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Lippyass Major
Mens Mentis Minor

Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:57 pm
Posts: 2052
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 12:48 pm 
 

EntilZha wrote:
iamntbatman wrote:
EntilZha wrote:
People using the school grade system simply prove that they have absolutely zero standards and thereby zero taste. Creating a perfect metal album is as easy as acing a school test? If that was the case then there must be tens of thousands of perfect metal albums since school tests are so fucking easy.

To me, creating a perfect metal album is like successfully landing and operating rovers on Mars, not some simple task like a high school math test. It's fucking damn near impossible, and a 70% success rate at operating rovers on Mars is already pretty damn good, despite the fact that the remaining 30% were a great waste of time and resources.

People using the school grade system think of metal as a simple craft like carpenting or whatever, reducing it to some low end job that any trailer trash can do with two weeks of training. All recognition of metal as art, and therefore all proper understanding and appreciation of metal is lost on these people.


While I agree that the "school" grading system is not the best choice for album reviews (mostly because it allows so much wiggle room to describe the various levels of failure while limiting how detailed you get with successful albums), your reasoning is pretty much some of the most retarded I've ever read. What difference does it make if crafting the perfect metal album is significantly more difficult than acing a test? Doesn't that depend on the test? And why are you comparing the two, anyway? It's just a bloody scale. It's not like people out there say an album is godly then rate it a 36% then say something like "a 36% batting average is pretty fucking godly, hence my score."

It has not happened in this thread (yet), but in the many previous threads about the rating system numerous people have justified using the school grading system by comparing it to factory labour. As in "a guy is supposed to make ten chairs, but he only makes five, so that's a total failure by manufacturing standards, hence 50% is a failing score!"


Yeah dude, but the school thing is stupid. There are tests out there where nobody gets 100, such as a huge final exam or something. Again, it depends what the test is like.

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EntilZha
Retired

Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2008 9:22 pm
Posts: 2115
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 1:07 pm 
 

Every school test can be aced if you either study excessively enough or cheat. Creating a perfect metal album is not something you can have guaranteed even by knowing every single metal album on the planet and/or cheating by stealing riffs from the best of the best.
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Zoldaten_ov_Zatan
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:04 pm
Posts: 662
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 1:12 pm 
 

I've said it before, but the process is more like that of writing an essay. You don't just fill in blanks or cirlce answers, you create thesis, explain it, and draw a conclusion with entirely original thoughts and phrases, but using the predetermined language and syntax we all share (in this case the techniques and sounds of heavy metal). It's what you'd call a creative process, the opposite of taking a test where there is one right answer you must blindly regurgitate.
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Lippyass Major
Mens Mentis Minor

Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:57 pm
Posts: 2052
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 1:55 pm 
 

EntilZha wrote:
Every school test can be aced if you either study excessively enough or cheat. Creating a perfect metal album is not something you can have guaranteed even by knowing every single metal album on the planet and/or cheating by stealing riffs from the best of the best.


You've obviously never had teachers who make stupid questions that aren't relevant to the material, or perhaps you've never taken a subjective test like an essay.

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harbringer
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:12 am
Posts: 385
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 3:16 pm 
 

To everyone that argues that the school grading system is worthless for "grading" an album, realize this: giving an album a percentage score, as is required to submit a review, is still giving an album a score. It doesn't matter what you compare your scoring system to because when it comes down to it, you still gave ART a SCORE, just like you're pissed at me for doing.

Here's why I compare giving an album a score to the grading system:
100% = perfect album
90% = excellent
80% = great
70% = good
60% = ok
50% and less = no good

Coincidentally, the school grading system evaluates test/ class scores the same way as I evaluate albums. What's the problem?
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Zoldaten_ov_Zatan
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:04 pm
Posts: 662
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 3:29 pm 
 

It's not the numbers that makes the difference, but the mindset of scoring on a school grading scale that's the problem. Doing so makes people think about it like a test where there are right answers the band just didn't pick, rather than viewing it as a creative work to be taken as an entity and end in itself.
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harbringer
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:12 am
Posts: 385
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 3:46 pm 
 

Zoldaten_ov_Zatan wrote:
It's not the numbers that makes the difference, but the mindset of scoring on a school grading scale that's the problem. Doing so makes people think about it like a test where there are right answers the band just didn't pick, rather than viewing it as a creative work to be taken as an entity and end in itself.


I never thought of it like a test. Obviously music is a subjective thing not objective like "two points off for not using a blast beat at 3:36" or some thing. A scoring system is a scoring system. This works best for me, I think the people dissing it like "you have no standards if you use this system" are the close minded and shallow ones.
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TrooperEd
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Nov 14, 2004 6:18 pm
Posts: 2115
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 6:49 pm 
 

Ultraboris broke down the way he did it and I think it's brilliant.

100%: Best album of all time

99-90%: A flawless, transcendant, genre-defining album

89-80%: A Classic

79-70%: I really, really, like it, but can't objectively call it a classic.

69-60%: I don't hate it, but it has flaws galore.

59-50%: Doesn't really inspire love or hate. It's just...average

49-40%: It kinda sucks

39-30%: It really sucks

29-20%: It's so bad I can't even make it all the way through.

