I came across this article today, read it and at once felt an icy cold rush in, run over and through my chest, my heart absorbing the brunt of the message in an empathic near death experience.

https://pitchfork.com/features/overtones/the-rise-of-dissociation-music/

 

That's one way of looking at it, I was wondering for some time if this has more to do with the middle classes dominating modern music, on account of their connections; largely bland, comfortable people who have been given opportunities on a silver platter and because they haven't fought every step of the way they don't sound hungry, they don't have thousands of sometimes tough gigs behind them. They got there the easy way and they really don't have much to say about anything. They're faking it, playing popstars. Even the audiences at festivals have changed and are largely middle class now. The whole industry is created by them and for them. I get the same feeling when I watch middle class British actors, most of them are interchangeable. Very few working class kids can get into drama schools anymore, they're priced out of it. Pretty much all popular cultural arts are middle to upper class now. The place to look for real fire and commitment is in the struggling working class bands who can't for the life of them break into this closed system. I think the '90s was the last decade of true creativity in popular music.

 

Spoiler: stupid personal info regarding why i didn't read the article

ughh i'll be honest i'm a wuss and couldn't read the article cause the word disassociation "triggers" me, i hate writing that but it's kinda true.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10520978/

i fortunately found this article 1.5 ago researching my one of my dumb shit diagnosis, it saved my life because it STOPPED me from dissociating.... I guess the verbage is a bit like the difference between someone saying "this software is cancer" because it sucks and actually having cancer. my disassociation wasn't being on tiktok pretending i have alters (that shit pisses me off for various reasons), or being zoned out watching netflix- but being scared because i wasn't in full control of my body/brain which was hellbent on destroying itself. i STILL can't sleep at night because my body WILL NOT fall asleep. so i'm a pussy for avoiding the word but it is what it is.

i went on a LONG (SORRY, I'm insane and stuck inside) rant, everything below this basically just agrees the middle class might be making bland music but also just the fact more people than ever can make music means more mediocre music is being produced. It also mean this is PROBABLY a GOLDEN AGE of music.... but there is so so so much of it being made the struggle is FINDING that music, it's less that the needle has gotten smaller and more the pile of hay is bigger than ever.

IF you read any of this, the LAST 4 paragraphs aren't even about music directly, more about how the world sucks therefore it should be no surprise art reflects that. In someways... the bland mediocre art (corporate country, mumble rap, autotuned to shit pop, etc) ACCURATELY reflect today's world better than anything else. What's more corporate than appealing to the masses by creating the same thing everyone else is? That's the world.


i'm mostly responding to crinklebumps here (as i didn't read the article). i don't really strongly disagree with any of that... well. sorta. Crinklebumps focus is on the middle class (which i think is TOTALLY fair and valid especially when it comes to festival target audiences and the people who have the $$$ to get into 'pro' studios... rebecca black style.) but I think that the obvious should be stated and some of that is due to PURE numbers. I mean- very few working class kids can get into drama school, true- but almost EVERY working class kid can get software and a cheap smart phone to film there own show. The same can be said for music. There is a price barrier to get into a "proper and professional" grade area but there is basically NO barrier to get started on making electronic music nowadays- even 100% legit there are "free" ways (like garageband.... free after a computer. still fairly low barrier)


unfortunately you can't remove art from money in this world, which really confuses this whole topic. if you're a studio... you need to make money to feed yourself and power the equipment etc. the people who can afford to pay you aren't the starving artist (jesus christ, that's literally me lol. minus the artist i guess, that makes me feel dumb) but the bland middle class who can pay you. and yeah... they might not have a lot to say, musically or otherwise. You have them on one hand, and on the other you have a TON of people who just got FL studio watched a 10 minute vid on 1/32nd hihats and are making trap. There is mediocrity coming out of both ends (which, btw I don't hate on ANYONE for making music, I fucking encourage it as I love it so much. If someone else can experience that too, I would be a MONSTER to want to stop that. That being said, if I was a UFC fighter I'd encourage people to get into the sport but I wouldn't say they should fight in the main event on their first day of training.)


