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Paying for Reviews....is that fair?

Fox' remarks read to me as insufferably elitist.

Indeed. And we can't have that. Elitism hints at the highly offensive concept that some people are more educated and actually know more than others. That is a concept that belongs back in the industrial era, and is not something that we want to see in the era of my-opinion-is-just-as-valuable-as-yours internet world.
 
Indeed. And we can't have that. Elitism hints at the highly offensive concept that some people are more educated and actually know more than others. That is a concept that belongs back in the industrial era, and is not something that we want to see in the era of my-opinion-is-just-as-valuable-as-yours internet world.

Very true,

The use of words like "hifalutin" says it all.

Here's someone who knows more about the subject than I do. Someone who is interested enough in the subject to actually formally study it.

"He needs cutting down to size! I don't understand what I am mocking, but what the hell, the rest of the stupid people will agree with me, so that makes me right."

Chris
 
"He needs cutting down to size! I don't understand what I am mocking, but what the hell, the rest of the stupid people will agree with me, so that makes me right."
Some of the comments stem from Foxy (is he from Tooting?) saying:

Readers should understand music before reading music reviews, that means some investment from them in learning about music, doing it the other way around dooms any writer of any calibre to dumbing down a subject to the point where it says nothing and if it says nothing there is no point saying it.

'Twas Foxy saying what others what should do. Most live and let live though that can be a tough concept.
 
Indeed. And we can't have that. Elitism hints at the highly offensive concept that some people are more educated and actually know more than others. That is a concept that belongs back in the industrial era, and is not something that we want to see in the era of my-opinion-is-just-as-valuable-as-yours internet world.

No that's not the point at all. Of course there should be full spread of discussion about a thing, from the mundane to the profound if needs be. That's not elitism; what is elitism - more correctly, intellectual snobbery - is dismissing the purpose of the prosaic review in a prosaic context.

If the jazz world relied only on the reviews of The Wire, it would die in a cloud of its own pretence. If it relied only on the reviews of Jazzwise, it would drown in a pool of Scandiwegian ECM wannabes. If it relied only on the reviews of audio magazines, it would have died in 1962. If any of these titles were to transplant the reviews of the other, it would be criticised by its readership for either dumbing down or navel-gazing.
 
so it the notion that readers/listeners not the author give a work meaning out of vogue?
 
I am obviously too stupid and intellectually lazy to enjoy music. But I'm so stupid and intellectually lazy that I shall continue to do so. Please feel free to patronize me, I shan't be able to hear you because of the music. (;))
 
so it the notion that readers/listeners not the author give a work meaning out of vogue?

No, reception theory lives on, and there's still good work being done in the field.

The problem with reception theory is that it tends to empower some readers/listeners but disempower others. If I say that meaning is constituted by the reader/listener, it raises the tricky question: which reader/listener?
 
i thought that was the beauty of reception theory, namely there's no single meaning, there's no central authority, that the work in question can mean many thing to many people, and each response is equally valid.
 
Indeed. And we can't have that. Elitism hints at the highly offensive concept that some people are more educated and actually know more than others. That is a concept that belongs back in the industrial era, and is not something that we want to see in the era of my-opinion-is-just-as-valuable-as-yours internet world.

Ah, Julf. I realise that English probably isn't your first language, but if you're going to pick a fight based on what you think a word means, probably best to check that it does mean what you claim it means, first.

It doesn't by the way. Not even a bit.

And especially not if you take the context of my post into account.
 
i thought that was the beauty of reception theory, namely there's no single meaning, there's no central authority, that the work in question can mean many thing to many people, and each response is equally valid.

That way lies relativism.

If you wanted to go down that route , you could argue (as Kant did) that all responses to aesthetic objects are subjective. But it's very hard to take that position seriously, since aesthetic objects contain hypothetical truth claims ("if we agree on x as a frame of reference, then y is true").
 
I think this is touching on my earlier remark that if there is nobody to hear it, can it be music? At the time, I had that Zen question about trees falling in the forest in mind, but the point is well enough made. Music is in the ear of the beholder. This was Cage's point in 4'33", too, and I have some sympathy for his view that the music is the performance, and if you weren't there, you don't have the music.

But we do have recordings, and while they may not be the music, they can be a decent facsimile, and if they can help the listener to recreate some of the feelings when present at the performance, they have achieved their aim. That's why I don't obsess about transparency and measurement, I'm only interested in whether it makes me feel how I might have felt had I been there.

