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Old 03.28.2006, 06:40 PM   #38
noumenal
expwy. to yr skull
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels
also, i think the whole business of disecting art is largely a skam cooked up by academics to keep themselves in jobs, because every budding academic i've ever spoken to has told me the reason they want to be an academic is so they don't have to get a real job in the real world. and that's probably true of critics too.

I grew up hating literary criticism. I loved reading, but I couldn't stand the wankering that we would do in English class - making conjectures about symbolism and so on.

However, music theory is copletely different. When I do music theory, I don't try to figure out what music means, that would be pointless. I just try to figure out how it works and doing that makes me a better musician, but more importantly, it makes me enjoy the music more. Listening to music is one thing, but listening after having played it and analyzed it is completely different. The reason I love music theory is because of the power it has to help me understand and enjoy music more.

Some people think that doing this is like learning how a magic trick is performed - that it takes away something from the experience, but this is completely wrong. If you haven't had the epiphany of understanding how a particular piece of music does what it does, you're missing out. I agree that music is "emotional and spiritual", but it is also intellectual and it isn't magic.

This distrust of academia is disturbing. The academic study of the arts has fallen behind, I'll give you that. It needs to catch up, particularly in music. But it's difficult because people don't want to change. On both sides. Rock music could benefit from a different viewpoint as well. However, I think that the tactic that a lot of academics take towards pop music is stupid as hell. All they talk about are the lyrics and sociological aspects - and this is the kind of crap that T&B is talking about. I shit on that stuff. But it would be great for rock music if there was a more systemized attempt to understand it musically. Ultimately, it would make for better music. IMO, rock music has yet to produce anything that can come close to the greatest music in the classical tradition. And it never will if people keep viewing music as magic that ought not be dissected.
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