What I mean is, if money was the filter straining out talented(whether that be in a artistic or earning potential type way) artists then the boom in accessible technology poked a shitload of holes into that. I have 6 dollars to my name... in my bank account. I found a 10 dollar roll of quarters i had for laundry, so I've been eating from that- things are looking up! Meanwhile I have literally 1000 vst's on my computer lol. (ironically i probably am capable of creating better/more emotional music than someone eating well, but then again i don't have the energy or focus to finish anything so touche to the person with food. that's not me patting myself on the back, but more agreeing that stat's wise a lot of music is bland)


Anyway, a lot of this I feel has to do with the world at large. Art is a reflection of humanity, and humanity pretty much sucks in a lot of ways right now. Corporations and billionaires reign supreme, and by design they're terrible at art. If you think the billionaires in the popular eye have any vision, you're mistaken. 3 of them thought of going to space at the same time- that's how creative they are. :/ Any one of them could convert the city/county/state they live at into a Jetson's type city of the future with the amount of money they have.... they spent it making space rockets to compete with one another. Rich yes, psychopaths yes, interesting no. Musk saying they'd have autonomous driving cars the first time=interesting. Over the years repeating the same lie has proven he is NOT interesting, just another CEO type con man. Cuban opening a pharmaceutical website undercutting the FUCKING GREED (If skeptical, look at the top 5 pharma companies R&D budgets versus their marketing budgets. Then look at insulin costs in America versus the world and the pharma companies stated reasoning for that. pure and simple 1984 greed and lies.) of big pharma IS interesting to me- that will prove to change more than any dick shaped rocket into space.

The Kardashian's were also a reflection of things to come, or perhaps part of the reason. Kim Kardashian was born into a wealthy and celebrity connected family and SHE HAD TO FUCK A FOOTBALL PLAYER ON FILM to become relevant. That's how BANKRUPT of talent she is.... and YET 20 years later I see her and that piece of shit non funny hack Pete Davidson sitting near Jon Stewart at his Mark Twain award. People like Rebecca Black or JJ Icefish who are so completely terrible actually have contributed MORE to humanity IMO with ONE song than she has her entire life. That entire family and anyone who associates with them should be banned from any public appearances. YET they aren't, and now you have people growing up thinking that being FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS is the goal. That to me IS the big change.... I try not to be angry old man shaking their fist at the sky, but BEFORE Kardashian era it was I want to be famous/rich by becoming an actor, an athlete, a doctor even- whatever. Something of skill and talent. Kim Kardashian and her publicist team (the only talented people there) turned that into something VILE, fame for fame's sake. Obviously that existed before her- but she created a viable path to do that. There are so many people in this world where things would be INSTANTLY improved were they to vanish off the face of the planet.

Murderers are foul for many reasons, but I think ultimately the most unforgivable thing about them is they remove the potential that someone has to change and direct their life, permanently. In that way, some of these people are worse than a killer who murdered a single human being. Someone like Bezos has overseen and been the cause of, bit by bit person by person, the limiting of humanities potential. The world is instantly improved should they stop existing on it.


Long story short, the only faith I personally have left in this world is that things are going to get worse and worse. Maybe eventually the rat's or cockroaches can take over as the dominant life forms- can they do much worse than the Kardashians, than the billionaires of the world? I'm ready to hand it over to them.

 

Haven't we already lost count of

• how many times art has embraced vacuous nihilism;
• how many pointless flavours of vacuous nihilism there are;
• how often vacuous nihilism is pedalled because the proponents are totally incapable of offering anything else;
• how many times those who DO have something creatively positive to offer just say "who gives a shit - let the zombies do what whatever they want"

The number of times real artistry emerges from vacuous nihilism is too small to bother counting.

 

Bruce Dickinson back in 2014...

