Can the melody of my music already exist before i created it?

[jancivil]

I recall some sculptor once said:

• The sculpture was already there. I just remove the stone around it

Isn't it the same with music?

why don't you try and persuade us how it is?

the subject is melody. melody is a subtractive process, in what case? Whoever did that, when? It seems a reach to make that analogy as a generality.

I find the statement kind of absurd and fatuous, always did. It's so Plato. But it's the kind of bullshit that seems to work, it reduces the thing to language and people that don't get sculpture, that don't get music, like that shit; to have a line of bullshit to hang it on. Could attract benefactors, that kind of cute statement.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Yeah, but trance is shit though.
I feel elitist when that crap is playing.
Sooooo boring and formula driven, more so that other genres IMO.

Give us some Aphex acid

[Spiritos]

Well I didn't read all previous posts but I think it's inevitable some lines or progressions are already written. There's this dutch musician/entertainer 'Hans Liberg' that has a joke about this. He calls it the 'DNA of music' and to demonstrate this he plays classical works on the piano (he was trained as a concert pianist' then takes pieces of it to play contemporary music.

To me I feel music distinguishes itsself from other music by it's overall 'sound'. This has become more and more important in contemporary music. Especially true for EDM. Most times you read about 'how someone got those fat basses or swirling pads' and I do say composition is mostly playing second fiddle.

Having said this a lot of experimentation is going on -also in the fields of electronics- but as the means to produce this are increasingly becoming more democratic (cheap) there is a lot of shit out there where randomness is the main lead and not conceptual thinking like with Eno, Cale or Stockhausen for e.g.

[jancivil]

I didn't know how to phrase it with my broken english and incomplete musical knowledge.

Actually I just quoted an old friend who use to be a violin soloist player for classical music... Like 12 years before I went with him on a road trip, and I brought some CD of "electronic music" that I liked and thought it was quite evolved (some Goa actually). And he told me that he only hear lifeless bleeps and blops, and that there was nothing new in any melody he was hearing on my cd, and that anyway every single melody was already made before, as a part of longer pieces...

Wow, he sounds like a real party pooper. Not to mention intellectually lazy and unimaginative.

I think he was feeling like the elite, playing concertos with orchestra n stuff ^^ I can understand.

I think he was feeling like someone who knows a lot of music, from different eras, and is able to recognize influences to the point of mimicry in what others find "originality". Of course, the part of "bleeps and blops" sounds like prejudice, and the remaining assessment is somehow a caricature.

not all classical musicians are so elitist that they cannot see the good in modern music.
some are, but theyre usually pricks anyway, not just in regards to music.

Well, we can run with that story and believe it, the guy didn't get something because it was new. But maybe it was some total shite, like one of these Moby CDs where there is very little content, let alone novelty in tune-making. I don't really trust the whole anecdote frankly.

I don't know what 'electronic music' is in the tale. The 'is this a Golden Age' thread indicates, to my chagrin for even remarking really, that a lot of people here use that term, which ought to be kind of wide open, to mean something very narrow, in place of EDM styles. We can see all around this pejorative 'elitist' coming from that corner... so my filter is in play. If your band of experience is so very narrow, this sort of notion 'there aren't so many possibilities' follows that.

the thing about training to be one of these kind of musicians is, you expose yourself to the elite and they critique you all the time, 'you aren't measuring up' is a way of life. Miles Davis was one of an elite, really. It always strikes me as defensive to see it as an insult, and it has this political color I kind of find suspect.

[fmr]

Well I didn't read all previous posts but I think it's inevitable some lines or progressions are already written. There's this dutch musician/entertainer 'Hans Liberg' that has a joke about this. He calls it the 'DNA of music' and to demonstrate this he plays classical works on the piano (he was trained as a concert pianist' then takes pieces of it to play contemporary music.

