Scaruffi and the Pink Floyd

>>73989135
Well he credits himself as some kind of ideal amalgam of a critic and historian

makes sense for him to go into vivid detail about possibly one of the most celebrated bands of all time, and their evolution (which to their credit, is fairly interesting)

The fact that he celebrates early Pink Floyd while hating late Beatles is just more evidence that he is a retard. If you explore that website for more than 10 minutes you realize how stupid he is, and that he has no understanding of innate value in art, that it only takes place within a context and should be blindly rewarded for some kind of indefinable 'progression,' that only considers certain contexts while ignoring others. Definitely the worst critic I have ever seen.

>>73989135
>The History of Rock Music

>>73989622
His Beatles fanfic has been deconstructed and discredited line-for-line. At this point, it's just a meme spammed to trigger pre-teen girls and music defeners.

>>73989622
your mad as heck dude

>>73989686
>discredited

2017 and people still get triggered by a single guy not liking the Beatles at all. Is it that unbelievable to you?

>>73989744
Who said I liked the Beatles?

>>73989744
Nice dubs.
What's funnier is that Scaruffi admitted that his background is from classical music. He may have been mean, but imagine how little he actually thinks about Beatles' music after having heard and understood Beethoven. They're basically children to him.

I don't share his view of his (not fully, at least) but I've read him explicitly saying so in one of his letters (I think they're only in Italian, but I may be wrong). Technically even jazz is poor man's music when compared to classical music, in his opinion.

>>73989744
can you read? his issue is clearly with his reasons for disliking the beatles and the shitty essay, not the mere fact he dislikes the beatles

>>73989818
And enjoying Beethoven is somehow a measurement of intellectual aptitude? I find Beethoven's music banal and prosaic. Completely "entry level" classical music, if I may borrow your parlance.

>>73989840
His reasons have not been discredited (which were mainly centered about the fact that the Beatles would jump on every train they could catch, costantly doing pastiches of genres and styles that were all the rage 3-4 years before thier plagiarism) at best people can say that they don't care about it, which is still reasonable.

Post-Syd Pink Floyd is garbage

>>73989947
don't tell me

>>73989925
I guess you have never read his scores, right? Because they're nothing short of miracolous.

Also while prosaic may be a subjective judgement, banal isn't: Beethoven was and is, to this day, objectively groundbreaking. His innovations have resisted 200 years of intense, cruel musicology, and he is still hailed unanimously as a genius by whoever ever bothered to actually read and study his scores.

Don't mistake your dispproval with nuance: you probably can't even grasp what's considered good about Beethoven.

>>73989975
when do you turn 18

>>73989947
It has.

https://factorysunburst.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/piero-scaruffi-and-truth/

>>73989135
>He makes whole paragraphs just on the early singles.

Nothing wrong with this. Those songs are an important highlight of their career.

>>73989947
Scaruffi's Beatles article, which I have read a number of times, seems to be focused on pointing out that the group is credited with recording innovations that they did not make and this, coupled with the fact that their music does not contain a strong rhythm and blues influence, somehow makes their music objectively "worth" less than that of their 1960s pop music contemporaries. I can appreciate trying to deconstruct the myth of the Beatles, but the latter arguments are supported with falsehoods and puffery.

Bet he doesn't like SOAD either fuckin pussy old bitch doesn't know what real music sounds like

>>73990258
To be fair it's less about blues influences and more about the fact that Scaruffi can stand unexplored song forms. He mostly complain about the uniformity of rhythm, the banality of most of their chord progressions (and how they are repeated), the lack of interaction between instruments and so on. It's more of an attack towards that kind of musical primitivism that is never questioned in pop music (and it is the case for the Beatles too).
It's not a completely unreasonable criticism.

Never trust a STEM major's assessment of art.

