Unpopular Music Opinions

[Kaius]

what I'm taking from Leatherhead, and this has been the centerpiece of large RM discussions before, is that there are varying objective levels of craftsmanship that go into creating things. This progression of ability may be acquired through thousands of hours practicing at said art, and maybe someone has a more natural proclivity for creation, but there's a often discernible difference between an artist (in any field) that is well-practiced in any form versus someone who is not. None of that has anything to do with subjectivity.

But that doesn't make the art they make objectively good or bad - just objectively practiced. At the end of the day, people can still disagree on whether the techniques they use are effective. Again, in art, there really is no way to quantify things like craftsmanship. You're going to be making a personal judgment at some point, regardless of how "objective" you think your judgment is.

Definitely, effectiveness is a subjective term, but I don't think craftsmanship is. Anything that requires some level of education or practice in order to successfully display identifiable techniques can be qualified as objectively "good", though that is an awful word to use. It's so nondescript and generic that it doesn't really tell us anything in regard to the skill that was applied to a work or it's details.

[tragabigzanda]

[Kaius]

What?

[tragabigzanda]

[LoathedVermin72]

what I'm taking from Leatherhead, and this has been the centerpiece of large RM discussions before, is that there are varying objective levels of craftsmanship that go into creating things. This progression of ability may be acquired through thousands of hours practicing at said art, and maybe someone has a more natural proclivity for creation, but there's a often discernible difference between an artist (in any field) that is well-practiced in any form versus someone who is not. None of that has anything to do with subjectivity.

But that doesn't make the art they make objectively good or bad - just objectively practiced. At the end of the day, people can still disagree on whether the techniques they use are effective. Again, in art, there really is no way to quantify things like craftsmanship. You're going to be making a personal judgment at some point, regardless of how "objective" you think your judgment is.

It seems your definition of "Good" or "Bad" is loaded with notions of an audience having to have a certain response to the art. If the intention of the artist is to make a box, and they make a box that has perfectly symmetrical measurements, every adjoining piece is flush to each other, has been sanded to be super smooth, paint and finish are as smooth as can be and completely free of nicks and/or blemishes, then it'd be pretty hard to say this box art was not crafted well, since these qualities are easily objectively measured. Whether or not anyone cares about or likes this box is a different question, but there's no doubt this box is crafted well. The box succeeds in the artist's intentions of being a box. If the box fell apart after minimal use, it would not be crafted well.

Well now we're getting into defining art. It sounds to me like you're talking about constructing a product. A product like a box or a house or a car can be, for the most part, objectively constructed well or constructed poorly. That doesn't have any bearing, however, on whether it is constructed well or poorly as a work of art. The implications are different. You cannot apply the concept of objective construction to a song or a movie in any meaningful way.

[Kaius]

The box is well made because it has right angles, holds stuff, and doesn't fall apart. A piece of art's objective is rarely so cut-and-dry.

Ah. I completely missed Learherhead's box post.

[chewm]

art sucks

[Mike]

art ist objectively good

[Kaius]

what I'm taking from Leatherhead, and this has been the centerpiece of large RM discussions before, is that there are varying objective levels of craftsmanship that go into creating things. This progression of ability may be acquired through thousands of hours practicing at said art, and maybe someone has a more natural proclivity for creation, but there's a often discernible difference between an artist (in any field) that is well-practiced in any form versus someone who is not. None of that has anything to do with subjectivity.

But that doesn't make the art they make objectively good or bad - just objectively practiced. At the end of the day, people can still disagree on whether the techniques they use are effective. Again, in art, there really is no way to quantify things like craftsmanship. You're going to be making a personal judgment at some point, regardless of how "objective" you think your judgment is.

It seems your definition of "Good" or "Bad" is loaded with notions of an audience having to have a certain response to the art. If the intention of the artist is to make a box, and they make a box that has perfectly symmetrical measurements, every adjoining piece is flush to each other, has been sanded to be super smooth, paint and finish are as smooth as can be and completely free of nicks and/or blemishes, then it'd be pretty hard to say this box art was not crafted well, since these qualities are easily objectively measured. Whether or not anyone cares about or likes this box is a different question, but there's no doubt this box is crafted well. The box succeeds in the artist's intentions of being a box. If the box fell apart after minimal use, it would not be crafted well.

Well now we're getting into defining art. It sounds to me like you're talking about constructing a product. A product like a box or a house or a car can be, for the most part, objectively constructed well or constructed poorly. That doesn't have any bearing, however, on whether it is constructed well or poorly as a work of art. The implications are different. You cannot apply the concept of objective construction to a song or a movie in any meaningful way.

Ehe...see, this I cannot get on board with. I know there is a lot of gray fuzzies and fine lines in this area, but not being able to identify objectively, highly skilled musical and visual compositions might be a personal limitation, but it's not always a matter of opinion.

[Self]

Really, anytime you say something like "you can't judge art," you make yourself sound like a huge tool. It's that kind of egalitarianism that really defines who has anything worthwhile to say about art and who doesn't, because if you can't separate an Eliot poem from a high school diary, you really shouldn't be talking about poetry at all. Same goes for music, same goes for visual art, same goes for cinematography. The objective elements are what allow the emotion to take body in the work of art. You can't appreciate a good scene in a movie if it isn't shot in an artistic manner, and you can't really feel the emotion in a poem if the poet writes about time going "at a snail's pace." And I take this personally as well. I'm trying to be a writer. I'm working very hard at trying to be a writer, and for you to come in here and imply that there's no objective level on which I can improve my writing and that nothing separates me from people who aren't studying poetry and who aren't writing poetry and who aren't making a concerted effort to find their own voices and to write in an authentic and fresh manner? That basically discredits the entirety of what I'm trying to do. Fuck you.

[Kaius]

There it is.

[Self]

It took me a while to find it.

[E.H. Ruddock]

lol

[E.H. Ruddock]

It took me a while to find it.

I always spell egalitarianism wrong

[LoathedVermin72]

[LoathedVermin72]

Just fucking baffled by this conversation.

[Kaius]

I might be missing your point, Vermish.

[LoathedVermin72]

Let's get this straight: I am not necessarily saying all opinions on art are equally "valid." The opinions of individuals are going to be colored not just by their subjective experience, but also by their knowledge and understanding of art, its components, and its history. For example, I would probably put more weight into the opinion of an engaged viewer who has seen many, disparate films than a passive viewer who has only watched a few hundred movies all made after 1990.

However, those are all still subjective opinions. Just because one person's opinions may be "better" (more informed, more articulate), it is still just that - an opinion. You cannot say there is anything objective about it.

No one is saying you can't do things to improve your writing skills, Self. I don't know why you're taking this personally? But your idea of what "better" is is your own. Others may not agree with you. And that's okay. You're talking about how to make things work emotionally. Anything like that, obviously, is subjective. Different people's emotions work are triggered by different things. There are common methods to make these things work. There are historically successful techniques you can study. That still doesn't make them objectively superior to others. These are all opinions. Approaches can differ. And they should.

[Self]

Suck a dick. If you bothered reading, you'd realize that nowhere in here did I say that music is objective. It is not subjective appreciation that I take issue with; it's the naive idea that all music is good music if it expresses emotion (and variations on that idea). There's no denying that there's a huge area of subjective appreciation in music, as in any form of art. But in any form of art, there are also objective standards, and if a song doesn't operate within these objective standards (creative use of line, creative use of metaphor, creative use of language, multiplicity of meaning, authenticity of voice), it's usually drivel.

[LoathedVermin72]

I have no idea why you're getting so hostile and weird about this, dude. Jesus Christ.