: this is a weird thing because, depending on context, it can never decide whether it's saying that critics do dictate what people like (and are thus, like, responsible for Bad Comeback Record flopping) or are irrelevant (look, all these people I know like Bad Comeback Record!).

does not compute, please insert/delete at least one negative.

It works the other way for me, Alex. There are SO many good musicians now (statistically!) that I tend to automatically discount "quality of musicianship" in favor of elusive spark of genius, or well-stated message, or unusual atmospherics. Every third-rate hack out there seems to have chops, but I'm beginning to think that chops just mask lack of content, lending an air of quality to outright dreck. (tho I have chops) (I'm having some for dinner).

Ha! Nabisco, no pimp, sad to say. I can't even get laid these days..

I don't think it necessarily improves writing, but I know it helps me as a listener to know the basics of an instrument. I have a guitar and know the basic blues and folk chords, but not much beyond that. Certainly with something like jazz it's just a big help to follow the chord changes and count off the rhythm, time signatures, etc.

I agree -- chops don't compensate for a lack of style (see the volatile 'Why Does Everyone Hate the Dave Matthews Band' thread). But, if you're a musician, I'd imagine you listen to music in a completely different manner than the layperson, so to speak. A non-musician's imagination is more easily captured by something they hear, I believe, whereas a competent (or even an incompetent) musician might subconsciously be listening for limitations in the players' abilities.

Sorta my point, but can't a non-musician tell something as basic as "out of tune" as well? I'm thinking more like "ah, the bass player's using a Hamanahamanahamana amp and a doodle-doodle-dee pickup with yadda-yadda-yadda pedals and a three-quarter-inch booga-booga-booga set of 'funk fingers'" (please excuse the gibberish masquerading as the proper nouse of sundry musician hardware).

"That four-star rating TOTALLY missed the point!"

You know, I can think of several examples off the top of my head where musicians I knew were very angry about being written up positively - mostly because they hated the bands they were being compared to/aligned with, or the way they were being portrayed. Even if its positive, they may still vehemently disagree w/the critic's take.

.. I had a point to this .. but I can't remember what it was .. something about prog critics being as annoying as prog rockers - and these are the people at whom "People who write about music are just bitter that they themselves can't play it." is directed... I think that's what I meant...

HOWEVER, if you DO sound like AC/DC even though you hate them, going into a hissy-fit at the critic who points it out to you will not help you sound less like AC/DC. And yes, it's possible the critic is wrong, but it is also possible that the critic is RIGHT.

prog crit /= reviewer of prog rock.

prog = wordy, quotes Kirkegard, ....

"Incisiveness is not a quality I previously associated with Metheny. For all his instrumental bravura, his music is often swamped in a Brahmsian gloss, as dollops of superficial Weltschmerz vie with folkish tunes - a tendency exacerbated by the presence in his quartet of a rather precious pianist, Lyle Mays. I invoke Jarret as a source of Metheny's sugary modal lyricism, but it was probably ingrained in him during the time he worked with Gary Burton and Steve Swallow. At times they all intone plush melodies with excessive sobriety, as though the notes were transmitted from God, and the gospel chord they lean on originated not in the sweaty hallelujahs of a slave culture but in the pristine structures of Burt Bacharach. Metheny's new music has more spine in it, especially as sampled at the Vanguard, and for that I credit the Coleman influence."

At one level this is just a version of he standard, and often parodied, writer's trick (artist A = artists x + y + z). But 9 times out of 10 it's done so lazily and unconvincingily, you just end up not trusting the writer's ears. Whereas Giddins is completely convincing: you believe he could take you to a piano, and play the chords from the negro spirituals/Bacharach tunes/and Metheny's quartet etc, demonstrating exactly where the similarities and differences are.

(Incidentally, Christgau was being praised for brevity in another thread and this was used as a justification for his tortured prose. Without losing clarity Giddin's paragraph says something about two Metheny bands, Jarrett, Coleman, Burton and Swallow, Mays, Brahms, Bacharach and Weltschmerz and those somethings seem to me always right and, in relation to the main subjects, illuminating.)

Are Sunny Day Real Estate that bad, then?

By which I mainly probably mean they often confuse the process (HOW the music is made) with the PRODUCT (how the music actually SOUNDS.)

Not so much Tull flute as plenty of Phil Collins sop, I assure you.

But after a while of listening to music, aren't you curious how it's made

Not in my case. I just want the end results.

What music "DOES" is not independent of any notion of how it is made. Whether or not we admit it or choose to talk/write about, we are always drawing ideas/inferences about artistic creation when listening to a piece of music or watching a film. Or at least I thought so until Ned's comment. Which somehow offends me more than anything I've yet read on ILX though I'm not sure why.

