Too much music

[Violoncello]

I'm wondering what others think about the proposition that we are bombarded with too much music these days? It seems to be thrown at us every moment of the day. Like watching news-24, introduced by the same synthesised piece of dross that goes on for a full minute. Then, the moment the presenter starts this drum machine starts up. Then there are the ipods churning out stuff that passes for music but it's dross, the philosophy being that it doesn't matter if it's good as long as it keeps coming.

It makes me wonder if music isn't being devalued. Am I just grouching or what? I'd love to hear what others think.

[reith]

Agree about 90%. Until a century ago people heard music live but since the invention of media to disseminate music, then the media a a whole, it's insidiously got itself into our lives. I've come to think that the dross you speak of is a kind of opium, just as television and football are, to keep people's minds off important issues around them. I don't want to sound the cynic but better people have their thoughts blocked than get concerned about the state of the world.

cheers,
reith

[Thorolf]

This topic can be covered in full by two of my favourite quotes:

1% of the people think; 9% of the people think they think; and the other 90% would rather die than think.
Thomas Edison

People want to be relieved of thinking, as reith said, and filling the senses is a way of avoiding to think. But it has gone on since old times, priests were initially scared by printed books for everyone: If people was allowed to drown themselves in literature, what would the world come to? Then you got the radio, and it was, and still is, many people’s favourite dope (I never listen to the radio…)

Which leads me to the conclusion that it’s the art of listening that is diminishing in proportion to music exposure, which is bad, but I doubt that the amount of total listening has gone down—I rather suspect that the percentage of people that actually listen may have risen by a small fraction, due to enhanced possibilities!

And the second quote, kindly provided by Ballaw de Quincewold elsewhere on the board:

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Igor Stravinsky



Regards

[reith]

It looks like the UK broadcasters missed a trick when "going digital". They could have organised it so the viewer could turn off music and commentary separately (as they do subtitles).

Commentary because e.g. I gave up watching skating in anger over this commentator waffling on over the music and performance with the most inane details of what the skater was doing. The don't do it with ballet or opera.

Music because it is just dross as violoncello said - the snooker last night...various contestants were talking about themselves in the lead up to part 'x' of the quarter finals...and there it was, inane guitar music burbling away behind them. Why oh why?

Trouble is, this thread has drawn my attention to it.

[el-russo]

Hi,
Don't you guys think that not everything we hear can be called "music"?
Sure there's a lot of "organized" noise we hear around us, but that's what it always was like. It's like paintings and drawings. Do million images of, say, Ninja Turtles on chewing gum wrappers diminish the value of frescoes in Sistine Chapel or fulfill our need of the divine so much that we don't need to remember Michaelangelo after seeing them?
Regards,
el-russo

[ttw]

Lily Tomlin did say, "I worry that the person who invented Muzak is working on something else."

It's not so much the quantity as the misuse of music that affect me somewhat similarly to juniper pollen. Too many TV shows (and movies) play loud music behind people's lines (especially, true crime shows which are otherwise well done.) The music isn't appropriate to the situation and makes it difficult to hear the words.