'“Personally I have no interest in going to Glastonbury. In the days when Glasto was an alternative festival it was quite interesting. Now it’s the most bourgeois thing on the planet [...] We’ll leave the middle classes to do Glastonbury – and the great unwashed will decamp to Knebworth, drink a lot of beer and have fun.”'

https://www.loudersound.com/news/glasto-s-too-middle-class-for-maiden-bruce

 

This topic isn't well defined yet, if feels like the world is opening up to it still and trying to make sense of it. So many variables at play. It isn't really new, the majority of hippies at Woodstock were the middle classes pretending to be hippies, dressing up in the style for the day. In the '60s the musicians called the shots (though didn't realise they were being ripped off by their middle class managers!) but eventually the industry called the shots and from then onwards it's been a downward slide into mediocrity. Boy bands taught us that you didn't have to sing properly, anybody could sing falsetto, you just needed to look good. Autotune has a lot to answer for too, especially now that it's used live. The point is it's become easier than ever for record companies to control the whole market, they don't need to look for a great singer and manipulate them, they can pick almost anybody and turn them into stars. If you show an ounce of fight against any of this you won't be picked, so we don't really hear dissension in pop music. If you are picked you'd better have music lawyers read that contract.

It isn't difficult to find great middle class bands, artists or actors (Tom Hardy), I know I've generalised a great deal in what I've been saying. I just feel that there's a lot of truth in what I said too and it feels like it will only get worse.

Anyone can make music these days, it's so easy, but we're really talking about the industry, the so-called professionals and the market. Young bands need to believe in what they're doing 100% and have an attitude that they will find their own way into a business that doesn't want them - the internet is really the answer to this, but that too will be grabbed and controlled in the same way as every other money-making opportunity, hence all the streaming services that pay peanuts to the artistes. It's still possible though, Marillion demonstrated this a decade or more ago when they asked their fans to pay upfront for their next album (Marbles) and it was a great success, now it's a business model well worth considering for those on the margins. Harder for bands starting out with no fan base, of course, but the point is they were creative in the business sphere and other ideas can emerge also.

Gigging is no longer easy, in many situations bands have to pay to play, even successful artistes have to pay something like 20% of their mechandise sales (t-shirts etc.,) to venue owners and bands probably make more money from their merchandise than the actual music these days. The fight is real...

 

First, all musicians need more knowledge about exploitation in the music industry. Then we need think tanks to work out alternatives. How to start your own record label, how to organize concerts. How to create self-managed cultural centers.
How to organize street festivals. How to get insurance coverage for live performances.

How to found a support association for cultural workers. Then we need an alternative platform for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. In short, the revolution can only come from below. To be upset about those up there - the elites and rich investors, brings nothing at all, one wastes only his own energies. You should start laughing about them.

You should also stop reading the ruling media - which only serve to distract from the real problems. There are currently many powerful false people who lie to us and oppress us. Remain critical - think for yourself - question everything.

 

Last edited: Jun 24, 2022

those are all good points, but i think "So many variables at play" is probably the smartest thing anyone can say about things with any certainty.

lol i'm getting better- i just had a 4 paragraph reply adding onto your points and making some new ones, but managed to catch myself and just erase it.

 

My 17 year old daughter and her friend were hanging on the couch in the garden and I decided to play them a song that I wrote years ago during the Rwandan Civil War and the widespread massacre of the Tutsi. In my exercise I tried to fathom the scope of the atrocity by imagining myself a man who one morning goes to Lake Kivu to fish for his family miles away from their village only to hours later to see smoke rising in the air from the village's direction, and upon his frantic return finds that his wife and daughter had been murdered, being hacked to death from machetes and left in the dirt like refuse. The girls were affected by the song as is anybody that I've sang it to, but what struck me were their concerted comments...that my song would kill on Tic Tok because of the melody and that the songs that people are now writing have no emotional content and/or that the lyrics are just empty shells with no meaning and just filler.