I don't think this is a matter of confusion, but more of a perception that has been sensitized to different aspects and an expanded vocabulary to describe that perception. The musician IS describing how the music actually sounds. To them, it sounds like someone playing the "Hamanahamanahamana amp with a doodle-doodle-dee pickup". Whereas a non-musician might say, it sounds "crunchy". The musician's description is more precise, if you can speak their language - but of course, that's a big "if" when you write for a mainstream publication.

No it doesn't! "Why am I drawn to this particular piece of music?" leads to "What makes up this music?" which leads to "What parts of the music are the things I'm drawn to?" and "Why is it that the juxtaposition of these things appeal to me so much?" Other people and their contexts don't need to be involved at all.

Actually I totally misspoke (mis-wrote?). I agree with Dan. I guess I missed a few steps -- those which Dan identifies above. I'm all for taking apart and reconstructing (in writing or simply in your brain) the formal elements of a piece of music. But I think that leads to other questions. I guess the problem is that most rock critics skip that middle step. Ha! Just like I did!

I'm too confused to sustain an ideological schism. I'd be trying to jump across it every few minutes. (What happens when you fall INTO an ideological schism?)

Sometimes I wonder how a particular songwriter came up with a particular musical notion due to the chord it strikes with me, but it's usually in the context of "How can I create that type of feeling in someone else with my as-yet-unwritten musical masterpiece?" rather than any desire to get closer to the songwriter. Those musical idols whom I do want to meet/get to know better (again, Prince/Robert Smith), well, those desires come from wanting to be there when they create their next brilliant song and hopefully getting an offer to sing backup/go on tour/abandon my mundane programmer existence for a life in the studio, on the road and on stage. So even there, it's less about who the songwriter/performer is and more what he/she can do for me.

A schism = the point where two previously-congruent things suddenly find themselves in opposition.

A shism = fo shism my nism.

Musicians make a lot more sense when they don't use language.

Which is why I pointed to archival type music, which speaks to both points: since I exist outside of the social context of say, music from the Depression, part of the interest I'd have in listening to something like that is using the music as a tool to try and see into what that social context might have been. This is what Dan is talking about, partly, only displaced to a different part of the cultural landscape -- but it's also half of what Amateurist is talking about, because there's no reason that, with certain pieces of music, we shouldn't have the same voyeuristic interest in the personal "social context" of the artists themselves, and their particular mileu.

In that case whatshisbucket from Sigur Ros would be the most sensible man in the world, and yet I doubt.

All songs are connected to each other while at the same time existing in a vacuum. Writer's intent tends to get trumped by listener's interpretation.

Yeah, the psychological aspect of music is something I think more critics could worry about. You ask, re Prince for ex., how does he get that effect? Anyone who tries to create music experiences that elusive emotion when you're very detached from what you're doing but you've created a certain effect...kind of like intellectualized nostalgia. Obviously, critics need to address the issue of how well the artist handles her relationship to her material, the tone, and whether the tone is morally appropriate to the subject--if the tone is justified, and not just a formal stance. Do rock critics do this very well? I'm afraid I don't read them too much any more, so I don't know. In movie criticism, Kael was good at this, she often got down to the heart of what the artist's intentions were and whether the artist had deluded himself about those intentions. This doesn't seem quite the same when you're talking about pop music. All this seems to militate against the kind of "a-ha!" moment that creators of music want to have, though, you can't worry about it or it won't come. Even the best stuff seems like it could have been made from isolated moments of inspiration and then strung together, there's not really a flow at all--I've been learning to play those Jobim songs--and I think "bitterness" comes when someone realizes they're good at stringing stuff together but not so good at that initial inspiration, or vice versa? Does this make sense at all?

I mean, if you want to talk about how music is consumed in a social sense: can anyone say that comparative studies of Morrissey's persona vs. Morrissey's actual history were not a very real part of what on-the-ground Morrissey fandom was, at one point, about?

amateurist,i don't think you should apologise for your stance,i actually wanted to here more from your point of view

i think the problem is that your view was instantly set up as the opposite of dan/neds,ie you either have to listen to music completely in isolation,or know consider it in terms of how it was created,etc,so there was no room left for anyone to express a more moderate opinion (such as mine)
i certainly agree that you shouldn't have to know about an artist to enjoy their music,but i also think that you shouldn't insist that the only way to listen to music is to know nothing about the circumstances it is created it
basically my point is that you don't have to take an ideological stance when listening to music-it is possible to listen to ludacris and not give a fuck about how the music came about,what the creators thought about it,or even to completely disagree with their worldview and still enjoy the music,but it is also possible to listen to the velvet underground and find the scene they were part of interesting,be interested in what the band have to say for themselves,etc

fuck while i was writing this nabisco made my point more succinctly,but i suppose i may as well post it anyway

i got the impression while reading the liner notes of an ornette coleman cd that i was,or at least that the person writing them enjoyed the music in a completely different way to me,but were they just describing what i heard technically,or,as i suspected,were they getting more pleasure from the music as an intellectual exercise for those in the know that just from the sound of it?

