the etymology of both those words imply different cultural heritages. although both words refer to the same signified physical entity, the signs (or words) have different meanings.
Indeed! I'll snip the rest of your reply because to me here this is the imporatant bit, as interesting as the cultural development of staring at the stars may be be.
I'd say "composer" and "producer" (in the House sense of the word) as well as "composition" and "track" refer to the exact same things (much like with the glowing dot in the sky) but they do so in different ways.
Clearly when somebody -in the here and now- refers to the "morning star" he's refering to a dot in the sky in a symbolical or romantic sense. We'll asume everybody knows it's actually a planet and the romantic sense is being used to indicate a certain mood/ time/ perspective or perhaps a asociation.
When we know that it then makes very little sense to then talk about the differences between Venus and the Morningstar. It'd then -to me- be more interesting to instead look at *why* either option is chosen. Is Venus used because of the asociation with the godess of love? Is the morningstar mentioned because of it's asociation with the angel Lucifer? Those are quite different. "Morningstar" would also be likely to refer to being up very early while "Venus" would be more likely to be used in a atempt to determine not when but *where* we are.
The exact same difference can be seen in the distinction between "composer" and "pop musician". It's -for example- entirely possible to analyse Liszt as either a composer or as a sort of prototype rockstar but when we do we are trying to get a insight into him as a person, not trying to prove he was exclusively either one.
Very early on in my stay at EM I started refering to everybody who writes music as a "composer" and calling every piece of music a "composition". I did that on purpose to get rid of the "highbrow/lowbrow" distinction that tends to make some people put down house/techno in favour of more "serious" music. I think that's silly. Much classical music started it's life as commisioned entertainment (or at least as functional pieces with a purpose every bit as defined and functional as the latest dance-floor filler) and conversely; there is quite a bit of 4/4 techno that's extremely conceptual in nature.
That's where I'm coming from; you can call it a godess or a star if you'd like but it's still a bit of rock going round and round in the sky. Calling it by a different name might give you a different way of dealing with it that might be usefull but it doesn't actually change what it is.
We can look at the Beatles in any number of ways (if we find a new one we can make a book and make money like countless others did) but finding a new way to look at them does not make them that thing to the exclusion of others.
....At teast that's how I look at language philosophy and denotation matters. Please feel free to dig up Frege or Russles or some such thinker because it's fun.
The exact same difference can be seen in the distinction between "composer" and "pop musician". It's -for example- entirely possible to analyse Liszt as either a composer or as a sort of prototype rockstar but when we do we are trying to get a insight into him as a person, not trying to prove he was exclusively either one.
i take your point, but the technicalities of being both a composer and pop musician are as i described them, they share many qualities.
they are both concerned with the elements of music, however you define them. structure, duration, pitch etc.
do they *mean* different things? i think that's where the cultural perspective comes into play, but not in the technicalities in what they are doing.
whether Liszt is viewed as a composer, which he most certainly was, or as a prototype rockstar (the far more alluring romantic notion) Liszt's work is still exactly the same, and his life is still exactly the same, in much the same way that the dot in the sky is the same whether you call it Lucifer or Venus.
Do the transcendental studies sound different if you call him a pop musician or composer? perhaps, but that has more to do with the listener's perception than it does the shape of the waves modulating the air to your ears.
does a martini taste different in a cocktail glass or a manhattan? _________________ there's no I in TEAM, so let's all act as individuals instead
I'm in complete agreement. I do think your perception of a piece changes a lot depending on how you listen to it. Another great example of that is playing Basic Channel tracks in a livingroom or in a club.
Previously in this discussion there seemed to be a contrast between Wout's view that pop-musicians are composers and your own stance that they are different things. Now I think we have a more clear image of the situation.
