by Habina Seo
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| Lera Auerbach |
Whether it be a parent saying that music ‘in their time’ was
much better, someone claiming that they ‘only listen to classical music’ for
the sake of it, or a tourist it is a well-known bias that the majority of
modern music and art is getting worse Although this matter may be seen as
subjective to most, there are certain people who insist on justifying their
opinion on the horror that is popular music, based on made-up factors and sometimes
just purely false information, despite the fact that there are already logical
ways of measuring and marking the quality of art, especially in modern times.
In this article I will be focusing in particular on the ‘decline of modern
music’ which is a very common idea which has arisen from about 2012 onwards.
The most viewed video on the topic of musical decline is
Thoughty2’s ‘The TRUTH Why Modern Music is Awful’ which has over 9 million
views on YouTube. Despite being heavily flawed and littered with false
information, it shows a largely supportive response from the public, displaying
the gullibility of the audience, which largely consists of the untrained masses
rather than musicians in particular. However, from a musician’s point of view,
it is snobbish and unnecessary to assume that all modern music is ‘awful’, and
one can certainly critique the way in which the quality of music has been
measured.
The sources of this video are likely to be from a joint
article written by five authors representing various fields of work (AI, music
technology, physics, complex systems modelling) titled ‘Measuring the Evolution
of Contemporary Western Popular Music’. However, you may notice that a
musicologist or a composer who would have a rigorous musical background is
missing in this research. This is already a bad sign as a key part of the
judging will be ignored, leading to trivial and made-up ways of reaching a
conclusion while trying to objectify and quantify elements in order to measure
the quality of music. The research done on a sample of music (which was
primarily popular styles rather than the diverse range of genres that the
YouTube video claimed) measured three factors: ‘harmonic complexity, timbral
diversity and loudness’. Straight away, these elements to a musician wouldn’t
strike them as the key elements which would make a piece of music good or bad.
After all, loudness is something that simply increased due to developments of
instrumentation over time, and also with the technological advancements that allowed
easier adjustment of audio. Harmonic complexity is something that, if anything,
has gotten more experimental and diverse over the years as composers learn from
and build on the works of predecessors, but ultimately it is the effectiveness
in the manipulation of harmony which is the deciding factor, rather than how
complex harmony is in one’s work. Those who argue that the majority of recent
pop songs are made up of the same chord progressions, this can be applied to
older periods, especially in western popular music.
As well as giving a misleading definition of timbre,
‘timbral diversity’ is a pretty trivial factor since timbre is simply the
character and sound of the music (as opposed to the definition given that
timbre is the ‘richness and depth’ of a sound), and this will depend on the
purpose of the piece, therefore it cannot be easily measured in a way that will
compare all genres of music fairly. A person with some sort of musical or
compositional background will know that more instruments does not mean a piece
of music is better, but rather the way in which the timbres are used with each
other to create certain musical effects. As music becomes more experimental,
there are plenty of examples where new techniques exploit and separate out
specific sounds in the timbres such as ‘sul ponticello’ which is a string
technique where it reduces the fundamental pitch, bringing out the
scratchy-sounding overtones, and prepared piano which John Cage has written
music for its interesting timbres. Another claim Thoughty2 tries to justify is
the ‘lack of timbral diversity’ through the example of bands using the same
instrumentation, and also the use of synthesisers. A synthesiser could not be
more ‘timbrally diverse’- it can
literally sample and play any sound, therefore making it the most diverse and
flexible instrument, which in the hands of a good musician can create
interesting and innovative fusion pieces (such as ‘Gypsy’ by Shakira, which
features the prominent use of a sitar). However, even if a synthesiser was said
to be the most ‘timbrally diverse’ tool, it certainly wouldn’t necessarily make
it much better than the real instruments playing live, although it does make
for more convenient music making, and opportunities for different sub-genres of
electronic music to arise. Furthermore, it is stated that timbral diversity
peaked in the 1960’s, and has been steadily declining ever since. Does this
mean that artists such as Bob Dylan and the Beatles are definitely ‘better’
than composers such as Mozart, Bach and Beethoven who have contributed greatly
to the development of musical forms and orchestras? The conclusion reached here
is clearly flawed.
By the time the video essay is halfway done, the point made
in the video has strayed from the title- there is clearly a heavier focus on
pop music rather than ‘all genres of music’ as stated earlier on, and the title
is now misleading as it is not focusing on all modern music.
Whatever your opinion on modern music may be, do not let
misleading and misinformed sources of information such as the examples analysed
here, deter you from the incredible advances that contemporary musicians are
making following centuries of music-making, such as Jacob Collier and Lera
Auerbach.
Sources :
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