Jonathan Blow's Twitch: / j_blow Tip me: ko-fi.com/blowfan Jonathan Blow explains how the relevancy of music declined as the internet and other forms of entertainment grew.
Michael Jackson was the first big artist to come to Bucharest, after the communist regime fell. I will remember that concert until the day I die. There were over 90.000 people all crammed up, some of them even fainted. But the atmosphere was electric, man. He was a true artist and I don't think there will be another one like him.
Jonathan Blow is just in the start of developing the greatest band of all time. He has previously played in over a dozen constilation and he has finally made up a first draft of his design. He is aiming ti release the first record in 2033 with a world tour promotion.
Imagine J Blow just jamming with a backing track: "who made that chord progression? that's just lame" which would inspire him to compose his owns backing tracks to improvise.
a few exceptional decades in history - when tech was good enough for portable full spectrum music, but not for portable full spectrum moving images. will never be the same
I think this is a big part of it. I got into producing music around a year ago and with just my PC and a few hundred dollars worth of software, I am now able to produce music that actually sounds good. You used to need dozens of real instruments, expensive microphones, recording booths, multiple people, etc.
And because of that there's greater competition for a lesser audience. Promotion is times more expensive then production (if not infinitely more, since you can produce a competent song for free, if you're, well, competent). Today is the best time if you want music to be your hobby, and the worst if you want to be a professional artist.
I don't know if I agree with what he's saying about modern music being less complex. Complexity in modern music tends to revolve around sound quality/timbre/mixing rather than the composition itself. Modern music that's complex "musically" does exist, it just often tends not to be that popular.
Modern music is mostly trash, because the vast majority of music listeners would rather listen to something like rap than actual music. There is no incentive to make real music, because nobody is going to appreciate it anyway.
@@youtubeenjoyer1743 There is nothing wrong with rap itself, biggie smalls and tupac were huge, but that side has also been dumbed down into mumble rap which is an absolute horror
@@youtubeenjoyer1743 I couldn't care less which genres you hate or like. There are dozens of countries making music in hundreds of styles, being unable to find anything that appeals to you is just genuinely sad. I seriously hope you are just trolling.
Yeah I could never relate to the different era music would've been pre-technology that we have today, but in a way it could be said it has never been better for it. There's endless music you can find on the internet and some independent artist you could never have heard of might have some amazing songs that fit you perfectly, you just have to kind of stumble into them though.
@@dotmatrix9818 Name me your favourite Chopin song, I'll listen to it to see if it's innovative. Here are some orchestral songs I like that I think far surpass anything Chopin composed: Neptune - 2WEI Afterlife - Ivan Torrent Scars of War - Jessie Yun
Yeah, music pretty much stopped evolving in 2000s. Mark Fisher said it like 10 years ago in his book Ghosts of My Life, that if you went 20 years back in time and played a modern hit, people wouldn't be awed or even surprised.
Strongly disagree. I can only listen to a handful of songs made prior to the 2000s, the majority of the 10,000 songs I listen to were made in the last 10 years. Genres that were created in the last 20 years include: Chiptune House Electro Swing Epic Orchestral Bounce Phonk Dubstep Melodic Dubstep K-Pop Chillstep Lo-fi hip hop Trap Synthwave Drum and Bass Electro The type of people who think music has gotten worse are usually the same people who actually think the Beatles are any good, and not a bunch of talentless losers. Take any genre, like orchestral music. All the greatest composers are making music now: Hiroyuki Sawano Martin O'Donnell Ivan Torrent Kazuma Jinnouchi Zack Hemsey Takashi Ohmama None of the historical classical composers even compare to contemporary composers. Even if you don't like new genres, the best music of established genres was made recently. If you like 80s synth music, try listening to modern synthwave music, it's significantly better.
@@williamanthony915 Good lord, how out of touch do you have to be to think chiptune, house, DnB, etc. were created within the last 20 years... Reading the rest of your post I'm going to assume you're trolling.
@@Doubles_Advocate List me 5 orchestral songs you like. Here are some I like: Afterlife - Ivan Torrent Tip of the Spear - Martin O'Donnell The Witch From Mercury - Takashi Ohmama E.M.A. - Hiroyuki Sawano Aramid - Audiomachine
@@monad_tcp Everything sucked prior to 2000. Music sucked. Games sucked. Fashion sucked. Movies sucked. Computers sucked. Software sucked (despite it's problems, I'd rather use modern animation software than whatever they used in the 90s).