One thing that I think heavily affects how we previously saw the "devide" is the lack of context that much classical music has now. Classical (and Baroque, Romantic and so on) composers are no longer also seen as traveling perfermers, musicians, piano teachers (as well as political loudmouths....) and so on; to many people they are "just" composers while more modern composers are more clearly also rockstars, producers, celebrities and maybe political activists. _________________ Kassen
My philosophy goes a bit like this;
If a "serious" "composer" can write a composition which results in 4 and a half minutes of silence, then any sound which can be re-performed and is distinct, in any way, from a sound which might occur naturally without conscious intervention can be regarded as a composition, and the person who created it, a composer. It can also be scored, (almost anything can!) and if other people (or Venusians) like the composition, then the person is a "popular composer".
BTW, I don't mean to degrade the value of John Cage's work in any way. His composition is actually a powerful force in liberating the whole debate. _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
There IS a distinct difference between a "Composer" and a Pop-musician isn't there??
Maybe the question that we should ask ourselves is: Can pop occur
naturally? What if a composer's music was underground (and wants to
keep it low key) and then one day the TV show the "O.C." wants to pick it
up off their Indie Label, that him/her signed their rights away to (to get the
deal), and they have no control over who dose what with their song... and
now every person loves it for the wrong reason "OMG I love the new song
to the O.C."
Then there are the producers that formulate chord progressions to make
wonderful cadences and modulations at the bridge and all sorts of
organized harmony and rhythm stuff. But their intention is to make BANK
... Look at the money throw at Britney Spears to make her image and look
at the money thrown at her in advertisement. The return on Britney
Spears was BANK- good investment but who won? The record company,
they made bank and were like "peace out". They care two shits about what
that girl is doing now (as you can see), why because they have one
intention- Formulated pop music. I guess her rehab wasn’t a part of their
business model
If you go into a project wanting to make a big pop hit you are then a pop
producer - If not, you're just a producer... simple as that.
Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 875 Location: Near Wageningen, the Netherlands
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Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:35 pm Post subject:
ploy wrote:
poser = pop, therfore COMposer = pop deluxe
and if you're on EM all the time you're a dot.composer
BTW, although pop clearly refers to popular, it doesn't have to mean imo that the specific song is popular, but it refers more to the general style; popular music as in popular culture. _________________ Spinning at ~0.0000115740740741 Hz
Joined: Mar 28, 2006 Posts: 1356 Location: Kansas City, Mo USA
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Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:06 am Post subject:
Quote:
"Is there a difference between a Composer and a pop musician?"
Have followed this thread and pondered the question. Some other questions come to mind:
Are all pop musicians composers?
No. In fact, a pop musician may perform music that is entirely written by others.
Are all composers pop musicians?
No. Many composers write music that they themselves don't perform.
Are some pop musicians composers and vice versa?
Of course! If someone writes in a pop music style and performs it then they might fall into both categories.
Sometimes the term "songwriter" is used to describe someone who writes popular songs, the word "composer" for well... just about everyone else.
I refer to myself as a "composer" rather than a "pop musician" because the pop musician label would be misleading -- that is, I believe people expect a pop musician to work in popular song styles. A pop musician may be expected to exhibit showmanship -- perhaps the ability to dance/gyrate on stage and display a strong stage presence. Some pop musicians may have acting and stage presence talent that greatly exceeds their musical creativity.
A composer need not have any particular performing ability or stage presence. This is fortunate for me, because while I have a relaxed and pleasant persona my personality would never fill a stadium!
The irony is, that despite my musical abilities, training, etc... my ability to sing a pop tune would place me in the "worst of the worst" category in an "American Idol" setting.
Personally, I would describe myself as a "composer/performer" which, I believe, better describes what I do. If I billed myself as a "pop musician" and proceeded to play my formal (i.e. "long-haired") compositions for an audience, the audience, expecting rock, hip-hop, jazz, etc... would likely be disappointed.
(Note: Sometimes I encounter profiles on myspace where someone lists themselves as "experimental" only to discover that they are doing conventional music. I even encountered a guy playing and singing folk music with an acoustic guitar that called his work "electronica/experimental". The music was ok however the description was misleading. Perhaps there was something experimental in the music however it was beyond me.)
Sometimes terms are simply a matter of fashion or marketing.
