Songs without words vs Sing songs

I'm weird though. When I listen to a song, the very last thing I pay attention to is the words. I hear the pitch, articulation, and ornamentation of the singer along with as many of the background parts that I can digest but pay no attention to the meaning of the words. On repeated listenings I eventually hear all the parts and start digesting how they react with each other. Then when all or most of that is assimilated in my brain, I start hearing what the words are actually saying. In other words, all songs start out as instrumentals to me, even the vocals. The voice is just another instrument capable of creating interesting articulations. Eventually those articulations become words and have a literal meaning. But again, I'm weird that way.

Insights and incites by Notes

Well, then, I'm weird, too, because that's just about exactly how I "hear" music the first few times through. I listen to the instruments first, trying to digest each and every one, then I find more nuances the second listen and so on until about the fifth or sixth listen, when I actually hear all of the words (or the song in it's entirety, if you will).

Notes you didn't come off as anything I just wanted to be sure you knew I wasn't attacking you.

As I originally started reading the post that you and Scrybe and Electra had posted there was a common theme but all of you are musicians that I would expect to maybe dissect things alittle more than the average joe like me.

And I may have made an assumption when you all were talking about instrumentals and complex that somehow the two were intertwined and I just didn't see that.

Anyway at the end of the day I think I agree with what you all wrote, I'm not sure that I've ever dissected a piece of music or art as much as you all have but I sure have worn out records listening to music I like.

And apologies if I came across as being argumentative - too much time studying philosophy and working in politics sometimes cause me to, uh, revert back to "tutorial mode"* if I see a flaw in an argument. I'm going to weekly group sessions to deal with this...

*in my Uni philosophy tutorials I was expected to be unrelenting in taking an argument apart and pointing out any holes.

No Scrybe same as with notes I never felt that way and I kind of enjoy "discussing" different points of view. I think it's the pseudo-psycologist in me or something but seeing that everyone here has at least one interest in common or maybe two music and playing the guitar/bass. It's interesting to me to see how everyone attacks/enjoys it in completely different ways.

Depends on what your definition of "is" is. :)

After reading your "debate", it seems like you're agreeing in principal, just differing on the details. You can enjoy music of various complexities, with or without vocals, based on many different levels of analysis. For the average listener, they may judge a piece based solely on a nearly subconscious analysis resulting in "These sounds are pleasing to the ear, therefor, I like it." For the educated musician, they may judge a piece via a more conscious in-depth analysis such as (forgive me, I'm making this up) "The harmonic imbalance created by the tonal shifts in the chorus are not to pleasing to my ear, therefor, I don't like it."

Neither analysis is more valid for the individual listener, neither creates a more valid reason to like or dislike the music from the individual listener's perspective. An educated musician may understand more of the musician's intent, may relate better to the complexities of the piece and may grasp the reasons the sounds are pleasing to the ear. But does he like it any better than a non-musician? Is he able to turn his appreciation "up to 11"?

An analogy... years ago (way too many years :roll: ) in school, I had an english lit class where we dissected many great pieces of literature. I loved some of the books on first read, but after in-depth analysis of theme, style, plot, etc., I sometimes had a much different opinion of the work. And some that were tedious, boring and downright painful to read, turned out, after further anyalysis, to be books that I really appreciated for what they had to say. I enjoyed the books in different ways based on different levels of analysis. Was I wrong to enjoy a book at the simple level of reading without analysis...No. Did I gain more understanding of some through greater analysis...yep, but it didn't necessarily add to my enjoyment of the book.

So music too, can be enjoyed for different reasons, appreciated at different levels of analysis. You guys aren't disagreeing about that (are you? I'll feel really stupid if you are :oops: ). Some gain their enjoyment of music (instrumental or vocals) based on very simple criteria, others bring a deeper understanding of music upon which they can value a piece. But even if much of todays popular music is simple, a non-musician can still enjoy a complex piece without understanding all of the details. Consider that throughout most of classical music's reign, much of the audience was barely literate, saying nothing of their knowledge of music comp and theory. It didn't interfer with their enjoyment of the music, even if they didn't "understand" it.

As long as we don't write off someone's opinion based on their method of analysis, we should be able to accept their appreciation of the piece from whatever perspective they bring.

Just my thoughts on your "raging debate" :lol:

Dave "Who" Else

And I didn't mean to make it seem as if there has to be a correlation between "instrumental" and "complex". There are some extremely simple, but nonetheless beautiful, instrumentals, too. I don't want you to think that all instrumentals are automatically difficult, and therefore, beyond your reach. Please ... reach. The reward will be amazing!

:D