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Post by ancientmeadow on Mar 17, 2020 10:56:59 GMT -5
I own the first Grandma's Cottage tape, so I can't say it is unequivocally bad. I'll largely agree that it is unfairly associated with Dungeon Synth simply because the person who created the most commonly cited piece (GC) also has a few DS projects. I would agree that the whole phenomenon has gone too far if others are referring to it as a sub-genre in its own right. Its proximity to dungeon synth music is largely limited to the people making it. The only piece of music thus far that has a sonic provenance with DS is the first GC tape. Otherwise, the rest is pretty uninspiring and should really be searching for a home elsewhere. The whole premise of "comfy" synth is antithetical to the very core of dungeon synth.
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Post by Sorrows Realm on Mar 21, 2020 21:47:40 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with it existing and I think it's good that people explore different sounds but I don't think it should be connected to Dungeon Synth as the only thing they really have in common is the "Synth" part....it would be like Major Key Happy Doom Metal...it can't exist...if that's what your playing your not playing doom metal your playing something else..hair metal or power metal not doom metal...regardless of the fact that hair metal and doom metal use guitars and drums they are polar opposite styles only very loosely connected...same for CS and DS.
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Post by jondexter on Mar 22, 2020 2:49:01 GMT -5
I haven't even bothered to listen to any of this stuff to be honest the name sounds stupid to me in the first place plus way too much dungeon synth out there now which I can't keep up with let alone having time to explore other stuff.
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Post by Digol on Mar 23, 2020 5:33:59 GMT -5
I have nothing useful to contribute to this thread, except that the title makes me laugh every time I see it...
"Has comfy synth gone too far?" is just the best sentence. I am imaging someone shaking their fist at an armchair shouting "COMFY SYNTH, YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR THIS TIME!"
And that is my non-contribution.
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Post by Griantor on Mar 23, 2020 5:47:51 GMT -5
Very funny thread. Don't know what 'comfy synth' is and sincerely don't want to know. The name itself makes me loath to know, sorry...
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Post by crystallogic13 on Mar 23, 2020 8:02:01 GMT -5
To give some context into people noticing the thread now or maybe a lot later, there was a December 2019/early Jan 2020 period when some people "promoted" by a lot of posts(maybe spam..) in the 2 main Dungeon Synth facebook (half-working) groups.. Alongside, a lot of mostly low effort releases were using "dungeon synth" tag on Bandcamp while not being DS but mostly in that neo Comfy Synth whatever(along with the comfy synth tag).. Anyway, things and people thankfully have moved on it seems by now anyway so there's that. p.s. Truth is nobody can forbid any random basement dude from tagging his e.g. Britney Spears pop music as "epic metal" , "atmospheric black metal" etc.. Same with "dungeon synth", from the daily 10+ bandcamp releases, at least 40% is (metaphorically mostly ) noise and not even connected with dungeon synth.. So I have come to peace with that and ignore all the distracting unrelated stuff that just use various tags to get more hits..
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Post by dedran on Mar 23, 2020 19:35:55 GMT -5
I do really dislike this trend, but I also see it as part of a larger trend toward saccharine, uninspired music that emerged during the 2010's as a result of greater availability of music distribution platforms like Bandcamp, unfortunately. These platforms are largely responsible for a lot of new music that I've discovered over the last few years, and we do live in privileged times in the sense that no humans at any other point in history could so effortlessly be exposed to such a broad variety of sounds, but it does come at a cost, which makes the technology a double-edged sword of sorts.
I don't buy into the "All music is subjective, so let people like what they like" argument, because if an art movement with a particular core spirit or essence gets brigaded by people with very little understanding of it thanks to low barrier to entry promotional channels, those channels will get flooded by a thing that is fundamentally not what most searchers of the thing's label are searching for (until, of course, enough time passes, and the original thing is altogether replaced by the new thing, marginalizing the original searchers). In short, as it gets easier to promote music on the Internet, consumers with very discerning ears might find themselves skipping through ten albums instead of five to find something that clicks, and so on. Finding interesting music becomes a chore rather than an adventure; when music in general is scarce, finding something truly special might take longer and there might be less of it, but there are gaps between discoveries where you do something else with your time. Conversely, when music is overly abundant, finding something special requires a lot of wasted time going into listening sessions based on one-sentence reviews and cool album covers, only to realize this is the fourth album in a row that you didn't like, and wouldn't it have been nice to have done something else during that window of your day?
