It's because few of us actually understand it on any technical level. We just like it or we don't.

But as we can bore at Olympic level about bands, tours, lighting rigs, production credits, album sleeves etc, when somebody says something that suggests they have a technical grasp of the stuff, we feel lost.

I couldn't give a mnkeys about cars either - they either take you somewhere or they don't.

How dare you talk music, you unmitigated swine!

There's nothing wrong with trying to describe the actual sound itself. I assume we're all fairly well-read, intelligent individuals (ahem), so there's no problem with the vocabulary.

If reviewing a track or album, the most difficult question is "what does it actually sound like?" You can't say "there's a guitar bit, then it goes lower and then the singer comes in and tells a story". No, you look for reference points, hence your clichés of "Byrdsian jangling" and, of course, "unrepentant doo-wop harmonies."

Just to play Devil's advocate, however, maybe it's because snooker, football and motoring are not art (at least not in the same way music is). Something could be technically shoddy but if it catches the right spot and makes you feel something then it's perfect.

There still seems to be a widespread view in the world of rock (and, indeed, of roll) that to be 'aufentic' you have to know nothing about the theory or science of writing music, playing your instrument or arranging the notes into a pleasing sequence.

Whilst it's perfectly possibly to bang out three chords and make it sound good (and God knows, that's the limit of my guitar and piano ability), knowing a little bit about the science of what's happening within the music makes a hell of a difference to the making and understanding of music.

As an aside, it gives you a useful vocabulary to use when trying to describe a piece.

If anyone wants a good musicians introduction to music theory, can I recommend Dave Stewart's excellent book "Understanding The Dots" - it's not just about reading sheet music but covers a lot about how music 'works' and it's internal structure.

Of course you can drive a car without understanding how an engine and gearbox work but, once you have that little extra knowledge, it makes a huge difference.

I'm guessing it used to be different. No-one ever talks about sound any more either. It's barely mentioned. The following is from a Ron Ross review of the New York Dolls debut album in 1973.

On the other hand, Todd's mix lacks both top and bottom, Jerry is buried so that the band doesn't sound as tight as they actually were, and David's vocals, the samiest thing about the Dolls, are mixed far too high. Johnny and Syl are both rhythm-lead guitarists in the best Jones/Richards tradition, but the difference in their style is lost. The overall effect makes the Dolls sound hysterical and without direction, which at this point is more an aspect of their subject matter than their music.

No-one would write that today. Now it's all about comparison ("the new McCartney sounds like Radiohead duetting with an aggrieved gibbon"), cultural significance ("this record ushers in a new era of speed-reggae"), context ("this is Roger Waters' 129th solo album, and was recorded in an abandoned eel warehouse in Wapping"), and avoiding cliché.

Broadly with Joe on this one, but that ain't to say that Archie V's comments weren't interesting, particularly given that the country's ignoranti were on their feet, retard-clapping and loudly hosannaing the fabulosity of Susan Boyle's pipes. Wouldn't want too much of it - my default position when it comes to technique is that 'it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing' - but a technical critique in this context seemed entirely apropos.

Always wanted to use that...

Being on this here blog can sometimes be like being back at school. That is not a bad thing. Keeps the old brain cells...er, working. Perhaps we should have The Word of the day.

My word of the day has to be Melisma

http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textm/Melisma.html

she is a lovely girl but I prefer her sister Melinda.

wariness of the intellctual life. Which is always a double edged sword; it means that any sort of learning (especially that which the media as a mass don't have) is mocked and ignored and so any small mention of something technical gets a "ooh get you with your fancy book learning" response. It does mean however we avoid those programmes they have on the continent where serious blokes in modish suit waffle on for hours interspersed bya chat with Catherine Denveuve and then on comes a hostess in a swin suit.

In the real pseuds corner recently someone was mocked for for calling a sauce on cookery programme "wonderfully oleaginous".

It's also why we end up with squirrel gate etc.
having said that it's ok to talk about the mechnics of music but A: stories about Rod's ex-girlfriends are more fun and B let's not fall over into a Jazz mag blog (not in a good way) and get lost in chords.

I have to say I prefer the reviews/articles that get a bit vague about the technical stuff - or even start to express themselves in huge flights of fancy. But then my favourite music writer of all time is Chris Roberts when he was on the Melody Maker mid to late 80s.

