Musical Taste Vs Critique And Value

[WizMystery]

Hopefully this is considered relevent to the production of audio...

Everyone has their own distinct musical taste. Not a single person on this earth has the same exact taste as another when measured to an extreme. We use this musical preference to critique the work of another person in a way we think is best. We assign a grade to that work according to how "good" we think it is, believing that musical prowess can be measured in numbers.

I'm rather doubtful of the perfections of this system. I have a feeling that nobody knows how such a system is supposed to truly work, and that we often think we grade objectively as if there is some altruistic definition of good and bad. What exactly is such a grade supposed to define, and who is it supposed to help?

This is open for discussion, and will most likely veer around several topics.

[Kr1z]

Imo its not all 'taste' that defines a score for a track,

I usually judge a track by its originality and its mixing..
Both require effort, some talent, and experience.

[WizMystery]

At 8/17/10 06:39 PM, Kr1z wrote: Imo its not all 'taste' that defines a score for a track,

I usually judge a track by its originality and its mixing..
Both require effort, some talent, and experience.

I actually meant in regards to the music and the composition itself. Though technological elements are important a lot of people measure the value based on the music alone.

[mhzinski]

the grade is supposed to define the general agreement or consensus over how positively the music is received. that's the point of music, it's supposed to create an emotional response, mostly a positive one. if that's the goal of the artist (and I don't understand why it wouldn't be) the number helps them determine how hit or miss they are with their message. this applies universally, from beethoven to grandmaster flash to led zeppelin, and doesn't seem to derive itself from any complexity, just a way of saying what's cool and what's not. nobody who really likes music votes something down based on taste, because if all you like is an already established sound, then you aren't interested in creating or understanding music, just what you can relate to.

[WizMystery]

This is where musical taste comes in, however. What if the artist has a taste unlike anybody else, and therefore cannot transfer his emotions to anyone? Is he then supposed to change his style, or continue what he is doing?

[Gario]

At 8/17/10 06:45 PM, WizMystery wrote:
I actually meant in regards to the music and the composition itself. Though technological elements are important a lot of people measure the value based on the music

Mixing & mastering is a part of the composition of music, so discluding them is naive. Music isn't music until it's received by the listener, and because the production is vital to the reception of the track it really must be considered as a part of the composition itself, not as an afterthought.

As for the system, there are some flaws to it (Zero-bombers, people who use subjective taste to downrank a track, self-boosting, etc.), but because of the public ability to vote on something at leisure the law of averages will win out over the deviants. If a track is being self voted tot he top one way or another then it'll attract the attention of the masses and be voted back to the place it should be. If the song is actually pretty good (but someone zerobombs it first thing) then others can (and, in my experience so far, will) vote it back to it's proper place. Because people have the ability to vote on any track they want the number of honest, objective opinions will weigh heavily against the people that abuse the system.

I think it's about as good as it's going to get, considering what it is. A self-regulated system where people vote others in or out will, over the long run, balance the issues out just fine.

At 8/17/10 07:22 PM, WizMystery wrote: This is where musical taste comes in, however. What if the artist has a taste unlike anybody else, and therefore cannot transfer his emotions to anyone? Is he then supposed to change his style, or continue what he is doing?

If the person is writing music that only s/he enjoys (as unlikely as that is, considering the way music works in the mind) then so be it - they're writing music only they enjoy. Depending on what they want to do with their music, they may continue to write music only for themselves (if they don't care about public opinion and, therefore, the music business as a whole) or they may adapt and adjust their style to fit some criteria that an audience will understand, appreciate and enjoy. Writing for yourself is one thing; writing for an audience is a whole other experience.

[WizMystery]

I should mention that I'm talking about any rating system in general, and not just the one on NG, where we have experienced musicians rating experienced musicians. Since a lot of people here do base their score on mixing & mastering, I'd understand the response. I'm talking more about professional artists who sell their music, and by doing so allow the average joe to respond.

The main reason why I brought this up is because when people buy an album and like it, they then often become a fan of the band/artist. If they buy an album and hate it, they'll avoid the artist at all costs. Then there are people who hate the artist because they think the music is too "simple and stupid" or "complex and... stupid". Then there are people who hate the artist for no particular reason. Then there are people who judge the artist based on their looks. Then there are... you get what I mean here, right?

