The concept of a 'Taste Vocabulary'

I have a friend who plays in my band who listens to a fair bit of music and has, to all extents a well developed taste in music. One thing he can't abide however is 'heavy' music like punk and metal. It doesn't matter whether it's Converge or Baroness or Emperor or whoever - "All I hear is anger and aggression. It's just angry music", so he claims. If ever as a band we're jamming around and go into heavy metal territory/parody, his idea of playing in these styles is to maniacally thrash at his instrument in a brutal haphazard way.

It struck me that hard/heavy music just isn't part of his musical vocabulary. Like someone with a limited linguistic lexicon, he has a limited way of understanding things like heavy metal, hearing it indiscriminately as "angry" music, whereas I (as someone who was indoctrinated into that church several years ago) rarely hear "anger" in that music necessarily. Sure the music can be "raw", "visceral", "fantastical", "majestic", "technical", "nuanced" in many ways - but I only know this because I'm accustomed to the various styles, bands, themes and subtle variations within them, instead of hearing this default burst of uncontrolled rage as does my friend.

I guess I can appreciate the musical vocab theory, the idea that discovering new music is a bit like learning a language - adding words, grammar, customs and phrases slowly but surely until one becomes fluent in it. I can certainly relate when it comes to finding out about things like house music in the early 2000s when it took me a while to decipher and appreciate a style of music I'd previously written off as being too tame and commercial. I just hadn't allowed my musical vocab to encompass house's function/role in music and the possibilities within that.

I'm not sure what I'm asking here, but would you agree? Are there any other examples you might have?

Not sure that enjoying a kind of music and being able to analyse it are the same thing. After a few years of hanging out and talking music with metal friends as a teenager I could tell my Death from my Amorphis from my Krabathor, but I never really enjoyed it that much. At the same time, I love a lot of jazz but have only a tenuous grasp on the fundamental vocabulary.

Obviously enjoyment and vocabularly expansion are strongly correlated though, you're more motivated to learn more about music you enjoy.

Strikes me as a condescending way to rationalise someone else not liking something you like.

hehe, I can relate on the "knowing about metal but maybe not enjoying it as much as you might like".

I'm also thinking about those who say things like for instance "all reggae sounds the same" citing the emphasis on the off-beat but discounting the fact contemporary Jamaican pop consciously reinvented itself every 3-5 years since its inception in the early '60s. To people who say this, they're not lying - it really does sound all the same to them. Until they start exploring, via say a 100% Dynamite compilation, it will all sound the same.

I think there's a certain sense of musical vocab involved in enjoying music, but it's not that necessary or technical or objective - with jazz, for instance, I don't have a clue about the technical / musical side of how or what is being played, but I have learnt my own limited understanding of what aesthetics and signifiers and sounds I like over time. Same with many different idioms. I don't think you need to formally learn a specific vocab to 'get' an idiom, though.

I think it's also totally valid to have no interest in learning a particular vocab, either as casual listener or technical player; it's A-OK to just think metal sounds fucking horrible and ignore it, fvor instance.

I don't think a "taste vocabulary" is a helpful way of looking at it. But there is the idea that, in order to be able to appreciate new (to you) forms of music, you have to learn what things to pay attention to.

People are allowed to dislike what they dislike - and people come up with as many silly rationalisations for why they just don't respond to something, as people come up with silly rationalisations for why they *do* like something. I do think it's important, as a ~serious fan~ (whatever that means) of music, rather than a passive consumer, to interrogate those emotional reactions, and think about why you have them. (And indeed, if they can change.) And while exploring a new (to you) genre, it does help to learn about the signifiers of that genre, learning those signifiers will not always make you *like* something you are inclined to dislike.

Metal is SUPPOSED to be noisy and alienating though. The idea that more people would like it if they just sat down and learned how to listen to it is o_0

xxpost Matt DC - not sure I agree. The number of times I hear people say "heavy metal, it's just people shouting and going "GROAAAAAAAGGH!!" - I mean, it is and it isn't, isn't it? Same as all techno goes "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!". And all hiphop is violence and misogyny and bad language.

It springs from the subscribed idea (one that I've often used to champion music appreciation as a pastime) that the essential difference between sound art and visual art is that with sound, no matter who you are or what your background is, you can't ignore it without walking out of the room. With a painting or sculpture, you aren't forced into having a reaction - you can look away or stroll by and move on to the next one if it doesn't take your fancy. Music has to provoke some sort of reaction in the listener, for better or worse, and of course people will react differently to different kinds of music based on their tastes and experiences.

But I'm not sure whether the idea of a "taste vocab" kind of undermines this idea, because if you were to put a fan of Motown ballads in the middle of a drum'n'bass club, their reaction wouldn't be the same as someone who goes out clubbing every week and it's likely that once they've gotten over the initial culture shock, that they'd get bored, even if the DJ was playing the best and most cutting edge d'n'b set in the world.

