Why wash cycle, why. Just because you play an instrument does not give you the right to rag on artist/musicians. If you don't like pop music, thats fine, but you need to understand that sometimes people want to write the music they like to play/preform. Opeth plays what they like and Pop artist enjoy what they do. Also, I may not like N'SYNC, but I know it takes talent to sing. I know, I've tried. Now just because you don't like the way they sing doesn't mean they have no talent. That'd be Like me saying that Jimi Page had no talent just because I don't like Led Zep. Its ignorant.

are you a musician or just a listener of music? seriously... because yes ultimately the end product is what you end up hearing, but the process is JUST AS IMPORTANT. I hate to use this example because not everyone agrees on the musical value of this band, but Opeth's take on songwriting creates far more interesting output than fucking anything you hear on the radio. Mikael starts with the shell of a song, and the members of the band improvise their own parts in the studio, writing the music as they go, so that as much of the soul of the individual musician is infused into the final product. This can be done in extensively planned out music as well, ala Mark Knopfler's solo material, but when a pop musician goes into the studio, and the song is already written for them, the tracks have been recorded and all they do is sing the lines that have been given them, the final product sounds mechanical, boring and contrived. Not to mention that most pop-singers either a) have extremely boring stock-type singing voices or b) are graced with a technically amazing set of vocal chords but they have no soul whatsoever

My main musical concern is composition.  The process/means is/are extremely important to music in general, but not to the actual listening experience itself.  Here's why:

Let's say someone gives you an unlabeled CD-R with a bunch of recordings on it.  Let's also say that you absolutely cannot find any information whatsoever on the music.  Now all the tracks have vocals and other instrumentation as well.  When you listen to this music and decide if you like it or not, the process involved in making this music has absolutely no effect on your experience of the music.  Unlike the Opeth example you gave above, you cannot say that the keyboardist gives his own particular soul to the track by improvising over something the rhythm guitarist is playing, and so forth.  You have no idea how many musicians were involved in the writing and recording of the track; you have no idea who did what; nor do you even have any idea whether something was improvised or not.  Even if the recording sounds just like a Justin Timberlake song, for all you know the guy singing it could be the only one involved (wrote the song, produced it, sang it, etc.).  In this case you cannot judge the song based on the singer's involvement in the songwriting; you cannot judge on the song based on improv skills; hell, you can't even judge the song based on "technical skill" on an instrument (what if this artist or group of artists is/are crazy good at programming and programmed an unbelievably realistic acoustic drum sampler?).  The list goes on, you have no idea if the singer can really sing or not (what if he or his partner is just an amazing producer who flawlessly pitch-corrected his performance?), etc.

The ONLY judgments you can make are: I like the way these drums sound; the singer's voice is a bit annoying; the guitar is mixed too loud; etc.  THESE are qualities of the music and THESE are what should be judged.  If the attributes I mentioned in the previous paragraph truly mattered to the listening experience, you'd be unable to judge whether the aforementioned CD-R sounds good or not.  The truth is that I know you WOULD be able to judge it, because I know that if you heard a song on the radio, you wouldn't have to read the Wiki on the band before you thought to yourself "This sounds good" or "This sounds like ass."

Now, with regard to the process/means, as I said it's very important outside of the listening experience.  For instance, I have a lot of respect for musicians who conceive music largely for a certain instrument and then obtain a degree of technical proficiency which allows them to fluidly realize that music.  Hell, John Petrucci influenced me to practice guitar 6 hrs/day and I kept it up for about 6 months.  I also like hearing about certain methods of composition (such as the Opeth example above), as they could be useful to me as someone who writes music.  It's always great when musicians find processes that result in themselves or their band making great music.

Your situation is the following:  You genuinely like Opeth, Miles Davis, etc. and genuinely don't like pop.  The reasons why are basic issues of taste (ex. simply prefer Miles Davis's trumpet solos to Justin Timberlake's vocal harmonies).  You also have an admiration for the means your favorite musicians have developed for realizing their own particular style of music (technical skill on an acoustically-based instrument, improvisation technique, etc.).  Now, your error is in relating the pleasure of the listening experience to your admiration for your favorite musicians' means.  Thus, in equating pleasure with admiration for means you assume that since you don't get any pleasure out of pop music, the means that its musicians use to create their music must be inherently flawed (which is why you're shitting all over every convention in the creation of pop music).  I've already shown with the hypothetical example above how ultimately irrelevant the means are to the end.  As I said, in actuality your qualms with pop music are simple issues of taste (ex. you don't like how mechanical and rigid it sounds).  I bet if you found Justin Timberlake's music catchy you'd be much more accepting of pop music recording practice.

