Avoiding indoctrination by music theory

  Quote

I studied composition and production at Berklee. I'd never go back and give up that experience. That said, yes it is very possible to get stuck in following rules... Why wouldn't you... You spend years learning those rules and there is a compulsion to apply what you dedicate your time to.

I didn't feel like my music got good though, until a few years after I graduated and I started not thinking about it... The music was second nature and I let my ears guide me. Theory was always there if I needed to go back and understand what I just played in a context that I could then structure and develop. Or if I was out of ideas, I had a palate of structures to start from.

 

The majority of popular music that was ever written, involved little to no "formal" training. I never wanted to be an academic musician, but I have an equally strong technically minded counterpoint to my creative side that wants to understand how things work.

 

It took me awhile to realize that part of the joy of music is not understanding... But feeling. I've heard great pieces of music and analyzed them expecting some technical epiphany. What I find is that it is often simple and/or inexplicable. How can this sound so good, be so moving, and be so simple (or have no obvious reason for its greatness)? That's not answerable... It's because the artist tapped into an idea and emotion... And that takes looking inside yourself. There is no rule or formula for that. It's being part of a musical and cultural dialog that you converse within. That's what music is... Conversation. An inarticulate person can still have a deep intuition or idea, and stumble when they try to put it into words, but that is not to say they did not have that idea. For example, you can express a sense of anger with "there is a seething rage within my soul"... Or you can scream "fuck!" Both kind of get the idea across... But both have their place and appropriateness. Sometimes screaming fuck gets the point across better. Sometimes articulating it with more descriptive words is best.

 

That's the point... There is no right way... Only your way... And if you're honest in what you say, it doesn't matter how you say it.

 

Just be truthful.

/thread

I know music theory pretty good and it's only a good thing. Helps a lot when you don't have to spend the whole day to find the right chords or notes. That being said - it's "theory", not the "Rules of Music". Better trust your ears more than what is theoretically correct, or something.

  On 9/4/2015 at 9:20 AM, ieafs said:

knowledge can literally never be a bad thing

 

 

That's not quite true

There exist "information hazards"

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Information_hazard

http://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf

  On 9/4/2015 at 11:22 AM, Thiefinger said:

I know music theory pretty good and it's only a good thing. Helps a lot when you don't have to spend the whole day to find the right chords or notes. That being said - it's "theory", not the "Rules of Music". Better trust your ears more than what is theoretically correct, or something.

Just to play devil's advocate, the idea that there are "right chords" and that (western, diatonic) music theory is the way to find them, is in itself a potentially limiting belief. Diatonic music (and hell, music with a theory of harmony in general) is big right now but if you look across human cultures and history it's just a small part of music.

I know what you mean, though, and don't disagree. Just being a pedantic ass.

  On 9/4/2015 at 5:24 PM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/4/2015 at 11:22 AM, Thiefinger said:

I know music theory pretty good and it's only a good thing. Helps a lot when you don't have to spend the whole day to find the right chords or notes. That being said - it's "theory", not the "Rules of Music". Better trust your ears more than what is theoretically correct, or something.

 

Just to play devil's advocate, the idea that there are "right chords" and that (western, diatonic) music theory is the way to find them, is in itself a potentially limiting belief. Diatonic music (and hell, music with a theory of harmony in general) is big right now but if you look across human cultures and history it's just a small part of music.

 

 

 

I know what you mean, though, and don't disagree. Just being a pedantic ass.

Not as much as limpy.

[j/ks bra]

  On 9/4/2015 at 10:13 PM, ieafs said:

  Quote

There's unbelievably rich deep music across the whole spectrum of that zone. I disagree that people need to ground free playing with training in more traditional forms. There are literally infinite unique paths through the universe of music; I believe it's the job of each person to find their own path intuitively, by following their heart. For me that has included old-fashioned changes-playing, Bach partitas, Early Music on recorders; but for someone else it might be (and is) multiphonics, keypad drumming, and circular breathing. But while my trip might be conservative looking (none of that shit is conservative!), it is a path of appetite, lust.