Why syrupy and sweet music with little drama or real musical structure is a by-product of this phenomenon is harder to pin down in specific, but I would guess that it has something to do with Internet bubbles like reddit, where certain political values, social practices, and physical lifestyles might influence music creation on a deep, subconscious level. The Internet is a fundamentally difference place now than it was just ten years ago for many complex reasons that would probably be better suited for another post, perhaps on another forum, but suffice it to say that both blandness and laziness are becoming more acceptable within underground music. Dungeon synth is not the only victim, here, with comfy synth being preceded by a few years by lots of mediocre Summoning and Lustre clones in the black metal community that over-use sappy chords, cheesy choir keyboard plugins, and too-crisp production, with few musical ideas to show for it -- and I'd even argue that a lot of "serene" dungeon synth that overly relies on harps and flutes in lieu of interesting harmonic or melodic moments foreshadowed comfy synth. Infiltration by video game nerds, anime fans, and socially feeble people plays a large role in the social media age, as the fanbase shifts from edgy, tatted, weed-smoking Satanists running around record stores and tiny local shows to short-haired Netflix binge watchers curled up in bed with their ultra gaming laptop ready to fire up a new Witcher 3 mod.
The latter group, of course, often pay way too much attention to the supposed influence of video game soundtracks on dungeon synth and not enough to the other key influences -- not a huge sin in itself, but worth noting given the demographic.
This is why, although I do still stumble upon a dungeon synth release that really blows me away from time to time, I'm finding it more and more beneficial to look to traditional music for the same fix; people who made music for a god they actually believed in, or for a ceremony that would prevent their families from starving during a famine, or while in a state of deep depression after losing their 30-year-old wife to tuberculosis often did so out of necessity, and the results could be incredible.
If you ever find yourself tired of the same stale melodies and the returns on your Bandcamp searches are diminishing at a scary pace, I would recommend taking a break and doing some research into classical, folk, medieval, and pagan/ancient music, if you haven't already. It requires more work, but the best things in life generally do.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 24, 2020 23:00:49 GMT -5
I don't buy into the "All music is subjective, so let people like what they like" argument, because if an art movement with a particular core spirit or essence gets brigaded by people with very little understanding of it thanks to low barrier to entry promotional channels, those channels will get flooded by a thing that is fundamentally not what most searchers of the thing's label are searching for (until, of course, enough time passes, and the original thing is altogether replaced by the new thing, marginalizing the original searchers). I think a case can be made for art not being 100% subjective, and I myself would make that case, but how might one objectively justify the value of something so crude and simple as FΓΈdt til Γ₯ Herske against a modern hi-fi ornate soundtrack-ish DS album? I don't think the "original thing" will ever be replaced. Those 90's albums aren't going anywhere, and I think there will always be an audience for that style even if the majority of new dungeon synth totally goes off the rails. Even if there is never a new dungeon synth album released for the rest of time, and all that will be released from here on out is comfy synth tagging itself as dungeon synth, we already have far more serious traditional DS albums than most people will ever have enough time to listen to and fully appreciate. The worst case scenario is all interest in traditional DS dies out as far as the "scene" goes, but that doesn't seem so bad to me. Hell, I kind of welcome it, because then making it will feel more worthwhile and less like just another drop in the bucket. I do generally agree with this, but I think the advantages outweigh the negatives in this case. Like if you're starving you'll appreciate the taste of food more. Think of it like this, nobody in history has ever had this level of access to such a wide variety of music, more than one could listen to of all quality levels, and it's expanding everyday, so it's a unique challenge to figure out how one will navigate this new terrain of aesthetic appreciation, and how can one contribute to make it better to navigate for others? I think there are a lot of possibilities and opportunities right now, it can be overwhelming, but I also think it should be exciting because it just gets faster and faster. Who knows what's next, maybe a new golden age where everyone is taking it really seriously and new releases are really speaking to the soul. Or maybe it will be a dark age of meme miasma while only a handful of the faithful cling to the classics. Either way it sounds like an interesting journey that I want to be a part of. I strongly disagree with this. A big reason why I find it difficult to get into classical music, and most genres pre-1960's, is that so much of it sounds just like happy-go-lucky skipping through the meadows on the way to the local fair. If anything that heavy use of the major key makes comfy synth more akin to classical than traditional DS. I think the reason why many of us find happy music cloying, such as comfy synth, is that we live comfortable and privileged lives without much day-to-day hardship, so that's what we're yearning for. I think perhaps if we had lived a century+ ago comfy synth might sound far better than both DS and black metal, people whose lives were so difficult and filled with suffering that they needed to escape to a place of frivolous joy. And I'm not sure what you mean about "little drama or real musical structure," because that has been a part of DS since the beginning. Sure, very little music nowadays can compare to the structural complexity of classical, but I don't know how one can make the case that newer DS albums in general have gotten more structurally simplistic. There's a lot of blandness and laziness from 90's DS and black metal as well, and I think it was even more "acceptable" because there was much more demand than supply. Though people might not be getting called out very often for making boring music, it does still seem like the good stuff rises to the top and gets more attention by listeners. Of course the lame controversial stuff gets a lot of attention too, but I think those are quickly forgotten. And many amazing albums go unnoticed, but I'd like to think most will eventually have their day in the sun, even if it takes years. Also you seem to have this attitude that people who watch Netflix and play video games have nothing to say about the human condition and I don't think that's fair at all. If anything such people are the ones who should be doing the deepest soul-searching expression because of that emptiness we feel at being so far removed from our state of nature these days. That's kind of what DS has always been about, escapism not in the sense of distraction like video games and tv shows, but escapism like maybe there's something even more, even something entwined within the nostalgia of distraction-escapism. Second wave black metal took some fun silly distraction like Venom and said, "What if it were serious? What if it really meant something?" It's a sort of irrational subversion of nihilistic consumerism, to say hey this LOTR/D&D stuff is a lot of fun, but what if we exalted these fantastical imaginings to a spiritual level, would that provide real sustenance in this desert? But maybe that's just another illusion... maybe black metal and DS are as hollow inside as the rest of the distraction-escapism so many of us rely on to tune out the nihilism of our age. I've personally made peace with that idea, though I must admit I have a lot less faith in the inherent transcendent properties of DS than I used to. At times I can still suspend that disbelief long enough to get something more out of it than I might from generic fantasy stuff.
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 25, 2020 3:11:21 GMT -5
Oh I like this, let's keep going. I agree that not all art can be 100% subjective and I absolutely hate the relativist idea that anything can be ok depending on the angle but here's the deal. I spent the majority of my youth in the black metal scene hanging out with the aforementioned edgy, tatted, weed-smoking satanists. I've been that guy and I hate to break anybody's illusion but a big portion of those guys aren't any more spiritual or have anything more worthwhile to say than your average Joe most of the time. Most of it is just as hollow and trendy as the next thing and a lot of those guys are very socially feeble as dedran put it. I don't know anything about how the scene is today but I'd imagine it's probably worse. I wasn't there in Norway in the early 90's and even though I'm very fascinated by all of it I'm pretty sure it wasn't generally that much different. When all is said and done glorifying lost teenagers doing lost teenager stuff is a bit silly. I don't mean to say I'm anything more than what I described above, I'm just another guy. Just wanted to clear that to not portray any sort of elitist image. I do understand the consumerist zombie stereotype dedran is trying to portray and I agree there is a demographic that wants their one shot fun and nothing too challenging or influential and are in it just for the cool factor. This is the same with all social phenomena and all types of music. I grew up with this music and I also can't really respect this kind of thing but I still can't see why I should care. The DS market is already just as described above. It's a massive pit of every kind of quality imaginable and it's very hard to dig out the really good stuff. The mystery is gone but there is also a lot of music to be heard. Maybe I'm just cynical but I kind of like it. If I could choose I would go back to a point where there is no internet, you have to trade tapes and there's as little common knowledge as possible and lots of room for speculation but that was more than 20 years ago and I feel it's time to get over it. The fact that we're having this conversation over the internet is a bit ironic already since we're being part of the trend and helping DS to be more accessible to people that don't want to go through any sort of effort. I'm fine with that though. I took a side road there but overall I agree that anything goes is a bad attitude to have. I just don't see why I should concern myself with anyone making uninspired music from the outside since there's a lot of that inside DS already and I don't think it'll change anytime soon. I understand and can respect it if people feel there is a scene that must be protected as it's something very special and great but I've seen so many scenes in my life that I'm incredibly disillusioned by all of it. I enjoy a lot of the things that the DS scene has to offer nowadays but I also dislike a lot of it. I do wonder whether the DS trend is a passing phase or if it'll grow even more. I'm interested to see how it turns out. I just feel I'm very unaffected by all of this and can't be bothered to pay that much attention to it. It requires more work, but the best things in life generally do. Well said.
