What exactly is a "song" anyway?
- Thread starter SinisterMinisterX
- Start date
I think our perspective on this might be affected by the fact that most of us listen to music primarily in the form of recordings, which we play over and over. This adds a lot of additional factors to the music, like arrangements and production. When we say that we like a song, what we mean a lot of the time is that we like a performance - the singer's voice, the guitar sound, or something. I think there's a case to be made for "studio-created music" (for want of a better term) as a medium of its own, because quite often what people enjoy about the music is isolated to one particular version of it, which is not reproducible in any other context.
For example, I'm a huge fan of Kate Bush, but I can't imagine listening to her stuff done by anybody else. Same with Jimi Hendrix - the guitar-playing is out of this world, but the songs themselves are rarely anything special, musically or lyrically. That's why not a lot of people cover Hendrix, there's just no point. Nor do they cover "I Am the Walrus". But thousands upon thousands of people cover "Yesterday", because that's a great song, independent of any particular performance.
Sound collages like "Several Species..." could be seen as an extreme example of "studio-created music", impossible to meaningfully reproduce in any way at all.
For example, I'm a huge fan of Kate Bush, but I can't imagine listening to her stuff done by anybody else. Same with Jimi Hendrix - the guitar-playing is out of this world, but the songs themselves are rarely anything special, musically or lyrically. That's why not a lot of people cover Hendrix, there's just no point. Nor do they cover "I Am the Walrus". But thousands upon thousands of people cover "Yesterday", because that's a great song, independent of any particular performance.
Sound collages like "Several Species..." could be seen as an extreme example of "studio-created music", impossible to meaningfully reproduce in any way at all.
That's what I see as the main dividing line between traditional vs modern music. Is the primary medium written or recorded? The two approaches are very different.