What makes good music? That question is far too complex and broad for my, or really anyone’s, simple mind. The question itself already sets one astray. Our conception of good is arguably subjective. And our ideas of musical quality are almost inarguably subjective. Therefore, if one pursues this question their answer will only be a reflection of their own taste, and that isn’t useful at all – except maybe to them.
However, generally speaking, one of the major differences between people is to what degree and in what form they want roughness in their music. This roughness takes many shapes ? from dissonance to distortion ? but in my experience the arguments people have over what is good or bad music comes down to a difference in degree of roughness.
Personally, I like my music to be like granite mountainsides more often then not: nice and scraggily but still possessing some form (examples can be found below). Others prefer their music to be like an unkempt bed: it has some rolls but is still generally soft to the touch. This may manifest itself in the form of Arcade Fire, The Beach Boys or Wagner. At the extremes are velvet and rock quarries (examples could include the new Fleet Foxes album or any mathcore, respectively). Obviously this isn’t the only element deciding what people like to listen to but it seems to be a key one.
This seems to raise the question: why is it people like roughness in their music? Traditionally, in the West, people’s conception of beauty has been relatively smooth. The Baroque periods in art and music exemplify this trend. Started around the 19th century, some artists began to move away from this smooth ascetic eventually leading to the works of Picasso, Henry Cowell, or later John Cage. These changes all came with new definitions of what beauty itself was. Before it may have been defined as what is good in the world by western standards: love, friendship, pastoral landscapes, and major thirds. Now, beauty may have been defined as what the world is with all of its hatred, apathy, loneliness, poverty, suffering, boredom, malnutrition, discarded dreams, death, unidentifiable shapes, and atonal clusters of sound.
Some may argue that artists have been dealing with these later issues since people began producing art. They are right. I’m probably wrong. However, I do feel that songs such as Mozart’s Requiem or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony that dealt with these issues using traditionally beautiful musical structures are fictionalizations of the world rather than reflections of it. Not to say I don’t find them beautiful but it is a beauty of man’s mental structures rather than the beauty of the world itself.
Regardless of all that, the question still remains, why do most people like some degree of roughness in music? To this, I can only answer from personal experience. To me, smooth music just sounds phony. Perfect harmony is a figment of our imagination. Conflict and contradiction exists between myself, my environment, other people, and my self. Dissonance, harshness, distortion somehow reflect this conflict. Even if a song is trying to represent happiness or love or something like that it just sounds wrong if there is no conflict in it. Perfect consonance will never exist in the world and trying to seek it just seems ignorant. Any song worth its while will have some elements in it reflecting the beautiful dissonance that surrounds us.
I am far from finding any worthwhile answers to these questions. The reason that people like different degrees of roughness in their music cannot be boiled down to differences in definitions of beauty. The world would be far too easy to understand if it could. In the end people will listen to the music they want to listen to regardless of how they define beauty or view the world. However, I would encourage everyone to feel out the rougher music out there. You may just find that getting a few cuts and scrapes feels spectacular.