That old chestnut about a cathedral of sound says more about a track than the slightly more technical, "tinny sound covered in reverb setting 113". I don't particularly want to associate a favourite song with the technical realities, when I want it to take me to other places.

It's not snobbery on my part, it's more like not wanting to sit down for a lovely meal and be faced with the realities of where that food came from in the first place!

...used to describe King Crimson as "music for head, heart and hips". Now, whether or not this aptly described Crimso's musical offerings, it certainly covers the aspects of music which determine its appeal. Head (mathematical relationships between notes both simultaneously - chords - and consecutively - melody, plus the POV that music can be seen as about structuring time), Heart (the emotional payload of various keys, plus the ability of a snatch of remembered melody to transport you back to the moment you first heard it), Hips (doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof...).

Trouble is, most rock music journalists are music fans who've trained (if at all) as journalists. They're mostly not trained musicians. And like most people, they prefer not to stray far from their comfort zone, so to avoid exposing their knowledge gaps, they avoid "Head" in their writing. And, of course, "Heart" is intensely subjective and personal, so there's not much mileage writing about "Heart", either. Which leaves "Hips" - but there's not much to say about the danceability of music. It either moves your feet, or it doesn't.

So the writing is about the musicians, rather than the music. Where they've toured, what inspired the new album,who their influences are, what was in the sandwich they made for a nemesis...

Or about the business - the CD vs. Vinyl debate, whether or not piracy is comparable to paedophilia as a threat to the fabric of society, the changing role of touring as a source of revenue, and so on.

And, of course, The Word does all of the above with immense aplomb.

is that Susan Boyle is being judged using criteria (i.e. technical proficiency) that has been rendered redundant by the context of and the overwhelming response to her "audition". In the scheme of things what is the point of being a nay-sayer on the basis that her timbre is a bit reedy? Arguing the toss about the Cowell affect on people's perceptions of music has "a point" but I fail to see the point of trying to cast doubt on an amateur's technical ability at a public audition in front of an, at first, sceptical audience. Will knowing that she doesn't have the best voice in showbiz really change people's minds about her effect on their well-being last Saturday night?

It's not a question of being lowbrow, highbrow or monobrow about a topic. In the context of Susan Boyle her technical ability is an irrelevance and therefore to try and hang a critique of her and her alone by using such a platform really is using a hammer to crack a walnut. The problem seems to be one of over-intellectualising a subject that has transcended that realm and which is now lodged firmly in people's emotional synapses.

By all means break down and wax lyrical about how Stevie Wonder achieved his clavinet sound on a technical level on Superstition but don't forget that no matter how much you attempt to reduce the mystique through such tactics people will remember the song because of the way it made them feel when they first heard it.

when my posts get criticised.
(Sorry, Arch, couldn't resist ;-))

Just ask Liam, Archie, I'm sure he'll give you a considered and intelligent reply.

if we all agreed to agree or indeed to disagree. Archie had the balls to indeed put the same balls on the block with a considered but contentious argument against the alleged merits of Boyle's voice.

Without his willingness to strike a note of dischord my rationale for despairing at The Cowell Factor would be less entrenched and multifarious than it was prior to his valid and worthwhile contribution!

I am self taught as a musician, but I've learned enough about the technical side of music to work with classically trained musicians on an even level. But I still find when I'm trying to describe what I want out of a piece I resort to music journalist language, or worse some kind of shorthand that belongs nowhere. Or even worse a combination of technical and my own shorthand, that starts to sound like Del Boy's use of French.

"I want the strings on the middle eight to sound like somebody's hitting you repeatedly on the knees with wet spaghetti". That was one of mine...

There is a part of me refuses to acknowledge the fact that some of music is maths and numbers, even when I'm faced with proof of that when I'm sat in front of a sequencer.

Some people pay good money to be hit across the knees with wet spaghetti.

That aside, it seems to me quite a good evocation of the sound you wanted to have replicated. More to the point, meaningful.

Archie’s point, I think, is that he was not being overly technical in his critique of La Boyle but that he was derided by some for mentioning the singer’s technical ability at all.

My view is a slightly different one. In poprock writing, generally understood musical terms such as timbre, mid-range, bass, treble, time signatures, major, minor etc are tossed around airily . It is not the technical knowledge of music that's lacking, but good writing technique. It tends to lack a key virtue - precision. Precision and meaning are related. Slack prose housing slack thinking it carries no meaning.