When I was studying composition, I remembeer my teacher telling that music is a sum of repetition and variation. Using this as a wider concept, one can say that this is exactly what happens. Every now and then something trully new or innovative appeaar, but most of the time what we hear is "repetition and variation". This isn't necessarily bad. Variation is a very impotant part of the craftmanship of any composer. This is what allow us to develop ideas, derive new material form the old material, and create entire pieces that are cohesive and work as a whole. And we can create lots of new melodies over the same chord progressions (that was made since the renaissance). A few days ago I was watching one of those talent shows that are now spreaded all over, and a guy came with a guitar and start playing. The chord progression was exactly the same of the song "Mother" from the album "The Wall" (so much that I thought he was singing it), Much to my surprise, h sung a completely different song. I tried to hum "Mother over what he was playing, and matched for the most part - yet he was singing something different.
So, one doesn't need to be obssessed about being original. Of course, I am not advocating plagiarism, but being self conscious of the influences, and using what already exists in our favour is nothing wrong, IMO:

[vurt]

I didn't know how to phrase it with my broken english and incomplete musical knowledge.

Actually I just quoted an old friend who use to be a violin soloist player for classical music... Like 12 years before I went with him on a road trip, and I brought some CD of "electronic music" that I liked and thought it was quite evolved (some Goa actually). And he told me that he only hear lifeless bleeps and blops, and that there was nothing new in any melody he was hearing on my cd, and that anyway every single melody was already made before, as a part of longer pieces...

Wow, he sounds like a real party pooper. Not to mention intellectually lazy and unimaginative.

I think he was feeling like the elite, playing concertos with orchestra n stuff ^^ I can understand.

I think he was feeling like someone who knows a lot of music, from different eras, and is able to recognize influences to the point of mimicry in what others find "originality". Of course, the part of "bleeps and blops" sounds like prejudice, and the remaining assessment is somehow a caricature.

not all classical musicians are so elitist that they cannot see the good in modern music.
some are, but theyre usually pricks anyway, not just in regards to music.

Well, we can run with that story and believe it, the guy didn't get something because it was new. But maybe it was some total shite, like one of these Moby CDs where there is very little content, let alone novelty in tune-making. I don't really trust the whole anecdote frankly.

I don't know what 'electronic music' is in the tale. The 'is this a Golden Age' thread indicates, to my chagrin for even remarking really, that a lot of people here use that term, which ought to be kind of wide open, to mean something very narrow, in place of EDM styles. We can see all around this pejorative 'elitist' coming from that corner... so my filter is in play. If your band of experience is so very narrow, this sort of notion 'there aren't so many possibilities' follows that.

the thing about training to be one of these kind of musicians is, you expose yourself to the elite and they critique you all the time, 'you aren't measuring up' is a way of life. Miles Davis was one of an elite, really. It always strikes me as defensive to see it as an insult, and it has this political color I kind of find suspect.

you can be an elite player without having tendencies to belittle every "other" thing.


as forwhat i said, i was talking in general rather than for the specific case, i wasnt in that car, for all i know it could have been anything.

as for my band of experience, im sure you already know, its not narrow. ive been involved with music for almost 35 years now.

i do agree with you about "electronic music" it involves a lot more than the dance stuff that people expect when you tell them you do electronic music. but again, theyre pricks also.

[Davias]

Yeah, but trance is shit though.
I feel elitist when that crap is playing.
Sooooo boring and formula driven, more so that other genres IMO.

Give us some Aphex acid

I think u can find gems in any style of music just have to dig a little bit ^^ oh and i love aphex' IDM

[Davias]

I didn't know how to phrase it with my broken english and incomplete musical knowledge.

Actually I just quoted an old friend who use to be a violin soloist player for classical music... Like 12 years before I went with him on a road trip, and I brought some CD of "electronic music" that I liked and thought it was quite evolved (some Goa actually). And he told me that he only hear lifeless bleeps and blops, and that there was nothing new in any melody he was hearing on my cd, and that anyway every single melody was already made before, as a part of longer pieces...

Wow, he sounds like a real party pooper. Not to mention intellectually lazy and unimaginative.

I think he was feeling like the elite, playing concertos with orchestra n stuff ^^ I can understand.

I think he was feeling like someone who knows a lot of music, from different eras, and is able to recognize influences to the point of mimicry in what others find "originality". Of course, the part of "bleeps and blops" sounds like prejudice, and the remaining assessment is somehow a caricature.