>>73990390
I have a mathematical background and I can't help applying Logic. If rule X applies to the Beatles, then it also applies to everybody else, and viceversa. You can't tell me that the Beatles are great because X, but someone else is not as great even though X applies to him as well (eg, the Beatles are great because they were the first to use the sitar in a pop song, but the Tokens are not great even though they were the first to use an electronic instrument in a pop song). Most stars are credited with "skills" that turn out to be ubiquitous (their fans don't know that those skills are ubiquitous simply because they don't know the lesser publicized musicians who have the same skills). As far as I am concerned, those stars are as good as (basically) everybody else. On the other hand, lesser known artists frequently exhibit more talent and introduce more innovations than the stars. As a mathematician, I draw the logical conclusions.

>>73990326

I hope he reviews Linkin Park next, like to see what this fag thinks about them. Better than Beethoven, don't know about Beatles they're just as inventive.

>>73990408
Exactly my point.

>>73990359
>uniformity of rhythm
>banal chord progressions
Have you, or Scaruffi ever listened to the Beatles? No other band had the amount of layers of crazy that The Beatles did, leading to anything BUT uniform rhythm. As for banal chord progressions...that's the first way anyone can know that they have never listened to The Beatles except maybe pre-Rubber Soul Beatles. Strawberry Fields Forever has a more sophisticated progression than anything in that top 25 albums of his.

>>73990440

Yeah I can't wait to see them and Blink with my older cousin, he's sixteen. He has his own grow op for purple kush. Can't wait until I can drive to rockfest

>>73990359
>the banality of most of their chord progressions (and how they are repeated)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTnmuVyMqUg

>>73990508
I've studied their scores, if that's what passes for interesting harmonies and rhytms, then your standards are very low. Those crazy layers are nothing more than justaxpositikn of consonant pitches and compatible rhythms.

>>73990558
this is b8

>>73990533

Fuckin Dave what are you doing here? Get the fuck out I was the one who told you about /mu/

>>73990546
Literally an harmonized chromatic scale.
Do you realize that Scaruffi has studied Bach's scores? This is stuff that he expects to find a single bar, the thought of that idea being the focus of an entire piece is almost comical to trained musicians and critics.

>>73990568
Or probably you're not confident with the tonal system. I can assure you that the Beatles use only the most basic tricks.
You may think that this makes them musically free, instead they're music is EXTREMELY formulaic, especially compared to classical music. Making a crazy layers with a bunch of Cs, Es and Gs will sound mindblowing to you, to everyone else it will be a simple triad.

>>73990593

I already browsed /b/ and the pokemon board you fucking poser

>>73990638
Also I'm not saying that this means that they're music is automatically bad, I'm still referring to this post >>73990258 and trying to show you that Scaruffi's point of view starts making sense as soon as you understand his background.

>>73990558
Strawberry Fields Forever.

Not to mention that I agree that they aren't the most crazy with their progressions, but in popular music they certainly are. Nothing by King Crimson, by Faust, by Velvet Underground, by Zappa, by Beefheart, etc. comes to the kind of progression that SFF has.

>consonant pitches
>compatible rhythms
So super heavy syncopation and dissonance makes complexity? Man, fuck off, that's the most childish view of sophisticated music on the planet.

>>73990661

Yeah I bet u don't even know what reddit is, answer ur fucking phone u pussy

>>73990663
If this was true, you should be able to see how flawed Scaruffi is with his bullshit about "muh artists adding counterpoint while Beatles were writing ditties" when Beatles had it way early in 1966 with Paperback Writer

>>73989135

Scaruffi's a retard. I can't believe people take him seriously.

>>73990679
>Strawberry Fields Forever.
I-IV-V-V-IV-I, with a few cadences here and there.

>So super heavy syncopation and dissonance makes complexity? Man, fuck off, that's the most childish view of sophisticated music on the planet.
Chill out. If you add 300 notes that compose a triad this is it, you've got a triad. It's not like those layers are being used playfully to enhance the musicality of the piece.
Scaruffi's point is this: most Beatles' songs are standard songs under every aspect (melody, harmony, form, no counterpoint), and the innovations they've been praised for are not really theirs. After you've deconstructed this the only things that remain are these songs, which you may like, but have no inherent quality in them that separates them from any other song. You like the, and this is nice, but he does't, and apart from personal taste he can't find any merit in that music. The fact that it is idolized is even more frustrating to him, hence that review.

