A few says ago I saw a facebook post that made me cringe. Which, honestly, happens quite frequently, but this post in particular needed to be blogged about:
Music should never been deemed good or bad by the way it sounds, But by the way it makes you feel.
Ouch. While I agree that a judgement of musical quality should not be based solely on physical sound, one must not forget that sound is the mode of communication that music uses. Sound is contained in the very definition of music. Additionally, sound is an emotionally evokative phenomenon; one of the most elementary examples of this is the common association of minor keys with sadness or darkness.
Feeling is very poor ground for determining the "goodness" or "badness" of music. While judgement of musical quality will always be subjective to a certain degree, leaving it entirely up to feeling ignores the technique and specific choices of the composer. Musical value is morbidly reduced by the exculsive "feeling criteria."
Sound and feeling work together with a number of other elements, among them being time, thought, and careful planning, to produce good music. What I would consider "bad" music would be something that breaks rules and strategies of writing music, without artistic purpose.
Yes, I did just pull a facebook post apart. I have no life.
Actually, I take that back. I have spent countless hours and days on music; I am studying it as a minor in college. I am far from well read in music theory and literature, but I believe that the past several months have given me a more accurate understanding of what music is. So I do, in fact, have a life.
Reducing the quality-determining factor of such an intricate and mysterious, yet beautifully systematic phenomenon as music to something so base and loose as "feeling" is a rash statement deserving of correction.
I will now return my soapbox to the closet and wish you all a wonderful day.
