I've just been thinking a lot about the definition of music today and I'd like to share some of my thoughts. (THIS IS NOT AN ESSAY I WANTED TO WRITE, THIS IS JUST ME THINKING)

The way I see it, individual pieces of music are a lot like people. Every piece of music has the two traits that humans are judged on: "personality" (the way it's structured) and "outside looks" (the way it sounds to the musically untrained ear).

Unfortunately, because of the latter, along with the superficial world we live in, music is judged based on it's "outer beauty" and not it's "personality." For example, some people consider heavy metal to be "ugly" because its extremely loud and violent sounding "outside" draws people away from it. But if you really listen to what it has to say, musically and lyrically, it has a very deep and well educated "personality" (I'm talking about the good metal). This also goes for atonal classical music.

However, since 99% of the world's population (that's an exaggeration, hopefully) is either too ignorant or too wrapped up in their own lives to realize this, they continue worshipping the "models," music that's beautiful to the ears but is usually musically and lyrically ("personally") shallow (ex. gangsta rap, pop music, crap like that). But the thing is, not everyone has the trained ear to understand the beauty behind esoteric genres like metal, atonal music, jazz, and other stuff that's ahead of it's time and humans have a natural tendency to dismiss, criticize, and be close-minded about anything that they don't understand.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with someone, who obviously didn't know shit about music's "inner beauty." I improvised some heavy metal-style atonal riffs (like Dream Theater) on the keyboard and this girl yelled at me "Play REAL music!!!" (whatever the fuck that is!) She said heavy metal was not "real music" and that because it's nothing but noise and not beautiful, it can't be music at all. (again, what the fuck is "real" music? Isn't ALL music technically "real" music?). Bringing my previous point into play, if "ugly" music is not real music, are ugly people not "real" people? That's cold.

That's all I can think of right now...