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From: jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Instrumental vs. vocal popular music
Message-ID: <1695@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 11:11:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1695
Posted: Thu Sep 26 11:11:06 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Sep-85 13:22:21 EDT
References: <1477@brl-tgr.ARPA> <607@grkermi.UUCP> <361@harvard.ARPA>
Reply-To: jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson)
Distribution: net
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 34
Summary: 

I don't think there are very many people that all vocals should be
removed from popular music.  I certainly wouldn't, but the pros and cons
of vocals make an interesting topic for discussion.  

I like vocals, but one thing I don't like about them is that a lot of popular
recording artists seem to use vocals to cover up repetitiveness in their music,
though probably not deliberately.  You can repeat the same music over and over
again for five minutes, but as long as you change the lyrics, it won't sound too
repetitive.  On the other hand, if you're going to do a five-minute instrumental
piece, you don't have any vocals to break up the monotony, so you have to make
the music much more interesting and non-repetitive than what you can get away
with in a vocal song.

I find that a lot of times when I buy a new album, if I look at the lyric sheet
before playing the album, I feel pleased if I find that there are a lot of
instrumentals and disappointed if there are none or only one (depending on the
artist).  I'm sure it's because I figure it's much more likely that I'll like
an instrumental, since they have to put a few interesting twists in instrumen-
tals but they don't necessarily have to do that with the music in a vocal song.

Many artists who use little or no vocals, such as Mike Oldfield (whom I like
almost as much as Doug Alan likes Kate Bush) and Jean-Michel Jarre, have often
been criticised for being too repetitive.  I admit that both of them have done
some pieces that I think are too repetitive, but overall I think their music
is much less repetitive than most of the vocal stuff that's around.  But because
vocals are so effective at diverting the listener's attention from the
repetitiveness of the music, a little bit of repetition in an instrumental piece
is much more noticeable than a lot of repetition in a vocal piece.

As always, comments are welcome.
-- 
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto  (416) 635-2073
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