That's Inconceivable!

Recently on NewMusicBox.com Colin Holter wrote about trying to create music that sounded bad but was good. This seems impossible for two reasons: First, if music sounds bad and you are bothering to listen to more than the surface it is. The end. You can't polish a turd, so the saying goes. Second, if you try to write music and you are writing in anything other than your own voice (which would be necessary to speak in a 'bad-sounding' musical langugage) your music will inevitably be bad in sound and construction. You can't write in a musical language which seems foreign enough to be called bad. The root idea is the same as it has ever been: write what you know and know what you are writing.