The better critics are the better writers. David Quantick is a good example as is Barney Hoskyns.

It is in theory, quite simple. Just tell me what it is you have been listening to, how it made you feel and why it made you feel that way.

It is, in practice, very difficult. Take the opening chord of Hard Day's Night. So now we know what it is - tell me how it makes you feel and why?

But, even if you do manage to construct a well expressed thought about that musical moment, you’re left alone with the haunting question “is this how a grown man should be spending his time?”

One typically assertive, and I think germane, argument was made by the young Clive James when writing about Robbie Robertson. He felt then, and I fear still does, that you could certainly be too clever in rock ....

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/robbie_robertson_in_the_shadow_of_the_ba...

"I don't want to be thought of as suggesting that this rapid boom-and-bust was written in the stars or has got something to do with an inherent inability of rock to sustain its own creativity: rock seems to me a form which can be worked with to infinity, and whatever laws govern the behaviour of its practitioners, they are not astral. The Band's (and particularly Robertson's) incapacity to keep up the pressure of completed, filled-out achievement can most probably be written down to those sociological conditions which only an acutely self-preserving personality like Randy Newman has so far been able to out-flank.

To put it briefly, I don't think any cosmic triple-whammy or Indian sign has been put on Robertson in order to deprive him of his creative intelligence. It's much more likely that something has occurred to dissuade his intelligence from operating. And this, in turn, has probably got a lot to do with the fact that his initial virtues as a lyricist were not identified for him by the rapturous critical reception that praised the Band for everything except its most singular quality -- its radiant compound of words and music.

The rock culture's tribute to the Band reached its logical culmination in the Joan Baez hit version of 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'. There was something heroic about the casual violence of her assault on the lyric, which would probably have received more reverential treatment from Lulu. But the critical outcry (and there was some of that, to do the rock press credit) had only a shakey base to work from. It had never done much to pay Robertson his due tribute by analysing his precisions and structures -- precisions whose importance Baez underlined by transforming them into imprecisions, structures to whose emotional coherence Baez paid inadvertent homage by reducing them to prettified wreckage.

It was one of those moments when the air was vibrant with the flap and wrangle of chickens coming home to roost. Joan Baez made Robertson a million while simultaneously showing him that his talent was, for all practical purposes, over-refined: its subtleties hadn't registered. We should be able to deduce from this piquant little scene -- if we can't deduce it from larger and often catastrophic events -- that the rock culture is a mass audience and that the individual talent if it wishes to preserve itself, must in part treat acceptance by this mass audience as hostile."

While the Jamesian implication that only he was clever enough to spot this will annoy many, I think it remains an interesting line of attack.

The James article reminds me of a quotation but I can't remember who made it:

"There is no art, only artists"

I'm not sure how technical I want discussions about music to get insofar as I understand a litle bit of the technical side but it doesn't take much to get me scratching my head trying to make some sort of sense.
What I am against is the lazy use of cliche. Word has admirably taken a stand against the hackneyed phrase. It's an attitude that needs to spread into the wider press and television.
Finally, I'd like to ask if I alone in never having heard Susan Boyle? I've not clicked links posted here and managed, as far as I know, to avoid hearing her on any other medium.

I don't know why. It's the same when it comes to films. I don't want to come across as a know-it-all tosser or sound pretentious.

But that's just me.

This reminds me a bit of when I used to go to the cinema all the time and read more film magazines than I do now.

I remember that mags like 'Empire' or 'Total Film' talked about the way films made you feel, and like David H says further up about music reviews, placed the movie in the context of films the readers would already have seen.

Whereas 'Sight and Sound' is as much about how the films are made. An industry journal, in other words. Full credits for each film, synopsis (including the bloody ending! Woah!) and real in-depth analysis of cinematography, screenplay, etc.

I wouldn't change Word for the world, it's like meeting like-minded friends for a chat every time my copy arrives. But could we do with another magazine that discusses the 'forensic' side of rock music a bit more? Not classical, or jazz - rock. I can't think of one that already exists - apart from 'WIRE', the avant-garde/electronica/noise magazine.

as highlighting the fact that Joe Public has an extraordinary lack of discernment. Do I like the song that wannabe is performing, do I like the look of the wannabe? If 'yes' to both then it must be jolly good stuff and don't be telling me anything else 'cos all criticism is nasty and unwanted and unwarranted.

I'm with Archie on this one: good point, well made!