“Whenever I hear [A], I know [B]”
I’m allergic to musical opinions made in the above form. For example, recently I heard someone say something along the lines of, “Whenever I hear a half-step modulation in an arrangement, I know that the arranger has run out of ideas.”
Maybe we can assess an individual musical work without resorting to cliche or blanket generalizations.
Are half-step modulations often cheesy? Were they overused by Barry Manilow? Are there often more creative solutions to creating excitement 3/4 of the way through an arrangement?
Certainly. But sometimes…sometimes…sometimes a half-step modulation is the right solution.
And because that’s true, I am allergic to blanket generalizations about music. Just as Bach legendarily broke every “rule” supposedly based on his writing, so it is for pretty much every musical rule. Generalizing about a musical works’ value based on certain rules does not treat the specific music with respect.
And before you point it out, I acknowledge that I just made a blanket generalization…about blanket generalizations.
Whenever I hear [a blanket generalization], I know [that the speaker is not treating the music with respect.]
However, a call for seeing the world as less binary – 0 vs 1 and more Real (infinite numbers between 0 and 1) is the opposite of a blanket generalization.