Analyzing Music

Today a question was posed...is it useful to analyze music? I guess really that depends on what your definition of analyzing is when it comes to the arts. Is it simply exploring the possibilities on why, how or when it was created? In my experience, most of the time this is not the case. When I think of analyzing music, I think of people sitting back asking "What's the point of this? Why is the music so fast\slow? Why doesn't this song have lyrics? Why are they screaming?"...etc. This annoys me. Like Kurt Cobain said "Art is Expression. In Expression you need 100% full Freedom and our Freedom to Express out Art is seriously being fucked with." Real art is created when you take risks; exit you comfort zone and explore it. My old acting teacher taught me that. It makes it really hard to leave our comfort zone when people won't allow us to and are judging or "analyzing" our expression. Expression doesn't need opinion, it needs acceptance. I believe that is what Kurt Cobain is talking about when he said "Our freedom to express out Art is seriously being fucked with." In this day and age we think art has to be accepted by the majority and in order for it to be considered legitimate, we have to get the approval of not only our peers but the "professionals" like MTV, VH1, the record company or whatever "professionals" exist that are critiquing your form of art.

I've been involved in theater since I can remember and people always ask me why I haven't done any community theater lately and that's because of this very topic. I've found that in this valley there is a certain criteria for the people they cast in the plays every year. It's not necessarily bad, just bland and heavily judged by others. Almost every actor I speak to is talking smack about someone else's performance from the night before but are best friends to each other faces and are all in the same shows together. I guess that works for some people but not me. I can understand slim pickins' in this valley for people who have the schedule to be in plays and are interested but I don't understand judging other people's expression of art.

Maybe I'm getting slightly off topic but the point I'm making is that, from my experience "analyzing" music sounds formal, judgemental and getting away from whatever it is that the musician would want you to experience. Like Copland said in our article last week, a good listener should be unbiased and the reaction to the experience should come from the musical experience not the logistics of it. The beauty of music is that it follows no real pattern. There are a million different genres and a billion more sub genres. You want rock? cool! Classic? Alternative? Punk? Emo? Metal? Hardcore? New Age? Crossover? Acid? Ambient? Christian? Drone? Electro? Folk? Garage. Okay, Okay you get my point! It's endless and if there was criteria to be analyzed and critiqued and judged, those wonderful sections and subsections wouldn't exist. It wouldn't be unique or pleasurable for the listener.