Challenging

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What's the last music that challenged you? How did it challenge you? What do you mean when you say a piece of music challenges you?

Recently I am sometimes fascinated by things I don't like, things that seem completely totally wrong and perverse and non-intuitive, things that seem pointless and go on for too long, things that bore and annoy me. This seems like the last real frontier of challenging oneself musically (maybe the only real frontier?). Sometimes I just like the fact that they do seem so wrong, like a ceaseless pointless collection of annoying sounds is the ultimate punk act or something. All the better if they don't ultimately resolve into something appealing and understandable. For a while I thought the half-hour performance of Cage's "Four^6" on Sonic Youth's Goodbye 20th Century was terrible. Now it's one of my favourite pieces on the collection partly just because it is so long and seemed so pointless at first. I hated Gorguts' Obscura at first - it seemed so wanky and pointless, poorly constructed, and reminiscent of terrible hardcore bands. But it wouldn't be as extreme and intense if I liked it at first, if it gave me what I wanted.

― sundar subramanian, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't actually started to enjoy Obscura a lot but I like the fact that it bothers me. Besides how important is one's own petty enjoyment of things? Who are you to need to enjoy the music you hear?

― sundar subramanian, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was listening to an Oum Kalthoum song I've heard before ("Salo Koos"), last night and I was thinking that it is challenging in the sense that you really have to pay attention to it because what's going on revolves around the sometimes subtle variations of her delivery of the same line. As in jazz, the melodies become fragmented, because the singer improvises and stretches things out. A lot of pop songs allow you to sort of blank out temporarily and still know where you are when you start paying attention to the song again, but this Oum Kalthoum song doesn't really work that way. I also still find the compositional structure (as opposed to what the performer does with it) somewhat confusing: how melody x fits with melody y which comes before it still puzzles me in many cases.

When I listned to Outkast's "Stankonia" I thought that in a funny way it was challenging. The rapping was so dense that in order to really hear everything, you would have to pay attention to it very closely.

The kind of challenging listening that you describe, however, is soomething that really hasn't interested me for a long time. I want there to be something in the music that I can connect with, even if there are other aspects of it which are a stretch.

― DeRayMi, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is a very good question that I can't find an easy answer to. I don't know whether for me it's that the music has to be challenging or my expectations, positive or negative, that are challenged, if you will. Hm...so for instance, that there would be a few tracks on the Eminem album that I thought were quite good was a pleasant surprise, but I don't know if I was challenged by hearing them per se. Hard question in ways.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The last piece of music that really challenged me was Paul Dolden's L'Ivresse de la vitesse. We discussed Dolden a little bit in the toronto ILM meeting sundar. I remeber saying the improvising wasn't amazing though I liked his guitar playing on the one track that he did use it.

At first it was difficult to get used to the ultra-dense layers of music. That's what challenged me. I think its the craziest I have ever heard and I'm not surprised that I haven't seen much from him since.

''What do you mean when you say a piece of music challenges you?''

When a piece of music changes the way I think sound should be organised and Paul dolden was the last one. Before that AMM and before that cecil taylor Unit (its in the brewing luminous) and then Anthony Braxton's For alto.

― Julio Desouza, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Who are you to need to enjoy the music you hear?

For some reason I like this question a lot. I think it's something I often ask myself, and it usually leads me back to pop music, because it's supposed to be something for everyone yet only a small portion of it actually appeals to me. The blander end of pop music is more challenging to me than, say, free-form noise, because I KNOW what purpose noise is supposed to fill, while a "pop" song that doesn't appeal to me melodically or sonically leaves me utterly confused.

So something like Nelly's latest single becomes an instant classic for me, Toya's "I Do" had to be rammed down my throat by radio and friends before it actually appealed to me beyond its cliches and intuitive sonics. Thus "I Do", 2001's Single of the Year IMHO, is the last piece of music that challenged me. And it's real sexy too.

― Keiko, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Julio is challenged on a daily basis by FM COCK ROCK! ;-)

A lot of so-called "challenging" music has, for me at least, become fairly transparent. Not that I don't still like some of it, but I don't think I'm getting off on the fact that "hey, this is difficult music!" I do enjoy having my personal what-nots challenged, though, and these sorts of challenges can (perhaps unsurprisingly) come from all over the place. Learning not to cringe at certain things in music has been one of the most valuable, rewarding, and challenging listening tasks I've undertaken - something I think more people should try to do. There of plenty of fans of "challenging" music out there who refuse to try and get rid of their own little listening quirks.

― Clarke B., Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I agree with Clarke, that popular music is often challenging for the "experienced" listener, and it would do the good if they could get over that. As for the question, last year I sat down and listened strait through La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano. It was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I did it, but it was also challenging. For me challenging music is music you can't just put on a do other things. You have to devote your full attention to. (like hypnotic music) For example If you put on Merzbow and go read a book, it just sounds static in the background, but if you listen closely the detail is amazing.

― A Nairn, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

''Julio is challenged on a daily basis by FM COCK ROCK! ;-)''

Not at all! in fact I enjoy listening to a lot of it on the radio (I wouldn't spend any money on it though because i can listen to it for free).

― Julio Desouza, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

To clarify what I meant earlier (I was still pretty groggy when I wrote it), it's not that the music itself is transparent - I don't pretend to understand where these musicians are coming from - more that the idea of challenging music as a *listening* modus operandi, the "hey look at me i like Challenging Music" way of listening, has become increasingly transparent to me (and I'm sort of jaded by it now).

― Clarke B., Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

''more that the idea of challenging music as a *listening* modus operandi, the "hey look at me i like Challenging Music" way of listening, has become increasingly transparent to me (and I'm sort of jaded by it now)''

I want to clarify that i don not listen to music because its challenging. I don't want to test my self. i'm not interested to see whether i have nerves of steel so I can't get through this. A lot of this stuff is unique and I feel this music to be very creative. The fact that you can't dance to it is not a drawback.

― Julio Desouza, Saturday, 15 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have been feeling quite pro "challenging" stuff this last week, but I have also been misanthropic this last week and what I find challenging and interesting is very bizzare lately and I don't understand at all. I think I am very confused right now about what I want to listen to and watch and deliberately contravening many normal safe courses for myself and feeling fairly dissatisfied all around. Four great radio singles tend to make things a bit better but I really miss the "shazam" moments I was having regularly last year and seem to be looking for them in stranger places.

However note that I am now listening to Kylie's greatest hits. "What is love" is the safe choice but I have a strange attraction to "without you" which would be a great bootleg companion to "without me".

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 16 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Belle & Sebastian.

― Marc, Sunday, 16 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Beethoven's Ninth reckoned it could take me in a fight the other day, but a couple of Mozart symphonies reckoned I wasn't worth it and we'd all had a drink, and it came to nothing.

― Martin Skidmore, Sunday, 16 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

correction: the Kylie tracks are in fact titled "finer feelings" and "where in the world?"

it was too challenging for me to look up the proper titles at the time.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i think that most people here are voracious music consumers/listeners, and as such are pretty jaded. i find that after i've been through every genre and every subgenre and every obscurer- than-thou band the only thing left is to try and get my brain around music it's not supposed to like.

recent fave: thai elephant orchestra.

― fields of salmon, Monday, 17 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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