So does unfamiliar music become like wallpaper to the uninitiated listener? There must be buckets of bland indie rock tunes from the last decade, beloved by certain types of people that would reduce me to a state of vapid, tearful boredom.

in order to be able to appreciate new (to you) forms of music, you have to learn what things to pay attention to.

this is OTM, and not far from the idea of the "Taste Vocab". What I mean here is not "I know a lot about metal and its bands and its history", rather "I know what to listen out for. I understand it. I have developed a modicum of fluency in it". The difference between hearing a spoken language as a bunch of gobbledegook, and then being able to make out the odd word and eventually being able to converse in it.

Sometimes the visceral reaction is the person's correct, authentic reaction. One just lacks the vocabulary to describe exactly what about it one dislikes. Stop expecting people to justify their dislike in language that will somehow suit you.

I spent 90 minutes yesterday interviewing a renowned professor of Art History and he thinks he won't have an anlogous word for 'listen' in relation to visual art; he thinks 'look' isn't strong enough. Which was an interesting idea.

we don't, not he won't.

I've heard probably thousands of deep house records in my time and I know exactly what to listen for and what it's supposed to do and I still by and large don't like it.

Not sure how much the metaphor necessarily implies this but I think these ideas often are founded on this idea that what the music is - in all its nuanced glory - is always objectively present, and it's just a question of whether the listener sees/hears that clearly (i.e. has the right vocabulary to decode the sounds).

But listening, like reading, is not "innocent" - I think the process also involves an encoding of the sounds via ideas, associations, parallels, presumptions about purpose or use etc. etc. Music is spongey in this regard, soaking all this stuff up.

I suppose my thinking of this comes from DJ culture where a DJ by virtue of selection/sequencing might demonstrate that they "hear" something in a particular tune that even the most learned listener had not (and help you to hear that too).

The idea that more people would like it if they just sat down and learned how to listen to it is o_0

I don't think they have a duty to or anything but I also don't think this is o_0 at all

Several x-posts now but...

I mean, I spent *ages* thinking that I was somehow ~missing~ missing something in metal, because so many of my friends and people whose musical tastes I otherwise appreciated were raving about it.

So I spent a lot of time trying to listen to it, and trying to work out the signifiers. And some people, because I was putting in that effort, thought that I was somehow going to become a convert to the ~one true music~ or fucking whatever. I didn't. And I eventually had to conclude that it was never going to click, and I should stop pretending to like it. And go listen to something that pleased me more. I still don't know what, exactly, it is about that music that I dislike or fail to respond to. (Though I do know a lot more what it is about the *culture* that turns me off.)

Learning the signifiers DOES NOT MEAN that someone will start liking something they have no predisposition to like, or specific reasons for disliking. And sometimes it just seems really arrogant for people to insist that if they somehow just "learned the vocabulary" they would somehow either 1) explain to them in ways that they could not dismiss why they didn't like it (impossible) or 2) suddenly start liking it (arrogant assumption).

Where it helps is where you *do* have an instinctual positive response to something, but don't know where to start or how to get into it.

Where it also helps is trying to distinguish between "I don't like the way this sounds" (fine) and "I don't like the kind of people who make/listen to/are associated with this music" (not fine and needs to be interrogated.)

I spent 90 minutes yesterday interviewing a renowned professor of Art History and he thinks he won't have an anlogous word for 'listen' in relation to visual art; he thinks 'look' isn't strong enough. Which was an interesting idea.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 11:24 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

woah many xxxposts - that's interesting too. there are loads of books called things like "learning to appreciate art" or "reading the classics". i think i saw one about classical music too. and then there's that book (which i haven't read) about the difference between Rothko and Stockhausen and why many enjoy the former, but only a select few appreciate the latter.

I think WCC is OTM throughout here though. But please, I'm not repping for any particular stance or disparaging people who dislike one style of music or another. Of course what one enjoys or dislikes is entirely down to them.

idk what sort of music dog latin's band plays but, going on the description, I don't think I'm being too presumptuous in suspecting that his bandmate is carrying a fair bit of cultural baggage wrt to his dislike of metal?

I have read that book. And although it is deeply flawed, you should probably give it a read before discussing the ideas in it.

ha! That sounded a lot more snarky than it was intended to, because I was trying to do about 3 things at once. Sorry.

idk what sort of music dog latin's band plays but, going on the description, I don't think I'm being too presumptuous in suspecting that his bandmate is carrying a fair bit of cultural baggage wrt to his dislike of metal?

― it's-a me, irl (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 11:32 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is another angle. Often there's a thing that will actually blight the concept of a genre and put whole swathes of people off it. Metal's a good example. I can imagine my mate growing up in a time where metal = Limp Bizkit, Korn, Linkin Park; bands who took the concept of teenage angst turned into rage and amped it up to almost comedic proportions. Taking that as your jumping-off point, it's easy to map those values and emotions onto every bit of heavy music one ever hears, be it Enslaved or Electric Wizard or Judas Priest.

Think reggae is another very much misunderstood genre because often people think of it in terms of "well there's Bob Marley and UB40 and..."; either that or their worldview of reggae is informed by Shaggy, Aswad and Snow's 'Informer'. It's not that these aren't relevant facets but they are much more prevalent than a lot of other stuff.

