I like it all... but just so I can see the results, I'll vote trance.

If there were a "top-40 country" I would choose that, but there are too many great country artists that I love. Of course everything on country radio is complete drech. I had to go with dance/techno because so much of that is totally derivative. There are exceptions for sure: !!!, LeTigre, etc.

Agree on RHH, disagree with the above. Roachboy pretty much already destroyed this sentiment but I just thought I'd add that these are the same things that were said about electric guitars 50 years ago--that they were'nt insturments--that the people who played them weren't musicians etc. People had similiar problems with bass-guitars, synthysizers, drum-machines, theremin, distortion, and samplers--now these things are commonplace.

I dont really mind any of the choices, but out of the list, id have to say country.

whether their commonplace is not the question, its whether it requires talent that were talking about, and none of those do except bass guitar and synth(listen to some synth metal like Children of bodom, Norther or Kalmah, its fuckin talent alright)

and i voted for rap, cause country has some actual musicians, and techno is respectable if it actually involves mad keyboard skills(which it usually doesnt, but there is some)

I'm seeing the Rev on December 11th AND 12th baby! I think that will make it about 14 or 15 RHH concerts in the past 10 years.

Torn between rap and country.

(C)rap!! The funny thing is that Hard Rock/Heavy Metal used to get bagged because the critics said it all sounded the the same. Well hello these same critics acclaim it as brilliant. I can't tell one rap group from a 1000 others plying the same garbage.

so being able to use a set of turntables and a mixer doesn't count? It's harder to blend two songs perfectly together than one thinks...

I could have done a really mean extended version of John Cage's 4'33". I didn't because I didn't want to feel like a pretentious hack.

But I agree with you on the subject of techno.

The problem with that is Electric Guitars, Bass Guitars, and Theremins take every bit the skill to play as any other instrument, so that's a disingenuous argument. Distortion and effects, even midi effects, do not change the fact that one still needs to play an instrument to generate a signal for them to generate, so that's a disingenuous argument. Some synthesizers are really just keyboards, and the best of those mimic the action of a piano to a great degree, requiring the same skills to play, and still others mimic and require the same skills ans other instruments, and one, the Synth-Axe Drumitar the "drummer" for the Flecktones uses, even requires a totally novel set of musical skills, on the other hand, some synthesizers and most drum machines are not musical instruments; they are computers with a sound output, and the skill involved in making music with them is a programming skill. That's fine, but it shouldn't be confused with music any more than a photoshop on Fark or Something Awful should be confused with Art. So, I guess what I am getting at is that synthesizers and drum machines are every bit as problematic as Sampling.

Understand that I am not saying that Synthesizers and Drum Machines and Samples cannot be part of worthwhile music, or something used in addition to things that require musical talent, just that the programmers thereof are more like the lighting guys or the producers or folks who run the soundboard than they are like the musicians. They're technicians, not musicians. My beef with Dance and Techno is that a large part of it seems to me to rely entirely on these programmed devices, to the exclusion of any display of musical talent. That and I find it boring, repetitive, and unpleasant to listen to, so even if you disagree with my intellectual argument for disliking it, you cannot justly disagree that it is very much not to my taste.

You could really have a whole new thread here.

I can't make you like electronic music.. that's a given. I do disagree with you saying that people who make it aren't musical. Even though I don't like him, let's take Moby as an example. He plays the guitar and plays the keyboard among other things. He implements this into his music. That being said he obviously has talent. Now let's take (IMO) the best Drum and Bass producers out there. Pendulum. They used to be part of a punk band. One played drums one played bass. Makes sense huh? They got into D'n'B because of the energy of the music. They obviously have talent as well. Now let's take me. I can't play any instruments but I can spin the fuck out of some records. I dabble in production as well. Creating a song using various programs and synths or whatever you use is quite time consuming and alot harder than people realize. I know people who play instruments and they have a hard time using a redrum kit. So to say that it doesn't take talent is a little insulting from my view point.

Sorry to offend. I am not claiming that it doesn't take talent. What I am saying is that that is not a musical talent on the same order as performing on an instrument, but rather something between that and writing elegant code. It's a talent, but one that does not by itself make music I find compelling or even particularly attractive. (As with everything else, there are exceptions. I heard an interleaving of Oasis - Champagne Supernova and Green Day - Boulevard of Broken dreams put together by a local radio DJ th'other day that was quite clever, but clever only gets so far.)

