Does having classical music knowledge improve our skills ?

[slipstick]

Understanding how classical music works is helpful. Just listening to it without any analysis isn't. Understanding how any sort of music is put together helps. And that starts from knowing some basic musical theory. If you don't know a bit about scales and modes and chords and progressions and all that other "academic" stuff you're just floundering around and if you hit on anything good it's probably by pure luck.

So first learn the "rules", including the rules for your chosen genre, and listen how they've been applied. Then you can start breaking them, just like all the greats before you did .

Steve

[Richard deHove]

I'd say 'it depends.' I'm a musical auto-didact, though my former recording partner had theory and practical training. He could not improvise. He needed the sheet music in front of him. So, when we'd record an original song, I'd basically have to come up with his piano parts myself. I've noted this weakness in other classically-trained musicians, as well. Don't want to over-generalize on that one, but it is 'a thing.'

Have seen this multiple times too. The training seems to somehow constrict people - which could be something to do with how music is taught these days? A person I used to record with (who was a fantastic player) would sometimes interupt jam sessions by insisting that we not play certain notes because it was an odd key change. But at least he could improvise. Other classically trained players I've met just can't seem to break out to something original at all.

[ghettosynth]

After studying theory/harmony and listening to classical music, I never felt that it helped me to make Trance mucic.

I think it helped Cosmic Baby a lot

Harald Blüchel was born at 19/Feb/1963 in Nuremberg, a classically trained concert pianist who began at the Nuremberg Conservatory at the tender age of 7, he has been composing pieces for synthesizer since discovering Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk in 1980. In 1987, continuing musical studies, Cosmic Baby moved to Berlin and entered the Art Academy, composing experimental music on a Fairlight computer. At the Technical University, he studied sound engineering, learning the technical side of music production.

All that knowledge gave result to a trance masterpiece like Perfect Day ('92), to pick but one of his many fine discs as an example.

So first, don't take this the wrong way, I like early trance and that's an awesome track. However, I think that there is a big difference between something "helping" and something simply not "getting in the way." Also, I think that any study is always a trade off, it may help, but it has an opportunity cost.

There's nothing there that I haven't heard in a thousand other tracks from people without classical training. I would argue that it's not even really that innovative, even for 1992 and that other artists with much less "classical training" did much more.

Further, when we consider where one current "is" vs where one "was" and just happened to end up there, I don't think that it's the same argument. Sure, he was a pianist at an early age who later create trance records. The real "comparable," if you will, is someone who started creating trance records then attempted to leverage classical training. Further, we have to compare that person to someone in a similar position who took the same time and resources and used other methods.

I think that you'll find that for dance music, classical training generally has a much lower rate of return than just studying more narrow aspects that are closer to the source so to speak.

[Aloysius]

Theory can be a shortcut and even a great help but the music came before the theories were developed around the music as far as I know. Science did not create the sun. Science might have some good theories about the sun but the sun existed before the theories did. My 2c. I'm not sure if this makes much sense but it sounds kinda cool and mysterious imho.

[kbaccki]

I dunno.. I've always wanted to impress folks by saying I graduated from "The Conservatory" and to chat about high brow things over wine and cheese... does that make me shallow?

I think somebody who has classical training is great... but I also think there exists a certain air of superiority wrt. the relative importance of traditional western classical music compared to all other forms. Like western classical is the purest form, and classically trained musicians are accordingly a step above the rest. Ok, that's fine, and it's not everybody... but I think it's just "there", under the musical surface, at least in the west. It's like the jazz purist cats... there's pure jazz, then there's everything else. A basket of deplorable music, if you will. And some of the most critical and outspoken (IMO) folks... like Wynton Marsalis... are jazz purists with a classical training foundation. Coincidence? I'll let you decide!

Anyway... the cloud of traditional western classical I think doesn't intend to overshadow literally 1000's of years of music theory dating back to ancient times... Middle East, Far East, etc... it just does. In terms of "importance" to western culture in modern times (e.g., contemporary jazz, rock, pop)... pure folk music from Ireland et al and African/Afro-Cuban rhythms are much more influential and important than anything Beethoven or Mozart ever did... we're talking jazz, rock, pop, and all the various offshoots and evolutions... Oh well, my $.02.

That being said I never get tired of listening to some powerful Wagner, folksy Copland, and some jazzy orchestral Gershwin... good stuff...

I was on the Santa Monica Pier a month ago... and there was an old gentleman playing an Erhu to a lush backing track... making it sing... just really beautiful and evocative... technically speaking, you don't learn that in the conservatory...

Overall, if you open up your mind to the universe of what makes music what it is, then being "classically trained" is not necessarily so important...

[jancivil]

I have a skill set from being a classical musician, I mean having to perform the music and shape the piece for consumption will have been irreplaceable to me. "Knowledge", can't fully know your meaning, there are people I've seen who can regurgitate music theory information which some may want to deem 'knowledge' but I don't think that in itself does any magic trick. Nor do I think becoming a classical musician does anything just through itself for one's creative skill set. It did for mine, in the areas of interpreting pieces I got a path to crafting phrasing and a sort of sensitivity to timing and dynamics that are invaluable to me, and a path to a certain mastery of part-writing. Also I won't have obtained an m.o. towards handling polyphony on an instrument otherwise, which I think a composer should definitely have going on.