Also, to take Fox' point about the intention of the composer - a lot of composers wrote (write?) instinctively. Analysis, and deconstruction of a work may tell us why such and such works to create the effects it did, but that is not the same as saying we know the composer wrote it that way consciously to get that effect. I think it is entirely possible to 'understand' a work better than the composer does. Which may well be, in effect, to fail to understand it at all.
 
There are various kinds of elitism at play here and if people reading what I write think I am saying you cannot enjoy music (or even understand) a piece of without musical training or knowledge then read again, and if you still think I am saying so read it a third time. I think I have been clear.

There is also the elitism of "I know what I like and I don't need no education" and while that is true it is much much harder to understand fully the language and structure of music, its architectural edifice is seen only from the outside and the inside, but the way the edifice is built is based on assumption and (in my case with jazz, reverse engineering, looking at the edifice and stripping it down)

This is why I compose, this is why I build thing, this is why I am useless at everything in life except this strange marriage of the two.

But I will not step down against anti-intellectualism, the "my opinion matters as much as yours" approach to this, music is formal, defined structure that has the added advantage of appealing to the emotions, if you write about the emotional aspects of music only, fine, but that places you in uncertain terrain, terrain that is assumptive and quite possibly wrong. If you know that a modal change creates an uplifting effect if the minor key subdues the piano while the sax takes over, if the expression is notated just so, then you gain insight into the mind of the composer, the inner workings of the music are revealed in unpretentious and obvious ways.

Uninformed "assumptive" music reviews are hand waving at best, poetical near nonsense at worst and not fit for publishing, but they are useful for artists to get eyeballs to hover around their work for even a dew seconds. The basic fundamental errors in music reviews that mention key changes when they are modal changes, when the tempo is not changed but the beaming across the barre is changed is not important to an emotionally driven reader, but it is a factual mistake and it is just plain wrong and in allowing that wrong to go uncorrected you do the artist and the music a great disservice.

Sorry, I know I said I was done but misrepresentation and not really reading carefully is in and of itself wilful neglect.

tl;dr. Its perfectly fine to and completely right to not need any education to enjoy music but you will better understand the basis of your enjoyment if you do learn a bit.
 
Its perfectly fine to and completely right to not need any education to enjoy music but you will better understand the basis of your enjoyment if you do learn a bit.
That's a perfectly reasonable statement. Had you said that in the first place I doubt there would have been any further discussion on the point.
 
You can type in practically any musicians name into YouTube and easily make up your own mind as to whether you like the music they make - are music reviews even worth punishing any more?
 
That's a perfectly reasonable statement. Had you said that in the first place I doubt there would have been any further discussion on the point.

But it does not say everything and it is a selective quote of a much greater set of concepts that are hard for people to swallow and even harder to swallow if you have not read it properly or understood it properly. I forget at times most people skim read. And that is an error on my behalf.
 
But it does not say everything and it is a selective quote of a much greater set of concepts that are hard for people to swallow and even harder to swallow if you have not read it properly or understood it properly. I forget at times most people skim read. And that is an error on my behalf.

I think though this is the main area some disagreed with and the tone of the above statement is much more reasonable than saying people need to do some research work before reading music reviews.
 
You can type in practically any musicians name into YouTube and easily make up your own mind as to whether you like the music they make - are music reviews even worth punishing any more?

Music reviews as contemporary modern historical writing? Yes. Why not? The conditions it was recorded in, the insights of the composer, some thoughts on the listener based on familiarity with the band, the music and the history of the time absolutely. Q and Mojo on a plane and so on actually provide some very good insights into the world of music for all-comers, this is the great bonus for people whom have taken the effort to learn the technicalities of music in their field: reading well-written populist writing is still very informative, its entertaining and light reading while you still feel like you are getting work done, sadly the opposite is not the case for populist readers approaching technical journals "the journal of acousmatic music's: open source livecoding strategies for creating structures from aleatoric generative algorithms" is some of the finest writing on reconstruction pattern methodologies but to joe off the street... Dull as ditchwater.

People With specific technical knowledge have the advantage of both worlds but the disadvantage of spending precious time learning it. Some people do not want that. But using technical musical terms incorrectly but VERY VERY CONFIDENTLY, is not going to win you points anywhere except the dinner party table.
 
I think though this is the main area some disagreed with and the tone of the above statement is much more reasonable than saying people need to do some research work before reading music reviews.

And if people read rather than skim the inference is clearly there (I had to go back and check). That people find my approach elitist shows they have not read or understood or skimmed and not actually engaged with the contend of the post.
 


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