By the way, the danger in the excessive importance you put on the means is that it limits you as a musician.  Because your error results in an apprehension towards pop recording conventions, you will always be prejudiced towards them and never be willing to attempt to use them to make something you actually do like.

With regard to my own music, I have a pretty decent voice.  It's slightly on the "rock" side but pretty sing-songy (I think I sound a lot like Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age).  A lot of what I write and what I'm inspired to write is instrumental, often completely electronic.  Being a big fan of a lot of pop music and extreme musical clarity a la Mozart (and Rihanna for that matter), it influences my music.  I imagine that if my voice sounded like Justin Timberlake's and I recorded a very electronic, poppy song, you'd hate it because it was written by a big group of uninspired songwriters and sung by someone who had never composed a note in his life, right?

well you pretty much trashed me there

but at the same time, it is impossible to listen to music in the hypothetical situation that you have created.

It's really not and I know this because it's the way I listen to music (and the way I've been listening to music since around age 16).  I also have a diverse range of friends who have no problem listening to music this way as well.  In fact, it's been a long time since I've even had this argument because it's such a given in my usual musical circle.

Listening to classical music in any other way greatly short-changes the experience.  Some composers are almost completely incomprehensible any other way (ex. Bach, Schoenberg, Xenakis).

Maybe this is part of the 'mature listening experience' that you have mentioned previously, but I'm gonna be a dick here for a second. I think that this sense of open-mindedness that you have given yourself is merely something you've come up with to justify your guilty pleasures. You enjoy Justin Timberlakes music, or Rihanna or whatever, but the difference between you and I here, is it that while yeah I may find something that I like, I still realize that the music I am listening to is pretty much awful by all musical standards. You listen to music based upon how much pleasure you get out of hearing it. Many people do... and I dont think that there is anything wrong with pleasure seeking, I have hedonistic tendencies, but I also consider myself an artist and thus there is far more to get out of embracing other people's work in the field than simple amusement or enjoyment.

...

Why is it so difficult for you to just say that you don't like something because you don't dig the way it sounds?  Of course Rihanna's music is a lot different stylistically than Prokofiev's but neither one is necessarily anymore pleasurable than the other to me.  This distinction you make between candy and vegetables just does not exist for me.  I listen to all genres with the exact same ears and I'm willing to completely submit myself to any music and experience it on its terms (listen to it as fun music if it's designed to be fun, somber if designed to be somber, campy if designed to be campy, etc.).  I pay just as much attention to a Beethoven Symphony as I do a Christina Aguilera song.  I get as much raw, euphoric pleasure from Justin Timberlake as I do Bach; of course they elicit this from me in completely different ways, but they still both supply genuine, chills-down-the-spine, moist-eyed pleasure.  The way you break music up into two brands of pleasure, one genuine and one frivolous, is simply a result of your erroneous thinking that I pointed out in my last post, which results in undue prejudice towards genres you don't like with creative processes that differ from your own.  It's your loss, though.

I disagree that I would appreciate and approve of pop music recording process if I enjoyed pop music. case and point: I hate the sound of animals fighting. I absolutely cannot stand their music, but I absolutely love the way that they record music. It is a brilliant idea, but the final product of their experimentation is jarring and not pleasant to listen to. Thus conversely I make my case.

Rephrase...I have no idea what you're trying to say.  Animals fighting, recording music, what?

but anyway, I am a musician first and foremost, I listen to a lot of music for reasons other than pleasure, and I think that this is at the heart of why I dislike pop music. There is nothing for me to get out of it.   Granted I'm not saying I dont listen to music to gain pleasure from it, but at the same time, I feel that listening to music improves me as a musician. One does not become good at something without imitating those who have come before, no one sits down at an easel and paints Starry Night, you know what I mean? Often times, the music I listen to, I listen to first to get a musical idea out of it, a certain emotion or vibe that is unique to a particular artist (and especially in my case, with the drummers). I have always been a jazz drummer, but for the longest time my style was stagnant, and then I discovered bebop and cool jazz, and the drummers therein opened up a whole new rhythmic world for me, the jarring syncopation and accent patterns completely revolutionized the way I play music. I dont get that from Justin Timberlake, and since I dont find his melodies to be catchy or find his voice to be interesting, I dont enjoy it, and thus there is no reason for me to listen to his music.

