Not as OT as you might first think/ Cliches: idiotic & otherwise

[D_dup3]

Cliches take a place in language that tends to gloss over the actual idea one intends to express. That in itself is bad enough since this puts us at a remove from the situation/idea. We begin to respond to flash-card symbols rather than the singular reality of a situation. Eventually our responses become artificial too, even though they may seem genuine to us & even to others. This becomes even worse when cliches which do not even make any sense in their origin become standard references. Two examples which are really grating to me lately are "like fingernails on a chalkboard" & "lock & load". The first intends to describe a particularly ugly sound [i]but the noise to which it refers is not made by fingernails at all but by chalk squeaking on a blackboard[/i]. Just try making that sound with your fingernails! The second is a "get ready" rallying cry but any chamber or device must be loaded [i]before[/i] it's locked or it can't be loaded. However this cliche got started is beyond reason...maybe it rhymed with something. :rolleyes: Why do I bring this up here? I like well-rehearsed & sharply executed performances; they can be stunningly effective. I also like to improvise. How often do you find someone (perhaps even yourself) depending on a standard device or trick to convey a musical idea that fails because they rely on a cliche? I'm not talking about obvious things like major=happy/minor=sad or fast=exciting/slow=serious, although those are limiting enough. Nearly daily I encounter some player who thinks that musical knowledge is reducible to which scale to play with a given chord, ignoring that contexts---melodic, harmonic & especially emotive---are a fluid mixture...unless you like formulaic artifice instead of art. I know of a young artiste who can barely play [i]any[/i] scale but considers themselves capable of writing songs. Yesterday they asked what chords "make" the blues. Imagine: they are so unfamiliar as to have no recognition of what makes this most common (yet most expressive) form in American music but they thought that if someone gave them the rules they could knock off a blues tune that afternoon! It goes beyond this, too. Do you know engineers that automatically dial up certain EQ settings for types of music before they hear anything or even know the band's make-up? A good friend of mine---himself a musician---uses a software sequencer to time-shift drum parts [i]as a whole[/i] because this will establish a certain feel...despite the easily shown fact that players actually vary note/beat placement continuously inside a measure & at different sections of a piece. Sometimes this sort of thing is a shortcut that's drawn from experience but other times it's just what someone reads in Modern Recording. They find the formula for recreating what Eddie Kramer or George Martin or Tom Dowd did on a one-time basis with their just invented tube driven gear & think, "Here's the ticket! Let me just program these digital settings & I'm [i]locked & loaded[/i]" Don't misunderstand, I like modern technology. A drum machine can be very expressive when programmed by a thoughtful person who remembers that the essence of music is [i]nuance[/i]. I encourage everyone to try to remember this...because the next time somebody tells me my wailing free-form ring-modulated guitar solo sounds like "fingernails on a blackboard" I'm liable to [i]"go postal"[/i]! ;)

[Audiobotica]

It's funny how different cliches go in and out of fashion in different circles. I recorded some guitar overdubs for a guy who normally does everything MIDI sequenced. He couldn't stand my part because my blues playing lags behind the beat at times. To me it sounded expressive, to him it was just wrong cause he couldn't time correct the living s*$# out of it. Best advice to avoid musical cliche-ism. Listen to music from all around the world in all different styles. There's some very authentic music out there that sounds nothing like western pop. Learn from it and make the parts that click with you part of your own music. Yours in Music, Ben Fury

[patrick_dont_fret]

How long did it take you to write that, d? Gawd. Anyway, I'm only sick of cliches when I hear them too much... :freak: .

[phaeton]

:thu:

[Slowly]

One little error. Lock and load means to lock in your magazine and load a round. Whoever told you otherwise was wrong. Kcbass. Unites States Army. 1976/79.

[velvetoceansound]

Next time you find yourself in front of a chalkboard, put your hand in a claw like position with each fingerail perpendicular to the chalk board. Drag you hand downward while applying a slight force against the chalkboard. The sound is indeed horrific. It's not the same sound as squeeky chalk, but terrible in its own right; maybe even more so than squeeky chalk. Now let's see here, current cliches in music: How about the gruffy tough guy assrock vocals so popular today; i.e. Nickleback, Creed, seven mary three, Travis Meek/Days of the New, Default, Godsmack (IMO one of the worst offenders) 3 Doors Down, and on and on. It's my gut feeling that we have Eddie Vedder to thank for this. Can I get an amen?

[D_dup3]

Well, I guess I'm wrong on details but , perhaps, right about principles...?

[Jotown]

Cliches, when used properly, whether verbal or musical are ok. As long as the users vocabulary does not become one long cliche. All styles of music have their cliches that are part of that vocabulary. When used as a device for communicating they are useful. When used as a substitute for communicating they are flawed.

