Music is art - If you go to see a piece of art at a gallery - You stand - You stare - You think - You move on - What you do not do is ask the artist to make changes to the work - So that you can enjoy it more - You don't tell the artist that he or she has chosen the wrong types of colour or that oil would have been better than acrylic --

Music is art - Remember that - The expression is important and not so much the execution ---

No ?

 

Tottally agree with you and I would say : music is THE art!

 

the great thing about this place.. is that an artist can ask for constructive criticism while her or his work is
in progress... and music is often a collaborative effort, and many participants may have input on the final work
that gets submitted to the public...

so yes.. express yourself all you want..
but don't ask for criticism if you don't want it , if you do ask for it..
you will have enough people here who will be happy to comment...

 

Yes I do understand - I just wonder if it stops being art the moment you ask for criticism - It no longer holds within it - the original intent - That is not traditionally the way an artist would have worked - It appears that the reliance on other people to criticise our work is due in part to the abandonment of the conventional artistic course - The the fact that we can infinitely edit our music also does not help this - In the past like in photography we would have captured our work in an instance on a recording device - As it was - when it was - forever frozen in our artistic vision ---



This piece of art - is as it was - when it was - trapped forever in time ---

 

Yea, verily!

Music is "my" art. I also do visual art (mostly graphic design), and I write (text), and I take photos (not just digicam stuff; I've studied photography). Music is the means by which I feel that I most purely, immediately, directly, consummately and masterfully express myself and also express what I sense to be "beyond myself." Music has, since anyone's ancestors can remember, been the most spiritually-infused artform, and its direct effect upon the emotions of humans and other animals, and upon the spiritual nature of humanity, is such common knowledge that it's almost taken for granted, though also intentionally abused. Without having learned to make music, I would not have been able to make myself a whole person; I would be a lot worse off; other people might even be dead.

What incites my ire is when people, even those who aren't musicians, respond to a recording I've played for them (without the purpose of eliciting their feedback) with, "What I would have done is . . .," or, "You should add . . .," or, "Vocals are too low/too loud," or reflaxively comparing it to one or more other artists' work. When someone goes to a gallery opening, with the painter present, does one go up to him or her and say, "You really should have used absinthe for the greens in this one," or, "It would have been cool if you'd used your own blood for the red in this one," or, "This reminds me of Rauschenberg and Mondrian on acid?" The painter will have the manager have a security guard "ask you to leave."

Music is so powerful, in fact, that it has been, for the past 50 to 60 years, been exploited to manipulate entire segments of the populace, via commercialized cultism, used as the fundamental element in a controlled mythic environment, a culture in which people participate, per demographic significance, by consuming not just recorded works but the concepts of the personages who make the music. In other words: people are fed "music" on a mass scale; they commerically worship the musicians and singers to whom the "music" is attributed; entire generations' attitudes, ideas, imaginations and behaviors are swayed by the agenda embedded in the memes being marketed to them.

Things have gotten so weird, with people's ideas of what "music" is, what a "musician" is, and what "success" is. I can't talk to anyone, anymore, about broadening the audience for my music and thereby gaining greater success with it, without their mentioning someone such as Taylor Swift as a point of comparison. Aside from that comparing something against its exact opposite is counterproductive, it just shows me how "in-the-Matrix" people have been caused to be. Maybe I'll just chuck the computer and DAW and start a jug band.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2016

well, if I think painting is shit and I would tell him my opinion if we would met.
but here is the catch, opinions don't matter.

of all the people in the universe, at least a couple could enjoy any form of art we can't even imagine!

 

Music is Music.. Good Tunes are Good Tunes. Good Sex is Good Sex. Hell even bad sex is good sex sometimes

 

To me it all comes down to the execution of the idea, and if the medium of art conveys each detail or nuance of the idea for you to sufficiently describe or explain it. Sometimes you want no feedback as an artist and solely use the idea to create a specific type of medium without any interference from others idea/influence, and other times you openly accept these criticisms and since the creation is malleable (before completion) you can improve or clarify the idea and its expression. To me only the artist can say if a piece of work is finished or not and thats how i personally decipher the "execution" part of the question. As an artist this is the thing i care about the most, because then the expression speaks for itself. The other part that comes into this is the inspirations and influences around you, the filters that you choose to look through in life and selectively pick to craft your medium of art. These will all grow, expand, change and become refined over time, and so you may revisit ideas in the past that you may have deemed sufficient to describe that emotion back then. There is a constant feedback loop of information going on around you and the choices you have chosen may have limited or accentuated some specific types of information that you deem valuable. It is up to the creator to "refresh their filter" and independently question the surroundings that they are in and the tools they are using to make sure that they have the potential to carry out the execute the creation of the medium to the best of their abilities.