Well, it's also another fallacy that people who have only heard a pop or "watered down" version will suddenly instantly convert if exposed to "the authentic stuff." Maybe that's not what you're saying, but there are assumptions behind what's considered "representative" and what isn't.

I mean, I'm not going to get into arguments about metal, but it seems that "angst turned into rage and amped up" is a pretty accurate description of the whole ethos behind much of metal. So maybe the turning point in your phrase is "teenage" or rather it's "all metal is not chart nu-metal with those specific sounds" but, at the same point, that is the point.

I mean, I'm not going to get into arguments about metal, but it seems that "angst turned into rage and amped up" is a pretty accurate description of the whole ethos behind much of metal. So maybe the turning point in your phrase is "teenage" or rather it's "all metal is not chart nu-metal with those specific sounds" but, at the same point, that is the point.

But really "angst turned into rage and amped up" is the equivalent of saying "disco is all people mincing around the dancefloor and pointing their fingers in the air". I don't honestly don't hear a lot of angst in the majority of metal bands i listen to. Is Black Sabbath "angry", "angsty"? These sound like inaccurate words where better words would do, but you can only apply those words if you know what to listen out for, otherwise you're going to use a vocab that's limited to "it's angry music".

I don't honestly don't

But really "angst turned into rage and amped up" is the equivalent of saying "disco is all people mincing around the dancefloor and pointing their fingers in the air"]

No it isn't. The equivalent would be something like "disco is queer/female desire ramped up and set to a beat you can shake your arse to." Which is also effectively true. ;-)

You're the one bringing in the cultural assumptions by using words like "mincing" and assuming that queer/female desire and dancing are negative things.

listening, like reading, is not "innocent"

this is OTM. having any response to music at all requires you to hone your ears, build some mental/aural apparatus. everything sounds shit on a tabula rasa. you can learn how to hear something like someone else does, whether it's through criticism, curating, developing an appreciation of context/lineage &c.; it is possible to adopt new methods/sets of tools w/ which to perceive & dissect the music (how you delimit music also part of this process). this can of course mean you develop a compellingly nuanced hatred of something much more appealing to you than any positive spin on the same music.

I think the dislikes ppl have are normally created/defined in the negative space left as they learn What They Like, which is often about choosing/valuing something at the expense of something else. i'm not sure whether you have to value something necessarily at the expense of something else, but if not it raises a question over how you discern quality or enjoy w/out discerning somehow (hehehe lil b amirite?)

delimit genre, rather

I guess. It's like when someone builds up a definition of "80s rock" that somehow doesn't include Siouxsie or The Pretenders, my response is "well, fuck *rock* then." When actually, it's "fuck those delimitations.")

No it isn't. The equivalent would be something like "disco is queer/female desire ramped up and set to a beat you can shake your arse to." Which is also effectively true. ;-)

What you've done there is describe disco in the kind of terms that someone who appreciates and knows about disco would use. Being neither queer nor female and still very much a disco fan, I would also disagree with that description, but that's neither here nor there. Similarly, boiling metal music down to "rage and anger" is wholly reductive, and many would argue inaccurate because there are many many metal bands who don't use rage and anger very much at all.

I'm sure I could find aggressive disco and "mincing" metal out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNesGpMG6Oc&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85c-P9hbmBg

The other word used was "angst" actually.

And now this is going to become "a defense of metal, part 2000" and I'm not really very interested in that. People are allowed to dislike what they dislike, and they do not have to explain themselves to you.

Actually for the most part metal can take a flying leap, I'm a DJ.

C'mon now WCC, that's not what I'm here for.

Well, this is what often seems to happen. I say "I don't like metal. I just don't." And then they ask "oh, but why is it that you don't like metal?" and whatever explanation you give, they try to turn it into reasons that you should like metal and somehow it is your genre descriptions that are inaccurate, rather than your emotional response.

And I think I've said what I need to say.

i completely understand why people don't like metal. it's not like i even want to listen to it all that often - i'll go months without putting a single metal track on, so no one's saying you ought to like it or that you have to like it or that you're wrong for not liking it.

going on the description given (again), there's prolly not much to be gained from getting dl's bandmate to like metal, but he could probably stand to be a bit less of a wang about it

And also, really, in my statement about Disco, I said *nothing* that implied a knowledge of Disco and its stylistic components (syncopated snare, 16th note hi-hats, octave-hopping basslines) - all I did was rephrase the idea that it contained -women -gay people -dancing in a way that was generally positive towards women, gay people and dancing.

It's repositioning the attitudes, rather than saying anything at all about the music and what constitutes it.

It might be more helpful for your bandmate (or you) to say exactly what they don't like in musical terms ("distorted guitars" or "loud/shouted vocals") rather than the emotional descriptors. But it sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what they don't like ("heavy") even if they don't have an ~acceptable~ way of phrasing it.

And also, really, in my statement about Disco, I said *nothing* that implied a knowledge of Disco and its stylistic components (syncopated snare, 16th note hi-hats, octave-hopping basslines) - all I did was rephrase the idea that it contained -women -gay people -dancing in a way that was generally positive towards women, gay people and dancing.