Has music decayed or is it just mainstream music? As someone who used to be really into music I always found what plays in the radio to be irrelevant to the state of music overall. Kinda like ignoring indie games and lamenting that the madden of the year is just the previous game with slight graphical upgrades. I do agree on music becoming less relevant overall thou, feels like we have more media so music gets a smaller share. For me podcasts, audiobooks, YT videos etc. have pretty much replaced music when it comes to my eartime and I doubt I'm alone in that.
Idk about the second point. While I listen to those, I'm still listening to music for at least 8 hours a day. I'm sure that's way more than other people historically. Completely agree on the first point. Saying modern music is trash and pointing to Drake and Taylor Swift as examples means you have to be totally ignorant of the tens of thousands of talented musicians making music now. I love the Madden comparison.
It's a problem because I have to be forced to listen to absolute dog crap music whenever I hang out with friends, go shopping and etc. Dumb music becoming popular is a legitimate concern as it will attract the most funding, meaning less and less people will be inclined to evolve the medium and instead settle for less. There is nothing wrong with wanting beautifully made music. That requires time and money. So it is 100% justifiable to lament the fact that good music is receiving less attention. Yes, good music exists, nobody is saying there is *absolutely no good music being made at all ever and they never will make good music ever again* Nobody is making that argument bro, you need to chill and stop strawmanning. They are upset over the sheer amount of BAD music being made and taking higher precedence over good, well made music. The popularity of art also reflects the culture and general intelligence of the population. Just look at what's popular, you *absolutely should be concerned*
yes, but put simply, most music consumed is mainstream music. Most people do ignore indie games. I think it's fair to say that our creative ecosystem has decayed, even if what's inside our much smaller bubble has not decayed.
@@shanekunz Except even the most mid indie game now makes millions of dollars. If I could go back in time and shock my 8 year old self, I would tell him that every single women I met at uni / early career was a gamer that exclusively played indie games like Stardew Valley and Terraria. Women used to never play video games, and now every girl I've dated wants to play Cuphead with me. Meanwhile, I haven't meant a single person in the last 10 years that plays Assassin's Creed. Every single person I meet that's a gamer exclusively plays indie games. What markets do overtime is they fulfil niches that people are craving, giving them more variety for their specific taste. Historically, if you wanted to read a book, the only book you had access to was the Bible. Nowadays, not only do I read an obscene amount of niche horror manga, but when I go to the bookstore, the horror manga section is always crowded with groups of friends, and I have to wait for a chance to look. Markets over time fulfill niches, and the variety and sophistication of media increases. I can't wait to see what new games and songs are created over the next decade, and what new audiences are brought into these niche genres.
true, music was better back in the day. people were more creative and smarter and made better music. nowadays people are dumb and not creative at all, so they cant make good music. old is always better than new, i dont like new things. i like old things that ive heard many times and know very well. new sounds are bad because i've not heard them before, also because new musicians are uncreative and dont know how to make music and theyre not creative and
Artistic mediums take time to develop. Groups of instruments where developed over centuries until they reached a point of diminishing returns with the classics, there was little room to go from there. New instruments/mediums/styles are in development now, but it will take a long time to reach and surpass the complexity of the classics. I dislike the lens of "its decayed", its evolving, and doing so requires a momentary regression. Same is true with painting, took us millennia to get to hyperrealism, but after a certain point that no longer excites the general public, so we regress to pong and pacman, yet the eventual result of that regression surpasses anything the painters did.
If you really dig, there's some insane electronic artists now that are nearing the complexity of the classics, but that's not what you hear on the radio or in Spotify mixes, so most people (especially olds) think of electronic as trash 90s "uns uns uns uns" rave music or Skrillex dubstep (which I loved but is admittedly simplistic). Eventually what is now experimental will become palatable to the general public, when those ven diagrams converge we will be living in the last great era of music.
The reason it's taken so long is that the depth/scope of what is possible musically exploded within the last 100 years, we didn't have enough time with each medium before another popped up, so we've never masted any as much as the classics did. But thankfully we passed a point of diminishing returns in the generation of sound about a decade ago, so electronic artists have just now started to focus on complexity over novelty.
@@rlikz Best example I have is the album Magdalene by FKA Twigs, first song is a great sampler for the rest of it. "The Glitch Mob"s album "Drink The Sea" was one of the best early 2010s electronic, "Between Two Points" and "Starve The Ego Feed The Soul" are standouts. Flume has made a lot of incredible tracks, he was one of the greats between 2016-2020, it can be hard to find the good stuff in between his more "popular focused" music. His album "Skin" is his best IMO, listen to "Numb And Getting Colder", some of the songs on that album are radio-bait (#2,3,5&8 are attempts at making popular music) but more than half are quite complex. Also Iglooghost is great, check out "Super Ink Burst" and "New Vectors", the albums they come from are both incredible, but it's very fast paced. One of the more complex electronic composers out there, but if you're not high on stimulants it can be hard to appreciate. The genre as a whole is still lacking complexity, and none of those come close to the greats, but I think they're the direction music is headed. There's probably way better artists out there, but those are my favorites that I think are objectively great.
