Republican Music Police
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Something that probably should have served as a preface but will instead serve as an interlude
by Chris Wong
Here's what makes music so impossible to discuss in any sort of forum. It's something that so few people understand that my understanding of it, nay, mastery of it, may seem unfair. It certainly seems unfair to me. Let's see if I can put it in comprehensible terms.
Music cannot be described from any one point. You can't approach music from any of the sum of its parts. Yes some songs will have some of its parts tend to dominate - for instance, one can't listen to the song "Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin without being overly concerned with John Bonham's overly busy drums. You just can't. But that's not what "Moby Dick" is. It's not "a kickass drum track, man." It's a song. It's an instrumental, but a song nevertheless.
So how can a song be approached? Get ready for the mother of all abstractions. A song can only be approached by evaluating the sensation it provokes. Or, more accurately the sensationS. Let's take, for instance, the song "Try Not To Breathe," by REM off Automatic for the People. I pick this song because there's so many noteworthy ways to dissect it, yet nothing leads to anything significant.
Observe:
We can talk about any of the following things in the song: its 12/8 time signature, the percussion (a shaker), Stipe's overdubbed vocals, the tone on the acoustic guitar, the lyrics. It's a devastating song, yet none of these things add up to how demolishing the song is.
The lyrics, for instance, are evocative of the Kevorkian euthanasia debates ("I have lived a full life/and these are the eyes that/ I want you to remember)...but I defy you to tell me you thought of that the first time you heard the song (although you most likely haven't even HEARD it...too busy listening to Linkin Park).
The fact is, for me, this song evokes the kind of heartache associated less with death, but with yearning, of any sort. It is just a melancholy moment of sound. No more no less. I don't mean to draw metaphorical conclusions. What I mean to do is propose that, like any work of art, a song leaves the space of its performance and enters a THIRD space between the performance and the listener. In other words, the song is apart from its performer and apart from its observer. It is a confluence of me and REM every time I hear the song. And that sensation is inevitably what the song is all about.
The important thing to remember is that the song never exists as its individual parts unless you make it exist that way. And even then it becomes strained. You can't isolate anything. Even when I was learning to play guitar and tried to listen only to the solos to learn them note for note I couldn't just shut the music out. It's that the third space had altered to emphasize guitar. Because the song always emanates from its performance as a whole. The performance (at least on CD) is always the same. The third space relies on the listener.
Luckily for me, at this point, my third space is always in the objectively and universally accurate location. My sensation is never wrong. Hopefully, I can direct you towards the proper level of enjoyment.
best wishes,
cw
Here's what makes music so impossible to discuss in any sort of forum. It's something that so few people understand that my understanding of it, nay, mastery of it, may seem unfair. It certainly seems unfair to me. Let's see if I can put it in comprehensible terms.
Music cannot be described from any one point. You can't approach music from any of the sum of its parts. Yes some songs will have some of its parts tend to dominate - for instance, one can't listen to the song "Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin without being overly concerned with John Bonham's overly busy drums. You just can't. But that's not what "Moby Dick" is. It's not "a kickass drum track, man." It's a song. It's an instrumental, but a song nevertheless.
So how can a song be approached? Get ready for the mother of all abstractions. A song can only be approached by evaluating the sensation it provokes. Or, more accurately the sensationS. Let's take, for instance, the song "Try Not To Breathe," by REM off Automatic for the People. I pick this song because there's so many noteworthy ways to dissect it, yet nothing leads to anything significant.
Observe:
We can talk about any of the following things in the song: its 12/8 time signature, the percussion (a shaker), Stipe's overdubbed vocals, the tone on the acoustic guitar, the lyrics. It's a devastating song, yet none of these things add up to how demolishing the song is.
The lyrics, for instance, are evocative of the Kevorkian euthanasia debates ("I have lived a full life/and these are the eyes that/ I want you to remember)...but I defy you to tell me you thought of that the first time you heard the song (although you most likely haven't even HEARD it...too busy listening to Linkin Park).
The fact is, for me, this song evokes the kind of heartache associated less with death, but with yearning, of any sort. It is just a melancholy moment of sound. No more no less. I don't mean to draw metaphorical conclusions. What I mean to do is propose that, like any work of art, a song leaves the space of its performance and enters a THIRD space between the performance and the listener. In other words, the song is apart from its performer and apart from its observer. It is a confluence of me and REM every time I hear the song. And that sensation is inevitably what the song is all about.
The important thing to remember is that the song never exists as its individual parts unless you make it exist that way. And even then it becomes strained. You can't isolate anything. Even when I was learning to play guitar and tried to listen only to the solos to learn them note for note I couldn't just shut the music out. It's that the third space had altered to emphasize guitar. Because the song always emanates from its performance as a whole. The performance (at least on CD) is always the same. The third space relies on the listener.
Luckily for me, at this point, my third space is always in the objectively and universally accurate location. My sensation is never wrong. Hopefully, I can direct you towards the proper level of enjoyment.
best wishes,
cw
posted by Chris W # 4:28 PM 
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