You do realise when I said "people mincing around and pointing their fingers in the air", that it was meant as an example of a base perception of disco formed from, I dunno, the front cover of the Saturday Night Fever album. By incorporating women, gay people, shaking your booty etc, you've unwittingly added three important and valuable vocab items to the disco 'definition' - items that will help towards the understanding of the genre, like learning the word for "hello" or "very well thank you" in Spanish.

You don't think the word "mincing" has any connotations at all?

Also, if "women, gay people, dancing" is part of your accepted definition of "disco" rather than "syncopated hi-hats, octave hopping basslines" then why is "teenage angst ramped up as anger" not considered an accepted part of the whole definition of metal? So who listens to disco is important, but who listens to metal is not? Come on.

Also, if "women, gay people, dancing" is part of your accepted definition of "disco" rather than "syncopated hi-hats, octave hopping basslines" then why is "teenage angst ramped up as anger" not considered an accepted part of the whole definition of metal?

Because it's reductive and inaccurate. As is "women, gay people, dancing" reductive and inaccurate of disco.

But you just told me that my reductive and inaccurate description of disco was evidence of knowledge of the "kind of terms that someone who appreciates and knows about disco would use."

I give up.

I feel like I'm being unwittingly steered into a conversation about social prejudices, rather than an exploration of how taste in music comes to us and how it develops which was the original intent of this thread. WCC - I do agree that no one ought to be forced to listen to a style of music until it clicks - that would be some bullshit and it's not my position to argue it. I understand why a lot of non-metal fans see that music as angry/angsty/ragey, either because of the abstruse textures of the music itself, or because of a pre-conceived notion of what that kind of music is trying to emote.

What I am saying is that metal (like any other genre), if the listener is willing to try it, can evoke certain emotions/reactions that other genres simply don't have a lexicon for. So while you might have a band, like Nile, trying to describe the terrifying majesty of an Egyptian deity through pummelling double-pedal drums, upward spiralling solos and and emphasis on high-speed but technically elaborate riff structures, the likelihood is that someone who is not versed in death metal will say "This music just sounds angry. It is music for angry people".

I feel like I'm being unwittingly steered into a conversation about social prejudices, rather than an exploration of how taste in music comes to us and how it develops

You say this like these two things are totally and utterly disconnected, and not intimately linked. Taste does not develop in a vacuum and cannot be addressed in a vacuum. This applies to everything, whether it's metal or disco or whatever.

...this is similar but not exactly the same as someone who only has a peripheral idea of what disco is all about might reduce it to "this is music for women and gay people to dance to". Let's assume that this example is being said as an observation, not a prejudice.

First of all, it addresses the fact that disco largely originated from the gay scene - this is accurate and also alludes to opening up a huge window into the history of disco and its role in the gay rights movement (for example). Similarly it also addresses the popularity of disco with females as often the lyrics relate to female desire - and this is often true as well. Most importantly, 'dancing' is integral to disco by definition. It is dance music and largely designed for dancing. But this is also a very narrow definition. Reducing disco down to "music for gay people and women to dance to" elides so much about disco that makes it interesting - its relation and influence over techno, house, funk and post-punk; the warm, dusty production values; the musical and technological innovations pioneered by Russell, Moroder, Rodgers and Edwards; the birth of the DJ beatmatcher and the rise of the nightclub...

However, mentioning women, the gay rights movement and the dancefloor to describe disco isn't a bad description - these are three ineffable factors contributing to disco music.

When we talk about metal, all too often the description boils down to "angry shouty music that begins and ends with rage", which is a thorough misunderstanding of metal as a genre. In fact most metalheads I have met are intelligent, reasoned and fairly calm people - not hyper-tensile brutes who go round picking fights and shouting at people. Why would someone like this want to listen to angry music all the time?

the royal trux too, for the most part, but something made me want to stick with them and I feel like the experience of coming around to both was rewarding

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 16:39 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

royal trux are always the thing that i enthuse to people about but have absolutely zero idea of where to recommend people start from; it is like you just have to already-be-used-to how their records sound

xp ty sund4r, i should probably youtube or something

3rd album w/ "Blood Blowers" is a good intro imo, its freak folk!

those angry, violent ramones

this is precisely why i've always been bemused by the ramones being called punk!

the ramones were plenty angry and violent, wtf.

xp Well there are two RTX fans, right? People who fuck with Accelerator and people who fuck with Twin Infinitives. (I refer people to that kid's song "Hero Zero" re: the former, US Maple warmup re: the latter)

Like three of these aren't angry and/or violent

1. "Blitzkrieg Bop" Tommy Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone Mickey Leigh 2:12 [14]
[49][72]
2. "Beat on the Brat" Joey Ramone — 2:30
3. "Judy Is a Punk" Leigh, Tommy Ramone 1:30
4. "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" Tommy Ramone Leigh, Rob Freeman 2:24
5. "Chain Saw" Joey Ramone Tommy Ramone 1:55
6. "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" Dee Dee Ramone — 1:34
7. "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Ramone — 2:35
Side B
8. "Loudmouth" Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Ramone — 2:14 [14]
[49][72]
9. "Havana Affair" — 2:00
10. "Listen to My Heart" Dee Dee Ramone — 1:56
11. "53rd & 3rd" — 2:19
12. "Let's Dance" Jim Lee — 1:51
13. "I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You" Dee Dee Ramone Tommy Ramone 1:43
14. "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World" — 2:09

the catharsis one experiences after being dragged through extremes of anguish and brutality is what makes makes neurosis work.