19-10%: Fucking awful

9-0%: If you like this, you are part of the problem.

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LegendMaker
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 11:24 am
Posts: 1872
Location: France
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:32 pm 
 

harbringer wrote:
To everyone that argues that the school grading system is worthless for "grading" an album [...] It doesn't matter what you compare your scoring system to because when it comes down to it, you still gave ART a SCORE, just like you're pissed at me for doing.

Here's why I compare giving an album a score to the grading system:
100% = perfect album
90% = excellent
80% = great
70% = good
60% = ok
50% and less = no good

You're right and if I had the choice I'd rather go either without scores or with very simplistic indicators like some mags and sites do, like between 0 and 5 stars or something similar. Those who use such systems typically have a small table that spells out what it means, ie "__: hate it, *: dislike it, **: indifferent, ***: like it, ****: love it, *****: treasure it", but even when they don't, the scale is so damn small that no one is likely to confuse it with a precise system that compares albums reliably. It's just a quick way of letting you know in advance if the review will be rather negative, neutral or positive. But it's not the case here, there is a scoring system based on % and it's impossible to submit a review without using it. So let's see how that can be used.

There is one hundred and one possible scores, which is quite a large scale in itself, especially when people sometimes give very specific scores that can feel random if there's not a discernable pattern justifying it (our human minds are designed to look for patterns, anyways). What doesn't work too well for me in the scale you've described (which indeed seems relatively close to the US school grading scale) is basically what I've described in my previous comparisons between that scale and the French one: it doesn't use the whole grid, and the range between good and perfect seems too small (which might justify relying on more specific scores). What'd make more sense to me would be roughly:

100% = The infinity of perfection, something for all to aim at, all the while knowing it's unreachable by nature...
90% = godly
80% = masterpiece
70% = excellent
60% = very good
50% = good
40% = okay
30% = not so good
20% = bad
10% = very bad
00% = When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. In this case, "the abyss" could be anything from horribly bad to blank. Same advice anyway: avoid it!

It's just that the scale you use (which is used by many reviewers, hence my original question on this thread) has a much wider range available (but hardly used) for the realm of suckiness than for the realm of goodness. It'd make more sense the other way around. "How bad does it suck, exactly?" just seems less useful a question than "How awesome is it, exactly?". With your scale, there's only 30 out of the 101 possible scores that you can use where it matters the most. Isn't it a waste?

TrooperEd wrote:
Ultraboris broke down the way he did it and I think it's brilliant. [...]

79-70%: I really, really, like it, but can't objectively call it a classic.

69-60%: I don't hate it, but it has flaws galore.

Same thing here. It's phrased a bit differently, but the actual scale is exactly the same as that described by harbringer above: if he gave below 70% to an album, it basically means that he thinks his readers have better things to spend their time and money on than this album (if he sticks to his scale). Does he really need 70 subtly different ways to get that message across? I think not. Could he use more than 31 levels of quality for albums he deems worthy? I think yes.

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harbringer
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:12 am
Posts: 385
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:41 pm 
 

LegendMaker wrote:
60% = very good
50% = good
40% = okay


I think I see the issue here, that numbers are just as subjective as musical taste. To me a 60 is just an okay album and anything below is just "bad", the numbers at that point reflecting just how bad. A 40 to me is an album I wouldn't want to listen to again, wouldn't recommend to anyone, had very little good qualities to it, etc.

The funny thing is after reading your reply I thought I might be harsher with my scores than other people, but then I thought about it this way: if someone thinks an ok album is a 40, I'd probably give the same album a 60.

So who's to say which one is more appropriate? Even the numerical scores are subjective as fuck.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:47 pm 
 

Zoldaten_ov_Zatan wrote:
It's not the numbers that makes the difference, but the mindset of scoring on a school grading scale that's the problem. Doing so makes people think about it like a test where there are right answers the band just didn't pick, rather than viewing it as a creative work to be taken as an entity and end in itself.


This was my whole beef with droneriot's point in the first place. There's no way on earth you're going to be able to defend the claim that if one uses a particular rating scale, in this case American style school grading, they'll be unable to separate the act of listening to and rating music from childhood memories of school exams. That's just an absolutely ludicrous claim. Besides, even if this were some sort of psychological fact, what if the reviewer in question was a C student? Would his reviews suddenly be more "fair" or something? How about we just stick with weighing the merits of this grading scale versus that one instead of making speculative claims about the psychology of generalized groups of people?
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yentass
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2003 9:28 am
Posts: 927
Location: Israel
PostPosted: Fri Apr 02, 2010 3:09 pm 
 

EntilZha wrote:
Every school test can be aced if you either study excessively enough or cheat. Creating a perfect metal album is not something you can have guaranteed even by knowing every single metal album on the planet and/or cheating by stealing riffs from the best of the best.


It's only a grading system, why taking it for something it isn't? I use a school grading system, but not because I imply and/or think that crafting an album is somewhere near nailing a test in terms of difficulty, but rather because of the simple fact that the majority of the site's dwellers could relate to it much more than the statistics of landing a rover on mars.


As for me, I use a method similar to previously stated: I pick a round (with a 0 or a 5 in the end) score, then deduce points for flaws accordingly.
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