>>73990702
There's no counterpoint in Beatles' music, at best you can find polyphony. Also I haven't implied that counterpoint is synonym with quality.

>>73989925
A young trophy wife, in the parlance of our times

>>73990837

Warning to other that this is what learning music theory does to you. It clouds up your heard with all this technical shit, and you miss out on the real beauty of music. I feel sorry for you.

Because this

http://www.scaruffi.com/music/band.html

>>73990546
I really hope you don't believe what you're implying anon. One of the simplest back rhythms imaginable with a guitarist trying VERY hard and failing to play like The Byrds

>>73989622
Nigga he gave MC5 an 8.5 solely based on context. In fact, his dislike on the Beatles uncontested status as best band is based on what was going on around them in a musical context. FUCK outta here. He doesn't even dislike the Beatles that much as you would believe considering he gave two albums a 7. He just viewed them as an average band with too much love.

This board has long viewed any anything below an 8 as reviewed by a critic as probably pleby or not worth it. This stems from utter retardation that has not grown out of consensus mentality since I don't know how fucking long.

>>73991087
Not him but shut the fuck up

>>73991126

>U2 is on the list
>Radiohead not

based as fuck

>>73991087
He's literally just discussing if The Beatles music is as complex as people say that they are + Arguing Scaruffi's talking points on The Beatles

fuck off

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>>73990837
>>73991087
>Music theory makes you a reasonable, more knowledgeable person
??

>>73991127
I have to admit this was quality bait, even though I could recognize it as bait I was forced to reply. Well played anon, here's your well deserved (you)

>>73991136
I'm pretty sure he called Revolver the worst album he's ever heard in a recent interview. Pretty sure his hate for them is more than a "context" kind of thing.

>>73991087
So you have read nothing of what I've written, haven't you?
I'll summarize it again for you: Scaruffi does not like the songs. He tried to find other merits to them that could trascend mere taste, but there is no such merit in their songs. Craft is sloppy, the style is mostly uninspired and based on older fads, the lyrics do not hold with his favourite songwriters. Since he did not like them in the first place, and since he could not find any purely musical merit, he rejected them. That's it.

Who am I kidding? Why am I pretending that your post was a coherent response? Studying theory will dull you out because after that you can see behind every cheap trick employed by The Beatles? It's like saying "reading is bad" because hearing summarized stories is easier. You're basically uncapable of musical judgement (but you'll never notice it, since you're in an echo camber in which virtually everyone listen to music targeted at teenagers).
You know what's the worst thing? That I still like The Beatles' but you guys are too fucking dull and monolythic to see that one can criticize an aspect of the art they appreciate, and you're too prejudiced to understand that I can get someone else's point of view, even if it differs from mine.
With people like you talking about the actual notes means that I'm a shallow theorist, and explaining to you someone else's opinion means that I agree with them in a religious manner. Basically, debating you is time wasted.
I'm out.

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>>73991127
>the beatles
>trying to sound like the byrds

>>73989758
underrated

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man i have no clue who this dude is but he gave white light white heat a 9/10 so he's my nigga

>>73991203
Music theory helps you map out music, that's it. You may sing a melody, I may write it on paper, that's technically the same thing, the only difference is how much control I have over that information once I've noted it. This is what musical theory does (it's 99% ear training, the most basic and natural skill a musician or music listener should possess), stop feeling threatened by it.

>>73991250
But there are plenty of other sloppy, derivative bands that he does not hold to the same standards.

>>73991314
What the fuck are you talking about anon? Who's threatened?

>>73991346
but they're not as overrated as the beatles

I wonder if scruffy had ever mention that Lennon brutally beaten both his wives and enjoyed it.