I listen to all music for pleasure and of course as a music fan and composer myself I learn from the music by noticing what parts of the music I enjoy the most.  This is different from factoring the means into the aesthetic experience because these things I'm noticing are purely sensory (or extra-sensory if used for aesthetic purposes; campiness).  The irony of this little quoted bit is that you actually sound like you agree with me here.  You don't enjoy Timberlake's voice, his melodies, or anything about his music.  Thus, it's not a pleasurable experience and there is nothing to learn from it (because there are no especially pleasurable parts to notice).  Nothing wrong with that.  All you're saying is that Timberlake doesn't line up with your taste, which is exactly what I've been trying to get you to realize since this argument began.  You're right, there is no reason for you to listen to it, just like there's no reason for me to listen to most jazz, because it's not very pleasurable to me and I also gain nothing from it as a consequence.

I suppose that puts me in no place to judge whether his music is 'good' or 'bad', but I can certainly say from my standpoint that it is completely devoid of substance and thus worthless to me

Completely devoid of substance in relation to your own personal taste, yes.

I also have an extreme issue here, and this is mostly on principle. If I know that the music that I'm listening to was made for one reason, to be marketed to the masses, then I am much less apt to like it. And your pure listening experience argument doesnt apply here either, becuase I can tell what something is by listening to it. I can tell the difference between music in the 'pop' genre made by people who are musicians (for example Maroon5) and those who are not (Fergie) just by listening to it. If the people are only making the music to make money then I am going to have some serious issues with it and thus most likely not enjoy it.

You cannot tell this just by listening to it, as I pointed out earlier.  Like I said, if my voice sounded like Timberlake's and I recorded an electronic poppy song, posted it here and said it was by a new pop artist, you'd hate it because the singer had nothing to do with the writing and that it was just a money machine, which would of course be completely false.  Timberlake has songwriting credits on every track on his most recent album, I imagine if you'd actually listened to his music, you in all your psychic glory would somehow be able to detect that he is one of three songwriters for "SexyBack" and one of four songwriters for "My Love," right?

The Sound of Animals Fighting is a band, look them up, their recording process is difficult to describe concisely, but it is fascinating imo

Yeah, caps would've helped.  I looked up their recording process.  Look at my last post:

"which results in undue prejudice towards genres you don't like with creative processes that differ from your own"

I should add "significantly" after "differ."  This band has enough in common with the means by which the musicians you DO like make music for you to be sympathetic.  They play standard instruments and improvise, which are things that you admire in the bands you actually like and attribute to a positive listening experience, thus your sympathy in this regard allows you to be more open-minded to their ideas.

but see when you look at it objectively, jazz is far superior to pop music in literally every way except for the enjoyment factor that people get out of it at the macro level. The difference between you and I is that you're all about the subjective experience, and I take the objective into account more when I listen to music.

There are no "objective" factors on which to base this superiority; I've already shown you why all these "objective" factors are irrelevant.  The only objective qualities of music are concrete sensory attributes (ex. trebly vs. bassy; loud vs. soft; etc.) and things like form (but not form's value, only its nature).

Because Justin Timberlakes lyrics (that he didnt write) and song structures (that he didnt write) are soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo interesting.

His lyrics fit the music and the song structures cater to what I like most about the music: the tonal and timbral arrangement, and yes that is interesting within pleasure (as is any music that one likes).  And as I said Timberlake has songwriting credits on every one of his tracks on his most recent (and best) album.

Bottom line: I've already showed you very clearly why all this "objective" criteria that you demand of music is ultimately irrelevant.  You never actually argued my points; you've basically just ignored them and continued treating these ideas as relevant.  This is called dogmatism and basically it's obvious that you're unwilling to question your musical positions under any circumstances (which is a shame; almost the entirety of my philosophy regarding both music and life has arisen out of questioning my beliefs in the context of discussion).  I had a gut feeling that you'd be unwilling but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and continued the discussion because I know that strong feelings toward something don't necessarily imply dogmatism.  But basically there's no point in arguing with someone if that person is unwilling to question his position, so I'm not going to bother anymore.

EDIT:  If you're genuinely open to questioning your positions then you don't fully understand my points logically (because you keep bringing up things that I've already refuted without addressing that refutation), in which case I just don't have the stamina and motivation to make it crystal clear for you.  Virtually my entire argument against what you've said in your last post can be logically deduced from my previous post.

EDIT 2:  Actually my bad, virtually my entire argument against what you've said in your last 2 posts can be logically deduced from the post I made before my previous post.