See, even this doesn't necessarily seem related to anger to me.

emil.y OTM with this: The difficulty isn't in the music, it's in personal history and context. Talking about how long it took to 'get polka', that's not talking about the worthiness of difficult music, that's talking about a personal journey into a style of music. One of the most difficult-to-get genres for me for a long time was country.

I am a big metal fan and I think there's a lot more to metal than angry/violent - it is common to the genre but not essential imo

what are the essential aspects, if any? i guess i mean from a sonic perspective. isn't it what is most common within it that really defines genre? or rather what it has so much in relation to other genres? or maybe more what it doesn't have? e.g. what is happy metal? by the same token what is happy techno (while still being energetic and driven in the ways techno is typically thought of as being)?

it definitely seems unfair and problematic to link an emotion to a specific genre in this way and metal seems to me (wrongly maybe) to have attracted it more than anything else.

xp Well there are two RTX fans, right? People who fuck with Accelerator and people who fuck with Twin Infinitives. (I refer people to that kid's song "Hero Zero" re: the former, US Maple warmup re: the latter)

― Ówen P., Wednesday, 15 August 2012 16:48 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk i think it's p diffuse, i think there is maybe an ILM thread w/totally varied favourites. accelerator doesn't totally encompass the messier - ie 3 song ep/you're gonna lose - or the tighter, funner stuff, like granny grunt, to me, & part of their appeal's in being in further-out territory. although it has stevie so sure just tell someone to go listen to stevie.

"it's rewarding not understanding metal, or w/e, & then 'getting it', not because you earn your metal badge & can thrust it in everyones' faces but because it's exemplary of how things change & connect & how there can be a rewarding unspent charge dormant in things that you hadn't expected."

this! and by "work" i didn't MEAN a boring slog or some epic amount of homework and drudgery. i meant fun work! but it does entail EFFORT. maybe i should have said a lot of people don't want to put in the EFFORT to understand things better. pop, rap, metal, opera, or anything. its just not worth it for them. and its easier to be dismissive of things. it really is.

but i thought i was talking to music fanatics and musicians and music writers here and not normal people? sorry for being so uh whatever i was.

i learn something new EVERY day about music. and i don't think i'm elitist or better than anyone. it makes me a better person though. of this i'm sure. art is my church and art's wonders are endless. so i'm endlessly curious.

i finally "got" exile on main street two years ago. i heard it for the first time, i dunno, 25 years ago? i would play it once or twice a year for over two decades. it never clicked. then it did! i could have just said: eh, its not my favorite stones record and ignored it forever. but i knew there was something there...i just had to be 40 to hear it! maybe i'm crazy. SO SUE ME.

another way to look at this:

we're all "right" in how we hear music and about what we perceive in it. it really does seem to us the way that it seems to seem. this echoes something tim f said upthread:

...these ideas often are founded on this idea that what the music is - in all its nuanced glory - is always objectively present, and it's just a question of whether the listener sees/hears that clearly (i.e. has the right vocabulary to decode the sounds).

But listening, like reading, is not "innocent" - I think the process also involves an encoding of the sounds via ideas, associations, parallels, presumptions about purpose or use etc. etc. Music is spongey in this regard, soaking all this stuff up.

with that in mind, while some musics are obviously more generally accessible than others, every given listener gets to discover for themselves what's immediately appealing and what takes more time. some people like extreme metal and/or avante-garde composers right off the bat, while others have to work their way in to an appreciation of such things. other others won't ever get there, lack the reason, the desire and perhaps even the capacity to do so.

i believe that we do have a moral obligation to interrogate and even fight our social prejudices, but while social prejudice can inform and distort artistic taste, they aren't the same thing. we don't have a moral obligation to push our artistic taste ever outward. broad taste is not a virtue; it's just a reflection of certain proclivities. while it's taken me a lot longer to understand some musics than others, and i would generally agree that what you get out of initially incomprehensible art forms is roughly proportional to what you put in, i would hope that we could say such things without suggesting to anyone that they ought to listen to music they don't like.

the catharsis one experiences after being dragged through extremes of anguish and brutality is what makes makes neurosis work.