It seems everyone has their own idea about how a rating system should be. Yet even though this is true, we all form a general opinion using the only rating there is. Some people put thought into their reviews, while others don't. Often, fans of the band will just rate everything they put out a 5/5. Some people don't feel that way all the time, but a large portion of a band's fanbase seems to be just that, regardless of the type of music they put out. Is this supposed to help the artist? Is this supposed to help the consumer? It does neither; new consumers are not fans and will most likely have a different opinion, and the artists don't know how much they need to improve (if they aren't just making money). In the case of pop, many haters of pop will go around rating all pop 0/5 just because of the genre. This rarely happens in the underground, because most fans of pop don't know any underground artists, while everyone knows pop artists. This has given pop a bad name, but is it justified, or not?

If you were to ignore all mixing/mastering factors, how would you rate the music? When you hear a piece of music, you have a million choices.

If you happen to like it, you can either:

Rate it 5/5 simply because you enjoyed it.
Rate it as an experienced musician and find its weak points in your opinion.
Rate it as an experienced musician, believing that there is some general definition of good/bad.
Move on because you believe there is no good or bad music.

If you didn't like it, you can either:

Walk away because this is probably not in your taste.
Rate it low because you didn't like it.
Find out why you didn't like it (aside from musical taste) and rate it based on that.
Find out why you didn't like it, thinking everything you don't like is that way because it's "bad."
Move on because you believe there is no good or bad music.

And probably several other options that I'm not thinking of.

I'll end this post with a few questions:

What exactly is musical taste? Is it what you enjoy based on principle? Is it what you enjoy based on the result as a whole?

Is there such thing as good or bad musical taste? Is there really some definition of good or bad music?

[InvisibleObserver]

Read the entirety of this thread... bit long winded.

At 8/18/10 01:13 PM, WizMystery wrote: What exactly is musical taste?

An opinion?

I don't think an opinion has anything to do with what we know, or how knowledgeable we are of some objective voting practice and our ability to follow through it, but how willing we are to take the time and factor in as much as we can when judging our disposition in relation to that of anothers music. For most people, musically active and not, this is a common severe short coming where musical parasites has become the norm, and everyone suddenly feels their critique is worth something, regardless of the time and thought behind their opinion. The result is a lot of discrepancies and varied view points that spur up the need for people to make forum posts about it.

[WizMystery]

At 8/18/10 01:43 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote:

Read the entirety of this thread... bit long winded.

At 8/18/10 01:13 PM, WizMystery wrote: What exactly is musical taste?

An opinion?

I don't think an opinion has anything to do with what we know, or how knowledgeable we are of some objective voting practice and our ability to follow through it, but how willing we are to take the time and factor in as much as we can when judging our disposition in relation to that of anothers music. For most people, musically active and not, this is a common severe short coming where musical parasites has become the norm, and everyone suddenly feels their critique is worth something, regardless of the time and thought behind their opinion.

I know it's just an opinion, that was just the catagory I was putting the two following questions in.

This statement is exactly the problem I have with rating systems. Everyone has their own opinion about how another opinion should be, causing two tiers of possible disagreement.

People do fight over opinions as if either one of them had the "right" answer. Is it justified? No, absolutely not. However, nothing is done about it, and we continue on our way accepting that this will always happen. In a large number of cases, the system does more harm than good. I have a feeling this sort of system is the reason our opinions have become so divided. You are aware of the Metal VS Pop feud the music industry has today, right? A lot of people have become exclusive to a single genre, and hate everything but that genre.

If everyone's opinions were more detailed and thought out, then I think these divisions wouldn't matter as much, as people would actually respect each other's opinion. Nobody is educated about criticism, and therefore many do base their opinion subjectively. While having everyone agree on how objective an opinion should be would mean mass conformity...

I'm not implying that I actually wish everyone had to be educated about criticism, I'm just posing questions here and sharing a few thoughts.

The result is a lot of discrepancies and varied view points that spur up the need for people to make forum posts about it.

Are you implying this isn't a topic worthy of discussion?

[InvisibleObserver]

At 8/18/10 02:53 PM, WizMystery wrote: Are you implying this isn't a topic worthy of discussion?

