{"id":299,"date":"2005-05-06T16:31:40","date_gmt":"2005-05-06T08:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2005\/05\/2005_05_06_1631.php"},"modified":"2005-05-06T16:31:40","modified_gmt":"2005-05-06T08:31:40","slug":"on-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/06\/on-music","title":{"rendered":"On music&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know this rant is out of the blue (publicly speaking of course), but I just had nothing better to do hehehe.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always had to debate with myself the proper way to &#8220;interpret&#8221; music for performance\/recording. While I understand the need to be in a &#8220;comfort-zone&#8221; because of time constraints (and oftentimes simple narrow-mindedness), I can&#8217;t help but be frustrated with how some people deal with their &#8220;music.&#8221; &#8211; especially if its something I&#8217;m a part of.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes you want to contribute your ideas, but know <strong>beyond a doubt<\/strong> (in fact it was already proven once or twice) that they are too &#8220;aged&#8221; to listen to your input&#8230; I guess the saying &#8220;you can&#8217;t teach an old dog new tricks&#8221; (unless the dog is a &#8220;hip&#8221; and &#8220;updated&#8221; fellow)<\/p>\n<p>I would just want to set my mind at ease &#8211; by claiming that <em>I <strong>definitely<\/strong> can make things better&#8230; if allowed to.<\/em> And all my friends who <em>really<\/em> know me [musically] had constantly been on my case saying <em>&#8220;why don&#8217;t you exert yourself?,&#8221;<\/em> or <em>&#8220;you&#8217;re right&#8230; why don&#8217;t you speak up?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While I do appreciate their sentiments and support, I just <em>can&#8217;t<\/em> because I&#8217;m not the type who&#8217;d &#8220;force the issue.&#8221; For something to work, everyone must agree with it. If I do something better, but people don&#8217;t appreciate the methods I used to achieve them (if it gets political for example) &#8211; I consider that a <strong>waste of time.<\/strong> What&#8217;s important for me is growth for everyone&#8230; <em>not<\/em> a chance to be condescending and say &#8220;I told you so!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If my help is not asked for (&#8216;cuz I remember offering it already <em>ages ago<\/em>), then I simply won&#8217;t go out of my way to give it to the unappreciative.<\/p>\n<p>A friend of mine who&#8217;s definitely has influence in the music whole scene (or at least cannot be denied that he knows what he&#8217;s talking about) share my sentiments. Which is great since I never studied music &#8211; so I never knew if it was just a personal thing in my part or a real valid argument.<\/p>\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\n<p>Basta if ang defense ko sa opinion ko in context of my <code>&lt;insert prominent music school here&gt;<\/code> education &#8211; this is how id say it:<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Holy Grail<\/em> of recording technology <strong>nowadays<\/strong> is to enable us to <em>prefectly document<\/em> a performance and <strong>only then<\/strong> enable us to refine\/improve it <strong>should the need arise.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So if you are singing <em>rounder,<\/em> you are essentially trying to EQ yourselves&#8230; which is stupid. Because the whole first half of the equation is precisely the equipment trying to pick up whatever you deem to be beautiful <em>per se.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><code>webmasters note: The more articulate term would probably be to FAITHFULLY REPRODUCE the source. A also emphasized \"nowadays\" since, like any other sure thing in the world; things CHANGE. It would be wise to at least be open to change.<\/code><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;wa nang &#8220;in the context-in the context of&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><code>webmaster's note: this is simply him confirming that NOBODY needs to CHANGE their voice DRASTICALLY to fit a song\/genre (more proof on this later). Which has been the bane of choral singing nowadays; you should DEVELOP your voice to be the best it can be (if it changes in the process, so be it) but you should never INTENTIONALLY ALTER it.<\/code><\/p>\n<p>So kung sa studio pa lang eh tunog kweba na ang tunog ng singing tunog kweba pa rin yon sa loob ng mix at sakit lang sa ulo sa engineer who&#8217;d TRY to save it by bringing back the normal human singing voice &#8211; if that makes sense.<\/p>\n<p><code>webmaster's note: Indeed it does.<\/code><\/p>\n<p>Kung galing naman sa choral experience ko ang aking defense for my opinion:<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is insulting to the whole choral tradition for one to believe that, by singing <em>rounder,<\/em> you will have achieved the choral sound already.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><code>webmaster's note: These are the words of an influential member of a REALLY respectable CHORAL group<\/code><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>My sentiments exactly&#8230; the <strong>song<\/strong> or arrangement defines a song\/genre, the <em>sound<\/em> is just secondary (and never should&#8217;ve been the case in the first place).<\/p>\n<p>To sing a <em>Kundiman,<\/em> you don&#8217;t need a low deep voice (though it does help). You&#8217;d be retarded to even think that the singing style is what defines those types of songs.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t believe me? How about Sting&#8217;s take on standards? He sings them with his natural singing voice &#8211; the same way he would sing his own Pop\/Jazz songs&#8230; the same way he sung during his rock days with The Police. Same goes with the former boyband member Robbie Williams, same with any other artist who&#8217;s ever tried &#8220;crossing over.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So obviously, the <strong>music<\/strong> makes a song\/genre&#8230; and in addition to that: the <em>interpretation<\/em> makes it successful\/lousy.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s where all this <em>We should sound like this<\/em> crap is coming from. If you&#8217;re trying to copy a sound, then you&#8217;re taking the easy way out&#8230; plus you&#8217;re not being true to yourselves. <em>Cowardice<\/em> is what I would call it. As if the world hasn&#8217;t had enough of the same sound everyone keeps on doing. What people don&#8217;t realize is the very reason why Sting et all were successful is because they sang well and their interpretation was good &#8211; and of course the <em>songs themselves<\/em> were good. Them having\/lacking a &#8220;crooner&#8221; voice had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone <strong>can&#8217;t<\/strong> understand that, then I&#8217;ll respect their opinion&#8230; I just hope they also respect me thinking they&#8217;re not worth discussing Music with.<\/p>\n<p>PS. Though most of the post was about singing, my actual beef is with the instrumentation. I can&#8217;t do better <em>per se,<\/em> but I can certainly make them <strong>sound better.<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know this rant is out of the blue (publicly speaking of course), but I just had nothing better to do hehehe. I&#8217;ve always had to debate with myself the proper way to &#8220;interpret&#8221; music for performance\/recording. While I understand the need to be in a &#8220;comfort-zone&#8221; because of time constraints (and oftentimes simple narrow-mindedness), &hellip; <p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/05\/06\/on-music\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On music&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[803,993],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-music","tag-recording"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}