[Uh Clem]

time to lock and load... :D [quote] The origin of the phrase "lock and load" is not entirely clear, as there are two similar, yet distinct, explantions for its origin. Regardless of its exact origin, the phrase has come to relate to any activity in which preparations have to be made for an immediate action. One explanation of the phrase comes from the actions needed to prepare a flint lock rifle for firing. In order to safely load a rifle of this type it was necessary to position the firing mechanism in a locked position, after which the gun powder and ball could be safely loaded into the rifle barrel without any chance of the rifle misfiring. The second explanation is that the phrase (as "load and lock") originated during World War II to describe the preparations required to fire an M1 Garand rifle. After an ammunition clip was loaded into the rifle the bolt was pushed forward in order to "lock" a round into the chamber. [/quote]Nothin' but the facts, mam.... But if you want to give it the "Acid Test", go here: http://www.westegg.com/cliche/

[patrick_dont_fret]

Eddie Vedder? You're kidding me, right? That dude had some awesome lyrics early on in his career. Hmm, why don't we instead nominate Kid Rock and Limp Biskit for over-cliched lyrics. It's my way or the highway? How many times have you heard that one? Yeah, I know...a lot. Screw those guys, keep Eddie.

[whitefang]

I don't think m'man(another cliche, sorry) was talikng about lyrical cliches as much as vocal cliches. And musical cliches. The biggest offenders in this fashion are those who pump out the "romance" glop you tend to hear on those late-night"love connection" or "pillow-talk" radio shows. Don't know the proper category of music that is, and I really don't care! You know the ones I mean; so many the same, you can predict when the changes will come, and what direction they'll go. And then there's the one that burns MY ass---the song will pause on the main key, say G for instance, for a second or two, then there will be one big "WHOMP" on a floor-tom or bass drum, and the song comes back in A! The vocal cliche I can't stand is usually done by women vocalists. And that's where they insist on decorating their vocals with warbling up and down the scales at the end of a single word. For like 20 or 30 seconds! Yeow! Cliches may be OK in jam sessions, until you all get each others groove. After that, start getting where you're going on the UNbeaten path! Whitefang

[Dave Pierce]

[quote]Originally posted by velvetoceansound: [b]How about the gruffy tough guy assrock vocals so popular today; i.e. Nickleback, Creed, seven mary three, Travis Meek/Days of the New, Default, Godsmack (IMO one of the worst offenders) 3 Doors Down, and on and on. It's my gut feeling that we have Eddie Vedder to thank for this. Can I get an amen?[/b][/quote]Somehow I don't "get" the comparison of Eddie Vedder and Godsmack. Eddie's musicianship deserves better, IMO. --Dave

[T. Ehl]

[quote]Originally posted by velvetoceansound: [b]How about the gruffy tough guy assrock vocals so popular today; i.e. Nickleback, Creed, seven mary three, Travis Meek/Days of the New, Default, Godsmack (IMO one of the worst offenders) 3 Doors Down, and on and on. It's my gut feeling that we have Eddie Vedder to thank for this. [/b][/quote]kaopectate style is just a style the ripoff is in the music nickelback doing kiss from a spiderman seal ripoff creed liked she sells sanctuary by the cult too much and then discovered soundgarden seven mary three just sucks travis meeks wanted to be acousticgarden default is off the screen anyhow godarrrYAHsmack wants to enter sandmanerrrrrYAH 3 doors down just could not be more generic so it does not matter does it how about puddle of mud she hates me but sounds just like in bloom then there is john mayer who has never liked dave matthews his biggest influence is srv can you not tell that it is so obvious he says so so it must be true let us not forget the 3 dozen or so bands that do not sound like korn but are doing their own thing but just because they are tuned down to b or c does not mean they got the idea from korn do not accuse them of that they all sound completely original and unique

[Nawor]

"It was a dark and stormy night..." ;)

[Wewus432]

Cliches in lyrics are very closely related to what I call catch phrases. The best lyrics to me come when you create a new cliche OR catch phrase. For example there's a Rolling Stones song called Between A Rock and a Hard Place, that I never liked and it's not the music, that phrase is just a total cliche, but take another song- You Can't Always Get What You Want and add the phrase-but if you try sometime you just might find, you get what you need-and you have a totally new phrase that really works and makes a great song. of course the great music doesn't hurt BUT that phrase makes the song. Correct me if I'm wrong but the second part of that phrase didn't exist before the song. Even if it did, you catch my drift, NEW catch phrases are some of the best ways to attract lyrical attention. If you start looking at song titles it's actually hard to find that many that aren't cliches but the best ones to me are NEW cliches.

[Hippie]

I play chess every week with a buddy. We have these long 'bullshit sessions' about politics, religion, money, music, etc. Anyway.. He uses the analogy that 'pop music is a road and there is a definate direction that road is going'. A certain sound, a technical gimmick, a certain way to play, etc. He claims, 'that road stops right in front of certain bands homes that have that current sound, bands/artists that in any other time would be ignored'. When I look back on certain 'one hit bands' throughout the last 40 years, I have to agree with this hypothesis. He says 'to attain pop sucess you have to align yourself with that pop road'. So, I guess one has to play the 'musical cliche game' to some degree. Matt

[Wewus432]

Sorry Hippie I disagree. Many, many, many of the succesful acts in pop-music have been all original and cutting edge. When you aspire to play cliches you get shitty music.

[patrick_dont_fret]

Yeah buddy..