I can't imagine reading the posts on this thread and not in some at least rudimentary and often unconscious way picking up clues about what the posters are trying to say and what they make of the world that they're trying to say it in. And it's natural to do this with music as well as writing, again often unconsciously (as in watching a movie scored by Ennio Morricone and unconsciously learning as the movie goes on that some of the "sweet" sounds signal dangerous events in the offing). But this doesn't mean you should write about this in reviewing music. But knowing something of the music's world of origin (esp. if that world is far different from your own, e.g. Sun Ra's) doesn't exclude your thinking (and concentrating on) how to use it in your own; in fact, might enrich your doing so. So these aren't separate "approaches."

But in both pursuits, there is not so much the haves and have-nots (talent) but a sliding scale and different proficiencies at different things. The cream rise and the dregs are shat upon and the majority are just plain mediocre.

(Mediocre guitarist/songwriter/critic)

Maybe I'm making an artificial distinction between "a review" and "an article", but when I read a review, I only want to know what the music sounds like. I read articles to get artist background, context, intent, etc. It maybe be that for the people who write them, the only difference between a review and an article is the word count.

(I.e. why do I cry when I hear this particular drum fill? Where does that drum fill come from? What cultural baggage or physiological impact does it carry with it that might explain my response? I mean, the brain is not a passive receptacle. We are always striving to "understand" what we're hearing/viewing even if it doesn't come out as criticism per se.)

More later. I need to make dinner.

An argument for the "right" way to listen to music is an argt. for the "right" way to live, and an argt. over the intentions of a creator is similar. And for people to listen to music, I think they're constantly if not consciously making judgements about the "right" way to listen and constructing a view of the creator as well (otherwise pop personalities wouldn't be such an issue). But also I agree with chuck that process and product are different (but this can a lso be "how did they get that cool squelchy sound" and product can also be the personality we see as opposed to the chain-smoking hard-swearing unglamerous whatever offstage) and also I agree with frank that the two are inseperable, and knowing what the a rtist was trying for is a hellova shortcut to getting a bead on what you can try to get out of it.ˇˇ

Buffalo Bill had the wrong idea the whole time??

no, that's an inappropriate way to conduct yourself as a human being.

Fair enough, Dan, but is there the same kind of inborn faculty that hears certain combinations of notes/rhythms as a psychological grammar, just as we seem to be born with an ability to appreciate grammar itself (I'm no Chomsky expert, but this appears to be a pretty accepted insight)? So when I listen to something like one of those bossa nova tunes, that incessant chromaticism evokes a response in me that comes from me and not the music? Explain...

The closest I've ever come was being really high one night and writing random imageries and word-clusters to a live Medeski Martin and Wood recording. If only my abstract prose had turned out as well as their version of King Sunny Ade's "Moti Mo".

If you can answer that question, Frank, I think you've answered the question you've posed towards me.

The intent of the musician is best communicated where the musician and the audience share a context; remove that context and the audience will often interpret the music in a manner that has very little to do with what the musician/composer/songwriter intended. Extending that to musicians and critics isn't a vast logical step, IMO, and can be very valuable for the musician to see how people outside of his/her context will react to the music.

So if I listen to Jobim--he's my current obsession--on a winter day in Buffalo, I'm going to interpret what he does, formally, in a different way than I would if I were on the beach at Leblon, or at Destin for that matter? Do you think place is a part of context (dancefloor vs. living room)? So, music as a shared experience--those rednecks went nuts, smashed up the place, when the DJ played techno instead of Skynyrd!--is what you're talking about? OK, but now we're talking about social interaction and not music, because if you listen to music objectively, which is fairly impossible, why would you get angry because something has a different beat than the one you expected?...if someone did something very dance-oriented about a place called The Jug and girls named Linda Lou, what would happen then? I do think that perhaps we're all better off with a little demystification of the rock experience, and an awareness of historical context, but then it wouldn't be fun any more, you wouldn't have rock to begin with if Scotty Moore really understood how to play the guitar...and had a "context" beyond his very limited understanding of "jazz" or "blues" or "country." So, we're back at the whole "inspired primitive" approach to things which is fairly resistant to any analysis and which, once removed from its context, is revealed to be...what?

I agree with you, Dan, but I'm just trying to think of some real-life situations in which we put the idea of "context" to the test.

It doesn't matter than I can read music, play scales on a half dozen instruments, studied music theory in undergrad, played (albeit offhandedly) in bands, etc. I've never had the ambition to be a professional musician, but it doesn't mean that I can't play it. BFD. The only reason I write about it professionally is because I love music and want to share my enthusiasm about it with others. Which hopefully, is exactly the same reason a professional musician would want to make a career out of it.