Suggesting if there wasn't some weird fundamentals with how people view music, this topic wouldn't exist. If I thought it wasn't worth discussing I wouldn't have posted. It is certainly a sensitive subject that could be riddled with meaningless rabble. (So far so good) :P

I find if you leave people to their own devices critiquing a song, their critiques often are quite weak, but if you sit with them and ask them question after question about a piece you can riggle much more out of them. Usually remarks like "there is nothing wrong with it, I just don't like it" end up coming out that they wouldn't have offered had they not been prompted to be more thorough.

What I was sort of saying in my above post is a lot of judging has to do with how much some one is going to govern their opinion, or tailor it to be a criticism. A comment like "It rocks" obviously says less then "It rocks, to me, because...", but most people don't bother taking time to justify (or explain) their opinions. Which then of course looks lousy when there things like "It hurted my ears." being said.

[WizMystery]

At 8/18/10 04:55 PM, InvisibleObserver wrote:

At 8/18/10 02:53 PM, WizMystery wrote: Are you implying this isn't a topic worthy of discussion?

Suggesting if there wasn't some weird fundamentals with how people view music, this topic wouldn't exist. If I thought it wasn't worth discussing I wouldn't have posted. It is certainly a sensitive subject that could be riddled with meaningless rabble. (So far so good) :P

I find if you leave people to their own devices critiquing a song, their critiques often are quite weak, but if you sit with them and ask them question after question about a piece you can riggle much more out of them. Usually remarks like "there is nothing wrong with it, I just don't like it" end up coming out that they wouldn't have offered had they not been prompted to be more thorough.

What I was sort of saying in my above post is a lot of judging has to do with how much some one is going to govern their opinion, or tailor it to be a criticism. A comment like "It rocks" obviously says less then "It rocks, to me, because...", but most people don't bother taking time to justify (or explain) their opinions. Which then of course looks lousy when there things like "It hurted my ears." being said.

Yeah, and then the artist can either get completely offended or ignore the comment. Some comments can actually hurt the artist's outlook on their own music without the comment being justified in any way. Would a change in this system be a good thing, or even possible?

[InvisibleObserver]

At 8/18/10 05:12 PM, WizMystery wrote: Yeah, and then the artist can either get completely offended or ignore the comment. Some comments can actually hurt the artist's outlook on their own music without the comment being justified in any way.

Any artist who gets hurt needs to understand why the comment hit a nerve. If it is, the comment probably holds some truth to it, otherwise ignoring it would be easy.

Would a change in this system be a good thing, or even possible?

Most of what we've outlined here relays to other systems as well.

NG's is being worked upon and from what I understand will be a great update and overhaul both for users and mods, while placing a more secure system in place. There was an interview done with Tom Fulp and he mentioned updates, a few threads in the past 2 summer months in which.... Lil Jim and another of the mods openly said their working on things and generally "please stop complaining". A couple older regulars I think have discussed with the programmers of the update some outlines. If you look around you should find something.

So probably possible and a good thing.

[Gario]

I believe my earlier post referred to any popularity-based system, so what I said still holds in it's entirety. Newgrounds is an entirely public voting system, so there's no way we can know the musical experience of the general voting population. The people that review the music often lean towards being experienced musicians, but that says little about the general voters.

Let's look at the other voting system and observe the law of averages in action. We have a mediocre band that has a fanbase that will 'vote a 5' on everything they do. This will draw the attention to everyone who's shopping for music, so others will check it out. Their mediocrity will show forth and those people will vote based on how they felt about it. How many more laypeople are there than the 'fanboys'?

I'm going to throw out a number here - probably over 100x more laypeople than fanboys of any particular band (and that's a huge understatement, for the most part). The law of averages essentially says that because the average person's vote is so much larger than the fanboys, their vote will be what is reflected on the consensus. So despite the fanboy attempt to artificially raise the 'score', that score will be an average one.

If I were to ignore mixing/mastering... I think you missed my comment on that earlier (which shouldn't be tossed out as an 'opinion'). Aside from that, the law of averages will balance the opinions, the trolling, the educated voting, the average voting and everything in between out, so in the end you'll have a number that accurately represents 'how good' the music is in as objective a manner as possible.

What is 'Musical Taste'? It's the culmination of neural pattern recognition networks that form in the brain, associating familiar patterns with something 'you like' and unfamiliar patterns with something 'you don't like' (a limbic inclination formed due to the advantage being wary of the unfamiliar really ha). Thus, the more you listen to music (and recognize the patterns, unconsciously) the more varied your 'musical taste' becomes.