See, even this doesn't necessarily seem related to anger to me.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 8:50 AM (17 minutes ago)

i get you, but "anger" strikes me as a sensible shorthand for a knot of related ideas and emotions that metal is often built around: fury, violence, contempt, angst, suffering, negation, etc. negative states and thoughts. of course, not all metal draws equally from these wells, or at all. hair metal was often often no more than snarlingly cocksure, more flirtatiously petulant than furious. power metal tends towards joyful, anthemic uplift, and the proggy stuff is often more bewildering than brutal. nevertheless, i perfectly understand why non-fans would call metal or punk "angry music", and i don't think they're really wrong to feel that way.

when there is so much music that immediately works for you throughout life, definitely see why people wouldn't want to work for it. many will feel that liking lots of different types of music (and i mean more than most people, in their own experience)...or i should say types of track, because the idea of having to get into a genre feels more like a thing to do just so you can say you like that genre, as opposed to identifying the things associated with it you like best via specific tracks and just being able to say you love those tracks...never really felt like effort despite the time and energy they may have put into it.

people have told me that they hate rap because they feel like they are being shouted at. one person left my store when i was playing rap because he said he felt like he was being "aurally raped". all valid racist reasons to not enjoy a form of music. hahaha!

maybe it was el p tho.

oh but i do enjoy aerosmith's beach boys thing for some reason. the idea that someone is being tortured by their beachy harmonies. hahaha! that's why i never push the dylan thing with people who can't take dylan's voice. i get it. it can be a love it or hate it kinda thing.

i get you, but "anger" strikes me as a sensible shorthand for a knot of related ideas and emotions that metal is often built around: fury, violence, contempt, angst, suffering, negation, etc. negative states and thoughts. of course, not all metal draws equally from these wells, or at all. hair metal was often often no more than snarlingly cocksure, more flirtatiously petulant than furious. power metal tends towards joyful, anthemic uplift, and the proggy stuff is often more bewildering than brutal.

Anger is a specific, limited emotion. You've described a much wider emotional range than "all I hear is anger; it's just angry music."

^^^ but that's what shorthand is! Some, but not all, rap does feel like being shouted at to me too. And "aurally raped" is not racist. That's my perception of cookie monster metal vocals.

I think the vocabulary concept is totally valid. But it's separate from taste. And I think people are overanalyzing the emotional side of things (anger, etc) when it's mostly an aural and strictly musical issue. For example with metal, someone who understands the vocabulary should be able to distinguish different bands or different subgenres from each other while somebody without that vocabulary might think it all sounds the same.

A while back I was talking to a guy who dismissed the Zombies Odysey and Oracle by saying that it all sounded like the Beatles "Flying". Which made absolutely no sense to me on so many levels, but most importantly the two bands just don't sound anything alike to me. But I also remember when I was a kid, I thought that every song I heard on the radio with an english accent was the Beatles.

Maybe vocabulary is the wrong linguistic parallel though. It's more like how there are certain sounds in chinese that english speakers can't even distinguish. What's the word for that?

Phonology, right?

I guess. It probably still makes more sense to call it "musical vocabulary" though even if the comparison isn't strictly accurate.

I think the vocabulary concept is totally valid. But it's separate from taste. And I think people are overanalyzing the emotional side of things (anger, etc) when it's mostly an aural and strictly musical issue.

Yeah, fwiw, in music theory, "vocabulary" mostly refers to the sorts of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic resources used in a sort of music whereas "syntax" refers to how they are combined and organized. And I do think that understanding these things is key to understanding a type of music.

i do sort of like the idea of a "taste vocabulary" (which mostly seemed to have been rejected upthread?), as it helps explain the acquisition of reference points and contextual comprehensions. the more we hear and understand, the more we can hear and understand. where criticism is concerned, there's nothing more dispiriting than reading/hearing someone trash a recording or artist simply because they don't like, respect or know anything about the genre from which it arises. and distaste is far less offensive than ignorance. rockism is simply the insistent, misguided application of one rather limited taste vocabulary to a much larger musical world. see also lex's participation in indie threads.

Yeah, I think there has to be a distinction between the musical vocabulary that a musician uses to create music, and the vocabulary that a listener needs to understand it, which I still think boils down to making distinctions between different voices and sounds. For example the person who thinks hip hop is a bunch of talking on top of beats, vs. somebody who can identify different MCs and producers when they hear a track they've never heard before.

I guess it's kind of like how audiences needed to become fluent in the visual language of film to understand what was happening when there's a cut. Which is different from the technical vocabulary that the filmmakers need to understand to make the film.

xp

always thought of it as being akin to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect
ie the less experience you have with a subcategory, the harder it is to discern the (to you verrrry) subtle differences within it

i never push the dylan thing with people who can't take dylan's voice.

See Dylan is a great example of an artist who I really, really tried to get into, given his importance to dozens of artists I love, and just couldn't, and no amount of "you should really listen to X album" or an expansion of my vocabulary is going to get me there. Neil Young, too.

I think that you can't develop the taste for a form without first having developed the vocabulary to understand it. But you can have the vocabulary to understand a style of music and still not have a taste for it, or have bad taste. Some people are extremely knowledgeable about certain subgenres of music that they're passionately interested in but they still have shitty taste.

Does the concept of a vocabulary work for individual artists though, or just for different forms and genres of music? I'm not sure.

I think there has to be a distinction between the musical vocabulary that a musician uses to create music, and the vocabulary that a listener needs to understand it

But I think the sort of vocabulary and syntax that I mentioned are important for listeners. It's not that important to know what the clarinettist is doing with his tongue when listening to the first movement of a symphony but I do think that it makes a difference to e.g. hear the sections of sonata form, to be aware of the key relationships between the different themes, even to recognize dominant-tonic resolution.

