Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jancsika 1992 days ago
> but modern pop music is very constrained in its use of modulation so society has lost much of the grammar of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music.

Just to give a sense of context, try this exercise:

1. Pick any modern pop song.

2. Write down every seemingly superficial aspect of the song you hear: vocoder overuse, why an cheesy electric guitar sound accompanies a certain lyric, whether a given sound is employed for irony's sake, which sounds or lyrics are allusions to other songs, etc.

3. Continue until you literally cannot think of anything else significant in the music.

If you're exhaustive you should come up with dozens of bullet points for even a short song.

Now realize that wrt Schubert, you've mentioned a single such bullet.

That is to say-- we're all missing most of the grammar of those bygone eras.

1 comments

I read this a few times and can't parse out what you're saying. Pop music has a lot of gimmicks? ok sure, but what is the bullet for schubert? What is the grammar?
I think the idea is that the effect on the listener is not purely a function of the objective characteristics of the music, but also depends on historical context and conventions that may change -- or be forgotten -- over time.
That sounds right, but I'm not sure I would say that's any less apparent in modern pop, or any art for that matter.