Hacker News Reader

Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that none of this music is ... well... enjoyable.

Sure it is. It just depends on what you enjoy. It's called subjective experience and it's a pretty big deal for art. In my experience, that "Bad Apple" tune in the article is sublime, strange, beautiful, funny, and novel, all enjoyable characteristics.

Heh, I saw your post before I read the article and thought "surely it can't be Bad Apple from Touhou." But it is. If you know the tune, you can hear it in the video, but it's a pretty weird corruption of the song.

I guess I'm not surprised to see Touhou music being popular in this scene. It's pretty baroque and bombastic to being with, so taking baroque style to its logical conclusion is..... this. I'm not a fan, but I can see the thread. (Aside, if you want a modern take on classical music, check out some of the later Touhou soundtracks. You might find yourself surprised for video game music.)

Also a little Totaka's song easter egg in the middle of the first video, if you're into obscure video game minutia.

I don't know anything about video games, but I understand the piece is a heavily modified version of that tune... and yeah, part of the "charm" comes from the corruption of the way the software can't handle the extreme amount of notes. Like a weird digital and arrythmic version of amplifier distortion.

>It's called subjective experience and it's a pretty big deal for art

Yes, I know. What I did was called a quip, and I thought the fine people of Hacker News had a sense of humor.

Surely you'll admit that this is far less accessible, in terms of enjoyment, than a lot of other music.

You may have noticed that my rejoinder was not entirely serious either.

Of course it's less accessible. In terms of enjoyment though, I actively seek out non-accessible music, because some of it seems to tickle a particular funny-bone and I don't find that in accessible music.

The music I put on to really enjoy on a visceral level is stuff that I can't even play ten seconds of in public settings without people yelling at me.

I dunno, people seem to find even this stuff inaccessible, but it's some of my favorite music ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di9xaUBKY5I

wow, cool. it's like a musical equivalent of semantic saturation. they zoom in on a phrase and repeat it with such odd signatures that you lose all frame of reference, but then they move onto the next part and it makes sense in the context of a greater picture / chord progression. thanks for the rec!

Nice description! Yeah, the cuts in that song are really fresh and interesting. At one point in the second half they're jamming out pretty hard and then suddenly everyone starts screaming for a few seconds, Mats pulls up his shirt and laughs, and then the guitar guys goes into an awesome solo. I always laugh at it.

The rhythm changes are just awesome too. When I first listened to it they were pretty disorienting but after a few listens I could tap my feet to it and it's so satisfying.

Here's another polyrhythmic song that's confusing at first but then really satisfying. It's by Avishai Cohen Trio, I couldn't find the original but this cover is pretty good.

https://soundcloud.com/jasper-mellema/trio-pinzin-kinzin-avi...

Thank you for posting that video link! I'm listening to the album ProgXprimetal now for the first time and it's incredible.

I haven't even heard of that! Oh, it's another project with the drummer, Morgan Ågren. He does a lot of cool stuff (including the educational drumming TV show from which that link was a clip).

While googling I found a kickstarted documentary about him from 2013.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/morgan

I think I'll watch it right now. :)

Mats Öberg, the keyboardist, is also an excellent jazz pianist and seems to play on loads of new Swedish jazz records. Here's him with his own jazz trio. He also has two very beautiful solo piano albums (they're on Spotify and iTunes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tOykrVfIgc

While I'm geeking out... that Mats/Morgan song "Hollmervalsen" is named for Lars Hollmer ("Hollmer waltz"), a composer who played accordion and keyboard and was an important part of the Swedish progressive music scene in the 60s/60s. That scene split into a more political part and a more freaky part, and we're talking about the freaky part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Hollmer

His band Samla Mammas Manna ("Gather Mother's Manna") made some truly remarkable music. They took influences from Swedish folk music and combined it with Zappa-ish jazz rock. With the song "Musmjölkningsmaskinen" ("The Mouse Milking Machine") from 1974 you can understand they were an influence on Mats & Morgan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhDbgp1RX4M

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samla_Mammas_Manna

> Surely you'll admit that this is far less accessible, in terms of enjoyment, than a lot of other music.

One cool thing about the internet is the 'long tail' effect that you don't hear much about anymore that allows for all those microgenres like this to thrive.

It depends on the track and how dense the notes get and how quickly.

Take a listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFoJS5h-10

which is based off of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS_a8Edde8k

which, in turn is based off of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wFRIWFraWQ

I'm sure many people would say the same thing about some of the music of Conlon Nancarrow. But having earned himself — among many honors — a MacArthur award and a recent retrospective exhibition and performance series at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, it seems that others have found way to enjoy his work despite (or perhaps because of) its nonconventional sound.

There's no comparison between the two, except for both having "lots of notes"

For what it's worth, the couple of random Black Midi videos I watched from this thread were much more enjoyable than a random Nancarrow video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFz2lCEkjFk

So I'm not sure how you can say "there's no comparison".

Speaking as someone who's been playing classical and new music as an avid amateur (e.g. community orchestras, university orchestras) for several years, stuff like that isn't meant to be enjoyed as such. You don't put it on and relax with a glass of wine like if you were putting on a Grover Washington record or something by Sibelius.

I wouldn't even say it's supposed to be in the group of "challenging but at least somewhat structured and therefore listenable" not like In C (Terry Riley, if you're curious) or Music for Pieces of Wood (Steve Reich).

It might be intended to challenge what we think of as music, or challenge our assumptions about mechanization and culture. I'm not at all familiar with Conlon Nancarrow, but if he's in gallery exhibitions, and not on tour, that's the angle.

Try listening to Study no. 7, it's thrilling.

Exactly! In the same vein I find beat boxing to be interesting but I have yet to find a full length album I'd listen to. It seems the novelty wears off so quick with this form of art.

One of the things that separates proper avant-garde art from other art is that "enjoyable" isn't a concern. I recently got to see the avant-garde chef Ferran Adria speak (probably the most important chef of the past 30 years), and one of the key questions he asked was, "Is it my job as a chef to make a meal you will enjoy?" (paraphrased from memory, and he had a translator onstage, so...)

This is a critical question. I used to play avant-garde music myself, in a guitar + drums improvisational duo. It wasn't our job to make music anyone else liked, or even music we liked. We were exploring the limits of sound and the interrelationships of the instruments and ideas. To this day, even in much more mainstream contexts, I play a lot of guitar that doesn't "sound like a guitar". I learned a ton about my instrument, and about sound and music.

or musical.

There's a little tonality in there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com