My point (which has been shifting as the discussion has gone on) is really that a musician's intent is going to be clearest to people who share a context (ie, are on the same page) with him/her. People outside of that context are less likely to "get it" and will bring references that hadn't occurred to the musician to the music. All of this was an attempt to address Shakey's point about critics missing the point when they point out "obvious influences" that the bands in question have never heard; the fact that that wasn't the musician's intent does not preclude it from coming across to the critic and the fact that the musician didn't intend the similarity doesn't automatically mean that the similarity isn't there.

But to answer your new questions, I think place can be a big part of context but isn't necessarily tied to it; for example, I listen to a ton of dance music but I never go out to clubs. Hearing a piece of music in a new or unexpected location can change the way you think about it and how you react to it, but that doesn't have to happen (and, in fact, it rarely happens to me at least in terms of how I view the music; usually the way I feel about the place I'm in is changed by hearing a particular song there, not the other way around).

For the record, I don't even own an acoustic guitar. But I damn well know good music when I hear it.

For the record, I don't even own an acoustic guitar. But I damn well know good music when I hear it.

At the risk of starting up the tedious discussion of "what is art," I'm of the opinion that music is meant to be heard, and therefore anybody with a functioning sense of hearing is technically qualified to be a critic. (Whether or not they're a good writer is another thing altogether, of course.)

I own several guitars and a room full of equipment, but I've never made a damn dime writing about music even though I've dabbled in writing reviews of shows and records. (And yes, I have made decent money as a musician and as an engineer recording other musicians.) If anything, I feel my ability to write about music is compromised by the way I hear it a lot of the time. Like, I think Spoon's Telephono is an incredible record, but I swear the only thing I ever want to rave on about when discussing it is how fucking amazing the guitars sound. If I were to write a review, it would just sound like a guitarist or an engineer gushing about someone else's recording technique.

Which is key, I think. I like writing about music precisely because music is so indescribable a lot of the time; it's an interesting challenge to translate the ineffable into actual prose.

bull hockey. songs and novels are about stuff too dude. except when they're not. just like reviews.

But music writing can't exist without the music, therefore it's just always going to be a tier below.

I'm not saying I think it's a tier above or even a tier to one side. I just disagree that it has to be a priori below.

xpost

"If I were to write a review, it would just sound like a guitarist or an engineer gushing about someone else's recording technique."

martin i'm dyin to read this dude! seriously. i don't know anything about that stuff. i mean, if you could gush about it in a way that made any sense to non-gearheads it would be terrific and unique.

There's a right amount of music knowledge, neither too much nor too little, that can be helpful in criticism. And you have to apply it in ways that are going to be useful to your reader.

For example, knowing major from minor might help you describe the mood of the music. But how useful is it to tell people that a guitarist "relies perhaps too much on the Mixolydian mode"? That's just showing off. For another, you might want to tell people that a given record has a lot of tricky time signatures, which is useful to know if you like that sort of thing. But do you really need to tell them that a certain song is in 9/8 or 5/4 or whatever?

I write for a living (though not about music). Playing music is as close as I get to religion. (I'm not sure I'd do it for a living even if I could.)

Every field of human endeavor seems to be infested with little petty snobberies--published writers look down on unpublished ones; creative writers look down on journalists; journalists look down on PR people; writers for mass-market magazines look down on people who write trade magazines. Etc. This seems like a species of that.

Agreed that "bitter" in the original quote is misplaced. How the hell do you know whether someone is bitter or not? The reality is that only so many people are going to be able to make a living playing music. And only so many people are going to be able to make a living writing about it.

Personally, if I'm bitter about anything, it's that I can't get paid for lying around the apartment drinking beer and eating Fritos. But that's just me.

well, it depends. there are some writers (jon pareles and especially alex ross come to mind) who are able to use their extensive technical knowledge to get to the bottom of what music actually sounds like, and they know how to explain what they're talking about along the way. which is to say, if alex ross ever uses mixolydian in a sentence, (a) he'll probably be dead-on, and (b) you'll know exactly what a mixolydian scale sounds like before the sentence is over.

and there are some writers who don't know that stuff and don't need to. you don't need to know major from minor to describe the mood of the music. what you need to know is moods.

With a couple of caveats (What if you're writing for a musically-sophisticated audience who wants to know that the majority of the work is in mixolydian and dorian mode or what time signature the piece is in? On the other hand, perhaps you need to be able to identify those things so that you can more intelligently write on a generally-accessible level about music?) this is OTM.

conversely, quite often they're ignorant of how easy it is to make music tho amirite.

Yeah shit musicians make interesting music much more often than shit writers make interesting writing.