I mostly agree with you @owenwithahammer . What's interesting is that when Jon talks about the decay of software, I tend to agree with him, maybe because that's my profession. I think the nuance easy to miss whether Jon does this intentionally or not is that there's is still a ton of great complex music and software likely beyond the skill or possibilities of the classics. I think he's just always concerned with the average, not the ceiling. If there's only a handful of music or songs better and more complex than the classics, he chooses to focus on the 99.9% of human music consumption that's "bad", when maybe in the 80's only 50% of software and music consumed was "bad"/"boring". Ultimately he will just always critique the culture first and foremost, not necessarily the exceptions. I also think it's possible that high speed internet, social media, and LLMs will lower 99.9% of people's attention and skill where they are no longer able to surpass the fundamentals from previous centuries, except for maybe a handful of exceptions. Anyways, idk, I think a broad level of "decay" is still open for debate.
I don't entirety disagree, but the comparison between classical musicians and modern music is a bit unfair. - classical has existed for literal centuries and only a couple dozen musicians are considered to be masters of their craft, probably like 99.99% of musicians have straight up just been forgotten - rapid technical innovation also has an impact on music, people jump around more to explore new experimental sounds and rhythms instead of playing just 1or 2 instruments in one style their entire career - most innovations happens in the underground, unless you spend a lot of time listening to music you probably wouldn't even know about all the crazy innovation in sound design that's going on
If you study how music affects the mind and emotions, you will find that rhythm and beat are a great equalizer. Funny sounds don't mean much in comparison. In the end there aren't that many different experiences music can give you or anyone.
@@seriouscat2231 There's a reason that concerts were innovators of lighting and pyrotechnics etc. There is something very spiritual/visceral about music that bypasses your rational faculties. It's actually quite dangerous, as is any information that can bypass your rational faculties and elicit immediate emotional responses, as you are no longer in control of yourself in those circumstances. If that was weaponized against a people, it would be devastating. Luckily that hasn't happened.
@@seriouscat2231 That's a very large question. Ultimately it is because I am Catholic and have certain views of what reality is constituted of. If you don't have that background, then calling it spiritual won't make a lot of sense, unless you're willing to just listen to people talk about spiritual experiences and how much music effects people (as Jonathan talks about), and then try to understand how that can happen in your worldview. In my worldview, the explanation is quite straightforward. There is a reality that is being experienced that transcends the physical. I can't really say how you can understand that in your worldview. Someone like Jonathan Pageau would probably be a reasonable starting point.
The question is, What do you want to listen to the music For? What Activity are you engaged in while you listen to the music? There are many different types of music for many different types of listening.
The activity I'm engaged in while listening to music is called 'listening to music'. I thought this was normal, but then I met a bunch of people for whom music is solely a thing to put on while doing others things, which blew my mind.
@@hwstar9416 "Music was just objectively better" is always just nostalgia and or "le born in the wrong generation". Especially when talking about the more popier side of what can be broadly defined as rock music. It's most likely just when he just stopped caring about music or fell out with contemporary artists due to a generational gap. Putting classical music on a super high pedestal when jazz music, experimental/avant garde or even new classical music are still composed and recorded also shows his narrow view on the history and evolution of music. You can still think beethovens 9th is the best thing ever but the gap is not that high as people make it out to be. Most classical music is just as uninspired as the stuff he thinks is objectively worse. We just had 100+ years to filter through the garbage
I think this is a case where Jon doesn't have any knowledge or education in music theory, and he also doesn't have a broad sense of what music exists today. I was classically trained in clarinet and saxophone, and played multiple other instruments including guitar, bass, and piano. Classical music is actually very simple, repetitive, and boring to listen to. Similar to contemporary art, people only listen to classical music to, "make a point," to other people that they're sophisticated, but nobody actually likes it. People who claim to, "only listen to classical music," are people who actually don't listen to music at all, usually because they're dull and smooth-brained. There has been an exponential growth in the amount, quality, and variety of music, you just need to actually look for it.
He literally said at 5:45 that he wasn't classically trained musically, but he wishes he were. Definitely take his musical takes with a huge grain of salt.
Also, people back in the 1800s listened to Bach/Beethoven and thought these same things you did. The difference now is that people can't tell that Metal has the same kinds of classical influences that Beethoven had, so they think "one is better because violin and piano whereas the other is worse because guitar and drums". That's why progressive subgenres exist to push the envelope of the root genre.