>>73991372
But then Scaruffi claims that the Beatles not living up to those standards makes them inferior to the others

>>73991346
You're pretending that craft is the only element I (and he) have considered. Craft is only the cherry on top of a cake made out of nothing, as we have already seen. The only thing that could have made their music great was his personal appreciation for it, but he does not like their music, nor he can't find any other reasons to endorse it (he could use their success, but if you've read those reviews you know that he finds it obscene).

>>73991420
He makes a series of claims, and you're cherrypicking them. The votes he gives to their albums is a SUM of those claims. He is not rating them poorly only because their craft is sloppy and they're not that innovatived: those are only part of the problem he's got with the Beatles.

>>73990837
>I-IV-V-V-IV-I
The into alone is in I–ii–I–VII–IV and while there are IV's and V's that's not how they progress in the track; you have no clue what you're talking about
>>73990837
>If you add 300 notes that compose a triad this is it, you've got a triad.
But none of Beatles stuff implies a triad.
>It's not like those layers are being used playfully to enhance the musicality of the piece.
They are.
>most Beatles' songs are standard songs under every aspect (melody, harmony, form, no counterpoint)
Yet a pre-Revolver Beatles proves this wrong with Paperback Writer's counterpoint. Which btw is there, and you not saying no will not make it stop existing.
>and the innovations they've been praised for are not really theirs
Which ones? He never specifies.

>the rest of the blah blah
Yeah, I used to think like this, too when I went through music theory class in high school and discovered Scaruffi some time after that. But it's time to grow up and move the fuck on.

>>73991513
>The into alone is in I–ii–I–VII–IV and while there are IV's and V's that's not how they progress in the track; you have no clue what you're talking about
In fact that progression was not the intro. You may as well tell me I'm wrong because the chord progression I've mentioned is not the one of Oblada Oblada. I guess looking past the first progression was too much.

>But none of Beatles stuff implies a triad.
It's literally all triads with accidents here and there.

>They are.
Again, low standards.

>Yet a pre-Revolver Beatles proves this wrong with Paperback Writer's counterpoint. Which btw is there, and you not saying no will not make it stop existing.
Again, that's polyphony, not counterpoint.

>Which ones? He never specifies.

He makes a case for every album in which The Beatles adopt a different style. You might want to read those reviews again.

>Yeah, I used to think like this, too when I went through music theory class in high school and discovered Scaruffi some time after that. But it's time to grow up and move the fuck on.
Let me guess, You've stopped after that first Music Theory I course?

>>73991609
> I guess looking past the first progression was too much.
Did you miss the part where I said the part with IV's and V's (which would be past the intro btw) doesn't progress at all the way you said it. Not to mention that there's more than just a I, IV, and V in the rest of the track, which I purposefully didn't mention till now to notice whether or not you would rectify this at all. But you didn't, because you're talking out of your ass.
>It's literally all triads with accidents here and there.
There's a 7th chord everything third chord I believe in SFF. That's a lot more common than more sophisticated music than this.
>Again, that's polyphony, not counterpoint.
>implying works aren't often both
Like shit, dude, you're deaf if you can't hear the backing voices doing counterpoint here.
>He makes a case for every album in which The Beatles adopt a different style. You might want to read those reviews again.
Not really he doesn't. If he had an ounce of quality he would be more specific, but he can't even do that.
>Let me guess, You've stopped after that first Music Theory I course?
Went all the way through till mid 20th century getting to early electronic stuff, so no, I did not.

I like Scaruffi. He introduced me to good music, which is more than fantano or christgau did.

>>73991242
How sway? If I said Trout Mask Replica was the worst album I've ever heard, would that mean by that "CB&HMB is horrible" is my statement? No, that's what hypersensitive people with an agenda do.

>>73992084
Yeah he might severely underrate some things but for the most part his 8+/10's are great

All I'm wondering is how did he get all those rare tapes to listen to.

For example check out his Boards of Canada page, it's filled with reviews for demos stretching to the late 80s.

>>73991296
Explore the other 9's. They're good.

>>73989947
Show me the train that was already chugging that had a song like Tomorrow Never Knows before Revolver.