Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

I'd love to hear a piece of music without melody. Unless it's a percussive piece I don't see how that's possible.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7AIiTeKBUc"]Edgard Varese: Electronic Poem

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOO-n6gQk1s"]Messiaen, Couleurs de la Cité Celeste - YouTube
uhh... would you consider that to be melodic? If you can't hum it, it probably isn't a melody. I wish it was possible to hum Boulez LOL. I love music that has dandy melody AND crazy 21st century weirdness, like Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (polytonal melodic lines and such) or Agon (combination of diatonic and serial methods).

 

So it's a melody only if it sounds good to you?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raga_Mala View Post
Edgard Varese: Electronic Poem
Is that music though? I don't know. You can't play it on traditional notation.

 

Is that music though? I don't know. You can't play it on traditional notation.

 

Well, maybe. What distinguishes a melody from a line of tones? A melody is a specific line of tones that is distinguished from everything else, a recognizable motif. I could hum the trombone part in the video I posted, but the trombone part alone is not a recognizable part of the piece. Composers like the one in my post have a whole ensemble playing their own "line of tones," creating some pretty cool music. I don't really care about defining music, but it has its uses.

 

Here you go, no percussion:
Visions - Devoid of Shadows. At the end of the day, my ear still appreciates musical bits of this piece than those of Trout Mask Replica. Even if the only thing this has going is harmony. What type? I could not say. I wish I had some idea of how this music is produced.

 

This album IS acid

 

That's a terrible definition of music.

Traditional notation is extremely limiting. Even most rock/pop music can't be notated on traditional notation IF you consider the producing/mixing to be part of the musical composition, which for many rock groups it absolutely is.

Your argument is hella circular: "All music is melodic because melody is my definition of music, so anything that's not melodic I exclude from the possibility of being music."

Varese is music.

 

I could go to a mechanic's workshop and hear the same thing there as I do on one of Varèse's pieces. Does that mean the mechanics are playing music? Yes, you can get into the psychology of the musicians themselves but the fact is, all that matters is what the listener hears.

 

Lots of assumptions which are not Universal. The line between music and non-music has been challenged for the last century by intellectuals and musicians. You are presenting a very specific idea of music which is by no means universal, and, as far as I'm concerned, is not even current.

John Cage, Edgard Varese, Gyorgy Ligeti, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Luther Adams...all have composed music that doesn't meet your highly narrow definition.

You're presenting a definition of music that, as far as I'm concerned, is about 70 years out of date. You're entitled to that opinion, but don't cast that judgment out as a universal standard because it's not one.

 

Good ideas don't necessarily succeed bad ones. Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's bad. Especially since music is not a 'thing' we can talk about, but a word describing an aural sensation. I don't believe in universal standards, but a heterodoxy of varied and constantly changing ideas each representing a slice of our knowledge on a subject.

 

I love the Captain and the Magic Band... Drumbo kick ass! The solo in "Sugar and spikes" is the world.

 

Yeah, it's a classic. It can be hard to digest for first-timers - i get it, But, as we all know, it gets better with repeated listens.