What do u guys think of pop music?

[jaquet]

Hi im just wandering what my fellow pianists think of pop music. Lets have a discussion! Ill go first, i think that pop music is often times a bit degenerative and i dont really like it nor really understand it myself.

[transitional]

It can be good, but often it just relies on a few basic chord patterns to appeal to the general public. Maybe I'm not fair enough with it, but just because I haven't heard much good pop I liked in a long time.

[psipsi8]

I like listening to some of it. But I don't enjoy playing transcriptions of it on the piano! It's so boring and trite compared to playing classical music. The exception is some people's own arrangements of it, which can be quite awesome in some cases. Especially heavy-metal songs, but those technically aren't pop.

[pianistavt]

Hi im just wandering what my fellow pianists think of pop music. Lets have a discussion! Ill go first, i think that pop music is often times a bit degenerative and i dont really like it nor really understand it myself.

What do you mean by degenerative?
A lot of it is basic, especially the lyrics, but I wouldn't call it degenerative.
You have to compare apples to apples.  You have to compare pop/rock songs to classical songs (and this does not include opera), not concertos, sonatas and symphonies.

I listened to pop/rock/folk music when I was a teenager, was ardently learning classical piano at the same time.  Now, I listen to pop/dance music for workouts.  I also hear about friends' favorite artists and songs  - - So I think I have a seasoned perspective.

There are inspired and talented pop/rock artists and there are uninspired ones.  The same is true of classical.  The inspired ones produce notable music - the lyrics, the vocal lines, even the development.  For example - from my youth - Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and more recently, David Guetta's Titanium.  I could list a lot.  The fact that so many listen to and moved by this music is the only fact you really need.  To go down the path of the "uneducated / unsophisticated masses" is really antiquated and elitist. 

That's all for now.   

[jaquet]

pianistavt, i just used the word degenerative because i dont believe its really expanding music at all and instead just making music less of a art and more of just entertainment. Of course however there is some which is new and experimental but i believe mainly its just degenerating music for profit. I find it quite distgusting actually the mainstream music which i hear. It talks about such rough and rude topics and pushs many people in the youth in the wrong direction. Of course this is probably only a small part of pop music. But its all i hear to be honest!

[pianistavt]

...  i believe mainly its just degenerating music for profit.

for profit is one thing
degenerating, i.e. leaving you emotionally/mentally/spiritually less, is another thing

The management of American symphony orchestras is full of unimaginative money-focused ticket sales /  Profit strategies - - that's why they program the Rach 2 over and over and over ...

There is plenty of pop/rock/folk music that is truly uplifting, inspiring, expanding.  To believe otherwise suggests a lack of objective exploration.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

pianistavt, i just used the word degenerative because i dont believe its really expanding music at all and instead just making music less of a art and more of just entertainment. Of course however there is some which is new and experimental but i believe mainly its just degenerating music for profit. I find it quite distgusting actually the mainstream music which i hear. It talks about such rough and rude topics and pushs many people in the youth in the wrong direction. Of course this is probably only a small part of pop music. But its all i hear to be honest!

Do you think orchestras programming the same music over and over again into oblivion is expanding music lol

[ted]

I love its melodic power. That someone, usually untrained, can come up with a tune that sets the world singing, is real musical magic. I like the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Edith Piaf, Judith Durham and other singers whose tunes touch something universal in the mind of the ordinary person. Perhaps in the end this is a finer thing than being able to write a symphony.

[jaquet]

Do you think orchestras programming the same music over and over again into oblivion is expanding music lol

No but this isnt true for major concerts either, all the classical concerts which ive been to have programmed unique and modern music, however the amount of concerts ive been to is little. The music which i hear is mostly pushing out of music and into sound art i would describe in one instance and anyways, in classical music there are many different intpretations to a piece, i myself always view piano music as a sketch left by the composer where we the intpreter have to fill in the sketch with colour and our intpretation. So, in a sense its expanding but of course not in a linear way more degenerative and collapsing in on itself in a sense. But in general the mass likes the similar things which are nothing really unique, hence why pop music is so popular( this is one reason among many), i dont think many people who have listened to rap all their life can listen to some late scriabin and vice versa (all though no one has listened to late scriabin all their life lol- but generally that sort of music.) Honestly my views on pop music have changed alot since starting this post, it has its place, but i just wonder why so many view classical as boring and old, but when i listen to even some bach i think its more modern than anything ive heard. This is a losing battle on my part, so lets keep this as a conversation not a debate.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Hi [I']m just w

• ndering what my fellow pianists think of pop music.

It's fine, usually. There are exceptions of course (one of my former dormmate's favorite songs was just nonstop swearing with some instances of other inappropriate language), but it's usually fine on the whole. What we should really be asking about is pop artists.