Does the concept of a vocabulary work for individual artists though, or just for different forms and genres of music? I'm not sure.

i think it probably works for everything. "artist" and "genre" are just among the most obvious categories to which we might apply it.

But I think the sort of vocabulary and syntax that I mentioned are important for listeners. It's not that important to know what the clarinettist is doing with his tongue when listening to the first movement of a symphony but I do think that it makes a difference to e.g. hear the sections of sonata form, to be aware of the key relationships between the different themes, even to recognize dominant-tonic resolution.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 9:55 AM (1 minute ago)

i want to draw a clear line between "vocabulary of taste" and the sort of technical vocabulary you're talking about, sund4r. informed taste can be developed simply by listening, independent of any non-experiential education in musical terminology and form. therefore, maybe the term "vocabulary" is mistaken? i say that because it's not necessarily formalized or even linguistic. it can consist of things as simple as "i like it when the bass does that."

But I think the sort of vocabulary and syntax that I mentioned are important for listeners. It's not that important to know what the clarinettist is doing with his tongue when listening to the first movement of a symphony but I do think that it makes a difference to e.g. hear the sections of sonata form, to be aware of the key relationships between the different themes, even to recognize dominant-tonic resolution.

I don't know, I think that's an entirely different can of worms. But maybe it's safe to say that sometimes it's important and sometimes it's not?

I totally get off on the fact 'Ignition Remix' or 'Hey Ya' have unorthodox time signatures, in fact i might say it's these songs that helped to gain me a better appreciation of pop-r'n'b, but I totally get that most people like these songs because they're fucking cool catchy tunes.

i think it probably works for everything. "artist" and "genre" are just among the most obvious categories to which we might apply it.

Maybe. But I'm kind of struggling to see how it applies to say Dylan taken in isolation. An artist is always a part of a larger formal or stylistic context. The idea that there would be a unique "vocabulary of Dylan" that you would need to understand in order to appreciate his music implies that he sprung up totally unique, individual and fully formed.

If someone hates Dylan because they hate his voice that's understandable but then I would ask if they can understand his importance as a songwriter by appreciating other people's covers of his songs. If they still say no, and they actually dislike his lyrics and songwriting, then I would have to ask what familiarity they have with folk music in general, the songwriting of some of his contemporaries, etc. I don't think you're going to find somebody who truly understands the full context of the "vocabulary" that Dylan was working within but doesn't see why he's considered great.

Come to think of it, even Dylan's voice is part of a larger vocabulary of folk music. Somebody who can't stand the sound of his voice probably doesn't like Woodie Guthrie or Clarence Ashley either. I think our tastes can prevent us from developing vocabulary in certain areas. I personally hate cookie monster vocals, so I'm never really going to understand death metal or black metal or grindcore or what the differences are between all of those things, and I would never be able to pick any of those bands out of a lineup.

it can consist of things as simple as "i like it when the bass does that."

You know, this isn't necessarily that different from some of what I'm talking about, just without using the terminology. Something like dominant-tonic resolution is something that most people grow to recognize intuitively through hearing countless pieces of music in Western culture, even if they don't know the term.

I've known people into metal getting into dirgey/drone metal and then drone electronic stuff and on through that route. Listening to different artists added to their musical tastes and the overlaps or similarities can make someone want to seek out other sounds that they've heard. On the flip side, there are bands where certain songs don't appeal to me in that they're influenced by tastes that I don't find appealing.

Maybe. But I'm kind of struggling to see how it applies to say Dylan taken in isolation. An artist is always a part of a larger formal or stylistic context. The idea that there would be a unique "vocabulary of Dylan" that you would need to understand in order to appreciate his music implies that he sprung up totally unique, individual and fully formed.

― wk, Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:10 AM (43 minutes ago)

i mean that like genres, we can be more or less ignorant about artists, judging them only by the surface qualities we think we perceive upon first encountering them. if we were to spend more time with their work, our response would necessarily become better informed - our "taste vocabulary" would become more sophisticated - though we might still dislike it.

i mean that like genres, we can be more or less ignorant about artists, judging them only by the surface qualities we think we perceive upon first encountering them. if we were to spend more time with their work, our response would necessarily become better informed - our "taste vocabulary" would become more sophisticated - though we might still dislike it.

But going back to Phil D, he said that "no amount of 'you should really listen to X album' or an expansion of my vocabulary is going to get me [to like Dylan]" So you're saying that if he did spend more time listening to Dylan, it would in fact expand his "taste vocabulary" even if he ended up still having an extreme distaste for Dylan's music? I don't get how that expanded taste vocabulary would manifest itself then, if not in an appreciation for the music. I'm kind of backpedaling and confusing myself now.

Do we need to understand the vocabulary of a particular music in order to develop a taste for it, or do we need to develop a taste for a type of music in order to listen to it enough to understand its vocabulary? I guess both ways are possible. But I still don't see how you can logically link those two concepts into one.

