How does one discuss sound in a medium that necessarily removes it?

Listening to music is so easy these days. Everyone knows about everything. Sure, things can still be under or over rated, I suppose, but the point is that no matter what you want to listen to, it will be accessible almost whenever the whim strikes you. But so what? What does it all mean? What does this constant sonic picture blasting forth from every corner of the globe say about humanity? How can we discuss these things relationally when they all form a constant and unbreakable feedback loop of structure and influence?

After seeing Beethoven’s second performance of his Fifth Symphony, notable critic E.T.A Hoffman had this to say: “Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing — a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits” (Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, July 1810).

Upon hearing this quote, Noble Bighorn transit columnist Curran Folkers had this to say: “That’s some pretty heavy music journalism.”

To discuss music is to skate the precarious line of meticulous over analysis of trite facts and abstract ambiguous theorizing. When discussing the techniques and situations leading to the creation of the music in question, everything seems relevant but nothing can satisfactorily encapsulate the experience of music consumption. Many music writers (though certainly not all) choose to file music into some sort of hierarchical ranking system based on arbitrary subjective criteria in an attempt to make sense of the whole mess. While it makes it easier to create “Best Of” lists and convey the writer’s belief in the importance of the music discussed in relation to the other millions of releases, this practice ultimately fails because it attempts to quantify an idea dependent on intrinsic quality. Hearing that MusicTunesRUs.com gave the new Deerhoof album 7 out of 10 iPods is helpful for the casual consumer who wants an uncomplicated approach to art in determining a potential listening path, but it can’t be a legitimate way of attempting to describe the quality and effect of the project of music creation, and its reciprocal relationship with music consumption.

The Questions:

1. So where does the discussion begin? Format? Does listening to the same album on different formats totally alter your perception of it? Does the tape become the music?

2. Locality? Does the place an album is created radiate outwards from its sonic contents? If many records come from the same place do they come across as different tourist photographs of the Eiffel Tower? Do they all depict the exact same thing regardless of weather or season or quality of camera?

3. Relationship with tradition? Is it important to consider what music sounds like in relation to pre-existing music that utilizes similar traditions and approaches? How does the irreducible weight of music history impress upon the music of the now?

4. Message? Does music that conveys something in a concrete form deserve different discussion than music that does not? Does lyrical tradition actually do anything different than instrumental tradition, or are we simply substituting the signifiers?

5. Conditions of the individual? Does the artist or artists in question have something in their history and relationships that makes a particular work weightier or more groundbreaking than others? Does motivation alter approach?

6. Does any of this matter? How does a piece of music attempt, whether acknowledged or not, to express Being as such and contribute to the already vast bridge of sound being constructed between us and ourselves?

Over the next few months I will be considering these question clusters one by one and attempting to constructively strive towards expressing something worthwhile about the experience of consuming music and attempting to reconcile the effect it has on our identities and relationships with the seemingly inescapable fact that all of this is just soloing into the void.