At last the Geir Hongro Challenge!!

The part that's slightly annoying -- and this is constructive criticism, Geir -- is when he pops into a thread on hip-hop or something and restates his objections to it. I mean, Geir, I think many of us understand the way you look at music -- it's not hugely complicated or anything -- and we can just take it as given that you wouldn't like hip-hop. It's interesting to hear your take on different things, but it can sort of rile people when you just say "this is bad" and go on arguing that for a while. It's sort of rude, you see, because it's disrespectful of their opinions: we know certain stuff doesn't fit your criteria, but it basically hurts people's feeling when you just say it's "bad," instead of thinking about what their criteria are and why they might like or dislike different things.

"shakespeare's sister": because it doesn't.

Even the part about his mother?

"Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols has leaden verse melodies that "go" nowhere, and a drawn-out, "anthemic" chorus with no rhythmic or melodic tension leading up to it or taking place within it. VERY VERY BORING! http://www.geocities.com/alfonzobelushi/vyvscumbagcollege.jpg

He just forgets that everyone has a different set of qualities that excite them like that. He's confused his feeling with a universal feeling. We all privately think like Geir. We all search out music that conforms to a particular set of standards that we have set up (even if we don't realize it, and haven't set out to identify EXACTLY what these standards are). The only problem is that he is trying to impose his standard upon our tastes, and upon all music.

Okay, sorry, that was really muddled.

(Apologies, Geir, if I am offbase)

I don't think I'm willing to accept that. < /deliberate unreasonableness>

Yes = crap.

For instance, since this is R.E.M. day - in "Stumble" (the last song on "Chronic Town"), the second half of the verse bassline throughout most of the song is all one note, with a dip to a slightly higher note at the end of the phrase (bum-bumbum-bumbum-bumbumBUM). But then, at the end of the song (after the beatnik/be-bop bridge), the bassline changes, just slightly - it's still mostly that same one note, but now it jumps to a different, even higher note at the end of the phrase, and in a slightly different place: bum-bumbum-bumbum-baBUMbum. This used to KNOCK ME THE FUG OUT.

I mean, cripes, the Velvet Underground. The scratchy-guitar/ringing-guitar/piano/bass melody of "Waiting for My Man" is one of my favorite things.

I guess Geir's disparagement of the blues, though (except that "first" 12-bar song) shows that indeed a rigid structure of repetition does nothing for him. But, boy, it sure describes a lot of the music that makes me loopy.

bad melody: pretty much any progressive rock. For example Yes' Roundabout. It's just too complicated and has more than three chords. Which makes it suck. Switching key changes too often completely ruins the consistancy of the melody. A nice predictable and simple melody is always better.

O GAWD! i lurrrrrve this sentence!

is that your theory, jess? ;-)

ii. Hmm, a bad melody... This is harder to do, as I have a tendency to forget bad melodies. One I detest is the Beatles' "Long and Winding Road". I guess it's easy to pick on Paul McCartney, since he's penned so many brilliant tunes, but this one really isn't. It's just like the title says: long and winding. As anyone who has driven on such a road can attest, the experience is not pleasant. I think this is a good example of how an attempt to be "classical" can lead a good pop songwriter astray. This seems like an attempt to write a long, complex melody, but it ends up connoting nothing so much as grim determination, like a marathon runner nearing the finish line, but for the listener it's much easier just to reach for the skip button.

You've just defined prog.

ii. (will come back to this part later; can't think of anything now)

The whole song feels like someone presenting a children's television show, wheeling out a big box and going "oooo, kids, what do you think is in the box?" And then the box opens and it's the puppet sidekick, OBVIOUSLY, and if you're like five and the puppet sidekick is really cool there's an element of satisfaction in that -- but when the puppet sidekick is a fucking plug-ordinary McCartney vocal that WOW AMAZING basically just fits the chord under it, you sort of want to slap the hell out of him for acting all David Copperfield when he whips it out.

Maybe you need to make an effort not to look for the working if you're musically literate (unlike me).

And where did I see that I am against rhythm?

Rhyuthm should be present, I only feel it is unimportant and shouldn't dominate too much.

It is fairly obvious that somebody who has done theoretical music studies for years and years is clearly musically superior to somebody who just picked up a guitar yesterday (no point arguing here, because this is an objective fact!), and who out of the two is most likely to write complex songs with lots of chords?

Paul McCartney, however, also has written a couple of really bad songs, "Helter Skelter", "Yellow Submarine", "I'm Down" and "She's a Woman" being the worst.

"White Car in Germany" by the Associates has a jaw-dropping melody. The opening root-5th-octave synth bass line leaves you wondering whether the song is in a major or a minor key. It settles seemingly into a major key when the lead synth enters with the chorus(although the ever-present opening synth dribble (not the bass line) occasionally hits a flat 2nd, adding a lot of strange tension), but the opening vocal begins with a minor figure, coinciding with a similar shift in the backing track. The first time I heard this, I found it very odd and disorienting; it was hard to grasp the melody at first, but when I did I was floored. Another cool thing is the way that MacKenzie begins the third line of the verse on a major 2nd.

Some might say the melody's shortcoming is its resemblance to a line that should be played on a synth -- rhythmically, this might be a fair judgment, since the chorus is pretty much all quarter notes, and the verses aren't that much more complex -- but this only illuminates its strengths more clearly. MacKenzie's vocal is so amazing, too, in terms of delaying lines ever so slightly, shading the stately melodic line with vibrato, etc., that you hardly even notice the melodic line's rhythmic simplicity. In fact, I only noticed it just now when I was trying to come up with something to say about it.

(For other good melodies, see also -- well, pretty much anything by Rankine/MacKenzie ever.)

2. Bad melody

The melody of Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting For You" is incredibly dull and lifeless. The same criticism about the melodic line's too-simple rhythm could be leveled here; the difference is, Marx actually sounds like a synth -- scratch that, a $40 Radio Shack Casio if it had a "creamy-voiced tool" setting. He just goes from one note to the note closest to it on the scale -- no leaps to create interest/imply striving/falling/whatever. The first "I will be right here waiting for you" actually ends on a 5th after climbing stepwise down the scale! It's the limpest thing ever.

Not Level 42. Dunno too much about Kajagoogoo, but I have the impression they got more musically complex after Limahl went solo.

Meet the 80s....

Good melody - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
so perfect that any change kills it for me (see
Joan Baez). Still, the arrangement and performance
are vital icing on the cake; any rendition by
pro-tooling sessionsists would sound awful.

Bad melody - 75% of all Jim Morrison vocal melodies. The
Doors still kick ass, of course, but for different
reasons.

Re: "Meet the 80s..." true, but it _was_ the decade of Firehose,
Talking Heads, and _Skylarking_, all of which had organic
production. It was a tough decade, though, and a lot of
great songwriters produced sonically shitty product.

awaiting return of mark s.....

Revive! Ain't nothing like the good old days...

I don't see the point in clubs for indie fans at all. At least clubs where you are supposed to dance. Indie fans don't dance.

― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 14:18 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he meant 'can't' - these language barriers...

Indie fans don't dance, they just pull up their pants and do the rockaway

No, it is just yet another evidence that (melodic) pop will always remain better than rock.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 5 April 2003 19:41 (eighteen years ago)

Correct, but English melodies are about a hundred times inferior to the Arabesk pop of müslüm gürses. Listen to Tanri istemezse and you will realise that the entire corpus of white pop music is not nearly melodic enough. and that is just one song. Key changes mask a lack of talent.

12 tones are too mathematically limited. To have absolute melodic supremacy you need complete resolution, and 12 tones do not fully resolve.