Music appreciation

This is the first time I’m writing my thoughts on one of my passionate subject: music. The opinions and views put forth are based only on observations I made.

Also, this is about appreciation of music and not making music. So, this discussion rules out those people directly involved in the music-making or music industries. This includes song-writers, composers, producers, musician and artists either solo or in a group, and so forth.

What made me write this article is that I find so much written on music/album/song/single review and so little on music appreciation. And so much more are written on an artists’ life (or gossip, if you prefer) than on the music they’re producing and which the general public are consuming.

Appreciation of music, now how shall I even begin? Well, let’s start with the people who most often listen to it-youth and teenagers. Now, this does not mean that other people (that includes me since I’m not so young anymore) don’t listen to music but young people are the ones who most often listen to music. And their early musical taste do influence their preference for the type of music they listened to later in life. I say this from my own experience actually (of course with no scientifically proven facts, that is).

Now, today’s people (the majority again, sad to say) treat music indifferently as if it’s just a commercial product like mobile phones or console games where you could change to a new one every now and then. Nowhere is this more evident than in the proliferation of ring tones where music is converted to ring tones for mass consumption, which further downgrade music to some disposable consumer products.

Most of them listened but don’t really appreciate the music they’re playing. But can you blame them when most of the music coming out of the music scenes in these modern times are just crap; designed for short-term mass-commercial appeal and maximum returns for their producers. Just listen to some of the popular artists today. Most of their music sounds bland, even though the majority would say it sounded good; without much artistic value, and only sells because the artists looked good on the MTV (translation: wearing sexy clothes with cleavage showing, shaking their ass like there’s no tomorrow, or stuff like that). It's not that i'm partial to sexy women but the point is music is just not about that.

Ah, whatever happened to good music? Music that touches the heart, music that reaches into your soul, music that bring a tear to your eyes, music that makes goose bump stand, music that have something to say other than having sex with someone, having parties all night long, and then having more sex again. Have you listened to any good music recently instead of all those highly-polished, purely state-of-the-art 'commercial product' they played on the radio in these modern times? What is “good” music, you ask? A piece of music that touches you emotionally, music that appeals other than your sense of hearing; music that transcends our five senses-in effect, music that have something to say besides appealing to our human base desires. Good music doesn’t have to belong 'in' any genre. Any genre can have good music. You liked pop music and don’t like classical. That doesn’t mean classical is “bad” music, or you have no taste in music just because you prefer pop. People listen to the kind of music they like to listen to. It’s only bad if someone take a great classical piece and degrade it (maybe just by sampling it without really adding any new creative musical element or understanding the essence of that musical piece) just to make money for themselves.

You hear music but do you listen to the music you are hearing? Music appreciation goes beyond hearing. I was taught this by my lecturer during my course a long time ago. To appreciate music, you must learn to listen to music. What? Yes, I was being taught that hearing and listening are two different things. Women would have a better understanding of this concept. Hearing is one of our senses perceiving sound coming out of someone’s mouth, or speakers, or musical instrument in the case of music. Our voice is also a musical instrument. Listening is the conscious process to understand or better understand what is being heard by one of our senses. It is a process which involves the mind. Ha-ha, I can’t believe I just wrote that in one go, phew. So, to fully appreciate a piece of music is to really listen to it. Such simple observation ya.

Alas, there are people out there who are keen to prove how diverse their musical tastes are. If you liked pop (hey, I loved pop music), they will always say the kind of music you listened to are low-taste and try to convert you to their choice (“wah, you should listen to this Beethoven-Symphony No.9 classical cd”. It’s classy and it’s in hi-fidelity, not like your Sammi Cheng cd. Where good one!). They even pretend to ‘understand’ a particular genre or musical style and do not hesitate to give you their opinion of which artist is the leader of that genre when they hardly understand that genre themselves. Genre? It's just like different races living in this world. We are all human beings after all with just a few basic needs. Why can't the same apply to music?

Listen to music and appreciating it. Listen, easy; appreciate, a little harder, perhaps. How to explain it then? You know you liked a piece of music or a song when you heard it for the first time, or maybe after a few listen. Then maybe you heard it again and decided to really listen to it. After listening to it, you begin to understand why you liked it; maybe it’s because of the beautiful melody of the song, the perfect harmony of the group members, the pulsing rhythm of the song or the ringing guitar solo in the middle. To really appreciate the music you liked, you have to understand how the music is made (in effect how it is played, recorded and what goes into the recording (Again, I have to thank the course I took for this insight, but you don’t have to take any course to understand this, it’s very simple really).

