Album Rating: 4.0

@park: yeah imagine someone being so elitist you pretend hooks aren’t necessary or desirable. It’s just a different interpretation of the concept. What Gmork said is actually true, especially in some circles, honestly it’s kind of sad.

i just quoted what that guy said you goofball

http://puu.sh/FH3zV/1c5bbf7df2.png

lol
good job identifying the hook in that comment park ;]

demon of the [goof-]ball

more like i couldnt be bothered to read the rest even

lmao
may i introduce you to Pop Music
(it's rly good but we can't talk about it here)

please do

Album Rating: 4.5

@Demon My main point was merely that I dislike it when music places an emphasis on hooks (as in earworms), which isn't to say music must be devoid of them or that they are in and of themselves always totally inadequate.

@Johnny, I'm using 'water-down' as a pejorative here, I was merely stating I dislike it when music is deprived of depth or meaningful layers/textures, to ensure you can shove some earworm down someone's throat. That to me doesn't constitute interesting composition. Granted, allowing a certain element to overshadow others at certain points can be desirable, but I think that can be done without loosing depth, if you're willing to forgo a total isolation of a single musical element within a composition, something hooks generally incentivize I think. As I had said before, it's music within its totality that must appealing (for me at least), not a few discerete elements within it.

I tend to grow bored quickly of music that repeats motifs throughout seperated points, no matter how amazing they are. It causes songs to quickly become sterile, although I can understand using repetition to build atmosphere, or to hit home a certain theme. Granted, my point was mainly concerned with repeating musical elements, which themselves are intentionally watered-down. I mean, I suppose if your motifs are more abstract and difficult to reproduce, you can avoid sterility, yet I wonder whether repeating the same part, even within a different musical context, later down the line, appeals to me all that much, although I can think of examples where it does work quite well.



P.S. @Park: I must have misunderstood your intentions. My apologies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XH92Wie0U
so the use of a 'hook' in this song is remarkable insofar as it takes a reproducible lyrical sample and variates it by means different intensities of delivery and abrupt spoken word interjections. the focus is weighted so prominently on these elements that shallow listeners may not notice that the bassline stays the same throughout the whole song but Full Tac cleverly subverts this by taking out of the mix sometimes (and also sometimes changing the tone - bet they didn't even use a guitar pedal for that, fuck me pop music is clever). the song is actually a wry satire of the tendency of nonelite pop listeners to become contingent on the 'hook' for their release of pleasure, as it thoroughly instills its refrain in its audience and then ends abruptly as soon as it seems as though it could go on forever! it's like it's saying "this reductive piece of musical recycling is all you'll ever need", and then pulls the plug as soon as you start believing it! incredibly self-aware composition!

Album Rating: 4.5

I've legit never once taken time to consider whether something was "hook-y" or not. Hell I'm not sure I could even tell you what exactly a hook is. If I think it's good and I like it/enjoy it, I will come back to it. Hooks have nothing to do with it.



I listen to plenty of doom that is probably completely devoid of hooks and I've never cared.

what do you think of this site's infatuation with kate bush

Album Rating: 4.0

@park: phew, I’m relieved tbh. Well yes ‘imagine’ (thinking that) didn’t have to refer to you I guess ;-).

Album Rating: 4.5

@Johnny: I mean self-satire is cool and all, although I still feel that song becomes incredibly sterile really quickly, but I suppose that is the point. Even if you're incredibly proficient at recycling musical motifs, you're still, you know, recycling musical motifs, which I think is often unconducive to the engagement of a musical piece. Oh and yes, pop music can be very smart and even suprisingly progressive, something I won't deny, even if I dislike the general aesthetic.

"I tend to grow bored quickly of music that repeats motifs throughout seperated points, no matter how amazing they are."
i swear you were calling John Zorn (who is very very good at doing this and does it literally the whole time outside of his classical work) a genius like three threads back? i'm also unsure of this use of 'sterile' given that some hooks are self-sufficient when it comes to carrying songs, and others benefit from variations in rhythm, arrangement or lyrical articulation - seems a huge generalisation to discuss hooks or motifs without considering these things.

what do you think of this site's infatuation with kate bush [2]

Album Rating: 4.5

I wouldn't necessarily say John Zorn tends to make highly repetitive music, even outside his classical music (especially with his Moonchild records, certain piano pieces etc.) certainly not in the sense I had identified. Mind you, I did say it does work sometimes, it just takes me out of a piece of music generally. It also helps that Zorn's motifs tend to be so abstract or alienating I often don't really experience them as 'hooks', in the sense of easily reproducible earworms.

