Post #394,803
9/19/14 4:11:11 PM
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What we listened to at age 14 apparently stays with us.
“Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes,” says Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University. “Pubertal growth hormones make everything we’re experiencing, including music, seem very important. We’re just reaching a point in our cognitive development when we’re developing our own tastes. And musical tastes become a badge of identity.” http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/is-14-a-magic-age-for-forming-cultural-tastes/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0I've heard this several times from several sources and for me, at least, it holds true. I turned 14 in late 1973. While I did listen to the "typical crowd" of McCartney and Wings, Marvin Gaye, Grand Funk Railroad, Cat Stevens and so on, the music I chose to listen to was Flatt and Scruggs, Jim and Jesse McReynolds, Bill Monroe, James Monroe and, most of all, Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. In the next couple of years I learned to play the five string banjo myself. My father thought I was nuts. He'd grown up in rural North Carolina and likely heard my kind of music as a child. He was a huge fan of jazz (which I occasionally listened to as well). It was not until he reached his 60's that he rediscovered his love of Bluegrass music. Ironically, I had "moved on" from Bluegrass just as my father was rediscovering it. It was just a few years before he died that I got back to my 14 year old roots. I dusted off the banjo, silent for almost 20 years, and began picking almost every day again. I enjoy a variety of music, but nothing touches my soul like Bluegrass does. I doubt any other genre ever will.
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Post #394,805
9/19/14 4:18:46 PM
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Way back in the InfoWorld days ...
Remember when a bunch of us started sharing our music collections via direct peer-to-peer? Peter looked at my list and said, "It's all hair metal!"
I was like, "Dude, I was a teenager in the 80s. That's all there was."
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Post #394,806
9/19/14 4:52:07 PM
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Ugh. Nope.
For one thing, there was quite a bit more than hair metal. I hated it then as I hate it now.
That said I find myself listening to 80s alternative not very often at all these days, and that's the only genre that's survived the years since I was 14, other than perhaps Zeppelin (which is blues, not hair metal, if you're going to call it a thing). The 20-somethings at work have a thing for 80s music... it's like pulling teeth for me to listen to it now for the most part.
Much of the music I listen to now was not technically possible to create when I was 14, or it comes with a full orchestra behind it. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #394,808
9/19/14 5:01:57 PM
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84 album covers
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Post #394,809
9/19/14 5:08:38 PM
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100% !!!
I've never ever even seen a single one of those, never mind known the titles.
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Post #394,841
9/21/14 1:09:32 PM
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Uh huh.
Cuz the Jackson and Madonna album covers totally weren't all over the media from one wall to another for months, nuh uh.
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Post #394,810
9/19/14 5:13:11 PM
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Re: 84 album covers
2/20. Get off my lawn.
cordially,
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Post #394,812
9/19/14 5:31:40 PM
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Pure guesses should have netted 7/20.
You were being obstinate! :)
I got 11/20, all with guesses. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #394,814
9/19/14 5:43:54 PM
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Re: 84 album covers
17/20 and I only "knew" 3-4 of them. Meh. ;-)
And I didn't have any of them!!!1
Cheers,
Scott.
(Um, Dolly has a distinctive anatomy. Hard to miss that one...)
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Post #394,816
9/19/14 5:50:08 PM
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Devo, Run DMC, and the Chili Peppers
Are the only ones I listened to on that list. I don't make a habit of listening to them now.
I don't mind some Queen and Elton John but the rest is not something I care to listen to these days. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #394,817
9/19/14 8:36:53 PM
9/19/14 8:44:36 PM
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15/20 - guessed most of them
I didn't actually KNOW any of them, but the Springsteen one triggered immediately..
Hmm, that's a hint of a mustache, maybe it's freddie mercury - yes!
Hmmm, that's a bike, maybe purple rain, yes!
Hmm, that skin tone is 2 light for 2 of them, yes, got it!
WTF is that frilly shit, looks like part of a dress, hmmm, Madonna, yes!
I lucked out for the magic age. My brother, 3 years older, guided most of my choices, and his favorite time frame was 65-70s, and most of those bands were still in active production.