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Post by dedran on Mar 25, 2020 8:35:24 GMT -5
I don't think you really can. The point wasn't that we should throw the idea of music being subjective out the window; it was that people use it for the ulterior purpose of flooding Internet tags with their own music, and if they somewhat miss the mark on how they're tagging it, it becomes harder to find something tagged correctly. That's an oversimplification of course, and I wouldn't state otherwise. That's sort of where I was going. There's no concern at all in "running out" of music, so to speak. I feel the same way you do. I'm thinking less happy-go-lucky (comfy synth) and more "trying too hard to sound really sad and full of despair," e.g. black metal bands that try to be Summoning but have really slow sections that go on for waaay too long with the same few sentimental keyboard chords over and over. I think there are a lot of people interested in these genres because of the Internet who might see something in it that they want to copy, not because of an innate feeling, but because of the desire for the appearance of having that feeling; it's surface-level entertainment for them in the same way that the petty drama of Game of Thrones appeals to fans of mainstream television (although I did enjoy most of GoT for the record and am not attacking it), rather than something that might be coming from a more genuine place of inspiration. Comfy synth probably also fits this description, but from a more happy-go-lucky angle. But that's just a hunch. I also think it's unfair to take several centuries of music and sum it up as "happy-go-lucky." Even if you don't take a deep dive into classical music, right on the surface you already have Beethoven's first movement from the Moonlight sonata, which is like crushing doom metal without distortion. Funeral doom bands like Pantheist even borrow whole sections from Chopin's preludes for more of that funereal feeling. And that's just "mainstream" classical music that the average person on the street might be aware of, so there's definitely going to be more of it out there. Like this, for example: I'd take this over the 20 new dungeon synth albums released every week any day. Is comfy synth lame? Yes, it is. But this isn't. Sometimes it's better to retrace your steps than to constantly seek out something new. Are you seeking this out, but there's more happy-go-lucky stuff in the vein of comfy synth that you have to sift through? Then perhaps try this instead: As for the reddit comment, I don't mean people who have comfy lives because of the improvements in living conditions brought on by modernity, which is something that applies to all first-worlders, but something more specific -- people who genuinely enjoy political virtue signaling, or who spend way too much time getting offended by harmless Internet comments and generally coddle and reassure one another from within echo chambers. These behaviors can leak into music scenes to the point where even the idea of an album review might be considered "mean," leading to less constructive criticism and weaker mindsets. Perhaps this is why comfy synth can get to the place that it has. Structured is not the same as complex. Good simplistic music is also structured well. The music just has to have some sense of direction and internal logic with a minimum of aimless wandering. Lots of classical composers experimented with minimalism and extreme repetition long before dungeon synth existed, including Beethoven for the aforementioned Moonlight sonata. What I mean by little in the way of musical structure is just a subjective feeling when listening to some of the more bland releases that the artist is just fiddling around with chords, but ultimately, nothing interesting really happens -- like reading a chapter of a fantasy novel where the author spends way too much time describing the characters' clothes and not enough moving the story forward. Nah. It's just fun to use colorful language to make a very general point. I've binge watched my share of series and I'm a lifelong gamer. But the Legend of Zelda and Skyrim are very mainstream pieces of media that can seep into a genre like dungeon synth as it grows in popularity, leading to perhaps more emphasis on crowd-friendly melodies and a general belief that this music is "nerdy RPG music," which is only one piece of the puzzle. Also you seem to have this attitude that people who watch Netflix and play video games have nothing to say about the human condition and I don't think that's fair at all. If anything such people are the ones who should be doing the deepest soul-searching expression because of that emptiness we feel at being so far removed from our state of nature these days. That's kind of what DS has always been about, escapism not in the sense of distraction like video games and tv shows, but escapism like maybe there's something even more, even something entwined within the nostalgia of distraction-escapism. Second wave black metal took some fun silly distraction like Venom and said, "What if it were serious? What if it really meant something?" It's a sort of irrational subversion of nihilistic consumerism, to say hey this LOTR/D&D stuff is a lot of fun, but what if we exalted these fantastical imaginings to a spiritual level, would that provide real sustenance in this desert? You hit the nail on the head here. And plenty of people who play a lot of video games do ask these questions and have this general understanding. Again, it was just a way of framing a point rather than a generalization about gamers and nerds, a group to which I myself soundly belong.