 

Good one.

Really, if something sounds sweet it sounds sweet no matter how the person who made it works. Pretty much of my nitpicking and pedantry and grand declarations are about what I'm after when I play r collaborate with someone, not so much anything that I care about if I'm listening to something I like.

learn heptatonia secunda

1. Music is an art form consisting of sound and silence, expressed through time, transfering information.

2. Hearing and emotions bound to a listening experience are configurable.

3. Any hearing experience and interpretation of the transfered information depends on the current configuration of the receiver.

There is no system. Deal with it.

<3

You"re like that annoying kid in 'intro to philosophy'

That's like "who's to say what's right or wrong...it's all relative, maaaaaan"

(And then you reach down into to your backpack

and dramatically pull out a bottle of red Manic Panic

To show that you mean business)

Half of those clips feature works with a heavy theoretical foundation, too.

  On 9/5/2015 at 3:25 PM, LimpyLoo said:

You"re like that annoying kid in 'intro to philosophy'

That's like "who's to say what's right or wrong...it's all relative, maaaaaan"

 

(And then you reach down into to your backpack

and dramatically pull out a bottle of red Manic Panic

To show that you mean business)

Thank you.

  On 9/5/2015 at 3:37 PM, psn said:

Half of those clips feature works with a heavy theoretical foundation, too.

That is correct, but(!) there is a difference in studying something others have researched and researching a topic on your own. Sure it is nice to incoorporate the research of others in your own research, but it is not mandatory for somebody who has a topic and researches it. A lot of times dogmas created by others stop the researchers from succeeding. Please dance on occam's razor.

  On 9/5/2015 at 4:12 PM, Psychotronic said:

 

  On 9/5/2015 at 3:37 PM, psn said:

Half of those clips feature works with a heavy theoretical foundation, too.

That is correct, but(!) there is a difference in studying something others have researched and researching a topic on your own. Sure it is nice to incoorporate the research of others in your own research, but it is not mandatory for somebody who has a topic and researches it. A lot of times dogmas created by others stop the researchers from succeeding. Please dance on occam's razor.

 

i'm now fully convinced that you have no idea what you're talking about

  On 9/5/2015 at 4:15 PM, LimpyLoo said:

i'm now fully convinced that you have no idea what you're talking about

Yes and i thank the mighty cthulhu for that every day.

music theory is reserved for equal temperament right? mainly deals with tension and release and do you even need it if you dont plan to change key?

im asking humbly

music theory is an observation of music after the fact. its an attempt to explain ear training in a left brain manner

  On 9/5/2015 at 8:48 PM, marf said:

music theory is reserved for equal temperament right?

What? No.

  On 9/5/2015 at 8:48 PM, marf said:

music theory is reserved for equal temperament right? mainly deals with tension and release and do you even need it if you dont plan to change key?

im asking humbly

 

 

music theory is an observation of music after the fact. its an attempt to explain ear training in a left brain manner

Music Theory isn't reserved for equal temperament

or 12tet

or diatonicism

(and you don't ever 'need' it, per se)

on paper, 'music theory' is as broad as it sounds: it's theory about music

in practice, though, it tends to be much narrower

but why are some Merzbow choons better than others?

is it a sort-of brute fact mystery that we'll never understand?

or can we say something sensible about it?

if we can indeed say something sensible about it, then that falls squarely under the perview of Music Theory.

Music theory isn't just boring diatonic functional harmony gobbledygook (e.g. sub-dominant, tonic, etc).

It often stinks of academia, but that's (almost) entirely the fault of bad teaching.

  On 9/5/2015 at 9:21 PM, LimpyLoo said:

but why are some Merzbow choons better than others?

is it a sort-of brute fact mystery that we'll never understand?

or can we say something sensible about it?