It depends if the vocabulary is the way you express your tastes, or if it's the words to describe music.

neither, the vocabulary should be inherent to the music

I don't get how that expanded taste vocabulary would manifest itself then, if not in an appreciation for the music. I'm kind of backpedaling and confusing myself now.

Do we need to understand the vocabulary of a particular music in order to develop a taste for it, or do we need to develop a taste for a type of music in order to listen to it enough to understand its vocabulary? I guess both ways are possible. But I still don't see how you can logically link those two concepts into one.

i questioned the word "vocabulary" a while back (after initially accepting it) because what i'm describing as a "vocabulary of taste" isn't necessarily linguistic. nor is it only expressed in liking things. we come to understand the working language of a genre or artist by immersing ourselves and listening carefully. that's one kind of metaphorical "vocabulary": the external structures around which bodies of work seem to be organized.

as we come to know those vocabularies, we necessarily increase the number of things we might possibly relate to in them. in this sense, we construct our own internal vocabularies of taste. if you've heard dylan only in passing, you might reject him simply because his voice annoys you. but if you were to spend time with dylan, you'd likely gain an informed understanding of what he was trying to do and what other people enjoy in his music, even if you still didn't like it yourself. having that understanding, that new "vocabulary" programmed into you by exposure, it might open you up to other music you might not have otherwise been prepared to enjoy. i guess that i'm only saying that personal taste is at least partially dependent on information, exposure and understanding.

the vocabulary should be inherent to the music

i would say that a vocabulary of taste must be inherent to the listener. taste does not exist in music, after all, but only in our relationship to it.

e.g. what is happy metal?

Andrew WK? Depending on what you consider to be metal, plenty of music that precedes Andrew WK that was considered metal at one time was happy (e.g. Kiss - "Rock and Roll All Night").

I still don't see the value in linking those two concepts, so I didn't mention taste. To me musical vocabulary is something inherent to the music, related to its form, history, and context. All of the subjective stuff about anger and violence has nothing to do with musical vocabulary. It sounds like you and mh are simply talking about the actual vocabulary people use to discuss music and musical tastes, but I don't think that has anything to do with what dog latin was talking about. It's not that his bandmate thinks metal is all just angry because he lacks a better vocabulary to describe what he's hearing. He isn't properly understanding what is going on musically, as evidenced by the fact that his attempted mimicry of metal is all wrong.
xp

Furthermore to what contenderizer just said, a taste vocabulary (or 'lexicon' or 'index') doesn't necessarily inform positive opinions. Being immediately repelled by a particular sound so much so that you never want to be in its presence again is a rarity (for me at least - I mean, dogs barking, alarm sirens and screaming babies, yes I have trouble with those noises, but music?). But there's stuff I don't like too. Like the Grizzly Bear album my housemates are playing right now. I can probably list the reasons why and make comparisons but these'll be much more influenced by how I think there are other bands who do that kind of thing a lot better.

To me musical vocabulary is something inherent to the music, related to its form, history, and context. All of the subjective stuff about anger and violence has nothing to do with musical vocabulary. It sounds like you and mh are simply talking about the actual vocabulary people use to discuss music and musical tastes, but I don't think that has anything to do with what dog latin was talking about. It's not that his bandmate thinks metal is all just angry because he lacks a better vocabulary to describe what he's hearing. He isn't properly understanding what is going on musically, as evidenced by the fact that his attempted mimicry of metal is all wrong.

i think that the violence and anger of metal are legitimate components of heavy metal's thematic/conceptual/cultural identity as a musical genre. they're different from but not less relevant or meaningful than traditionally & technically "musical" objective characteristics like like tempo, volume, timbre, tone, rhythm, arrangement, and so on. they're part of what we have to understand to really get heavy metal.

i agree that DL's point was that his bandmate lacks understanding, but this was reflected in his supposed errors of description as well as poor mimicry. DL rejects the word "angry" because he feels that it's inaccurate, while i just see it as imprecise (though still generally valid). anyway, this conversation concerns means by which we acquire familiarity with different types of music, and that must include subjective/conceptual/cultural stuff as well more objectively measurable qualities.

this thread seems dedicated to spiking stet's chart

i think that the violence and anger of metal are legitimate components of heavy metal's thematic/conceptual/cultural identity as a musical genre. they're different from but not less relevant or meaningful than traditionally & technically "musical" objective characteristics like like tempo, volume, timbre, tone, rhythm, arrangement, and so on. they're part of what we have to understand to really get heavy metal.

OK, I would agree with that. Subjective vs. objective wasn't the right way to frame it. But you're confirming what I'm saying about vocabulary having to come from the music rather than from the listener as opposed to mh's definition of vocabulary as "the way you express your tastes, or if it's the words to describe music." You're saying that a sense of "anger" in metal is an integral part of the language of the genre right? It's an emotion that's explicitly tackled in concrete forms like lyrics or album artwork so it's probably not too much to infer that some of metal's harsh sounds are sometimes meant to evoke that emotion as well. The idea of anger isn't something simply added by listeners who are making an emotional interpretation of abstract sound without any conceptual context.