 

Accordingly, some of our fellow human beings are also empty shells and your life is without meaning. They have nothing more to say, because in your head is also nothing more critical takes place. In short, some of our fellow men have lost their cognitive abilities, it is estimated that 40-50% of young people are lost. The reason is probably the excessive use of the smart phone.

 

I think you're on the right track here, the solution is from the ground up.

 

Maybe older musicians need to help young musicians more, we've had our time, our opportunities, whatever came of them. Those in a position to help should. It's a brutal world for the real talented young musicians out there right now. It should be their time. If you run a studio or have real production talent consider working for nothing or some sort of success-reward mechanism. We need new solutions to new problems.

 

beat16 you're being unfair to the youth here. look at how many OLD people fell for misinformation on facebook during covid- to the point animal feed stores ran out of horse dewormer.... meant to be used on horses. being sucked into a smart phone/the social media/constant drip feed of entertainment is MORE than a young/old thing, and it's also not a failing of character- anymore than becoming addicted to heroin or cigarettes is a failing of character. STARTING to smoke cigarettes or STARTING to do heroin- those might be character flaws, but becoming addicted to those substances isn't a character flaw, it's just what happens when you use those because those substances are super fucking addictive. So is the smart phone, and just like cigarettes and heroin there are a lot of people directly profiting who are invested in keeping that addiction going. You wouldn't jab a heroin needle into someone's arm then blame them for being addicted to it, and it's unhelpful I think to put a ton of personal responsibility on people for being addicted to smart phones- it's like saying all the people smoking cigarettes in the 1950's were stupid. (I know you didn't blame anyone in your comment as a side note, I'm more talking to the air right now)

My argument is that the reason isn't the smart phone, and the blame isn't on the youth. You said we shouldn't be angry at the elite and laugh at them- but here is a prime example of the large effects the elite have had on everyone. At least in America they've been working to undercut education for DECADES, and we're now living with the results. It isn't hard (unless you were educated here, then it might be) to tell we score lower than a ton of other countries when it comes to any student testing... and yet we're the most wealthy nation by far. it is by design of the elites it's like this- if they can bail out failing banks almost instantly but not address the failing education system for years and years all while spending 750 billion annually on the military... powerful people are invested in American's being stupid. When you have that many resources, action and inaction is a choice. A lot of America is working exactly as designed, which is to not engage any critical thinking and just do what they're told. I don't find the elites funny, I find them revolting in almost every way imaginable. the fact a billionaire can afford to pay a senator's salary like someone making 40k can buy a 7 dollar beer is fucking broken as hell, and the fact they can sway the populace to vote against their best interests with just a few key words means they've won.

it IS a lost cause in this country anyway, can't speak for any others of course. But I'll speak for America- it's completely fucked. or maybe i'm just saying that because i'm an empty shell of a person and my life has no meaning.

 

Thank you ! I have, so that the important topic is not lost, opened an extra thread:

Alternatives to the Music Industry - Idea Collection and Exchange
https://audiosex.pro/threads/altern...ea-collection-and-exchange.65404/#post-650371

 

I was just listing the facts. I did not judge or devalue people.

Problematic Mobile Phone and Smartphone Use Scales: A Systematic Review
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00672/full

 

Last edited: Jun 24, 2022

I thought this was gonna be about the way dissociative drugs alter musical perception.
Oh well.

 

Walk me out in the morning dew...

 

i couldn't fall asleep of course- @BEAT16 i definitely did not mean to come across as attacking you, and i definitely could have chosen my words better.

