Is some music better than other music?, A vexed question. Options

[wakibaki]

The question is exactly as posed in the thread title. Is some music better than other music?

For myself, I have long been convinced that some music is indeed better than other music. That all music can be ranked on a scale of 'goodness', given that no piece is necessarily of consistent quality from end-to-end.

For example, I might sing a song. I might sing it slightly out of tune in a particular passage. I might sing it again, without singing out of tune.

All other things being equal, I would rate the second rendition better than the first.

I think this applies across the board, that there is an intrinsic quality in music (or: are qualities) which make(s) it possible to say that one piece is better than another.

I know that not everybody agrees with this, some holding that there is no intrinsic quality in either piece, and that the differences are all to do with my perceptions, but I don't feel that this is adequate to explain the cultivation of musical expression and appreciation. I only got the perceptions by comparing good with worse.

Once, in the course of trying to teach a particularly obtuse guitar student, I was confronted with a somewhat existential position. 'You make a sound, I make a sound', I paraphrase his contribution, 'They're both sounds, there's nothing to make the sound you make any more valid than the sound I make.' He never did turn out much of a guitarist, but then maybe if I had been a better teacher I would have had a better answer than to burn him with a cigarette.

Despite that, I understand how some might find it offensive to be told that the music they like is intrinsically inferior to some other music. It could be seen as preferable to put it all down to personal preferences rather than risk confrontation.

I don't see anybody here backing away from a confrontation though. So, is some music better than other music?

[Canar]

Is some music better than other music? The answer is "yes". I can clearly ABX different works against each other, and one of them is almost always inferior in quality.

[dhromed]

Is some music better than other music? The answer is "yes". I can clearly ABX different works against each other, and one of them is almost always inferior in quality.

Well, I attempted to ABX two Nickelback songs once, but p went to 0.5 pretty much instantly.

OP:
You can't produce such a metric until you differentiate between properties that can be "correct", and properties that are subjective. And you can't do that. You can't make that distinction. There are 40 different ways a drum might sound, 40 ways a rythm might be played and another 40 ways in which it is incorporated into the final studio mix. None is better than any other, but I prefer some above others.

At the same time, it's pretty clear when someone is an inexperienced player and makes a lot of mistakes. So how do we judge "mistakes", even if the player has produced a new song? The only way to know something is a mistake is when we think we have an idea of the intent, and feel the artist has failed to produce.

In other words, by listening to a song — or experiencing any work, really — we automatically create a reference point out of previous experiences and a dash of thin air. I believe the more experience one has listening to music, and the wider one's repertoire, the better one can gauge the original intent.

There are times where one can't be sure the artists has messed up, or whether they intended to do it that way. Even a melody out of tune is not incorrect by any absolute standard: the artist may very well have done it on purpose in order to illustrate disarray and evoke feelings of discomfort. That is not wrong, but you're free to dislike it.

Hell, if you come back to it a year later, you may even enjoy it and start to love it. This basically describes the start of my relationship with Autechre, whose first track I heard was 777 — not quite the most accessible thing.