[jaquet]

It's fine, usually. There are exceptions of course (one of my former dormmate's favorite songs was just nonstop swearing with some instances of other inappropriate language), but it's usually fine on the whole. What we should really be asking about is pop artists.

Yes i think your right, i had quite a different opinion on it then compared to now. Your last line i think is a much better discussion to have, i think alot of the people in pop and especially rap are simply the wrong people to idolise and have weak moral compasses and i think the issue with gang culture being heavily promoted in pop music is not good for the youth. But i guess alot of this music stems from being rebellious and going against the norm. Its just how i see it, i would love to discuss further if you want.

[martinn]

I think some of the brightest minds in pop music have created things unique before they were absorbed into classical music by contemporary classical composers. Finding gems and roots in popular music is fun, but too much popular or classical music can be a negative thing. I don’t want to lock myself and want to find those that were super talented in creating something new. Only using old patterns is boring. Of course, the depth in classical music is usually much more satisfying, but that may not be the origin of certain ideas.

[ranjit]

Yes i think your right, i had quite a different opinion on it then compared to now. Your last line i think is a much better discussion to have, i think alot of the people in pop and especially rap are simply the wrong people to idolise and have weak moral compasses and i think the issue with gang culture being heavily promoted in pop music is not good for the youth. But i guess alot of this music stems from being rebellious and going against the norm. Its just how i see it, i would love to discuss further if you want.

Classical composers weren't really people you would want to idolize either. Anti-semites, womanizers, chronic depressives and schizophrenics abound. We really just have to separate the art from the artist imo.

[ranjit]

I don't mind the "degeneracy". I like some, dislike others, much like anything.

Sometimes, I like certain pop music because there's something new with the "sound". The same old string quartets and piano music can get old.

I also find that pop music is forced to be "honest" in a way that classical music is not, because it has to be liked by people to survive. That can give you clues about the kinds of musical ideas that are universally recognized and appreciated.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

[I ]think alot of the people in pop and especially rap are simply the wrong people to idolize and have weak moral compasses and i think the issue with gang culture being heavily promoted in pop music is not good for the youth.

That's just generally true of celebrities. It's hard to find one with a clean record.
Heck, wasn't one of the biggest youtubers on the platform exposed for corruption about a week ago?
Trump made a cameo in Home Alone 2 in the 90s. I doubt they would have hired him if they knew how he would turn out.
The list goes on...

[jaquet]

I don't mind the "degeneracy". I like some, dislike others, much like anything.

Sometimes, I like certain pop music because there's something new with the "sound". The same old string quartets and piano music can get old.

I also find that pop music is forced to be "honest" in a way that classical music is not, because it has to be liked by people to survive. That can give you clues about the kinds of musical ideas that are universally recognized and appreciated.

In my opinion from what ive seen in pop ( that being said i havent really listened to any mainstream pop in a few years) what ive generally heard was honest, was talking about drug abuse and gang violence, being  a young teen at the time, it didnt have the best effect on my mind. Also i might add the especiallymainstream stuff, e.g taylor swift seem to just reuse the broken relationship idea over and over again to appeal to the masses   in a sense. I think with classical music, more specfically Chopin and that era (because ive been reading about that recently) it appears Chopin at least, composed his most raw feelings at the piano, i dont think anything gets more honest than some of his pieces, its awfully private and shows his vunerability. In my personal opinion the very mainstream pop, as mentioned earlier(Taylor swift) comes across as very superficial compared to this, at least for me. Chopins problems at least are incomparable to any problems we face in the west (that is if you live in the west) currently apart from very few select situations . Tuberculosis, very talented yet also sick siblings and of course living in War torn poland, with opponents at every side and of course having to flee to a country alone, without his most beloved people. To add from the point another person made about alot of composers being anti semites, homophobes or just bad people in general, I might add that they didnt (generally) promote this in their music- at least none come to mind apart from maybe Wagner( i imagine he probably did something like that) and also there were some morally good composers which come to mind, Liszt and Bach are the first. (little is known about bahc or atleast i know little about his character but Liszt in everything ive read seems to be honorable and a truly honest man).