Perhaps my definition of Hooks is too pejorative or operatively limited, but I tend to dislike it when I have to enjoy a piece of music, purely through the constituent hooks, instead of in its totality, if can easily 'get it'. I quite like to be bemused, thrown of guard, made uneasy and generally hooky earworms and catchy melodies are incompatible with such experiences.

i don’t like reading but i’m sure you made a valid point

Album Rating: 4.5

I'd also add, that a single element of a song, no matter how elevated, shouldn't be expected to carry a song. At least, I'd much prefer it, if every constituent element of the music helps carry the song and if these constituent elements can work in tandem, to create texture and depth, without melding into an unintelligible cacophany, unless that is the point of course, which can be fairly amazing (think of John Zorn again, at times at least). Hook generally implies, to me at least, something easy to latch on to, easily reproducible and I don't know if such a thing, unless to serve some type of explicit minimalist purpose, is all that musically interesting. Quite a lot of Zorn's music might have some easily reproducible motif here and there, but it's certainly not the reason I like him so much, it's not the hooks that should make or break the music I think.

"It also helps that Zorn's motifs tend to be so abstract or alienating I often don't really experience them as 'hooks', in the sense of easily reproducible earworms"
"I tend to dislike it when I have to enjoy a piece of music, purely through the constituent hooks, instead of in its totality"
Going through different pickets of his work, and Hazor, Almadel, Snake Catcher, You Will Be Shot, Zeraim, Pink Limousine and Strategies are all (good) cuts that represent their respective parts of his oeuvre adequately - all of them are driven by motifs or phrases that could be outlined as hooks (and I don't think many of them are particularly melodically abstract). Some have multiple repeated hooks (Hazor and You Will Be Shot in particular). The arrangement and quote-unquote tonality is also on point in all of them, and it's obviously possible to enjoy them for reasons beyond their use of repeated motifs, but I think it's disingenuous to talk about music like this as though it's a million years away from more traditionally consumable scenes.
"I'd also add, that a single element of a song, no matter how elevated, shouldn't be expected to carry a song"
Yes fair, I was exaggerating somewhat when I said that. Good songwriting tends plays off good hooks instead of using them as a crutch. "where's my juul" had elements of this in its spontaneous-seeming spoken word asides, but I will concede that this was not adequately developed to stand as an example of this
Anyone vaguely following but bored by this exchange plz listen to all these Zorn cuts; shit slaps

Album Rating: 4.5

When I think of my favourite Zorn pieces, I think more of is work with the Moonchild trio, abstract piano centric pieces like The Hierophant, The Interpretations of Dreams and such. My absolute favourite of his is Interzone, which I find really difficult to describe, other than highly postmodern, although I understand that term to be fairly vague. Records like In a Convex Mirror and Madness, Love and Mysticism do wonders for me as well. Those records certainly can employ motifs of a kind, but I wouldn't necessarily consider them super 'hooky'. Rather, they're highly alienating in a more general sense.

You mentioned various pieces from his earlier work, including various cuts things of The Gift, which I recall is a favourite of yours, and to a lesser extent of mine, yet some cuts are also from The Crucible, Circle Maker, Nacked City's st (I recall my mom even liking You Will Be Shot), which also have various highly dynamic pieces on them. Granted, Zorn knows how to develope a motif, but again, I don't think I would generally describe his music as 'hooky'. I wasn't really concerned with Zorn's inaccesibility, it varies, from record to record, song to song, and its (broader) consumability will depend on, well, the machinations of capitalism and the corporate music industry, I don't really think it comes down to the fact that everything Zorn does is "super acquired taste yo". I'd imagine, given how varied his discography is, you might be able to find something for almost everyone in there, regardless of how much they love/hate the frequent use of motifs or easily reproducible earworms.