Clearly though, you are far more educated about music than I am, you study music in college or whatever you're doing. You're more qualified to make objective judgements on music, and yet you discard them in favor of the subjective experience, which you have hinted at as being the 'mature listening experience'. You listen to music to gain pleasure from it, I listen to music for different reasons and therein lies the subjective difference in taste between the two of us. Ultimately no one is better or worse for it in the end.

You're overrating a formal education in music.  I only mentioned my musical background in the other thread to show you the dangers of stereotyping.  Most music programs are geared towards performance, form/theory, and history in that order.  Even history is typically presented in a mostly technical manner.  These kinds of discussions and issues are more the stuff of philosophy, English, and (visual) art pedagogy.  I think it's unfortunate that musical pedagogy is lacking in this regard (so do a lot of professors, I'm sure, and it was interesting to see how my freshman music history professor tried to work this kind of discussion into the class, although it was pretty lightweight), but that's a completely different topic.  Only two people I regularly discuss music with have any formal music training at all, and one just has training in theory (no form, analysis, counterpoint).  There's only one person I've ever had an involved musical discussion with at my school, and even then it was comparatively lightweight.  The only way to engage yourself in this fashion in a standard music program is to directly sit down with professors and talk.  There's only one professor I've had good discussions with so far but 3rd and 4th year theory students at my school are required to do independent studies, which are projects the students choose themselves (research, composition, etc.) supervised by a suitable faculty member.  So those will be excellent opportunities to grow as a musician through direct conversation with them about important musical issues.  (A bit off topic but I don't want you to have any misconceptions about what it means to be a music major if you plan on being one, assuming you're 17 like it says in your profile.  Most people in music programs are no more or less "qualified" to have this discussion than you are.)

Secondly, our dispute has nothing to do with objectivity/subjectivity.  We both look at objective truths and make subjective judgments about them; our difference is in our choice of objects with regard to the listening experience (again, I consider the bulk of your choice irrelevant).

Thirdly, I don't look down on you for holding the opinion you do.  It's not uncommon; there's even a name for it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism ).  Your flavor of rockism is different from that of a lot of 50-year-old Doobie Brothers fans, but it's rooted in the general idea nonetheless.  It's simply a contemporary, rock-oriented form of a division between high and low art.  Such divisions have existed for a long time and have historically been often associated with class elitism, but today it seems more often associated with cultural elitism within class.  The thing is, though, the concept of a division between high and low art is from what I can tell mainly associated with critics and listeners (who generally make such a division usually for the aforementioned elitist reasons).  Among artists, this division has largely been nonexistent: Josquin and others wrote masses on popular tunes, Wagner played theater tunes by ear on the piano, Bartok and Kodaly incorporated into their music tunes and ideas from eastern European folk music, Schoenberg is especially notable for the way he integrated German cabaret into his music, countless composers including Bolcom and Stravinsky have incorporated ragtime into their music, not to mention once you get to John Cage, postmodernism, pop art, etc. even the philosophy evolves in the eyes of critics (and more explicitly in the eyes of artists) to destroy any division between high and low art that might have existed.  Still, though, I even think those arguing for a division in bygone eras would disagree with your reasoning in relation to the means/ends; they would more likely just create certain requirements that the ends must satisfy to be considered "high art" (ex. a musical piece must develop organically to be considered high art).  Rockism is just an unfortunate musical prejudice that has grown out of the same basic attitude a lot of elderly people today had (or still have) towards rock music.  I think in a large way our society breeds it (virtually everyone who gets into music via rock falls into that trap initially, and a lot of people remain in it).

Anyway, enough of this, back to Rihanna.  I was shown this yesterday ( http://www.totes-isotoner.com/category/totes/rihanna+.do ).   ​  Best.idea.ever.  I'm totally ordering one (that cheap, pink one  ).

AHH Velfarre beat me to it!!

uh didn't read this topic but justin timberlake rules

Have you heard the new single with 50 Cent ("She Wants It")?  Timbaland was involved, too.  It's probably one of my favorite Timberlake-Timbaland collaborations.  I'm not a 50 Cent fan (boring flow, just overall boring rapper) but he fits into the track perfectly while Timberlake's vocals and Timbaland's crazy beat just take it to another level.

http://nobodydancenomore.blogspot.com/2007/07/she-wants-it.html

yeah except you find it awesome and i find it really dumb

i mean i'm all for merchandising but anyone that was talking about SYMBOLISM and stuff...this kind of stabs that in the ribs

It's like if Johnathan Swift sold chocolate babies.  Suddenly A Modest Proposal would start looking pretty dumb.

Pop music is typically such a well-stirred mixture of seriousness and campiness that a Rihanna-brand umbrella is not out of place at all.