Is there such thing as good and bad music?

Question

Or is it only a matter of music taste?

dangerDoge · Accepted Answer

This is a difficult question. After some thought, I would ultimately say yes— with some caveats.

An initial concept of good vs bad can be determined with common sense. For instance, someone who is not trained in any musical aspect whatsoever can attempt to write a musical piece, and I can all but guarantee people will dislike the piece much more frequently compared to someone who has trained their whole life writing music and wrote a piece leveraging their experience/training. It makes sense in that way that there is a good vs bad.

I think we need to define ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ more. One way to do this is by likability of a piece on a wide scale. E. g. if the whole world listened to two songs and rated them while free of certain biases, the song ranked higher is better. Granted, the problem here is that the potential biases mentioned are difficult to ignore. We are susceptible to social biases being told by marketing or society what we should listen to, and we are afflicted with personal biases of wanting to like ideas/concepts we are more familiar with. In a perfect ranking, we would get a sample group of people who have never listened to music before to rate pieces, but that just isn’t possible.

On thought, maybe one way to get past personal bias to an extent is to send a song to a general intended audience and ask them to rank it if they are unaware of the piece/artist. For instance, send a metal song to metalheads who don’t know the song/band and ask them to rate it. If everyone is roughly on the same playing field when it comes to personal bias, that can help mitigate the spread in answers that would result from it.

There are some objective criteria which can make music more or less pleasing for someone. For example, patterns, musical notes and their dissonance/consonance (e. g. on pitch, in a mode or in a scale, etc.). There are also objective criteria in terms of a song’s mix (e. g. frequencies are balanced, instruments are clear, is dynamic, etc.). These criteria then affect more subjective criteria of emotional response and catchiness. Theoretically, I think there would exist a guideline of analyzing a song with it’s musical elements to determine the quality of a piece, but that sounds much more complicated than the couple objective criteria I threw out. A point could be thrown here about “what about music that is purposefully of dissonance and made to sound ugly and displease people? Some people enjoy that.” For that, I would still rate that music as objectively bad. It’s meant to be bad and it fulfills its purpose. In terms of song quality itself though, it’s bad.

drummerdude25 · Accepted Answer

Yeah I think so… while a lot of music is subjective, whether you like it or not, I think there’s a certain “coherence” to what a good song is… are the chords and bass working together how they should, or the beat/rhythms, or is it a convoluted mess? Does the arrangement fit the tempo?

Are the chords even made up correctly? Is the instrument out of tune? Like sometimes something just doesn’t sound good… Does the melody fit the chord structure? You know? There’s a lot of factors to it. It’s simple, but it’s difficult lol. I can typically hear it better than I can explain it.

There’s something in music theory called the “Circle of Fifths” and honestly, I think just about all “good music” pays some kind of respect to that concept… there’s just a certain “vibrance” in the relationship of the notes that really resonates.

I’m not the best person to talk theory with, but I’d love if someone else had something else to chime in!

thnderskiies · Accepted Answer

For me, it's art vs craft. A song carefully written with the intent to become a hit song is craft: it takes skill and precision to make successfully make a hit record... but I don't know if there's any artistic merit to it. On the other hand, art might benefit from skill, but it really doesn't require it. And is generally more interesting because the artist has something to say that the craftsman doesn't.

It's all subjective at the end of the day, there's no such thing as objectively "good" music. The term good is inherently subjective, it's you making a value judgement. What was "good" 100 years ago, might not be good now. What is "good" to someone in China might be different to someone in Europe.

Nikki1989 · Accepted Answer

It is like the difference between fast food and a 5-star restaurant. Obviously, one is better quality than the other.

ibodi · Answer

Just happen to study on flute It is weird that

Both of west and orient have it and afican rhythm.

So you should ask where music come from instead of picking up you like or do not like from other story.

You have your own story too.

LiamJHayden · Answer

There is a level of dissonance that makes "music" unlistenable but even that is arguably subjective.

AngryCarl2 · Answer

I think it's objectively bad if it's out of tune.

JosyJosy · Answer

Bad music to me is someone who can't sing or play.

CuriousGirl2ask · Answer

Yea I don't get sceamo music. It's too mean.

panamared1 · Answer

There is no accounting for taste

Is there such thing as good and bad music?

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