I understand that it is harder than it looks. I have heard turntable played as a musical instrument - it's percussion - and mixing the percussive scratching with sampling from the records' grooves is quite impressive (if not particularly euphonius to my ear). That's not what I am talking about, not primarily in any case. That's not what I have heard on those selections of house and techno it has been my misfortune to have been obliged to tolerate. Simple 4/4 beats played very very loud, and tape loops, with the occasional snippet of movie dialog thrown in is what I heard. Turn the beat down a bit, throw in a fill once in a while, have some people who play their own instruments react to it and record that (if their reaction isn't to walk out of the studio), and then you have some music that I might be able to respect (or not - playing your own instrument is no guarantee that you play it well.)

So please don't be insulted because I think you're not talented. You may well be talented, but I don't think it's a musical talent. If you want to be insulted about that, well, I am still sorry to have offended, but it doen't change my opinion.

(And I am equally not saying that this technical talent for mix and production precludes musical talent, but, in the case of Moby, I would say it occludes what musical talent he may have. I am not familiar with D'n'B, so I can't competently comment on them.)

techno is hands down the worst music created!

i am still confused as to what woud constitute "musical talent" for you tophat.
you have made a distinction between music and technical abilities: i am not sure where the line would fall. would you explain more directly please?
does "music" have particular tonal features? is it purely technical, done exclusively on traditional instruments?
what kind of music do you play? (your position seems like from someone who plays...)

i think ~1/3 threads in the music forum wind up as arguments about semantics. maybe everyone can agree to something like this:

composition and performance are two seperate, though often connected, elements of music. a composer is necessarily concerned with all 3 facets of music: pitch, rhythm, and timbre (the quality or texture of sound). if any one is missing, a shitty or incomplete piece is the result. for example, if a composer arranged a piece for 20 oboes, he'd be ignoring timbre because lots of oboes = pure pain. rhythm and pitch are more obvious. now take a performer. a traditional instrumentalist (trumpet, piano, guitar, etc) also must be aware of pitch, rhythm, and timbre. overlook any of these and you've got a poor performance. in the gray area of electronic music, i'd argue that it's entirely possible to ignore 1 or more of the 3 musical elements i mentioned. sampling, the only possible musical thing an electronic composer might do is adjust tempos. however, writing an electronic song from scratch can be just as complex as writing for traditional instruments. performance, well thats another story. on turntables, rhythm and timbre (marginally) are the only things going on. pitch is predetermined. i could agree that turntables are a novel percussive instrument, but neither have the full-fledged complexity of a wind, reed, or string instrument. (an array of differently tuned drums excepted from that generalization)

Not shitty. "Avant-grade" :crazy:

Well almost every turntable has pitch adjustment. Pitch matching is one of the basic skills on a turntable. There are also records produced for turntablists which have continuous tracks of various insturments playing one note or chord at a time.

so sorry try again!

p.s. you're also wrong about samplers.

Anything that's has been played on MTV in the past 24-48 hours.

I just can't stomach country music. Old school country was cool (Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Hank Williams). But when I am flipping through radio channels and I hear some crap like this:

Well I might go get me a new tattoo
Or take my old Harley for a three day cruise
Might even grow me a Fu Man Chu...
Oh Aww!

it makes me think it's a bi-product of new auditory torture techniques.

oh wow.. I don't even know where to begin to refute this. All turntables have pitch control. It's the most basic and necessary element of mixing. Without it you get crappy mixes and trainwrecks. sampling is a whole different monster. It depends on what you actually mean by this as it has different uses and different terms. If you're doing a mixer sample then yes it isn't difficult. IF you're doing a cut sample with another rec then it becomes an art form. Recs may be meant to be played at a certain rpm but you can speed it up or slow it down for some crazy effects. On the newer turntables you have a reverse feature also. That is not really my thing but it can create some good effects. Anyone who thinks turntables aren't an art form I challenge you to get some good recs and a decent mixer... and see what you can do. While it may be easy to match beats..you'll find it's harder to make it sound good than you think :thumbsup:

my comments weren't meant to offend or disparage mixers. i was merely saying that mixing/sampling in the most basic form doesn't have the same qualities that a traditional instrument has. you can add complexity, but an "instrument" inherently has the complexity.

essentially any object that requires the user to pick and choose the pitch, rhythm, and timbre produced qualifies as an instrument. sampling/mixing can, but doesn't necessarily.