Generally, I’m going to talk about pop music here because that’s what I understand most although it's not that deep an understanding. I would take pop music to generally cover rock, alt-rock, heavy-metal, hip-hop, r&b, soul, synth-pop/rock, and everything else other than classical and jazz; and a piece of music is going to be referred to as a ‘song’, in general and the instruments used are mainly the vocals, guitars, strings, drum or percussions, and bass. When you listened to music you liked, try to “listen” to all the instruments besides the voice. I know the voice and melody are the most obvious parts of a song that the majority listened to. Try to appreciate the other instruments too. I would say the rhythm section (which are mainly the bass, percussion or drums, and perhaps keyboards such as piano or synth) is the most ignored part when listening to a song. The rhythm gives the song the foundation. Close your eyes and make an effort to just listen to the bass-line of a song you liked. Consciously try to shut out the melodic part (the part which you can hum to-mainly the vocals and guitars) and really listen to the low notes throbbing.

Modern music are polished in the studio where recording is a science as much as an art-form. Modern music also has a lot of studio wizardry that goes into it to make them sound polished or contemporary, stuff like synthesizers, samplers and effects- reverb, delay, and flange, to name a few. You wouldn’t hear the same sound you heard from your cd during a live performance partly because of those studio tricks they employed. Which is not a bad thing actually? In fact it’s quite the opposite.

Even bad music is polished these daysmodern times, at least those commercially-produced bad music I’m talking of. Bad music does not mean music recorded badly for reasons of poor equipment. Bad music are those that don’t have any musical or artistic value. You have to use your mind to figure out those.

To further appreciate the music you liked, you can learn to appreciate the little nuances of recorded music. Listen to those slight touches of reverb which ‘sweeten’ the vocals of all those lovely ballads. Here’s an example, if you listened carefully to The Beatles “Let It Be” which is a classic Beatles song by the way, you could actually hear reverb (or echo, as the Americans liked to say) on the cymbals. Actually, there are two versions of this song recorded - one on the original “Let It Be” album which has the reverb on the cymbals and the other on the newer “Let It Be...Naked” album which does not have the reverb. Another example: snare drums sound ‘fatter’ if you add a little reverb to them. You could try to identify other effects or tricks that are added to a musical mix. Look up terms like delay, flange, vocoder, equalization, pitch-shifting and then listen to music which has those effects. You do not need to be a musician to appreciate the sounds they create. This was what my lecturers taught me and I must thank them for imparting this knowledge to me. Thanks Darien and Mike.

But for me, the ultimate form of music appreciation is one which is the most simple. Music is really ‘food for the soul’ as someone once puts it. Music appeals to the human emotion, pure and simple. It touches the heart. This may sound strange but for me music makes me think of my childhood and teenage years. When I was small, my mother used to put on those old 30’s & 40’s chinese classic by acclaimed female artiste such as Zhou Xuan, Bai Guang, Yao Lee. Now when I hear those songs being played, I think of my grandmother and those simple days where life was hard but not so hectic and happiness was just being with my family. Even though it was so long ago, music brought back memories and makes me cherished those moments.

The 80’s shape a big influence on my musical preference. Those so-called new-wave or new-romantic music which I fondly remember: Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet, A-Ha, Culture Club, Tears for Fears, Wham, Nik Kershaw. They all make and played great music, to me at least. And no, their music is unlike those mediocre but commercially successful music that people love to listen to now, lest you think so. Now when I listened to their music, I think of all my long-lost school mates and wonder where they are and what they’re doing. Friendships built during schooldays are the most cherished because there are no hidden agenda, no motives in making them. Ah, I have digressed but listening to good music (in particular music from my younger days!) tends to do that to me. Good music is made better by the memories it evokes and that to me is the essence of music appreciation.

Do you think the music produced today highly commercialized with too little artistic value? They’re churned out to please the masses which in turn numb their senses to good music. And in turn, those majority (ha, that word again) will demand more of the same because their senses have become numb to those music, which they deemed to be “good music” in their opinion. It’s a revolving cycle. If you think about it, everything in this world revolves in cycles but that’s another topic for another day :). On a more optimistic note, maybe people nowadays just want to have fun seeing that there’s so much stress in these modern times. And their musical preferences reflect just that. The majority just like “shallow” or “mediocre” music just as they liked short-term relationship, casual sex (well, it does have its appeal but that's another topic again). Anything requiring more attention or even using their mind will be difficult if not impossible to grasp.

So, how could anyone appreciate music that’s mediocre at best and only have commercial appeal. The majority don’t. They just treat music as a product – much like the “physical” goods you buy in stores, to be used and discarded when it’s no longer useful or when it had reached its expiry date. To them, music is just not that important a part in their lives. Many people do not really know what is important anymore these days.

Music, unlike math is not quantifiable (although we can argue it can be quantified - that’s how we get mp3, right?). It is purely an emotional experience. Good music is meant to be enjoyed and cherished, and bad music, to be avoided like the plague!

By the way, I liked Sammi Cheng. She has a beautiful and melodic voice, and I have a friend who is her biggest fan. Such a long grandfather story i'd weaved ...now if you’ll excuse me while I go put on my Sammi Cheng cd...