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Post by dedran on Mar 25, 2020 8:48:47 GMT -5
If anything, they're probably less spiritual than the average Joe. But the edginess came bundled with genuine aggression that led to some accidental, or incidental, discoveries while fiddling around with guitars that have stood the test of time. You can almost think of them like idiot savants -- maybe they make terrible lifestyle choices and aren't the greatest conversationalists, but they made some fantastic music. And some of them did eventually mature into interesting, if sometimes controversial, people.
There is nothing innate about these people who were part of scenes in the early 90's that made them better musicians; there were just less of them, so the signal-to-noise ratio was stronger. There are still great releases coming out all the time from within this genre cluster.
Hard agree with the rest of your post. There was a charm to the way that underground music used to be distributed that makes wading through Bandcamp releases sometimes feel less special. On the other side of the coin, in general, there is so much amazing music to be discovered thanks to the Internet that it's impossible for one person to hear it all within a single lifetime, or if they do, it's probably still impossible to spend hours with each album independently.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 26, 2020 0:05:17 GMT -5
I'm thinking less happy-go-lucky (comfy synth) and more "trying too hard to sound really sad and full of despair," e.g. black metal bands that try to be Summoning but have really slow sections that go on for waaay too long with the same few sentimental keyboard chords over and over. I think there are a lot of people interested in these genres because of the Internet who might see something in it that they want to copy, not because of an innate feeling, but because of the desire for the appearance of having that feeling; it's surface-level entertainment for them in the same way that the petty drama of Game of Thrones appeals to fans of mainstream television (although I did enjoy most of GoT for the record and am not attacking it), rather than something that might be coming from a more genuine place of inspiration. Comfy synth probably also fits this description, but from a more happy-go-lucky angle. But that's just a hunch. So you're saying there are a lot of posers who are just wanting to participate in a scene but don't really have much to say musically? That could be, certainly the case for some, but I don't personally feel that is the majority at all. I think by and large most DS albums released these days are still pretty earnest and sincere. My feeling when checking out the new DS releases on bandcamp is almost always just wishing I had the time and focus to thoroughly engage with them all. I said "much of it." Of course there's plenty of great ancient, medieval, and classical music I love, and certainly could not be described as "happy-go-lucky." But I'm pretty sure that most classical music is in the major key, so my point still stands. But isn't this "getting offended by harmless internet comments" as well? I think complaining about virtue signalling has sort of become a virtue signalling of its own. I'm over it from both sides. And I don't think that has anything to do with being mean or not with DS. And I don't think DS people are necessarily afraid to be mean in some cases, like comfy synth has arguably been the subject of a lot of meanness, both here and on facebook, and there's been very little pushback (because it's justified ). No, I think the real reason people might be more hesitant to be negative when reviewing or commenting on DS albums is that with this genre it's entirely self-motivated. The ideal is that the artists are making it entirely for themselves, not for money or attention, so how can one be upset by and attack such a work? It just wasn't meant for them. Well, idk, even acknowledging your clothes-description metaphor, I still think that static nature of DS goes back to the beginning and is part of what makes it unique and great, that makes it great background music. Some people want music to tell them a story or to take them on a journey, and I often do, but when I want to read or write, staying focused while transporting my mood, I often turn to DS because it generally has that static quality of being more just like a place rather than an event (an important similarity to video game music).