I can stand some rap, but no country at all. So I'm going to have to go with country as being the worst music. I don't see why you listed classical as a choice, it's wonderful =)

Well you're still not providing any substancial difference between a turntable and a "traditional instrument" so...your catagorization would be false.

i thought i was pretty clear, but apparently i've touched a nerve and don't care to look objectively at the situation.

my proposition: a musical instrument has three user-controlled properties - pitch, rhythm, and timbre.

my conclusion: assuming the proposition is true, traditional instruments can all be classified as "musical instruments". some sampling/mixing/scratching can also be considered "musical", but sampling/mixing/scratching present in a fair portion of pop music doesn't have all the above properties. would you consider the random scratching in a limp bizkit song representative of a musical instrument?

Country.... its just bloody crap. All the songs are the same.... utter shite IMHO!!

If you give a two-year old a saxaphone and he throws it down the stairs the sounds it produces may not be music but the saxaphone is still an instrument.

You are pretty much all off of the mark by at least a little. Class on the basics of music will start in a different thread.

This poll appears to of been made by someone who doesn't listen to music.
I voted country.

Second first: I play bass guitar, badly.
First second: There is no sharp line between musical talent and technical skill. There is a fuzzy grey line between them. Perhaps the argument I should be making is not so much between techical and musical as between composition and performance. I don't really know how to go about making that argument: I can't figure how it relates to the debate at had. So that is a given. Now, what's the difference between them: I can only define it by analogy, and I am absolutely certain I display a certain degree of ignorance when I do so (willful ignorance at that - not enjoying the style, I don't know as much about it as I would need to to argue as forcefully about it as I feel it warrants.) It is the difference between composition and montage (still a fuzzy line, but a bit sharper), between creation of a new whole and juxtaposition of exisiting pieces. Ultimately, to me, it is about the complexity of the component pieces and whether or not they are hand crafted in motion to a rhythm or machine turned piece by piece and snapped together at the end to give the illusion of rhythm. A single note on a flute you play on the one hand, a tape loop of 12 bars of drumming someone else did on the other. Play the next note and the next and the next at the right time in the right order on the one hand, repeat every 10 seconds with the pitch falling within the envelope defined by the following equation on the other. Is all techno made that second way? Of course not. Is some? Surely it is. Could I tell the one from the other? Unlikely. Hence, a reason to dislike the lot of it. (For me. Reasonable people will differ. I do feel strongly about it, though, so I find it difficult to kep to a purely intellectual argument.)

Now, turntables. You and guccilvr and locobot have convinced me that turntables have evolved into an instrument. I had been beginning to lean in that direction, but I agree that all the elements, both the complexity and the simplicity, are there that one can play a turntale as more than a pure, improvised percussion instrument. To pull an analogy, though, the LP on the turntable is like the reed on a woodwind. If you have a crappy reed, you will make crappy music. For my purposes, if you have an LP of someone else's work, and you play large, recognizable chunks of it, then, IMNSHO, you have a split reed.

Now, I have said it before and I will say it again: Reasonable people will disagree. At the base of it this is a matter of taste, and taste informs the argument.

Guccilvr - can you throw some suggestions at me of techno that I cannot use these arguments on? Specific songs so I can P2P them and see if I would be interested in exploring further and, perhaps, even revising my opinion. (I have done so with Country and Rap over the years, and it could very well be that I have only heard crappy, insipid techno.) Feel free to PM, and you would have my thanks.

Please explain. It's just a pole of the general music types as if you were to walk into a music store. These are the most common types of music categories you may find with the exception of dance/techno. :confused:

Not a big fan of Rap or Country, but voted for rap.

I voted Rap.

I never understood why a genre that portrays blacks as primitive materialistic sexist pigs could ever become that succesful

"Ungh, Ungh .." anyone ..

I agree with your reed analogy somewhat. IF you play shitty records on a good turntable the music is still going to sound shitty..but this is where personal taste comes into play. A turntable has so many things that you can manipulate other than speed. For instance, the needles. You can have scratch needles or mixing needles and yes they are different and yes they accomplish different things. A mixer is vital to any part of the production. The mixer can do some amazing things.. no matter if it's a battle(scratch) mixer or a true (production) mixer. They both serve a purpose. Of course I'm sure you knew this already :D

I'll be happy to pm you .. it's on the way.

I voted in terms of my opinion on new stuff in the genre, so I voted for country.

Country. I HATE country.

I have become a fan of some rap, not all of it, but some of it. However I would rather listen to someone disemboweling a cat with a rusty spoon than listen to country.

It's a close one between country and rap, but as a musician myself I can respect country more. Defintaley hate rap.