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Posted by Romy the Cat on
10-05-2013
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fiogf49gjkf0d It made me to think. Another day I went to a concert that was very bad in my view. The semi-amateur orchestra spent a lot of efforts to play with fewer mistakes and as they more or less did. As the mistakes were filtered then the primitivism of general interpretation and the entire orchestral became very annoying and made the hall listening experience poisoned. Anyhow, the concert was not good in my view.
After the concert I met a person, let call her X, who began to go over herself explaining to me how wonderful the performance was. He was clueless.
Then, telling the event to Amy and highlighting how uninformed that persons was and how low her reference point were Amy asked me an interesting question that bothers me. She said:
“You have very high standards and that perverts you to have pleasure from mediocre concerts. The person X has very low standards and that makes her to have obtained pleasure form bad performances. So, if to correlate the X’s pleasure and my pleasure then how approach delivers more satisfaction? “
That is an interesting take and that kind of stumbled me. I can go over many think that suggest that with higher reference points and rising level of infirmity the depth of pleasure also rise significantly. However, I also might argue for the very opposite point of view….
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Posted by Paul S on
10-05-2013
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fiogf49gjkf0d This is an old saw. But how does one "forget what one knows"? Perhaps, once the awareness and critical faculties are developed beyond a certain "point of no return", it requires a sort of personal discipline to simply let go when one is best served to do so.
Another point of view is that there are many points of view. It may be that the "person with low standards" is actually responding favorably to factors "imbedded" in the evening/performance/experience that you are less concerned with. For many people, just being part of a group is sufficient, and their perception of "events" might spring from their general sense of satisfaction, the proverbial rose-colored glasses.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by steverino on
10-06-2013
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fiogf49gjkf0d We don't know enough about the person X to assess the situation. I might say something similar if I went to a local semiprofessional orchestra, paid a few bucks and heard them play better than I expected. If I had paid $100 and spent an hour each way traveling then I might not be so amused. It's called equity theory. But let's assume that the performance was not even good in equity terms. We would have to see whether their behavior matches their verbal sentiments. In other words, if they have a chance to see one of two free performances, one with that semi pro orch and the other with a professional orchestra do they flip a coin? Just from general experience, when people are offered a choice they tend to choose better quality. Not the best quality necessarily, but better quality. The more experience a person has in making these comparisons the more expert they become at perceiving and evaluating differences. Even the not typically brilliant monarchs of old could become connoisseurs that way.
As for happiness in becoming more expert, intelligence never evolved because it made little animals happy; it evolved because it made them survive better. It's just that people apply their intelligence to subjects which have no real survival value when their own survival is not at stake. If a person had experience with "superhuman" orchestras they would be even more dismayed than you at listening to the BSO. You are satisfied with what you perceive as a great performance of Bruckner. But if a conductor and orchestra came along that were noticeably superior then that same performance would seem rather deficient.
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Posted by tuga on
10-08-2013
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fiogf49gjkf0d
Many people I know don't really have an active, critical approach, they are just looking for entertainment when they read a book or watch a film, attend a music concert or a ballet.
I think that it all depends on what you are looking for.
But as Amy mentioned, having the will and ability to dig deep into the layers that stand below the surface, to involve oneself emotioanlly and rationally in the subject can be an impediment, a barrier that prevents us from enjoying the moment, even when it's mediocre from an intelectual point of view.
Cheers,
Ric
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Posted by rowuk on
02-12-2020
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The issue here is that quality and enjoyment are 2 different things. The former is absolute and the latter relative. Quality is a parameter, that in this case belongs to the orchestra. It can be defined by using measuring units of intonation, synchronization, dynamics, ensemble sound and artistic impression. This is a standard method for artistic competitions worldwide. There are piano, violin, trumpet, ensemble competitions, where we even have a fixed set of rules to „judge“ everything from school level to world class performances.
Now, every instrument player starts building their audience from their first notes. At first it is the mother or an aunt. As they progress, their teachers and friends join in, later, they get critical acclaim from external institutions like newspapers, critics.