Also the point about seperating art from the artist brings up another conversation.
I ask, is art really like something like maths where the matter and the creator can be seperated. I dont think so, because the art generally is a composite of this persons culture and their very fibers of their being, and thats why these people who are great composers have generally suffered a great bit, because  their suffering is eventually part of their experience and a result of hard labour and their experience art is created. I personally like to believe that we are all shaped by experience and hard work  in this music bubble, i dont believe in a thing such as talent, ( however a certain case of yunchan lim makes me believe he is a genius after seeing him in concert) , I prefer to believe that the mind has certain affinities towards things  based on how we were raised when we were young, which cause us to want to work in those fields. Of course a level of intellect is needed in high level piano playing along with hard work- this is what i believe talent is.
 Also, to say that the artist can be seperated is also to argue that we must seperate the politics of the time from the art, yet the art is only created due to the poltics of that time, i might add this is very much like seperating a child from its mother, the child struggles to fare alone and needs the artist i believe to stand this test of time. The artist being here of course the sense of style and character. Honestly i may have just proven myself wrong. :/

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I personally like to believe that we are all shaped by experience and hard work  in this music bubble

This actually brings up a fun philosophical conversation (if such a thing can be "fun," that is): hard work vs. luck.
I completely believe that luck is the primary factor in determining success. We would never have heard of Swift or Chopin, had they not gotten lucky.
Most people in the Western Hemisphere at least know that there was a dude a long time ago named Beethoven who wrote piano pieces, but even many expert pianists don't know a thing about Mereaux. Sometimes even people such as Thalberg and Alkan are forgotten, even though Liszt (who was arguably no a better a pianist or composer than Alkan) is known almost Universally among piano enthusiasts. Sorabji and Xenakis both wrote monstrously difficult atonal works, but only Sorabji is well-known because of it (even though Xenakis was more recent, arguably more creative, and definitely wrote harder works). The primary difference was luck.
This applies to modern writers too. Doubtless there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of songwriters who are orders of magnitude more talented than Taylor Swift will ever be, who will never be heard of outside of a miniscule group, simply due to bad luck.
But that's a topic for another time.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Yes i think your right, i had quite a different opinion on it then compared to now. Your last line i think is a much better discussion to have, i think alot of the people in pop and especially rap are simply the wrong people to idolise and have weak moral compasses and i think the issue with gang culture being heavily promoted in pop music is not good for the youth. But i guess alot of this music stems from being rebellious and going against the norm. Its just how i see it, i would love to discuss further if you want.

Handel owned slaves, Tchaikovsky was a pedophile, Schumann was a pedophile, Gesualdo killed his wife and chopped up her body into pieces and sent them to her parents doorstep, Berlioz planned a double homocide (didn’t go through with it), Beethoven drove his nephew to attempt suicide, etc…. The classical cannon is just as bad

[thorn]

Also i might add the especiallymainstream stuff, e.g taylor swift seem to just reuse the broken relationship idea over and over again to appeal to the masses
...
 In my personal opinion the very mainstream pop, as mentioned earlier(Taylor swift) comes across as very superficial compared to this, at least for me. Chopins problems at least are incomparable to any problems we face in the west (that is if you live in the west) currently apart from very few select situations .
...
 To add from the point another person made about alot of composers being anti semites, homophobes or just bad people in general, I might add that they didnt (generally) promote this in their music
...
I ask, is art really like something like maths where the matter and the creator can be seperated. I don't think so...
 ...Also, to say that the artist can be seperated is also to argue that we must seperate the politics of the time from the art, yet the art is only created due to the poltics of that time

To pick up on these points in particular:
- Classical music is full of composers using the same idea because it appealed to their audience: the fugue, sonata form, mazurka etc

- Trauma doesn't work like that (a pop singer's breakup isn't as bad as Chopin's tuberculosis). I remember a while ago Lady Gaga spoke out about suffering PTSD and some war veterans were like "no you don't, you haven't been in a warzone". But our brains don't make those calls when faced with a traumatic event, they react to all of it equally. There's plenty of research on this if you're interested.

- The last three of your points count as one. So you're saying composers, unlike rap singers, didn't promote their questionable views through their music. But on the other hand you can't separate art/artist/politics? You're contradicting yourself there. Let's take a relatively recent example, where an orchestra (I want to say Berlin I don't remember?) cancelled their booking with Valentina Lisitsa due to her pro-Russian views. What are your thoughts on this?

I'll share my views on the main topic, pop vs classical, later as this post is probably too long already.

[pianistavt]

Discussing the socio-cultural seas around music is challenging - it's easy to say too much, generalize too much, simplify too much, equate too much, and slip into a variety of faulty reasonings.  To listen to gangsta rap, have a strong reaction (understandably), then call pop music "degenerate" ... is a bit of a
 generalization. 

It's much easier to discuss one performance, one recording, one song, one artist, one specific genre.

If you are at university or will be soon, take a course in logic, critical thinking, and/or a couple philosophy courses, they really help in how to organize and think through your ideas.  Or take one online.  It will nourish you for the rest of your life, it did for me and my friends in college.
Here's a link I found:

https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/phil1005#:~:text=An%20undergraduate%20course%20offered%20by%20the%20School%20of%20Philosophy.&text=This%20course%20aims%20to%20introduce,to%20the%20discipline%20of%20philosophy.