Now we finally have something interesting to discuss about. Playing forcefully devils advocate again:

1. Was this just an example or are you able to provide a real theory for that?

2. Isn't something like that just a matter of taste?

Sorry, i know i'm beeing really harsh in this thread, but this is imho really something that is worth discussing.

  On 9/5/2015 at 9:53 PM, Psychotronic said:

 

  On 9/5/2015 at 9:21 PM, LimpyLoo said:

but why are some Merzbow choons better than others?

is it a sort-of brute fact mystery that we'll never understand?

or can we say something sensible about it?

Now we finally have something interesting to discuss about. Playing forcefully devils advocate again:

 

1. Was this just an example or are you able to provide a real theory for that?

2. Isn't something like that just a matter of taste?

 

Sorry, i know i'm beeing really harsh in this thread, but this is imho really something that is worth discussing.

 

it's not that you're being harsh

your first post you said that there are no 'systems'

which, strictly speaking, I agree with

but the problem is:

how do you account for things being consistently, reliable good?

and i'm not even talking about taste among different people

i mean to you

or to me

all things being equal--

why does a player who is conscious of tone, dynamics, phrasing, etc

tend to sound better than one who doesn't?

if there was nothing to be understood about music

then there would be no reason to study

no reason to practice

my 8-year old sister would be as good a pianist as Chopin

because hey, it's all down to taste, right?

who's to say she isn't?

the question of whether it's all a matter of taste

is a really useless, misleading one imo

post-modernism is a dead scene

there are indeed things to be learned about the world around us

now, i like the Shaggs almost as much as I like Chopin

so i'm not making some snooty point about musical education or paying dues or any of that bullshit

i'm just saying it's not a complete mystery why i like certain things more than others

or why you like certain things more than others

  On 9/5/2015 at 10:24 PM, LimpyLoo said:

why does a player who is conscious of tone, dynamics, phrasing, etc

tend to sound better than one who doesn't?

 

if there was nothing to be understood about music

then there would be no reason to study

no reason to practice

my 8-year old sister would be as good a pianist as Chopin

because hey, it's all down to taste, right?

who's to say she isn't?

If that is true, then why does this statement exist:

  Quote

„I used to love jungle. I still think it's the ultimate genre, because the people making it weren't musicians. The best artists are people who don't consider themselves artists, and the people who do are usually the most pretentious and annoying. [laughs] They've got their priorities wrong. They're just doing it to be artists rather than because they want to do it. And a lot of jungle people were actually car mechanics and painter-and-decorator types, like, pretty hardcore blokes. I wouldn't want to get into a fight with them. I know a few people who were like that, and I don't think that really exists any more. Maybe those sort of non-musician types do some dubstep stuff, or grime. But it didn't exist in jungle for long. There was only a couple of years where people didn't know what they were doing, and you got all these samples that are just totally not related in pitch. I really hunt down those records. They've got this ridiculous mishmash of things that totally don't go with each other at all. Obviously, after they've done it for a couple of years they learn how to make chords and stuff, and it's not so interesting now.“

- Richard D. James

Is he gone mad?

  On 9/5/2015 at 10:24 PM, LimpyLoo said:

the question of whether it's all a matter of taste

is a really useless, misleading one imo

post-modernism is a dead scene

there are indeed things to be learned about the world around us

I feel the same and that's paradox enough to make my head hurt.

Regarding merzbow: Did you ever had the pleasure of abusing an EMS Synthi A?

life is too short to have this debate

wake me up when it's over

  On 9/5/2015 at 11:13 PM, LimpyLoo said:

life is too short to have this debate

ok, fine by me, fuck that discussion.

let's create some more fucked up noise because we can.

  On 9/5/2015 at 11:13 PM, LimpyLoo said:

life is too short to have this debate

 

 

wake me up when it's over

I think it's ok to have provided you don't actually take it seriously.

even if you learn everything, you will still mess up, and that mistake will be your 'style'