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I've tried several threads here to tackle the most important topic of them all. A simple one - why is some music good, and some not.
This is the direct one.
Why is some music "good" and some is "not"
This is the last one of the series.
Forget about taste and try respect.
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11-13-2025 09:37 PM
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It’s personal taste. Don’t try to figure it out, nobody can please everyone.
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A sound makes contact with a functioning ear. From that comes ear consciousness. From that comes a perception which includes a feeling. If the feeling is pleasant, that sound is labeled a "good" sound.
The sound has no good, the ear has no good, the consciousness of it has no good, the perception/feeling has "pleasant," but it is not good until that instant it is inventoried as such for the function of finding or creating it again in order to create the pleasant feeling again.
Perceptions snowball in this way and develop into more and more complex systems like "opinions" etc
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Really?
Originally Posted by emanresu
Entering absurdist territory !
I would respectfully you just make some and move on..... Ai is wayyy ahead of you here..
S
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I don't think there is a universal good or bad when it comes to art.
If you list a set of criteria by which to judge music then maybe you can come up with a few answers. But in the end, like others have mentioned, it's all relative and very much personal.
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JAZZ is good music....:-)
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I've run out of options. What is a good music?
If you have to ask this you'll never know.
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Why are there good musicians and not good musicians, good composers and not good composers? Originally Posted by emanresu
These questions are simple, but they are dead ends of incoherence until definitions up front make clear what comprises good and not good. It is philosophical and logical bad faith to pose questions about undefined ideas.
Music is neither good nor not good if you exclude taste as a constraint in order to attempt to make good and not good objective. Respect is in the same class as taste; the objects or attributes of respect are no more objective than taste for the same reason.
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Ok you foos need me to explain it to you. There are 2 domains to objectively good music and they're interdependent:
1. How sound the music is mechanics wise.
2. How effectively the music involves you in its artistic statement.
Art is not purely subjective. You can objectively rate if music is good or not. I can assess whether music is good or not regardless of if I like it.
Most music has to be sound to be good. It can be imperfect but it usually has to be either quite polished to somewhat imperfect. If it's just all disorganized and incoherent, almost noone will like it. But there are rare instances where the artistry can redeem it. Some music tilts more towards chaos, but it's still dependent on some organizing framework that if it doesn't uphold, it won't be sound, and people won't like it, and it won't be good.
However the end goal is to move the listener, in whatever feeling that is. Points if it's deeper feeling, but it doesn't have to be. Incredible music can convey intense or deep feelings where it's more powerful than someone trying to tell you their life story. The music conveying the feeling is dependent on it being sound, but the end goal is still the communication of the feeling, the telling of the story etc.
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Well, that's very true :-)Most music has to be sound to be good
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When music is played by outstanding performers, it is usually very good music
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Taste = something that you experience + how it makes you feel. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
It looks simple but we also can look past how it makes us feel and decide it being something good anyway.
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Liking or disliking a piece of music is personal. Claiming a piece of music is good or bad is social. The claim will be accepted or rejected by others, depending on social values. You might prefer the music of C.P.E. Bach to that of J.S. Bach; that is a matter of personal taste. But to claim the son was a better composer than his father would be to invite ridicule, because we all know J.S. is one of the greatest composers and C.P.E was a lesser light, although most of us could not say why.
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When do both good and bad music cross the line to being just sound or noise?
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When I was a hipster in highschool I listened to a genre called "noise" I never heard it referred to as music or anyone claim it to be music, but we listened to it as if it was music. The closest thing you could call it was maybe "sound art" but I don't think we would ever call it something as embarrassingly pretentious as that. we called it noise, the label was only as a means to reference it, had no other meaning otherwise Originally Posted by garybaldy
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My opinion, as I was trying to express in my enigmatic post above, is that IF feeling doesn't come first the label of "good" is based on something artificial, e.g. a group consensus. Originally Posted by emanresu
Isn't that an e.e. cummings poem? something like feeling comes first
edit: i was right!:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
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Sonic Youth Silver Sessions Originally Posted by garybaldy
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The individual Creed of Criteria determines what is liked or less-liked.
I frequented the art museums a good bit when I lived in DC, you see certain things you love. If pressed one can list the reasons why.
As I heard in a movie the other day don’t over- brain, a “needle through water” or not.
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If it sounds good, it is good.
Duke Ellington
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"sounds good" is a very broad term.... Originally Posted by BBGuitar
Kris
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Also an attempt at objectivity unless qualified by, "...to me." Originally Posted by kris
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SY is very good music IMHO. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Not all music is an artistic expression. "Functional" music, a.k.a., Muzak, is a product of engineering. It is boring by design, so bland that it won't be noticed, the sonic equivalent of subliminal advertising. So perhaps that is how we can assign an objective value to music: why does it exist? Is it a form of personal expression or simply a form of merchandising? Originally Posted by Strat-itis
Muzak: a history of this much-mocked musical form | Classical Music
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Taste again. Lets forget about taste or subjectivity.
Taste is not the key. I love playing Bach, I am annoyed by it when someone plays it the way I don't like.
This is taste. This is what taste does.
Let's forget about taste, let's imagine a world that has no taste and everything sounds the same for all people, no matter where they come from. Then this would be easier to discuss.
A little exercise for you to let go of your personal view of how things sound:
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Can you do it? If not, you are a slave to your own "taste".
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