The first paragraph from link:   "This course aims to introduce students to practices of argumentation, critical analysis, and evaluation. Such skills in critical thinking are integral to the discipline of philosophy. They are also tremendously useful in other academic domains, in the workplace, and in everyday life. The course aims to help students to understand and develop the skills required for critical thinking, and to encourage them to explore the ways in which these skills can further their academic and non-academic pursuits. Topics covered may include: various forms of reasoning, common fallacies, the use of rhetoric, elementary logic, and decision and game theories."

[ranjit]

In my opinion from what ive seen in pop ( that being said i havent really listened to any mainstream pop in a few years) what ive generally heard was honest, was talking about drug abuse and gang violence, being  a young teen at the time, it didnt have the best effect on my mind. Also i might add the especiallymainstream stuff, e.g taylor swift seem to just reuse the broken relationship idea over and over again to appeal to the masses in a sense.

This is a strawman, wouldn't you say so? You are comparing the most banal of pop music to the best of classical.

[lelle]

I think the whole thing that there is good music and bad music is a misnomer.

There is only music you like, and music you dislike.

Any argument beyond that essentially boils down to ego stroking.

There can be varying levels of craftmanship and skill involved, sure. But that doesn't determine how good the music is, or if you'll like it.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I think the whole thing that there is good music and bad music is a misnomer.

There is only music you like, and music you dislike.

Words to live by.

[thorn]

I partially agree. Sure there's no such thing as good and bad music, and trying to argue your taste is the "right" one/other peoples' tastes are "wrong" is ego stroking.

But I disagree that taste is all there is. Take one of the issues raised in this thread, why do more people like pop music vs. classical music. The simple answer is pop music (and rock, rap, whatever) originates from folk/world traditions- literally the music of the masses- whereas classical music is an elite tradition the masses have only recently (in the grand scheme of history) had access to, and that requires (often private) education in order for them to fully understand it. And there are dozens of other issues branching out from this core, too many for a forum post.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

And there are dozens of other issues branching out from this core, too many for a forum post.

One of the main ones being cognitive easement; pop is (generally) at least somewhat familiar for most people, while only a tiny percent of the world's population has heard classical piano (outside of e.g Fur Elise, HR 2, Ronda alla Turka, etc.). As a result, people are more comfortable around pop (and modern music in general) than they are around classical.
In the past, I've even convinced some of my classmates to like Chopin's 10/7 by telling them that it's a piano rendition of a popular song. And yet, when I give them the piece's actual name, those same people can't stand it for more than a few seconds.

(I should clarify that I show them 10/7 the second time a few weeks after they've heard it the first time.)

[thorn]

A related thing is music is impossible to adequately adapt, compared to say Shakespeare where Disney turned Hamlet into The Lion King without compromising the bones of the plot and it was a massive success. Sure classical music has paraphrases and fantasies but take the last one I personally attempted- Prokofiev/Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade- it still lasts longer than a pop song and all pieces of this genre cut large chunks of the original piece. The only real solution is soundbytes- most people recognise the opening of Clair de lune, Chopin op.9/2, Tchaikovsky Concerto 1 and so on. So it's way more difficult than literary adaptations.

[martinn]

At least loud pop music in concerts is bad for your hearing. And the ’loudness wars’ destroyed the natural dynamics of music in recorded pop music since late 90s. Music for masses ? I feel sad that they don’t have the energy to at least try classical music seriously. But classical music with modern mainstream instruments , yes that could be interesting.

[pianistavt]

This is a strawman, wouldn't you say so? You are comparing the most banal of pop music to the best of classical.

There's that, but I was specifically talking about the error of incorrect generalization - - something people do all the time in their arguments:

"The fallacy of hasty generalization occurs when someone makes a broad generalization based on a small or unrepresentative sample. For example, if someone meets a few people from a particular city and then concludes that everyone from that city has the same characteristics, that's a hasty generalization. It's a logical error where an inference about a whole category is drawn from insufficient or atypical examples."

[essence]

in any form there is good and bad. At any time, there has been mediocre music at the same time as geniuses.

'pop' can have a special meaning, which maybe the OP didn;t mean?

I have a classical music background, but enjoy Dylan, The Doors, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd.

I even enjoy Jay-Z (listen to the Black Album) and Trae/Z-Ro. tupac is great, love him.

Birwhistle excites and is VERY loud. Xanakis is also very loud. I once heard him at an electronic music concert - volume went up to 11.

A lot of rap can be very romantic. Also a lot of the merit is in the production, which is a skill unto itself.

Don't put music into boxes.

Question - is Dylan's Blood on the Tracks as great as Schubert's Wintereiser?

The big difference is the singer/song writer v.. the interpreter. Who will interpret Pink Floyd in 100 years?

[bachapprentice]

What's pop music?