Actually, the quality only is what it is. Only enjoyment can be poisoned if we are not the intended target audience. I experience this when I adjudicate competitions (mostly at school or college level). Some judges judge absolutely - which means that the intent of the competition (promote children playing musical instruments) is not upheld. I find that often this type of judge is a frustrated player that never got their own chance. By criticizing others, they raise their self esteem. Others try to be friends of the performers being overly positive about everything and conveying a false view of what the performer did. Yet others give a score but no justification.
So, getting back to your semi professional event. Is the problem a group of 80 musicians trying as hard as they can, having fun while doing so or is the problem that we went to the concert in hope of better? I play with professional and semi professional ensembles. My measure is: on the trip home if I ask why I even said yes to the gig, then I do not do so again in the future. It is MY JOB to test the waters before jumping in. After a while, the performer either has a lot of quality gigs - or none...
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
02-13-2020
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I think to a degree we misguided with our expectations as we
feel that the answer is in directly heard sound. We attributed to sound some properties
and we evaluating the properties are trying to make judgments about sound. I am
taking now strictly about targeting audio listening. Any deviations from the understood
properties we recognizes as “imperfections” and it a certain degree we are correct.
There is however much more to it as “heard sound” does not cover all aspect of sonic
sensations, and I am not taking about some esoteric properties that I do not necessary
disagree with.
Let take foe instance my solutions with the delay channels that
I proposed above. As musicians plays the reverberation time is very much factored
into the musicians decision when to stared, how long hold, chose of tempo, meanings
of legatos and many other factors. It is not the they “think” about it is it juts
human mind feels the acoustics of the performing environment and an musician
make the acoustics room a prat of own performance. There is nothing new in
this, it is very understandable. How, the event was recorded and played in acoustic
environment with reverberation time 20-30 time shorter. The recordings still
has longer delays but the physical feedback in the listening room contradicts
the heard delay from recording. This creates distortion of perception and in my
estimate this type of the distortion impact listener much more then harmonic distortions
of directly heard sound as this is not distortion of expression but the distortion
of intentions.
Many thing in audio is evaluated not because it is necessary
for sound but because it is easy sell to public. Like advantage of amplitude
over the phase and many other foolish things that has no relation to the actual
listening benefits. The distortion of intentions is one of them.
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Posted by rowuk on
02-13-2020
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I would maintain that much of the music available is intended for "informed audiences". This is true if we are listening to Stockhausen, Stravinsky - or mediocre concerts by amateurs or "semi professionals".
The level of our preparation makes it easier to sort the sonic events (live or recorded) when listening for the first time. With playback, the target changes once we start listening a second time. We know what is coming. With live, preparation can prepare our expectations.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
02-13-2020
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 rowuk wrote: | I would maintain that much of the music available is
intended for "informed audiences". This is true if we are listening
to Stockhausen, Stravinsky - or mediocre concerts by amateurs or "semi
professionals".
The level of our preparation makes it easier to sort the
sonic events (live or recorded) when listening for the first time. With
playback, the target changes once we start listening a second time. We know
what is coming. With live, preparation can prepare our expectations. |
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I actually very much disagree
with it. It might be that much of the music available is intended for
"informed audiences" when we are taking about musical culture but it
is very much not the case when we are taking about audio culture. The audio audiences
might be comfortable to recognize the musical payload of the audio event but
they are very little informed what purely audio infliction they are exposed
during listening. I mean audio people think that they have control over audio language
and expressive tools but in reality I insist that they most do not. Just an example.
When an classically trained audio person hear sound that he feel is not correct
then he can give with the precision of coupe dBs the deviation of response from
amplitude flatness. The irony is that the amplitude deviation is although registerable
but completely irrelevant for quality of listening. Practically no one classically
trained audio person understand how to acknowledge phase deviations and it is
the only thing that is important. The same way no one classically trained audio
person understand how to make bass that would impersonate long LF decay in listening room, it is not even recognized
as objective in audio. However, all of it has very direct relation to our inner
us react to sound and how our brain processes the heard sound. I do not want to
sound that I know how all of it works. I just point out at some directions that
you might explore yourself and to see if getting control of some of the less obvious
audio expressive methods you will get closer to where you would like to be.
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