Do you have to play an instrument?

[putte]

putte...then you are a hero..

so why the hell didnt you yet sign my newsletter on my homepage, eh?



putte

[Kriminal]

oh good, another argument

No it isnt!

outside, now!

But im just in my pants

[CypherOne]

oh good, another argument

No it isnt!

outside, now!

But im just in my pants

too late, I got fed up of waiting. I too was stood in my pants in my garden

[Kriminal]

putte...then you are a hero..

so why the hell didnt you yet sign my newsletter on my homepage, eh?



putte

A Hun newsletter? blimey, you're a bit up yourself

[TrekStar]

so why the hell didnt you yet sign my newsletter on my homepage, eh?



putte

...uups...sorry...I will catch up on that

[pHz]

1. the impression of having been more creative without musical knowledge is a subjective illusion.

not disagreeing ... but SO is the impression of being better for that theoretical knowledge ...

3. some people here claimed that progressive music has to do with breaking the rules. good. ok. that can be a source.

surely not so much about BREAKING the rules ... as working outside them ???

but to break a rule you first have to know it.

poor assumption ... (dodgy analogy alert) i travel to a foreign country and do something perfectly legal here in the UK but turns out i get arrested for it elsewhere - i can quite easily break a rule without knowing it

now ... CONSCIOUS breaking of the rules is quite another thing (picasso often said he spent his entire creative life TRYING to forget / ignore his formal training) ...

in musical terms that means...if you want to leave convential harmonical paths...you first have to know them. otherwise its just a blind flight....nothing what also an ape could reproduce hammering on the piano keyboard.

again poor assumption ... youre focussing purely on the physical process of making the sounds and discounting the discerning decision making that goes into turning those sounds into a piece of music - your ape is just making random noise - even the uneducated musician is making those noises (very rarely randomly - technical (not theoretical) knowledge of the tools is obviously a factor) based on hearing something that sounds 'good' and fits with everything else and discarding the chaff

and don't be stuck to the idea that nu & progressive stuff is only located in the unconventional/atonal sector. just because you can't find it, that does not mean that there are some some nu & exciting tone/chord combinations hidden within the "normal" harmonical correlations.

fair point

I think meanwhile the discussion has reached a reasonable level. How much musical knowledge/education can boost or hinder a composing process...that is something we can have different opinions. I would say a good daily program of working on some musical pieces to get the nu input and some relaxed improvisation on the other hand is a good way.

we also need to allow for different PHILOSOPHICAL approaches to though ... for some musicians the process is more important than the result ... for some they are aiming for SPECIFIC emotional / conceptual meanings ... some just want to make people dance ... some ARE focussed on interesting music theory 'problems' ... etc - so this approach will obviously not work for all of us

But remember the absurd title of this thread. Making music without a musical instrument. Would be pretty difficult without even touching a chord instrument like the piano or the guitar.

surely its about making music without the ability to play an instrument competently - we obviously need SOMETHING to make the noises with

slainte rob

[Sascha Franck]

A friend of mine who did learn all the stuff once listened to a piano-piece of mine and said "you know putte, what you play there is actually ´wrong´, from the educated musician point of view .. but i love it, and could never ever have such an idea to play something like this cause i´d know its ´wrong´ to play it".

THIS happened to me EXACTLY the same way countless times in my old band.
Our singer (who was the main songwriter as well) allways came up with something "wrong" - but in the end we allways kept the "wrong" parts because they just sounded great.

A prime example: A lot of you may know a stock open position C major chord on guitars (3rd fret A string, 2nd fret D string, open G string, 1st fret B string, open high E string). When you move the fingered notes up a whole note (two frets that is ;o)) while keeping the open strings, the chord spelling becomes: D-F#-G-D-E, resolving in a D-chord with both the major 3rd and the 4th present.
In all theoretical explanations this is a "you better omit it!" situation - but does that particular chord sound great or what (it even does when you don't arpeggiate it but strum it)?
Same thing about that B major chord (7th position, E-barré-type thingy) with the high B and E strings ringing open...

[Sepheritoh]

as people see things diffrently.

putte

But that is NOT allowed. Didn't you read the thread. Don't be so freakin' different.

Come on. In a row.

left, right, left right......

We'll teach all those non-conformist a lesson.

[TrekStar]

@phz:....sorry I am no native speaker.....so "dodgy"? mee?;).....is that something wrecked? OK...I have my online dictionary.

So probably you did not understand what I meant with my "poor assumption" that breaking the rules is only possible when you know them.
There you go: you a have a certain chord progression. You play a solo over it. you know, this and that scale fits, this and that tone material maybe. you start quite normal and suddenly feel for a change. now you leave the normal tone scale. just for a moment. tension. and back to the conventional material. relaxation. now you are getting in form. again a flight into some dissonances. Some play with graphical contrasts: width-closeness, intervals, chromatical...and back to the pentatonic. relaxation. smooth ending of the solo.

this is what I have meant with my statement, that leaving the harmonical context makes only sense when you know it.
you need a frame. and with this frame you can work. you can also leave it partially.