By way of example -- after the "organ reform" movement pipe organ purchasers wanted "classical" sounds rather than "romantic" sounds. No one wanted Melodias or Diapasons anymore. So, organ builders called 'em Hohlflotes and Principals. Now, people again want Melodias and Diapasons. While the names of the stops changed, the underlying tone was pretty much the same. (I have tuned organs where the stop was labeled "Hohlflote" and the pipes were stamped with "Melodia".
"Composer", "Songwriter", "Pop musician" -- to be any one of these things requires talent and ability. I believe one's choice of labels helps to attract listeners that will be open to one's work.
The irony is, that despite my musical abilities, training, etc... my ability to sing a pop tune would place me in the "worst of the worst" category in an "American Idol" setting.
Well, you'll fit in better at electro-music 2007. _________________ --Howard
my music and other stuff
I just wandered where musical 'composers' would come in all of this? Andrew Lloyd weber, for example, writes music which is phenomenally popular, so is this pop music or composing?
Surely it's all about the composition: pop, avant-garde, show tunes, the only difference is the intended audience and situation for the music to be played to.
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject:
Differentiation: question Subject description: composers and arrangers
Nice answer. I'm a big Wittgenstein fan, and look to the use of a word for its meaning.
I'd like to reexamine an earlier remark though. The difference between an arranger and a composer. When did the distinction arise historically? Did Beethoven or Mozart have arrangers? I don't believe so, but maybe someone here knows this history and could help me out.
Would a composer who works with someone else's music theme be considered an arranger? And not a composer? I think answering this requires positing a musical context for the work, something like what we do today with samples used in...uh...compositions. _________________ Robert Edgar
rbedgar@stanford.edu www.robertedgar.com
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:27 pm Post subject:
Re: Differentiation: question Subject description: composers and arrangers
rbedgar wrote:
Would a composer who works with someone else's music theme be considered an arranger?
look at the history of the solo piano composition Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. The most famous "orchestration" remains the one by Ravel. Nowadays we would say "arranged" by Ravel. _________________ homepage - blog - forum - youtube
Quote:
Don't die with your music still in you - Wayne Dyer
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:29 pm Post subject:
Re: Differentiation: question Subject description: composers and arrangers
seraph wrote:
rbedgar wrote:
Would a composer who works with someone else's music theme be considered an arranger?
look at the history of the solo piano composition Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. The most famous "orchestration" remains the one by Ravel. Nowadays we would say "arranged" by Ravel.
I find this as murky as the initial question. But I wouldn't say that working "with someone else's music theme" is arranging or orchestrating. Working with a theme sounds like composing to me. A theme is just a seed that can become many different compositions. Eh? _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:15 am Post subject:
arranging Subject description: or composing?
> A theme is just a seed that can become many different compositions. Eh?
I'd agree. And yeah, the "what is a..." (composer, arranger, artist, musician, Man Of God, soldier, comedian, philosopher etc.) question usually ends up pretty murky. Personally I find it helpful to comb through my thoughts on it right before I start a new project...in the end it's the actions I take, guided by my updated working definition to the "what is a... " question, that provides the answer for me. "What is a composition? It's one of these..." whereupon I point to what I just did. Of course, my next answer would be based on whatever I thought failed for the thing I'm pointing at.
Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:23 pm Post subject:
I'll preface this with: a composer can be a pop musician though not necessarily and vice versa, but..
A "pop musician" is usually a pretty puppet of a corporation who "performs" music written by nameless producers, which then gets pitch corrected and tweaked by said producers and slapped on a CD.
A composer is someone who actually has something to do with music.
That is definitely true in a number of situations today, and has probably been the case in the past to a greater or lesser extent depending on what has been colloquially termed "pop" at the time. But when I was growing up and forming my foundations for what I regard as important musical styles, and performers, (from the mid 70s through to the mid 90s) there were still a lot of musicians who were very popular because they wrote their own music, sang the lyrics, performed it, recorded it, produced it, even played up the fact that they were severely lacking in some of these skills.
Of course there will always be very smart business people who will "produce" acts that are engineered to bring in money regardless of their skills. These are usually pitched to an audience which is still in the process of learning the difference between someone worthy of admiration and a puppet. (<20 say?)