 

What about art critics? They are not short of an opinion or two

 

I own an art gallery/studio; it's located in a downtown office building of a popular city, which is world famous for the birth/creation of artists (Philadelphia). There is an artist who's work I really detest, but other members of the studio love his work. His work is really disturbing to me (eg. barbie-doll heads on melting monster bodies, tendrils, deformed figures, etc.). One day my partner and other studio members decided to play a joke on me and sat one of the "barbie-doll monsters" near my desk; to trick me into thinking it moved on it's own (i still believe those damned things do, lol). When I saw it, I screamed very loud. It was so loud, in fact, that the building-manager clearly heard it in his office way down the hallway. He came running, thinking something bad had happened. When I explained what had happened (and also how much I hated it) he looked at the "piece", gave a slight wince, then shrugged his shoulders and simply said, " it's art, it's subjective.".... then he walked away.

He was right.... just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean that everyone else won't.

 

Since only a visual was used to further the thread's momentum and the visual is a great example from that Spanish guy (what's his name, LOL), I will quote him here, "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth". From here, if agreed, we can come to a possible understanding that art is never the thing that it mimics, but rather is the filter from which we define the world and our place in it. Perhaps though, music is a bit different as it NEVER can be a perfect mirror or come close to a true reflection. Think of a bridge which can be a very beautiful constructed piece of functional art. A photographer or a painter or sculptor can create an image that we understand as a bridge, and as well a writer could describe it and we might know it as a bridge. To me on the other hand, music is far too abstract for an individual to decipher an artist's intent in so that what the listener is hearing is supposed to be a bridge. I feel that given this idea, music as art has different rules that define it and the applications involved, unless of course the lyric content helps one understand and that the music is the platter that the words are served upon, although Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge Song, if I remember correctly, never even uses the word "bridge" within the text, and I for one would never know that a bridge was involved if not for the title. I won't proffer my own definition for music right now (my body is riddled with opiate pain medication and this is as far as my limited brain power will carry me for the moment), but maybe others will kick in their 2cents to argue my points and proffer their own. Adios.

 

so you are essentially talking about a live performance captured on a recording device, you would still need at least the other musicians' input through performing each part of the musical picture snapshot, but yeah you do get the immediacy effect still ...and people will either like it or not, and offer their criticism (opinion) on it, whether you like it or not... if they are paying
for copies of it, and saying it's great then ,that's good to most artists, if they think it sucks, then you will find it in the bargain bin ! (or maybe it just disappears )

when you play your music, you are going to get a reaction, whether you want it or not, those with manners who find it poorly done, will just remain silent, or lie to you that it was "nice" or whatever,
others who are more cheeky will tell you what they find lacking in it

there are people who think Picasso sucks too.. by the way...

 

Yes - But artists do not make changes to the art based on their opinions ---

 

Well, those people are wrong in the same way that not understanding a foreign language would mean that the language sucks too.

 

I suppose it depends how 'independent' the musicians and artists are, and if they are receiving money up front for a commission.

 

No ! How you make music is irrelevant - What actually makes it art and what makes it your art is that you and you alone decide it's final destiny - Alone in private and immutable - Closure - This is it - The moment when this is it - I have finished -

As it was - when it was - Frozen in your the artists opinion ---

 

we are heading towards some philosophical bs here I guess Superliquid, but first and foremost a language is a utility,
more like the brush that can be used to make something artful, so I am not entirely convinced by your argument
( as Hans Keller would say... )

 

There are quite a few musicians who have full creative control, or there used to be. I would equate the person standing in the gallery as being the equal of a customer in a record shop, both are admirers.

 

alritey then Mister... fire up that DAW and get crackin'.. the world is awaiting...

p.s. they have done x-rays on some old master's paintings, that showed underlying layers
and found that indeed the painter revised the course of his creation as well

Mona Lisa to Leonardo : Don't show my teeth.. they look horrible !!

​

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 5, 2016

Reading between the lines of what SuperLiquid says I am convinced by the argument - It fully incapsulats the reasoning - All opinions are wrong apart from that of the artist - Hence we come full circle again - What actually makes it art and what makes it your art is that you and you alone decide ---