I guess my goal was to make the argument the problem is bigger than just the youth, and that it's less an issue of the smart phone device as it is the software being pushed out and delivered via the smart phone. I agree there is an issue in that area for sure- like they're not sure if the rise in adult ADHD diagnosis's are because they can diagnose it better now, or if it's actually increasing because of shit like the smart phone use. I also think the youth would be most vulnerable to the negative consequences of not having to think.

the smart phone is here to stay though- and overall I think that is good. can you imagine going back to not having a music player, a camera, a video camera, plus all the other bells and whistles and access to the internet all one device that fits in your pocket? those are ALL good things pretty much, yeah? That's where my analogy to the smart phones and heroin/cigarettes really stumbles, because smart phones give you a ton of good along with the bad.

the issue isn't of course the smart phone, or the internet, or the youth- it's the people who have made empires out of selling other people's data. they have a vested interest in people staying on their phones, more data to collect, more ad's that will get clicked. people aren't addicted to... reading wikipedia pages. they're addicted to well designed dopamine inducing bullshit like tiktok, or facebook, or reddit where it's endless and constantly changing. These social media giants are worth billions and billions... yet you don't have to pay to use their products. I'm obviously not a rocket surgeon, but I'm thinking they must be making money SOMEHOW.... hmmm.

I'd be interested in reading that survey. Perhaps it's just a different language type thing, but "40-50% of young people are lost due to smart phone abuse" is incredibly vague, even when you add in they lose their cognitive abilities. That is an extremely high number, and using the term "lost" to describe a human beings mental state in a peer reviewed article seems suspect. what does "lost" mean, cognitively? they can't find there way around the dewey decimal system? does it come back? how many people were in the study? how was it performed, is this a scientific study or a survey on some random website?

again, i don't doubt excessive time staring at facebook on your phone is a detriment to your cognitive abilities. i'm sure it happens to all sorts of people, but i'm questioning the methods and the numbers of the results of the survey, given how both vague AND conclusive the results seem to be. regardless, i don't question the overall spin which is "too much smart phone makes you dumb", that i agree with. I just think the smart phone is a tool, and tools aren't good or evil. there are certainly people who have used the smart phone to benefit themselves at the cost of others cognitive abilities- and that sure strikes me as a certain way on the old morality scale.

 

It's not about technology and prohibitions - it's about people.

Everyone knows what happens when they drink a bottle of whisky every day. Many young people use this technique without being aware of what happens to their brain or life. A responsible person would read articles or buy a book to inform themselves about this technology and what it can do. If you want to drive a car, you have to get a driving licence before you can drive in traffic.

The book from which the 40% survey is taken is called:

Payback: Why we are forced to do what we don't want to do in the information age and how to regain control over our thinking Hardback - 16 November 2009 by Frank Schirrmacher (Author)
https://www.amazon.de/Payback-Informationszeitalter-gezwungen-Kontrolle-zurückgewinnen/dp/389667336X

What was I about to do? Why do things no longer have an end? What is happening to my brain? Almost everyone is familiar with the new forgetfulness and the almost pathological increase in concentration disorders. There is much more behind it than just being overwhelmed. We know more than ever before and yet we are constantly afraid of missing the most important things.

Man is not only a carnivore and herbivore, he is also an information glutton. Information is advantage and in the information food chain, the one who sends and receives messages the fastest and most effectively wins. But this new form of Darwinism means that we can no longer distinguish what is important and what is not. We call up our whole life trajectory more and more like information, destroying our ability to deal with the unexpected.

The question is whether we have already begun to treat ourselves like computers, and whether we are in danger of turning human beings into mathematical formulas ...

It is not the technologies that are to blame, but the fact that more and more often only what is compatible with computers is demanded and promoted in people. A world without information technology is inconceivable. But the pure coexistence of humans and computers leads to the victory of artificial intelligence. Soon computers will be capable of things that seem unimaginable today.

They will know our desires better than we do and will even be able to translate our associations into software. But it is important that we do not lose our abilities in the process. We can reclaim what is taken from us when we redefine human strengths.

Based on conversations with the leading minds of the Internet age and important representatives of modern psychology, Frank Schirrmacher shows how the human self-image could change in the next few years and what fascinating answers to this crisis are possible.

- We are bombarded with what other people are doing every second.
- We will be able to predict what every person wants to do in the next minute
- We know everything. And nothing about ourselves

 

...my honey....