I played name that tune in jail. I'd pace the block, and there were 2 guys arguing over a radio at one end. Hey you, name that tune. I'd spit it out after a bar or 2. For hours and hours. I rarely got it wrong.
Did the same when listening to music with the boy. We'd compete to see how fast/fewest notes needed to figure it out.
Edited by crazy
Sept. 19, 2014, 08:44:36 PM EDT
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Post #394,840
9/21/14 1:08:40 PM
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There's too much good new music
to waste time listening to old bad music, just to check if it's still bad.
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Post #394,842
9/21/14 1:16:56 PM
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Re: There's too much good new music
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Post #394,845
9/21/14 4:25:03 PM
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There's too much good old music
to waste time on the sound-alike, now-99%-algorithm-derived ..ever-$$$-inspired ..wash-rinse-Repeats, thankyouverymuch.
Music-for-profit is exactly akin to Health Care-for-profit. Both unclear on the concept, so awfully that ... words nearly-always fail, amidst the cacophony, especially at ƒƒƒƒ
Carrion (there's an aural-form of that, some notice.)
(One could market Pure-Shit™ to a dung beetle in this enviro.) What was that LRPD'd phrase?
... Hell, Microsoft sells Vista!
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Post #394,850
9/21/14 6:10:23 PM
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Stop being a curmudgeon
What's on the telly (and to which you are objecting) is a tiny, tiny fraction of what's actually out there, which doesn't comply with your uncharitable characterisation.
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Post #394,852
9/21/14 8:08:10 PM
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Didn't Mozart write for patrons?
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Post #394,858
9/21/14 8:37:41 PM
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I listened to a Clara, Bob Schumann, and Brahms festival tonight.
And now I'm going to listen to Caravan Palace and Ewan Dobson.
Classical composers wrote music to make a living as well. You limit your own horizons with your snobbery, Ashton. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #394,863
9/21/14 11:04:07 PM
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There is a reason the algorithms work.
And that's because the respond to how our brains work. The human brain likes patterns. That is its primary mechanism for reducing the amount of information it is inundated with through our senses.
But it also likes patterns that slightly defy our wetware prediction engines. This is why innovative arrangements work. Patterns within patterns within patterns on top of patterns.
Wade.
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Post #394,870
9/22/14 4:19:01 AM
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Good points! but minor.
(Was just cutting-to-the chase, re most-all random samples encountered, over the many years.) Curmudgeonhood however, does try to balance the [-]s with whatever ameliorating [+]s emerge--as in cases where specific examples, some from these parts--have shown the possibility of my taking too-seriously those random examples. Agreed there are some I can appreciate, more I can tolerate ... but no 'genre' which appeals. Sure: Marks, Pounds, Francs circumscribed the survival of the Masters--ever thus, before fairly recent slight-distributions of wealth were wrested. Even the fictions of Amadeus demonstrated well the patronage as had to be accorded the er, Patrons. Now everything is pure- bizness. Anyone imagine that 1% of songs sold in last 10 years--will be around in 20, 50 more? Not implying, nor have I, that those in the IGM who appreciate the culled-best of (modern marketed media?) therefore must not appreciate the earlier. (For that matter, I have my own favs of the 'Masters' and merely the good? ... and connect-not with some others.) Beiderbecke, Dixieland, some other few jazz forms, folk songs and many melodies all-along .. tickle my fancy. Music was essential in getting through the military-mindset in my early schools--but not Que Sera, Sera or A-You're Adorable pop-craft of those days. My cohorts had more classical records than the pop-45s du jour. Yes, some hummed the ditties, but no one took any of those seriously. We knew Doris Day wasn't a virgin (either.) Mostly.. still true for me--the weirdness also predictability, have become Standard now: the focus upon a few amplified stringed instruments is a travesty also tragedy for all young, malleable minds, growing up amidst this monotonous sound-stage. I believe, via experience and observation: tykes need the (at least acquaintance with) that variety of Other Instruments, most of those found in an orchestra: plus some few *innovations, new but similar authentic, non-programmable