Explain the importance of meaning

This can be argued endlessly, but one good point in my opinion is that meaninglessness and pieces that are open to interpretation have been explored in music since earliest days of postmodernism. I suppose it kind of culminated in stuff roughly between avant-prog and noise. So if you strive for maximum artistic value, you should look into metamodernism of present-day.

On the contrary, there's no such thing as meaningless. If a piece doesn't relate to any real world matters, it at least has subject matters derived from art itself.

/mu/ is not going to be able to help you here. This is a very academic and theoretical topic. You want to be reading actual books instead of shitposts by teenaged Radiohead fans.

Start with Philip Tagg - Music's Meanings.
Some Wittgenstein might be relevant, too, concerning language and semantics when describing music.

>>70430985
Then again who the fuck cares about semantical frameworks? I've never heard anyone analyze a piece based on semantics derived from anything but a) cultural associations on harmony, rhythm and timbre or b) straight up references to semantics outside musical content like lyrics or sample sources

>>70430928
>>70430985
Thanks I will check all that out. To me there is no importance of meaning. I'm not looking for validation, I feel blind and want to better understand the other side. I was hoping for shitposts against my position as something might make me think.

>>70431146
>semantical frameworks
Would probably be very handy when discussing to have agreed upon terms and definitions to be able to digest what the other is trying to say, or you could go in circles with food and building analogies.

>>70431158
That's fair enough, personally I think it's quite important. A lot of people seem to only judge music on it's audio content, "I like this because it SOUNDS good," and overlook everything else. Visual imagery, track titles, lyrics are an enormous part of how you interpret music and the artist(s) convey meaning and explore ideas.

What might interest you is that a significant part of Tagg's book establishes his argument that all music, both as a practice and a product, inherently has meaning, because it exists as a multi-domain representational sign system. It's difficult to talk about without referencing the book, I don't have a copy with me now, since this is built on a lot of foundational theory presented beforehand.

>>70431444
I'm definitely going to read Music's Meanings, chapter 10 seems like it will be very helpful. I read about it on his website and found the word "muso".
>overly concerned with technique
I had no idea there were musical ideologies, this kind of explains how my discussion earlier today got so heated. How deep is this rabbit hole?

>>70431632
Haha, yeah.

It's not *too* bad, to be honest. Unless you're planning on writing a thesis or something, as far as musical semiotics is concerned you could begin and end with Tagg. The rabbit hole only really starts digging itself when you get into wider musicology and pure cultural theory.

What discussion did you have?

>>70431693
Literally 3 paragraphs to explain it all. Short is I put no importance on lyrics and all importance on originality and novelty, he thought the exact opposite and wouldn't let our differences be explained as subjective. I can post more in depth if you really want to read through it.

>>70432153
Go ahead, sounds interesting. I love this kind of thing.

>>70432196
What has more weight in the making of a song, lyrics or composition and if a song could be considered rehash garbage based on whether copypasted vocals or an unchanged looped sample is used. I was arguing the position of instruments, composition, originality and style (aesthetics?). They were arguing from the point of vocals and literal meaning derived from the words. Neither of us could see from each others perspective as we were appreciating different aspects while completely disregarding anything else.

I admit that I was possibly as stubborn as he was, however I saw it was going nowhere and at multiple points tried to end it with subjectivity and that we simply disagree. He was having none of it and it devolved into analogies. Maybe he was offended that I argued a song that had its "beat" lifted from something else, unchanged and looped, then had lyrics dropped on it was creatively bankrupt when passed off as an original. The whole thing started because I played gangsta rap acapella on silly cutesy beats and told him its funny because the clash of themes and its the illogical extreme of sampling gone crazy.

He kept saying "beat" like it was derogatory, and slapped his hands on a table like there you go that's a beat and it really blew my fucking mind. Behaved like he was convinced what I played was all I listen to and that without lyrics there is no meaning to a song and without that meaning its not art. I think perhaps I do find meaning in music, but I'm not aware of what it is I recognize in the music I appreciate. This is where semantics could have helped me explain my position to him.