For the first time, MusicRadar asked me to write about a couple of scientific papers rather than a song or album. The basic argument of both papers is that popular music is getting simpler over time.
The papers have some limits to their data sets and methodology that should lead you to take their sweeping conclusions with a grain of salt. The meta-level point is that anytime anyone else wants to pay me to critically explain academic papers in plain language, I am open to it.
> The authors recognize: “our focus on MIDI data inherently limits the scope of our analysis to structural aspects of music, such as note transitions and melodic complexity. Other critical dimensions, such as lyrics, timbre, production techniques, and cultural context, remain unexplored.” In Bach, note transitions and melodic complexity are indeed the structural aspects of music. Is that true for Jimi Hendrix or Kendrick Lamar? I would argue that for those artists, the other critical dimensions are the structural elements.
While yes, the MIDI analysis is very limited, I don’t quite agree with this. I would say that eg timbre, phrasing, flow and cultural context are essential in Hendrix and Lamar and could be called “critical” aspects, that’s not the same as saying they are “structural”. I don’t think these aspects could be called structural, except maybe timbre in some cases.
What is the difference between critical and structural? If the notes on the page are the structural elements of a Kendrick Lamar song, then it has no structure at all. There are certainly people who believe that to be true, but I am not one of them. The idea that one musical parameter is more fundamental than another is a cultural convention. It seems silly to me to apply the conventions of Western European historical music when trying to understand rap, it’s like analyzing Beethoven in terms of his percussion parts.
I found this to be a very interesting column. My feeling is that a lot of things are getting simpler. Nicholas Carr wrote a fascinating book about fifteen years ago, called “The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to Our Brains. His thesis is that click culture is shortening attention spans and leading to less deep analysis of things. And more recent writers are stating that the advent of AI is going to greatly accelerate these trends. Anna Lembke, in her book “Dopamine Nation” addresses the same subject in a slightly different way, more from a psychiatric viewpoint. As an amateur musician, I know that to really learn to play music requires a lot of what the Germans refer to as “sitzfleisch,” or the ability to put your butt in a chair and spend a lot of time learning something. As David Crosby said, “You have to put in your ten thousand hours to become a decent guitar player.” My feeling is that fewer people have the ability or willingness to do this. I am 69 years old, and was at Woodstock, and I have gotten used to the eye rolls when I give my humble opinion that in the 60’s and early seventies the level of musicianship and talent was higher in pop and rock than it is today. “Old farts always think their music was better.” Of course we have great musicians and song writers today, but I feel that it is not the same.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a video on you tube by FIL of “Wings of Pegasus.” He is extremely knowledgeable about music and analyzes different types of performances. He has a Woodstock series, in which he analyzes musical performance from the 69 festival. He analyzed a performance by Johnny Winter, and stated that in his opinion the level of musical talent was a lot higher back then, and there was a “deeper bench.” And FIL is a younger guy who was not born when Woodstock took place.
Just sayin’.
As you can see from all the Grateful Dead analysis on this blog, I am deeply interested in 1960s and 70s rock and have a lot of affection for it, but I don’t think it’s any better than anything that went before it or came after it. I appreciate the spirit of adventure in the hippies’ music, but their actual playing can be abominable. The standards for musicianship are hugely higher now than they were back then. I also don’t think there’s any direct relationship between complexity and quality. I am a hip-hop lover, and one of the things I love about it is its economy, directness and focus. It can make rock sound self-indulgent and shallow. Is the culture in general better or worse now than it was in 1970? I couldn’t say. I wouldn’t go back, on balance.
Is music research getting dumber, because more mathematicians are analysing it? Has the number of non-musicians writing academic papers about music increased in the last 50 years? Has the number of nonsensical statements in music research studies increased at the same rate?
Pop can be dumb and crappy musically,not all, Then look at some one chord BLUES, it can be intense, enough too make you cry.J.L Hooker, or J.Hendrix on slow version of Voodoo Chile,,one chord,a lot of pop guitar players couldn`t touch some of that one chord stuff, ya ya..
Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything inherently good about complexity.