Someone without completely no knowledge who wants to get progressive by leaving the normal harmonical context just plays in the mist. this and that. sometimes it sounds funny. that's all.

btw that example with picasso is excellent. Lots of people start painting abstract without having any skills in concrete drawing. these results are then "poor".
picasso wouldn't have been so great without these ground-skills. did you ever see one of his concrete drawings? Nobody would recognize it as a picasso.
so I don't know if you are exaggerating with his reportedly quote that he was suffering under his classical skills.
I would say without his classical skills he would not have had no contrast to work against to. sure he might have had the wish to overcome it...but I am sure that he would not wanted to forego it.

[jens]

Riiiight. You obviously have no idea about how many of the musical masterminds of the 20th century are completely self taught. Will hit a class ceiling my ass. Take Brian Eno for instance. Completely self-taught.

brian eno

Eno has done complex and sophisticated orchestral compositions that rival Ravel and Debussy? That is news to me. I mean, I like his music and the contribution he's made as a producer/collaborator to other musicians, but I don't know if he's what you'd call a composer in the classical sense. AFAIK, he's never composed anything remotely close to the sophistication of Ravel or Debussy.

Please tell me anyone who does know the theory and is working in that tradition who can compose music of that quality.

Well, exactly. If it's damn hard for trained classical composer, it would be humanly impossible for someone without theory knowledge. Thus the idea that knowing theory helps expand your musical vocabulary/palette tremendously--not the other way around.

Riiiiiiight. This is just getting too absurd. Their early records never really strayed from the path Kraftwerk had set almost five years earlier, and their later releases were more of synth-pop, and rather unremarkable at that.

Have you actually heard Sakamoto's B2 Unit album? Do you know much about Sakamoto at all? Have you listened to his opera? His classical works? His jazz works? His various film scores?

Well, let us. Brian Eno vs Ryuichi Sakamoto. What conclusion should I draw?

Ok, lets. Can Eno compose operas? Grand and complex orchestral works? Award-winning film scores? Is he well-versed in Bossa Nova, jazz, french impressionism, classical, and various musical styles of various ethnic cultures and time periods? Can he play any instrument as well as Sakamoto can play the piano/keyboard? Has he explored as wide a range of musical styles as Sakamoto has in his career thus far, and incorporated as many into his own works? I'm sorry, they are not even in the same league. And I have nothing against Eno--as I said, I do like his music.

this is too funny - you started with a weird and (at least for me) highly annoying statement which made some kind of generalization. And now suddely while defending this exact statement you suddenly narrow it down to a very narrow line of music which
(I am sure) will let most of the people you are communicating with here icecold.

'Daphne&Chloe' for example is imo a really really bad composition because it seems to me like 95% compositional technique but only 5% real emotion whereas imo the former should be solely used to enhance the expression of the latter.


So agreed and point taken: Maybe you have to know a lot about musical theory to compose something like 'Daphne & Chloe' or
'the miraculous mandarin' but likewise you have to be very much interested in musical theory to be able to enjoy it.

For me this kind of composition (which you praise so much) is just another kind of wanking (just like Malmsteen).

[jens]

several times I've read now that some musicians of you have come to a certain dead point "because" of their harmonical knowledge and learnt instrument. they're somehow "trapped" in always the same licks and chords. I think everybody knows such fruitless periods. but the conclusion that you were more creative at the beginning of your musical way is questionable.

1. the impression of having been more creative without musical knowledge is a subjective illusion. you knew nothing or not much about harmonics and chord progressions ...so nearly everything that you have discoverd by accident seemed new and progressive.
And for the case that the beginning of your musical activities is already longer ago and you remember that you were better: that has propably more to do with the hormone level of teenage days....

there is still some misconception going on round here:

the 'theory' which some of you are praising so much didn't fall from the sky or something.

As I wrote before all theory is invented to explain a part of reality in order to make it accesible.
That means the one who mentions a certain system of rules fore the first time has been born without knowing it. He simply examines the reality and tries to find a system to explain it. He is just a mere mortal. Now it is the case that science, which is all about finding/inventing such rules has often a hard time in trying to explain something according to rules which is known for a long time to so-called 'primitive cultures'. Thus it is often far easier to understand a certain part of reality and to use this understanding succesfully than to explain it in a generalized way.

Again: theory doesn't contain any 'truth' or evidence
which isn't part of the reality it describes.

