Tuesday, February 03, 2015

What is "Bad" Music?

After harping on the true definition of jazz music, I feel compelled to spell out exactly what is bad music or non music.  If I had to estimate a ratio of "real" music to "pop" music on television, I would have to put the percentages at about 95% to 5%.  Pop is heard 95% of the time, while real music is heard 5% of the time.  5% of the time the network must pay a realistic royalty to a composer and publisher.  A few television commercials or shows admit they have actually purchased the 'rights' of a particular song. With Steve Jobs' brain child, the iTunes Store, the royalty scale for ASCAP or BMI must be altered.  I can't imagined writer/publisher members are earning the same royalties they did a decade ago.  I would like to know.  If there is no real music on television than it doesn't have to be paid for.  Simple.  Conan O'Brien evidently lost his theme song when he changed networks, something in my opinion that degrades the show.  A theme song is crucial to establishing a relationship with an audience.  If there is no recognizable theme song, then what transpires is exactly what we have now.  Television programming is a huge wash.  You turn on the TV, find a network show, and it just flows.  There is no rhythm, such as comedic timing.  Once when television writing was at its pinnacle musical timing and comedic timing equally were essential.  This timing is what America has lost and for what has settled.  A wash.  We are being flooded in a huge wash.  There is not real distinction between the background music and the dialog.  Nebulously the inane dialog competes with the music with no real understanding of its content.  For their to be this relationship there must be a concept, an understanding of an idea.  It is far from a wash.  How music contributes to this wash is by defying the use of rhythm.  Instead they use an arrhythmic reciprocating of eighth notes in a 1/4  time signature.  Unlike African music this device has no musical significance.  Instead of carefully planning, choosing, and implementing specific musical lines, it is a wash.  A washout.  Sounds are nondescript, unrefined and blur together.  There is no independence between the voices.  What truly is amazing to me is that the television sounds I hear today are undefined in terms of envelope.  The sounds chosen are washes with no concrete attack and release.  Therefore when I watch the show, my brain fails to solve the riddle.  There is no riddle.  There is nothing to decipher.  There is no connection between the music and the dialog.  There is no reinforcement of the drama with the music.  Instead the music just smears all of art's traditional boundaries into a wash.  Who would want to watch or listen to such a thing?  The answer only is the mindless, because it truly is that.  We do not use our brains at all.  We vegetate.  Instead our brains are reinforced NOT to think.  The words, the sentences, the punctuation, and the paragraphs are reduced to mindless one liners.  One only would watch a few episodes of Seinfeld to see the difference.  It is a cruel, powerful, and evil ruse, the maiming of music.