Perspective -2

Who to blame?

I remember the Thai food in Kowloon City is very good, many years ago. However, the quality of Thai food in Kowloon City is getting worse and worse. Should we blame the restaurants of not keeping quality? Or should we blame the long queue outside the restaurants even the food is bad? Or should we blame the system behind? Like the magazines who praise every restaurant in Kowloon City even the food is bad, in order to boost sells and mobilize people to consume, under the same pattern? They all should be blamed, yet, nothing is necessary to be blamed at all, because the choice is yours, you can choose not to go there.

The music culture is bad in Hong Kong, should we blame the people who is making bad music? Should we blame the people still choose to listen to the bad music even it is bad? Finally, should we blame the whole music industry system behind to treat music only as a consumption and leisure, but not for the sake of music? I always wish the people love music like the way I do, the degree of loving music. Honestly, I treat music as consumption and leisure more than anyone does, that is why I buy records, t-shirts, musical instruments and equipment, spending all my money to study popular music culture. The thing I want to make a moan is the popular music I love is not popular enough here. The level of getting unpopular is that it doesn’t happen the way in which it makes you consume, at least getting a record in CD shop. Maybe we can look at a little bit broader to see music as a commodity in the whole industry. For instance, we don’t buy records nowadays, but we do buy a lot of Apple device and listen to music through them. In the meantime, the industry adjusts the sells pattern because of the emergence of the MP3 player. The unit of calculating sells is not measured by records unit now, it is now measured by “track” units. I do not see anything wrong with it, if a band could make 12 units of good songs, people should be willing to buy all 12 tracks no matter they buy them from “track to track” or a whole album. The better the case is the consumption would be duplicated, like you buy some tracks and discover the whole album actually is very good, then you buy the whole album. Society is changing as well as the technology. We leave the room for the future great artists here. Yet, the underlying problems here are, is popular music “popular” enough? Or the only thing popular is the word “popular” but not the music?

I do hope it is not so critical, just hoping a little critical for the sake of music. I understand Hong Kong has its own pattern of music industry, but most of the pop songs are generated from the 1920’s Tan Pan Alley pattern of making music. Is it good for music? To ask again, is it our “own” pattern of music making at all?

Perspective -1

What is good music? Generally a song follows a scale, or a sequence inside the music theory, d-r-m-f-s-l-t-d, and a batch of noise in combination of silence, fast and slow, loud and low, every popular song follows this, just the difference in degree. If so, what is good music?

Good music, should be not badly produced, played and listened. To put this concept a little bit further, it is to ask what is "not good" music, in the meantime, it is to ask what is bad music. Should we define something as bad of we like? It is not so necessary, however, somehow we have to do it for the sake of “music itself”. A song, if no one says it is good, actually we should not have to define it as bad; on the other hand, if everyone says it is bad but you think it is good, I believe we have the obligation to defend as well as to protect something you believe in. It is to like something, not disliking the music you like.

Therefore, I lay on the belief that good music is a completely personal preference first. It could be whatever reason you like a song or an artist. For instance, the singer looks cool, the music connected with your soul, remind of you something sweet, bitter or bittersweet, make you love your parents and friends and life after you listen to the song or look at the artists. To say a piece of music is not good music, again, it is a completely personal preference like what good music is. The thing which is more important should be, what is bad music, again, I lie on the belief that we have something to protect in life. When everyone says the song is bad and I think it is good, it is the perspective that how bad should we says a song is “bad”. From the previous, good music is not badly produced, played and listened, thus, bad music is badly produced, played and listened. The responsibility of making a music bad is crossing different aspects, production and reception side, as well as the processing in between these two. Bad music, is produced by someone who can’t produced, played by someone who can’t played, as well as listened by people who are not probably listened. In between these three aspects, authenticity is an important concept transcend them. Authentic music should be authentically produced, it is by appropriation but not by “copy” (it is difficult to distinguish between copying and appropriating, but I think it should be accorded by your own listening experience, like the concept of copy-right, it is regarded as copying if you listen to the song you seem to copy before you produce your own song. Therefore, the case here is, if you listen to Eric Clapton at your ages of 80, in which you never listen to Jimi Hendrix before, Eric Clapton’s guitar is not copying in your own term, and he should not be seen as “a thief” from any black music, fair enough); Authentic music should be authentically played, it is by a real communicative process as a player as well as a listener of “the player” in his/her own history; finally, Authentic music should be probably listened/played(as a reception side), it is not determined by the technical equipment, like how much the hi-fi system you have, or how much the earphones you have; or it is vinyl, cassette-player, MD-player, CD-player, MP3 player or whatever, they are just about media channels. It should be, listened and played at the right place in sociological term, we listen to the music but not “ripping off” the music, should we play Metallica’s Sad but true at a wedding? Or we play “Tell Laura I love her” when you propose to Mary? They are dry wit, and they are interesting to put some thoughts on.

Perspective -0

Making music; music making.

First of all, I want to provide an divergent meanings of these two phrases. As a youth who studied popular music in a cultural and popular sense, as well as a music maker at my free-time; Making music, I think that is the most instant communication between you and your instrument, music; and Making music is more or less like making your music a communicative text, to reach other people (of course yourself). Both of them are a communicative process, in the meantime, a creative process. There is no any ethical, or good/bad judgment in distinguishes, however, what I purposed to talk about is the way in which a song or music should be perceived. Popular music is in all time by determination on how it represents the people who listen to it, like a broken-heart song seems to "talk" to the people who lost their love, experiencing an end of relationship; however in academic music it is to see the things another way round, it is to see how the people listen to a certain song and how they use them. For example, in semiotic analysis red could be seen as dangerous but at the same time it could be seen as "lucky" or fortune in Chinese New Years festival. One signifier could be able to have thousands of signified. To apply this concept onto popular music, we always forget the fact that the song or artist you feel connected to is only someone's else song and artist in which he/she feel connected to. The author is dead, like what Roland Barthes said, and interpretation is our best revenge towards a sign, like what Susan Sontag stated. I never forget liking a song or admiring an artist is a feeling, the thing is liking a song or admiring an artist is a emotional response, but at the same time it is an ideological response as well. People have reason on loving or hating a song, we said some song is good while some other is bad, but we don't usually say some song is right while some other is wrong, it is about the taste and judgment, which is built up historically, in a sociological, cultural and historical aspects, and I believe it much relates to how a song is perceived by music lover, like you and me.