Day 2
Here’s a topic for debate: Is current music superior or inferior to previous, uncompressed music?
Yesterday’s class stared off with a similar question, lasting the entire period without officially reaching a conclusion. Of course, my teacher claimed its inferiority to music of his day, playing the devil’s advocate to all of our protests to the contrary.
Admittedly, much of class consisted of our teacher attempting to rile the class into opposing his view while we remained meek and mute.
One argument that my teacher held strong to was that we have taken the joy out of listening to music. According to him, music was meant to be listened to and appreciated. Now, someone reading this may say that we do listen to music everyday, maybe while doing chores, homework, driving, etc., but that’s not what he had in mind. According to my teacher, music is best appreciated when it hold 100% of the audience’s attention. Nowadays, it maybe receives 50% if it’s lucky. Even as I type out this blog post, I am currently listening to Carrie Underwood’s Something in the Water on repeat in order to block out my little nephew’s infuriating racket next to me.
Throughout the class period, my classmates gave examples as to why this may be. Some claimed that there are more distractions today than there were in the past, such as cars racing down the street and such. However, one person mentioned that he doubted there was as much distraction now as there was in the caveman era when human were constantly watching their surroundings for predators that could pounce and kill them at any moment. This branch of debate quickly subsided after that comment.
Another student mentioned that we like the music we do because it is all that we’ve been exposed to. Our teacher’s reply to that was whether ignorance was an exceptional reason for our poor taste in music.
When all of us had been quiet for a prolonged period of time, our teacher mentioned (in our generation of music’s favor) that our generation has a large amount of expectations heaped upon us due to our parents and grandparents wishes that we do better in school, go to college, or something else along those lines to have a better future than they may not have had the opportunity to achieve. Thus, music has been made for different reasons, such as providing us distractions from so much stress.
Personally, I like to have something in the background when I do things. I may not appreciate music in the way it was originally intended, but I appreciate it in my own way, getting me though a long essay assignment for a class, or calming me down when my temper’s been reached.
Now, as to whether one type of music is inferior or superior to the other, I have no idea. The maximized compression of today’s music makes for louder music, but lacks the emphasis that non-compressed music makes with the variation in volume. Yet though I cannot explain why, I like the music I listen to today. To me, it’s all a matter of personal preference, anyway.
To any readers, please note your own thoughts to this debate. Is older, non-compressed music better than the modern day compressed music on the radios to date? or vice versa? and for whatever reason?
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