human-only instruments. There is no substitute for the rewards earned by becoming better at a complex learning-curve, involving the whole body. Is karaoke sing-along a substitute for that effort? * An innovation: Sergei N's commissioning of a 4-valve flugelhorn, demonstrating via his emulation of a rich cello sound: garnering appreciations by string players as well as us brass-bedazzled. There's also ppp and ƒƒƒ dynamic range==everything in between. Perpetual SHOUTING is fucking-insane. And it has become habitual. (I wonder if Ian Underwood went deaf, playing those gigs with The Mothers; haven't kept in touch.) And no, I don't hate plucked strings per se, cf. Segovia, lutes, harps etc. But as a sole-diet, I see this fixation is akin to existing on pabulum, while all around are feasts. I don't care if the formula-music today has derived-from (you can't much devolve-from..) early Ad-mens' poisoning the world with Sales-jingles. Using an MRI now, to flag, trigger certain primitive levels of sound-processing? seems neither art nor 'science' but just more of the Crass: do x variants/sell more/hope not too many notice ... the parentage of them all. Sure this works--from the arithmetic of bizness models, it does. Change is inevitable but devolution is optional--except within a kultur where marketed, robo-created sounds (the score and the programmed-instruments) have fulfilled Roger Price's Avoidism curse for all Consumers: If Everyone doesn't want it: Nobody gets it. We aren't quite there yet; orchestras still hold-on--largely via Patrons. When the rich are all 30-something Silly Valley brats, next: maybe that source of funds will disappear, too. We're already culturally impoverished compared with many (always a personal call). A trend or an anomaly? tl;dr: The Average Still Sucks; the web can bring up my fellow curmudgeons' similar assessment: "popular music sucks" (also: "and is soulless") gets ~100k hits; didn't try n-variations. "Popular music is great" gets ~1.25M--first entry is, Why Classical Music? by Marcia PeckGuess I'm stuck with my sensibilities/as youn'ses are. I don't mind being an outlier and--as with sex preference--nobody can Like what pisses them off, viscerally. Rationally though: My tastes are irrelevant, of course. Simply, I deem it tragic that a majority of tykes have never heard a full orchestra--let alone a live one. This may have abetted shallowness in other areas of mind growth, I can only surmise. Lenny Bernstein's concerts for young people demonstrated the instant-love many of these very-young children experienced; you can't fake expressions on those faces. I call this Loss a tragedy for those millions of fledgling ears, who never had any home exposure to Works which have survived centuries/across all cultures--except this one. That there have been $Ts made in the Bizness just underscores the emotional impoverishment elsewhere.
Auto-rebuttal:
The 'cultured' Germans of their Great Depression, may have heard the Ode to Joy/no translation required: but that experience didn't prevent their going-all-beastly to put food on their families, thence move to remove that need (from those next dead families in their wake.) 'Classical music' alone won't save you from Beastliness.
If there were still, in the dis-USA more real instruments in use today than the present handful? would it still be the dis-USA? Beats me. (We'd have a better grade of Insanity here though, I wot.)
..and we'd still have Pianissimo along with the merely occasional ... Fortissimo. Moderation in modulation.
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Post #394,832
9/20/14 10:38:39 PM
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deep purple with the london philharmonic
still rocks.
Well it helps if the writer was classically trained Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
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Post #394,872
9/22/14 6:23:32 AM
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The Mothers (of Invention) were mostly 'classically trained'
but Wow.. their products had no andante moderato but a few codas, anyway. (I quite understood that their works were, at base: wry satire, thus catchy-tunes weren't exactly a priority.)
To my jaundiced ears, The Beatles grokked-to-adequacy the Power of a nuanced and critical sense of Loudness, recognized Why.. ppp and ƒƒƒ Matter; their harmonies Were (harmonies) and their songs Sing-able without transistorized effects, fuzz-tones and such. People really did leave a Yellow Submarine show: singing.
This I saw, twice, at least.
Glad you heard the London Phil. To me 'classically trained' means simply, that a one has learned the basic methodology for producing serene sounds, occasionally dissonant ones (since contrast is All) ... and something of what (most ears) discern as: something I want to hear More than Once.
(Of course mere words can never 'summarize' Music, but ... we all have to try.)
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