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Post by dedran on Mar 26, 2020 7:54:31 GMT -5
You're probably right. But then again, we see this in all genres, especially underground metal -- posers, maybe, but I don't really care about that so much as the music itself and whether it feels generic and uninspired, regardless of whether the artist is a poser. In metal in particular, we see dozens of releases that will never be regarded as classics; even if there are a few good moments here and there, why bother listening when the classics exist? When there is a huge abundance of something (in this case, music), basic odds tell us that upon clicking on a random link to listen to a new release, it isn't going to tread new ground or really stand out as worth returning to, even if it's just okay. Maybe dungeon synth defies the odds. I just can't imagine that if there are ten new albums with the tag on Bandcamp this week, I'm going to remember or care about at least six of them a year from now, which would be required to constitute a majority. Sometimes, in some cases, this could be due to mis-tagging and flooding. My main issue here is that I feel like "happy" and "serious" or "dark" music is a false dichotomy, but it's your opinion, so there's no point in criticizing it. I genuinely like a lot of major key classical music and feel like dismissing major key music while enjoying minor key music is a bit overly simplistic. I tend to think of it as more about realness, passion, or just wanting to experience the full spectrum of intense human emotion -- something that the entire movement of Romanticism in the 19th century upheld as a core component of its philosophy -- versus the surface-level, plastic, emotionally void, and consumerist-based. If someone writes a super happy melody in 1765 and it sounds genuine and full of life in the face of a cholera outbreak or a horrible war, that's great to me, although understanding the historical context isn't necessary if the music genuinely holds up on its own. I wouldn't classify most pop music as "happy" at all so much as just emotionally bankrupt, which is very different. I turn from Nicki Minaj to Vivaldi not because Vivaldi is more minor key than Nicki Minaj, but because Vivaldi is real. I'm not offended, nor am I complaining. I think it's possible to speculate about causes without being overreacting and draconian, which is unfortunately what happens a lot on the Internet as soon as someone comes out and says "This music really sucks." All I'm saying is that being able to come right out and say "This music really sucks," like you did by making this thread, should be more acceptable. If it's such a non-issue and I'm wrong and people are harshly criticizing bad music on a regular basis, then I don't understand why you made this thread.
Anyway, this is the part that I don't understand about your position: You made a whole thread about a genre of music going too far, you called it out very specifically for being "lame," but now you're saying that you're over what I was merely suggesting as a potential cause of the proliferation of the music that you think is lame and sort of infecting this scene. I thought I was actually contributing to your point about comfy synth. Are you saying that you're over what would motivate someone to make this lame music? If so, why make the thread in the first place? I'm not understanding your contention, here. Help me out by pointing to where I went wrong and why this has to be an argument rather than a fun case study. Unless it's comfy synth, in which case it's gone too far.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 27, 2020 0:36:45 GMT -5
You're probably right. But then again, we see this in all genres, especially underground metal -- posers, maybe, but I don't really care about that so much as the music itself and whether it feels generic and uninspired, regardless of whether the artist is a poser. In metal in particular, we see dozens of releases that will never be regarded as classics; even if there are a few good moments here and there, why bother listening when the classics exist? Though often one can tell when an album is very unlikely to become a classic, for me it always takes many listens before I realize an album is a classic, and sometimes I don't like it at all initially. I don't think only minor is good, there's lots of great keys and scales and whatnot out there, like the church modes. It's just the major key that doesn't work for me, and that's a shortcoming on my part. I can appreciate it sometimes, but usually with a bit of effort. But I think a lot of people these days feel that way about it, that it's unpleasantly kitsch. I think arguing about this kind of stuff is fun. This whole thread was basically me trying to stir-shit and start a start a debate to better understand comfy synth and why people like it, but unfortunately nobody really came to the defense of comfy synth and so now I kind of feel bad about that, and now that comfy synth seems to have died out
But when I said I was "over it," that just in regard to the mention of "virtue signalling." Seems like a political criticism and I'm not sure how that's relevant, and I'm just sick of politics.
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 27, 2020 2:04:53 GMT -5
But I think a lot of people these days feel that way about it, that it's unpleasantly kitsch. Major key doesn't need to sound kitsch though. To me when a major key song is made to sound sad or melancholic it's usually very mysterious and sometimes even creepy sounding. There are certain intervals and chord changes that have this eerie effect like I - III. Good examples of this specific chord change would be the intro to David Bowie's Space Oddity and Creep by Radiohead where they go from C to Em. Both of those songs are in the key of C major and they sure don't sound happy go lucky or kitsch. That being said I also have a hard time enjoying stuff like the most pompous and joyful works of Mozart etc.
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