General Music Humor

Canard

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Thank you! That is funny! I guess if I had more music theory I would have a better sense of humor!

walrus

Well ... it wasn't that funny. Not LOL funny anyway. More of an OMG cringe and groan thing, I think.

Lack of music theory (modestly and untruthfully self-professed or truthfully confessed) doesn't seem to have damaged your sense of humour much so far.
 

GAD

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"That Guy" notes that there is a difference between a key signature (which is what was pictured) and a key which is a tonality. "major" and "minor" indicate tonalities.

With no additional data (like notes or chords) the top key signature can either be A flat, A flat major or F minor. Similarly the second one can be C flat, C flat major or A flat minor. So while the elements of the joke are there it doesn't take too much familiarity with music notation and theory to overthink things. I only got it when I vocalized the top one and then figured out what C flat's relative minor was.
Dude, it's a joke. You need to be more funny. :)
 

Canard

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The record collector would be funny if it wasn’t so true.

It is Crumb's self-satire. He was an avid collector of Blues and Roots shellac. ("Me" .... shuffle, shuffle, fidget, avoid eye contact ... "well ... I only have five or six hundred 78s .... I can stop any time I like" .... umm ... sweating a bit now .... "Nothing to worry about" ... )

Crumb did a series of chewing-gum type trading cards for the Heroes of the Blues (as an analogy to sports trading cards). The originals are quite rare now, but there are reprints, I think. And there is a book which collects them together along with cards for some early roots proto-C&W artists and some very early Jazz artists Crumb loved. The book also includes a CD with representative pieces by the artists featured.

You can explore the trading cards here, along with Crumb's Charlie Patton comic book.


The book, which is a lot of great fun BTW:

 
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GAD

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If you could see some music written with notes and note a raised 7th then you could assume minor.

You guys are cracking me up.

It's a terrible joke that made a terrible pun that works if you're looking for the solution that was likely going to be a terrible joke involving a terrible pun all along. :cool:
 

fronobulax

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Thank you! That is funny! I guess if I had more music theory I would have a better sense of humor!

walrus
Actually I think the more theory you know the harder it is to see the joke.

But reading music notation well enough to name key signatures is certainly a prerequisite.
 

walrus

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I've always felt that if a lack of music theory worked for The Beatles, it can work for me. But it didn't work in this particular case! 😉

walrus
 

Canard

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I've always felt that if a lack of music theory worked for The Beatles, it can work for me. But it didn't work in this particular case! 😉

walrus
The extremely best musicians I personally know seem to fall into two separate camps: 1. people with graduate degrees in music who know everything but who haven't allowed it to kill their spontaneity and imagination and 2. people who know nothing and cannot explain how they intuit music anymore than they can explain how they know how to breathe or walk.

The people in group 1 are often a bit jealous of the people in group 2, because they had to work really hard to get to the same place the group 2 people seem to get to simply by getting out of bed in the morning. In dealing with arrangements and communication about arrangements, the group 1 people have a bit of an advantage simply because they have the formal language to talk about the technical aspects of music.

I do not fit into either group 1 or 2, being formally uneducated and not particularly naturally talented (and a bit lazy and haphazard in my efforts at self-education).

And it took me a long time to puzzle out the really dumb joke, which had been sent to me by someone in group 1, much longer than it took GAD, BTW.
 

fronobulax

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The talent vs. hard work debate comes up a lot and there is no good answer except that people who have one and contribute the other are usually pretty successful for some definitions of success.

Music theory is a tool and like any tool it depends how and why it is used. It can inhibit creativity or it can set it loose.

Using the Beatles as yardstick says a lot about one's worldview. I would say we need another 100 years. If in the future people are still listening to Beatles recordings then that says their lasting success is based more on their performance. If people are covering Beatles songs than that attests to their skill and talent as composers. In my worldview a good composer outranks a good performer but the best music comes from both working together. Bach had it easy since there are no recordings of Bach playing Bach so his compositions rest on their own merits.
 

walrus

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Using the Beatles as yardstick says a lot about one's worldview. I would say we need another 100 years. If in the future people are still listening to Beatles recordings then that says their lasting success is based more on their performance. If people are covering Beatles songs than that attests to their skill and talent as composers. In my worldview a good composer outranks a good performer but the best music comes from both working together. Bach had it easy since there are no recordings of Bach playing Bach so his compositions rest on their own merits.

50 years isn't enough? People still listening, people still covering them, new generations discovering them. A new 6 hour documentary about them recording just one of their albums coming out very soon, to much anticipation. In 100 more years they will still be extremely relevant. One reason is the times they were in (the 60's etc.), but it is mostly the quality and diversity of their music.

They cover everything in your stated worldview. More so than Bach, in fact. Our worldviews actually seem very similar.

walrus
 

fronobulax

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50 years isn't enough?

Yep. When the generation whose great-grandparents heard the Beatles live (or could have) dies out then there will be some objectivity. Many of the 18th century composers who are now considered Great were not well thought of by their contemporaries. There are lots of 20th Century composers whose assessment changed every decade or so. The concept of composer/performer is comparatively new and is closely tied to recordings. So I figure we need much more time to understand what greatness means and how to compare composers to performers or whether that comparison makes sense.
 

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Canard

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A friend sent me this. I couldn't decide whether to post it here or for sale listings. Here is better, I think.

There are various Youtube video clips that suggest themselves as accompaniment to this ad but they are mostly of a not-suitable for work nature.

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walrus

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Yep. When the generation whose great-grandparents heard the Beatles live (or could have) dies out then there will be some objectivity. Many of the 18th century composers who are now considered Great were not well thought of by their contemporaries. There are lots of 20th Century composers whose assessment changed every decade or so. The concept of composer/performer is comparatively new and is closely tied to recordings. So I figure we need much more time to understand what greatness means and how to compare composers to performers or whether that comparison makes sense.

Well, you are welcome to wait. I guess we won't be around to know! I'm fine with my worldview that The Beatles are Great as both composers and performers and cultural icons and de facto leaders of their generation.

But perhaps it's not a fair comparison, there were four of them.

walrus
 
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