@@SimGunther People didn't listen to music in the 1800s. When music became easily accessible to the masses, it created a huge demand for a wider variety of music. If you mean that music theory was necessary for modern music, that would makes sense to me. However, what Jon is doing is claim that modern music is unpopular and uninteresting, and that less developed music from hundreds of years ago is better, despite the fact that Jon hasn't even listened to classical music. People have always made fun of him for being pretentious, and I always defended him, but this was the video that made me change my mind.
"Classical music is actually very simple, repetitive, and boring to listen to". Which composition do you have in mind specifically? I can't really take your "classically trained" credentials seriously when you make sweeping statements and flagrant generalizations like this.
@@Kris9kris Symphony No. 5, Requiem, etc. They're all boring to listen to, which is why you never catch anyone listening to them for fun. If you know any good classical songs, please list them, I'm always on the hunt for good music.
The height of western music, and western culture as a whole, was in the 70's. That was the last decade where if you wanted to create music you had to have natural talent and you had to LEARN to create music, over years of practice. From the 80's, tech started to shorten the amount of time needed to make anything. And I'm saying this as some one who loves 8-bit NES chiptunes as much as I love 70's funk. But there is an unmistakable difference in craftsmanship and skill between these two genres. I can pump out a catchy chiptune bop in few a hours. But write a funk song? Only in my dreams.
I think very little music that came after the period in which the Great American Songbook (jazz before the avant-garde period, around the early 60s) was popular will survive in terms of relative popularity.
6:10 This is the crux of pop culture, it intentionally dumbs itself down to appeal to the lowest denominator, because most people area average in their capacity to care about music, reaching the widest audience means creating the most money, and with all the advanced psychological warfare that marketing has became, there are a lot of aspects more important than the quality of the music in order to become a rich artist
The great thing about capitalism is that it enables entrepreneurs and artists to fill out niches by charging a high price. For example, if you spend billions to develop a cure to a rare illness, you are able to charge hundreds of dollars per pill in order to make a profit from a relatively small consumer base. Similarly with niche games, such as visual novels, you can charge a high price and make a profit from a relatively small consumer base. There are niche musicians who I support through purchasing their albums and other merchandise. There are more popular musicians like Katy Perry who I don't support financially. It doesn't matter that Katy Perry is successful, because the niche artists I support can still make a living. This means that there is a wider variety of high quality music than ever before, thanks to market forces allowing for flexible pricing for niche products.
I'm 26 years old and I never in my life heard a good argument why classical music is more sophisticated or complex than popular music, or at least why sophistication or complexity are good things. In software it's obvious that unnecessary complexity is bad, why it's different for music? Most of the time I hear one of four things: enumeration of classical terms, a comparison of a classical piece score and popular piece score (with no explanation, it's just "there are more symbols per sheet ergo it's more complex"), comparison to an obviously not-so-sophisticated artists like Nirvana or 2Pac (they won't choose even Metallica or Hendrix because in that case they would need to make an actual analysis) or a notion that most popular music took inspiration from classical music in one form or another. All of them are absolutely missing the point and/or incomplete. And it's not like I'm not capable to understand a good argument, I have a basic knowledge of music theory and harmony and an intermediate knowledge of mixing and musical performance. My working hypothesis is that people who are competent are not interested in such debates, or they're too much indoctrinated to the point of denying any value to popular music in the first place.
It's been like 5 years since I played but as someone that's done some pretty hard custom tracks I definitely feel like the game started getting worse at either the highest or second to highest difficultly. Before that you can actually kinda dance, at some point the only viable strategy becomes moving as little as possible wich is obviously pretty bad design
@@pokefreak2112 That hasn't been my experience at all playing customs at 8.5nps-ish, my body is moving more when playing those than when playing the lower difficulty songs. It's also not clear to me why that's "obviously pretty bad design" in any way whatsoever.
@@Dyscivist Well you don't _need_ to move more at lower difficulties, it just intuitively feels like the right way to play in they same way you technically _can_ play ddr by standing almost still but it feels better to move fluently. Obviously with higher difficulty you technically need to move more but because the blocks come at you so fast your movements need to be conservative. So instead of doing a big swing to chop one block you'll now just rapidly move your wrist up and down to destroy the lines of 10 top and bottom blocks coming at you. I think this is bad design because I feel like the game designers intend you to dance to these tracks, not just awkwardly stand there.
@@pokefreak2112 I could see how you could make the argument that having more notes coming at you makes it harder to dance along to the music. I don't follow how this is bad design however - you're assuming developer intent in order to say they failed at achieving it. There's nothing explicitly within the gameplay loop pushing you towards dancing other than music being in the game.
