Posted on 02/04/2021 8:45:41 PM PST by nickcarraway
Play Nickelback on Amazon Music Unlimited (ad) What’s the most annoying sound in the world? Some might reply it’s fingernails on a chalkboard, someone vomiting, their ex’s snoring or Nickelback.
In a recent Gizmodo article exploring the question, a professor of audio arts suggested that a far more important question was why we find certain sounds annoying, and offered an interesting argument about a connection between noises we don’t like and an “underlying natural beauty” of the universe.
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The resulting suggestion was that perhaps we should make a point of listening to music we don’t like if we want to understand life better.
“The ‘most annoying sound for a human’ is a surprisingly evasive concept that depends not only on who the human in question is, but also on that person’s circumstances and emotional state,” said Florian Hollerweger of Columbia College Chicago. “I think of it as a beautiful testimony to the raw emotional power that sound commands over us – not only on the negative end of the spectrum, but also with regards to that most beautiful of sounds: music.”
He noted that changing circumstances and emotions applied to music as much as natural sounds - “the same strong reliance on context explains both the ‘ugliest’ as well as the ‘prettiest’ sounds.” To Hollerweger, that was evidence that both good and bad sounds are “really just two manifestations of a larger underlying natural beauty, which we humans can become a part of and nurture (through music, for example), but which ultimately exceeds the value judgements that we can’t quite seem to be able to do without.”
The experience of his research, Hollerweger said, was that “one human’s ‘most annoying sound’ may well form the basis of another’s most precious music,” echoing the timeless principal that one person’s food is another person’s poison. He suggested that we could learn more about ourselves and others by trying to work out more about our own tastes.
“Perhaps once a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available, you might want to attend an experimental music concert near you, to see which of these two groups you belong to ... or whether there is room in between," he said. "British composer Trevor Wishart, for example, created a stunningly complex and highly recommended piece of music entitled ‘Imago’ from a single clink of two glasses.”
You can try Wishart’s ear test below. Meanwhile, Nickelback’s back catalog is also on sale.
Most annoying:
Contemporary “Christian” music. Insipid, inane, and borderline blasphemous.
Jazz. Musical equivalent to Tourette syndrome.
Even this: Lucy and Linus?
Yeah. That’s cute; I do like it. :)
John was such a neurotic flake he would have latched onto some other pretentious artsy-fartsy BS artist if she hadn't come along.
I had a great disagreement with my teacher. I said Kenny G was the worst thing to ever happen to saxophone. He said anything that brings more attention to saxophone was a good thing.
I actually do this. Once a week, for 10 minutes I listen to free form Jazz. I have been doing this for year with different music. My hope is to eventually like it. So far, not so much. Two years ago I started listening to overtures. I always liked the William Tell Overture, but couldn’t listen to any other overtures. They made me hate myself. After a while I came to like them, so much so that I started listening to classical music.
Now, many of those overtures are well respected stand alone pieces.
“Kenny G ... He said anything that brings more attention to saxophone was a good thing.”
Kenny G = “a good thing”: When did bleeding ears become a good thing? ;)
I really don’t like any jazz. My background is in classical, church music, four-part Bach, and such — structured. To me, jazz sounds like a free-for-all; it actually makes me nervous. But each to his own, that’s for sure. My husband likes jazz.
Do me (and yourself) a favour: Go listen to Miles Davis’ album ‘Kind Of Blue’. Then get back to me.
The album was nothing but Yoko screeching and chattering like a monkey. Vinyl records were pretty unbreakable, so we had to take a hammer in order to destroy the album with extreme prejuduice.
Hank Hill said it best, “Can’t you tell you’re not making Christianity any better, you’re just making Rock & Roll worse.”
The album I play the most?
Miles Davis’ - ‘Kind Of Blue’.
FYI - a few years ago, because the original 2-channel mix was used so much the tape had deteriorated, the album was remixed/remastered from the original session tapes and released as a High Resolution 24-bit file.
AMAZING sound quality and it corrected the speed error of the original 2-channel mix master!!!
Next is almost anything by Frank Sinatra. I blessed to have been gifted CDR of his “hits” burned direct from the studio master tapes - most are “dry” before the dreaded reverb was added for the commercial release. Some have studio chatter of Frank & the engineers.
You can find good stuff in every genre. It's not all going to be 'great', but no group is firing on all cylinders 100% of the time.
For the past year or so, I've been checking out "What Makes This Song Great", a podcast by Rick Beato on youtube. He takes tunes apart track by track to show how the different parts work together. Some of the insights he has about tunes that I've listened to all my life are pretty amazing. These days when I really listen to tunes, I listen differently than I ever have, and it frankly amazes me some times that I can hear nuances to songs that I really hadn't paid a lot of attention to before.
There really is a lot of good new music out there, but you really won't find it on a top-40s chart, which is pretty much as it's always been. Rarely are the songs that top charts ever the best stuff the group in question has on an album.
Even the difference between 'noise' and 'music' is fairly subjective. There are gems everywhere if you look for them. I think most stuff has always been a bit simplistic and formulaic, and you sometimes do yourself a disfavor by dismissing everything just because of one song that got radio play.
Speaking directly to the Coldplay reference, Beato has two examples of their songs on his WMTSG list. Though I'm not particularly a Coldplay fan, I pretty much have to agree with a lot of his assessment of the two tracks he examined in detail. Both tracks had some really interesting stuff going on in them if you listen critically.
More than anything else I'm glad that I live in an age where there is so much stuff out there. You have almost an infinite variety of music available to suit your taste and mood of the moment. For someone who loves music as much as I do, it's freaking awesome.
Nickel Creek is amazing. I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste but frankly, I think Chris Thile is absolutely amazing. He’s been doing a lot of collaborations with classical players Like Yo Yo Ma, that is a really interesting blend of bluegrass, classical, and jazz.
I’ve been binge watching Rick Beato’s videos for the past few months.
Unfortunately it seems YouTube lately is being a little beeotch for striking his videos because he played a few notes from some Cars song.
Which I might add is really strange, because it’s a fact that when Beato features a song in one of his videos, it definitely results in people going and downloading the songs, you would think bands would beg Rick to feature their songs in his videos.
I wish they'd done a vid for "House of Tom Bombadil", or "Ode to a Butterfly". Both of those make me smile every single time, because they are just such happy instrumentals.
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