Notes_Norton

Don't say no no no no --- say maybe 

Maybe Baby — Buddy Holly & The Crickets
 

Heart Of The Sunrise — Yes

Jenny Jenny — Little Richard

Cream & Sugar makes the coffee better.

Another lady tried to save her and went chest first into the same propeller. It was an udder disaster.  

Blue Train — John Coltrane

Somewhere in this house, I have that LP. 

2 hours ago, pedant said:

you missed the cricket joke there 

Crikey—I cleanly missed the clever cricket joke that someone cracked. It's a catastrophe by Jiminy.

(I haven't watched TV since the early 1990s, so all my TV references are old—I'm approaching my codger years.)

C Jam Blues — Duke Ellington

18 hours ago, craigb said:

Bob's too nice.  Is it ok if I criticize rap?  😁

Neither you nor I nor anyone else has to like it, and we can list reasons why, but it's hard to argue with something that makes zillions of dollars. 

I don't like football, hang gliding, or hot peppers, but lots of people do. And I can think of reasons why I don't like them. Football=boring. Hang gliding=dangerous. Hot peppers=the plants developed that to keep animals from eating them, who am I to argue?

 

20 hours ago, fjz said:

I can't seem to find a definition for music that clearly states that all 3 elements must be present.

Again, I'll stick with what I learned in school and via the Berklee correspondence course.

I paid for those lessons, and I'm going to use them  

Melody, harmony, and rhythm are all components of music, but according to what I learned, you need all three for it to be music.

But like I said earlier, we probably just need to agree to disagree. 

20 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

By that definition, no acapella vocalist, or single-tone-instrument (flute, clarinet, etc), picked guitar, etc., could ever be music.   

That seems very strange.

 

I'll stick with what I learned in school, and via the Berklee Correspondence course.

What you describe is a melody, a component of music, but not music.

The Birds And The Bees — Jewel Akens

Then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this subject.

I'm happy your guitar survived undamaged.

I had a friend who put his SG against his amp to go to the kitchen for a snack during practice. When he got back, it fell, and the headstock broke and was folded against the neck.

The Wind The Scream (First Theme) — Ennio Morricone

17 hours ago, fjz said:

So are you saying that, if you take a Charlie Parker song - which I'll assume that we agree that it is music - and add poetry recited in rhythm over top of it (however unpleasant that would probably be to listen to), it then ceases to me music? 

What about African percussion tribal music? Is that wrongly labelled as music?

One example of a 20th century expressionist movement piece - Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg - is mostly devoid of melody in the vocals except for a couple of notes here and there. Would that be considered mislabeled as music?

There's a lot of music out there that are just cords playing. I can usually hear melody lines within those chords (as well as harmony and rhythm). If a rapper then adds his part to it, it doesn't mean that the song has no melody. It just means that the melody is not in the vocal part.

It's all music IMO.

fj

edited for punctuation

The beatniks called it “Beat Poetry”. The Charlie Parker part was music, and they added poetry on top. The result was a hybrid.

I'm not posting a criticism to Rap, it's an art form all by itself, but it's poetry, often over some music. 

Is a woman doing a strip tease to music, doing what you would call making music? No, she is dancing to the music.

Is that mockingbird outside my window making music? No, it's beautiful but melody without rhythm or harmony. 

African Tribal Percussion is not music if it lacks all 3 elements. That doesn't mean it's bad, it can be delightful, and I get lost in the rhythms, but it isn't music unless it has melody, harmony, and rhythm.

That's like saying "I woke up this morning, ate breakfast, and caught the bus to work" poetry. It's just prose.

It's all good IMO as long as it has someone who likes it, but we have to be careful with watering down our definitions, or they eventually become meaningless.

Rap is poetry that can be recited over music. Like the beatniks did, only more modern. 

Music: 1. The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.

That's what I was taught in school. Rap may be great, I might love it, but it fails the definition. This is not a criticism, just an observation.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Quite entertaining, I enjoyed it, and it's definitely an art form, but other than the guitar solos, it's not music. 

Poetry? Theatrics? Whatever. But until you can notate that on a staff and play it with piano, saxophone, guitar, trumpet, or whatever, IMO it isn't music. 

It would be like saying a Shakespeare play is music if you gave it a guitar intro. Or the Beat Poets of the 1950s reciting poetry over Charlie Parker recordings.

Music needs all three, melody, harmony and rhythm.

What I'm not saying is that Rap is bad. Some is good, some isn't. What I am saying is that it isn't music. It's an art form but not a song.


Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Diamonds & Rust — Joan Baez

Leave those trees alone. ^ ^ ^

On 6/24/2025 at 3:49 PM, Starship Krupa said:

I agree that entertainment industry awards seem to be silly opportunities for self-promotion and phony virtue signaling. The Motion Picture Academy lost me the year that Kramer vs. Kramer won over Apocalypse Now and All That Jazz. 1980 I believe. 1980 did a pretty good job of warning me what the next decade was going to be like.

It got me the year Amadeus won. Being in the school band we played Mozart, never one of my favorites, but I watched it anyway. Basically it was a flop. Stayed in the theaters a week, and left.

Then it won the Oscar for best picture (it was OK, but not best picture), ran through the theaters again, and became a smash hit.

That's when I realized, the Oscars are nothing but either a pat on the back, or an advertisement.

Sorry to touch on this as some will disagree.

Rap doesn't belong to be called as music. Music needs all three, melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Can you get out some music paper, put a staff, time signature, and key signature and notate the rap? Then get your piano, guitar, saxophone, or voice and play it? No. Because there is no melody.

I can open a music book and play the melody and chords from songs by Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Taylor Swift, Burt Bacharach, Leiber & Stoller, Goffin & King, Rogers & Hammerstein, Stan Kenton, Hank Snow, Zac Brown, and millions of others, but not Kanye West or any other rapper.

Rap is a valid art form, it's poetry to a beat, but without a melody, it's no really music, and therefore doesn't belong in a music hall of fame.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