Theory is always an invention of human beings, just like you and me, and it is always invented as some kind of 'mental crutch'.
- and yes, obviously we sometimes need this crutch for being able to move ourselves but often we don't (because we aren't scientists and it thus isn't our task to explain what we do and why we do it as long as it works for us) and as helpful as this crutch sometimes might be it is still a crutch.





Damned is it hard to write such explanations in english

[koorby]

Ok, for those that thought my opinion about music theory is full of shit--please name anyone that you know, without any theory knowledge, who can compose highly complex and sophisticated orchestral works--let's say something like 19th century impressionism at the level of Ravel's Daphnis and Cloe or Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faune. Now remember, not knowing music theory and being self-taught are two different things. Danny Elfman is self-taught, but he difinitely knows his music theory, and he has definitely studied it intensively.

Look, I'm self-taught like many of you here, and I really wish I can believe that without classical training I can one day become a real "composer," but in my heart, I know unless I go back to school and get a degree in composition, I would never be able to compose the kind of complex and sophisticated works I want to. Well, maybe if I am half as talent as Danny Elfman and tried half as hard as he does, maybe.

<cough> Sakamoto who?

Dammit I've missed most of this (now 14 page) thread. What a shame. It made for a few laughs though.

I make music because it stems from my soul, my being, my DNA. I was born to make music. I love listening to other people's music. I am not trained, and when I play the keyboard it's usually with my eyes closed and with no idea what chord structures I am using - it mostly just flows.

I can play jazz, pop, ambient, rock, make orchestral arrangements- hell even churn out trance or dance tunes.

This thread reminds me of an old family friend. Let's call him Jim. Now Jim was a music teacher and a classically trained pianist. He once invited me to his home when he had a beautiful 9' Bosendorfer in a dedicated room complete with special heating and anti-humidity devices to keep that piano in perfect tune. I asked him to play me something. What I heard was a mechanical rote performance with absolutely zero soul, no feeling and laden with mistakes interspersed with his loud "oops!" every ten bars. This from a music teacher with 30 years of theory and practice behind him.

I learnt a very important lesson that day. I walked away from that smiling to myself with the knowledge that my passion and feeling for music that I had inside me more than made up for 30 years of Jim's study and training.

If you ain't got that soul, give it up now.

It's about the passion, the soul, the FEELING - and I don't give a shite about theory, knowledge, experience and bloody credentials.

Check my website, listen to my tunes. That's from an untrained, unschooled, self-taught hacker. I'm not going to let anyone tell me I am limited about what I can do musically, or tell me there's a "ceiling". After a 12-year break from making music, I'm having FUN again, and just getting started.

Now ... who is this Sakamoto fellow again?

[peppy197]

Someone without completely no knowledge who wants to get progressive by leaving the normal harmonical context just plays in the mist. this and that. sometimes it sounds funny. that's all.

Or, someone with a little knowledge might think "substitution", modal playing, soloing, etc... whereas the less educated will simply think "thats cool". I would like to believe that the advantage of the educated is "prior experience" which enables expectation and the knowing of "making the changes" in chord progressions.
Myself I prefer the "thats cool" approach as the burden of technical analysis is not cool...foe me anyways... ha ha

But I do get into the litterature anyways, gives me one idea per hundred perused. Not a great absortion capacity but helpful nevertheless, and every little bit of help helps. So you might say I play 15% theory, 50% improv, 35 % ignorance, or maybe 99% intellectual laziness. Although maybe with too much theoretical the style would be dull Jazz-heavy (not that i find jazz dull at all, but harder to play for me) or better defined as classical sounding, in my case anyway, when I am trying to be avant-garde electronic symphonica with beat (not allowed btw).


Allen

[opiadream]

i still belive that untill i'll learn to play the keyboard i won't be able to give my songs the feeling i have at some inspirational moment..

buy 'the dummies guide to playing the piano' and a book of scales

[cloudspine]

Wow, 14 pages. I've only read the 1st and 14th...

I make music because it stems from my soul, my being, my DNA. I was born to make music. I love listening to other people's music. I am not trained, and when I play the keyboard it's usually with my eyes closed and with no idea what chord structures I am using - it mostly just flows.

...

I learnt a very important lesson that day. I walked away from that smiling to myself with the knowledge that my passion and feeling for music that I had inside me more than made up for 30 years of Jim's study and training.

...

It's about the passion, the soul, the FEELING - and I don't give a shite about theory, knowledge, experience and bloody credentials.

Well said.

As for the original thread question. I don't know and wouldn't really want to get into such a discussion as it really leads nowhere.
What I do know is that I play hand-drums, percussion, and didgeridoo... How I play is something altogether different, to each their own (opinion), I like what I'm doing...
Oh, I don't have any theoretical background, I barely even know BPM and time signatures are (for)...

But I'm learning a little theory here and there, mostly from I read on forums...