Tue November 28, 2017 10:43 pm
Tue November 28, 2017 10:45 pm
mikejasond wrote:You are literally people that cannot understand what Betterman is doing outside of its chords. Its no surprise what songs you guys like now because some elements of music are just being completely lost to you.
Tue November 28, 2017 10:48 pm
Birds in Hell wrote:PHATJ wrote:It’s impossible to debate the merits of anything when your arguments are 100% based on how something specifically makes you feel. That basis allows you to argue any number of absurdities with no reasonable way to disprove your cockamamie hypothesis.
What else do you think people should judge the merits of art on?
MJD honestly comes out of this thread looking fine, you guys are kind of being jerks. He’s being very generous and patient despite being openly (and unfairly) mocked for his opinions.
Tue November 28, 2017 10:49 pm
Birds in Hell wrote:PHATJ wrote:It’s impossible to debate the merits of anything when your arguments are 100% based on how something specifically makes you feel. That basis allows you to argue any number of absurdities with no reasonable way to disprove your cockamamie hypothesis.
What else do you think people should judge the merits of art on?
MJD honestly comes out of this thread looking fine, you guys are kind of being jerks. He’s being very generous and patient despite being openly (and unfairly) mocked for his opinions.
Tue November 28, 2017 10:54 pm
theplatypus wrote:If you look past the fact that he's arguing against claims nobody is making and constantly (willfully?) misinterpreting (and then misrepresenting) people's responses in a supremely obtuse manner, sure.
Tue November 28, 2017 10:55 pm
Birds in Hell wrote:You guys aren’t engaging with him, you’re just trying to goad him into saying more things you can mock him for.
Tue November 28, 2017 11:41 pm
Tue November 28, 2017 11:43 pm
E.H. Ruddock wrote:I used to like when Ed let the crowd sing, but that got old for me
Wed November 29, 2017 2:18 am
PHATJ wrote:Birds in Hell wrote:PHATJ wrote:It’s impossible to debate the merits of anything when your arguments are 100% based on how something specifically makes you feel. That basis allows you to argue any number of absurdities with no reasonable way to disprove your cockamamie hypothesis.
What else do you think people should judge the merits of art on?
MJD honestly comes out of this thread looking fine, you guys are kind of being jerks. He’s being very generous and patient despite being openly (and unfairly) mocked for his opinions.
When you are talking about song structure, maybe your arguments should be based on, I don’t know, SONG STRUCTURE. Not statements like “the song doesn’t repeat itself because when it does repeat itself I feel different”. Good lord.
Wed November 29, 2017 2:23 am
bodysnatcher wrote:PHATJ wrote:Birds in Hell wrote:PHATJ wrote:It’s impossible to debate the merits of anything when your arguments are 100% based on how something specifically makes you feel. That basis allows you to argue any number of absurdities with no reasonable way to disprove your cockamamie hypothesis.
What else do you think people should judge the merits of art on?
MJD honestly comes out of this thread looking fine, you guys are kind of being jerks. He’s being very generous and patient despite being openly (and unfairly) mocked for his opinions.
When you are talking about song structure, maybe your arguments should be based on, I don’t know, SONG STRUCTURE. Not statements like “the song doesn’t repeat itself because when it does repeat itself I feel different”. Good lord.
mikejason reminds me of this...
Wed November 29, 2017 3:17 am
Wed November 29, 2017 3:42 am
Wed November 29, 2017 4:27 am
Wed November 29, 2017 4:47 am
Wed November 29, 2017 5:42 am
Wed November 29, 2017 5:53 am
Kevin Davis wrote:I'm curious where this idea that "Better Man" only uses three chords came from, because it certainly uses more than that. The chorus uses three chords, but the verse uses four completely different ones -- granted they make use of that "make one chord shape and slide it up and down the guitar and see what it does" approach that seems to be common among inexperienced guitar players, but it stumbles into some cool harmony!
"Better Man" is a great song and MJD is right that it's well-arranged. But despite people's struggles to come up with a song that shares its exact same structural design, conceptually the notion that this song breaks some kind of new ground in pop song dynamics is wrong. "Thunder Road," "Stairway to Heaven," and "Hey You" all spring immediately to mind without any effort as overly familiar songs that use this "layering" effect, starting minimal and gradually becoming more and more dynamic, "repeating without repeating" -- some run longer than 4 minutes but it's not like "Stairway" labors to get to its moment of change; it would have had the same effect had there only been one acoustic verse instead of four. One of my favorite songs that builds this way, precisely because it builds this way, is "Have You Seen Mary?" by Sponge -- kind of an alt-rock relic, but it's a lovely song and when the drums kick in after the final bridge, it's immaculate.
Acknowledging though that, at the very least, "Better Man" is a very dynamically arranged song, it's interesting to consider that that element of it may have been a happy accident, or -- maybe worse -- a result of the genius touch of Brendan O'Brien. The original arrangement of the song -- which dates back to Eddie's Bad Radio days and continues up through the 1994 tour -- contains a drum beat from the very beginning of the song which to my ears sounds like it's constantly tripping over itself, and some of the accents that only appear once in the final version appear multiple times in the early version. The changes that were made to it in production were absolutely the right changes.
Wed November 29, 2017 7:49 am
Wed November 29, 2017 3:31 pm
Thu November 30, 2017 2:42 am
mikejasond wrote:Lets put it this way. There is no two 20 second sections in Betterman you could snip out and not know EXACTLY where in the song you are. Even if you ignored the lyrics. Not true of most songs.
Thu November 30, 2017 2:47 am
mikejasond wrote:Seriously if you listened to the first and second choruses in a vacuum you'd think you were listening to different songs. The tone and feel and rhythm and instrumentation and mood is just completely different.