But if "popular" is analogous to the number of albums sold, (for those who still remember buying albums), or the number of download "hits". The numbers are definitely on the side of the 25+ age group, who have more money to fund their discrimination, and I think it will always be that way.
Today's "rubbish that the young folk are listening to" will be tomorrow's "greatest album of all time". Always has been, always will be. _________________ What makes a space ours, is what we put there, and what we do there.
Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:41 pm Post subject:
Pop doesn't mean popular. Sure, that's how the term originated.. but.. Today there is pop music which isn't popular (and much that is). Pop has become a genre, and that genre is basically a genre that pretends half-assedly to be other genres from song to song, and fucking sucks.
Uncle Krunkus wrote:
Of course there will always be very smart business people who will "produce" acts that are engineered to bring in money regardless of their skills. These are usually pitched to an audience which is still in the process of learning the difference between someone worthy of admiration and a puppet. (<20 say?)
The way I see it, you either have an ear for music or you don't. There is no "learning the difference between someone worthy of admiration and a puppet." Either you're part of the 90% of the world that listens to music for the lyrics and has no real respect for the art, or you're not.
Either you're part of the 90% of the world that listens to music for the lyrics and has no real respect for the art, or you're not.
if the lyricist is someone like Ira Gershwin I can very much enjoy listening to lyrics, even more if the music is by his brother George.
The problem is that most lyrics are junk _________________ homepage - blog - forum - youtube
Quote:
Don't die with your music still in you - Wayne Dyer
Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 3:13 am Post subject:
Personally, I'm not too much into lyrics most of the time, but I won't condemn them or anything. It just pisses me off when people care so much more about lyrics than music, that they suck down shitty MTV/radio songs with generic sounding music cause they think the song is about them or what have you.
But.. I do enjoy good lyrics here and there, particularly when they come alongside good music.
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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:20 am Post subject:
I enjoy this thread, but I have problems understanding what it is about (which perhaps is part of the fun). Would you consider the person playing bass on stage for Madonna a "pop musician"? Or are we talking "Is there a difference between a Composer and a Pop Star"? How does Frank Zappa fit into all of this?
I personally think that composers are people who write music (however low-brow it may be) and pop means popular, and quite often is very nice to listen to.
Re trying to sound like others: one of my favorite things to listen to at the moment is Ratatat, who seem to have a pop image (posters on girls' walls, cool guitar poses, simple and accessible songs etc), but make music that to me sounds unlike anything else I've ever heard.
Is there a difference between being a composer and a musician?
We all know that:
1. It is possible to compose music without being a certified brilliant musician.
2. It is possible to prefer to write music rather than simply play other people´s music
3. It is possible for a musician to simply be a noncreative musician with no skill or ambition re composing music. Which is perfectly ok and I know a few of those.
4. It is completely possible to both be a fairly decent musician and also be a fairly decent composer. So what? I even know a few who are brilliant both at composing and playing their instruments.
Are any of these points representing a mindboggling and lifethreatening problem? I don´t think so.
Introducing the pop term into this will hardly change the basic issues unless we are supposed to scratch our heads over the question wether pop is music or not. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Joined: Apr 30, 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:50 am Post subject:
Pop is music. I may not like most pop, but, it's definitely music.
Chanting cavemen is music.
I may be the type of person who is very picky about music, but I'm not the kind of person who claims the types of music I dislike aren't music.
I guess to summarize.. I think we can all agree that there's a difference between the definition of "pop musician/star" and "composer," but that it's possible for one person to be both at once, or one, or neither.
I just wandered where musical 'composers' would come in all of this? Andrew Lloyd weber, for example, writes music which is phenomenally popular, so is this pop music or composing?
technically he's a "hack"...
_________________ there's no I in TEAM, so let's all act as individuals instead
ALW is a composer.
However, we are still too see up which creek the Tea and Teo MC808 preset controversy gets stuck.
_________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
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I even know a few who are brilliant both at composing and playing their instruments.