I think too that he had a good musical background for classical, but to him all synthesized sounds are lifeless, he only accept real instruments. And also he told me that a computer could never emulate perfectly real instruments. As an IT person I totally disagree with him, computers are theoretically able to emulate anything, u just have to make a good emulation, and sooner or later every "old" instruments will be perfectly emulated

[fmr]

I think too that he had a good musical background for classical, but to him all synthesized sounds are lifeless, he only accept real instruments. And also he told me that a computer could never emulate perfectly real instruments. As an IT person I totally disagree with him, computers are theoretically able to emulate anything, u just have to make a good emulation, and sooner or later every "old" instruments will be perfectly emulated

The part of computers being "lifeless" is a common prejudice in classically trained instrument players, and I can somehow understand what they say. When you listen to a piano, a violin, a cello, a flute, a clarinet, whatever, played by a well trained musician, is like the instrument has a "soul". The player articulates the phrases very much like a good "speaker" articulates the phrases in a speech, with pauses, emphasis, ups and downs in volume, crescendi and dinuendi, sforzandi, rubati, etc.
We can do that with computers too, of course, but that requires a lot of work and skills, which the vast majority of people using computers for music do not have (and the vast majority of styles, like EDM, even don't care about). To sum it up, yes, computers can sound lifeless, but they can also sound very much alive, if well programmed.
But I totally disagree with you regarding the emulation of "old" instruments (first of all, I don't even understand the word "old" applied to a musical instrument - perhaps you would want to say ancient, but we don't consider ancient any instrument that's commonly used nowadays, like the ones I mentioned above).
The reason I don't agree with you is because the acoustic instruments depend very much on the technique developed by the players. If you listen, for example, piano pieces of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Messiaen, Ligeti, it's like you are listening to different instruments. It's the same instrument, but the techniques used are so different, the musical language is so different, that's almost like it's not the same instrument anymore.
My view of music with computers and synthesizers is more towards considering them like musical instruments in their own right. Someone once wrote that the first synthesizer was the pipe organ, and I tend to agree with that.
Synths, like the pipe organ (but much more widely) are able to create different timbres and sonorities. My approach is to use them by what they are - new instruments capable of a wide timbre and sound palette, and painting and sculpting with those sounds, as if they were colours.
Using computers to emulate an acoustic instrument is not only pointless but also an exercize condemned to failure, I'm afraid. My two cents.

[srv-musikmaker]

Someone said trance is 'shit' and boring ? Well we trance lovers 'shit' on the non-trance garbage you listen to. Just my opinion in response to yours !

[vurt]

i agree with fmr's above post.
use synths as synths, if you want a guitar or piano, buy a guitar or a piano, hire a session muso.

however, i do also enjoy some of the failed emulations of acoustic instruments, because they dont quite sound like the instrument in question and can be used in a different way to tell a different story.

[fmr]

however, i do also enjoy some of the failed emulations of acoustic instruments, because they dont quite sound like the instrument in question and can be used in a different way to tell a different story.

Totally. Besides, well used and programmed, a sequencer with a good orchestra library can recreate well enough an orchestra (which is good to rehearse and check an orchestration, and much cheaper than hire one )

[nix808]

Someone said trance is 'shit' and boring ? Well we trance lovers 'shit' on the non-trance garbage you listen to. Just my opinion in response to yours !

bloody hell man, you'll not get my vote fer trance ambassador prime to KVR.
easy mate- u r furthering a negative perception of the genres

ur a charmer hehe

[srv-musikmaker]

Someone said trance is 'shit' and boring ? Well we trance lovers 'shit' on the non-trance garbage you listen to. Just my opinion in response to yours !

bloody hell man, you'll not get my vote fer trance ambassador prime to KVR.
easy mate- u r furthering a negative perception of the genres

ur a charmer hehe

Sorry I'm easily incited when someone labels trance as 'shit'. I love other genres too lol.

[trimph1]

Someone said trance is 'shit' and boring ? Well we trance lovers 'shit' on the non-trance garbage you listen to. Just my opinion in response to yours !

bloody hell man, you'll not get my vote fer trance ambassador prime to KVR.
easy mate- u r furthering a negative perception of the genres

ur a charmer hehe

Sorry I'm easily incited when someone labels trance as 'shit'. I love other genres too lol.

It just happens to be 'Bag On Tarnce Day' at KvR....