Response to Lisa's "Bell&Music"

Lisa Asked:

"When you listen to music, do you distinguish the music from the lyrics or do you tend to take the piece as a whole and judge it based on the hybridization of the music and the lyrics?"

First of all, I'd like to take a second and appreciate your punny title. Intentional or no, it's still pretty good.

Alrighty!

I believe this to be case specific. Music is a huge part of my life, and I listen to it and play it often, and so sometimes it's hard to pry the two apart. If I listen to a song that's in a genre I don't particularly like, I often separate the two. Most of today's pop music I don't much like. The lyrics are often insubstantial, and the person singing them hardly ever composed the words. This being said, the beats are certainly catchy, the tracks well-mastered, and the lyrics at least aurally appealing. In this case, I separate the words from the music in order to squeeze some type of enjoyment out of the process.

With a genre like rap, where the sound and rhythm of the rapper's voice is as much a part of the music as are the drums and bass, I often treat the voice like an instrument; that is, I don't treat the words as words, I treat them as different notes being hit by the instrument-voice. This way, even if the rapper is rapping about something chintzy like making money and pimping hos, I can still appreciate the musical quality of the genre.

Really good music, though, I treat as one sound. Jason Mraz (don't hate, appreciate), for instance, has a wonderful voice. I treat it like an instrument, but he also is a wordsmith, and so I don't have to ignore the message he's portraying. Along with his wonderful popjazz style, the whole works are absolutely eargasmic.

Hopefully this answered your question?