What one bit of Music Theory was really helpful that caused your songwriting to improve ?

[jancivil]

I find that stuff (usually) tiresome, actually. Once I tried to take an elective on Film-something but it was like that and just a no from me. I think there is a certain point where you can take the magic out of an experience. I think my knowledge of music makes some things such a non-mystery it may mean a lessened experience. But it's a trade-off I'm good with.

"down to metre and rhythm, the sounds of words" - I could maybe get into that. But I was writing poetry on the natch before I was writing music and I wasn't interested in hearing about metre then. I looked into it later and it seems so obvious to me.

But in music, for instance my drum teacher made me write out what I wanted to suss, 'Fire' by Hendrix out on staves to best understand it as parts. It was the clearest way to teach that. Also: he made me do it. That's what music theory is to me, mechanics, clearly breaking down what is there. OTOH I learned the solo in Badge by Cream, and quite a lot of Abbey Road off the record and there is no point in anyone telling me a thing about it, I got it. JS Bach wasn't sussable like that. I would probably have needed Wagner, eg., Tristan Chord spelled out as well.

[IncarnateX]

The ability to ignore it

That does actually make sense to me even if you are joking. Getting all the insights into your muscles and brain to an extent where you just do it and don’t have to analyze or think about what you are doing is the ultimate goal of training, imo.

Schoenberg said that one should compose first and analyze later.

To each his own. My musical skills were rather limited before music school, so I trained my playing and composition skills guided by theory first and began to forget about 10 years after because I did not have to analyse anymore. Every new thing I learned of interest was immediately applied to my own music in the same progression as the courses. However, I have never really adored theory for the sake of theory but have had a rather applied approach to it, e.g. counterpoint, its detailed history and 1000 variations bore me, but its main principle is easy to get hold on imo, and even training such simplified versions of the species as we did can be enough to embody it to the extent where you use it more or less intuitively, maybe correcting an unforeseen minor second that you do not want to stay as is but not much more apart from minor polishing like that. Far from enough to make you compose like Bach or Debussy but enough to be able to mix several melodies in your own music effortlessly and enough to give you a hint how to study Bach (through hard work) if you really wanted to imitate his counterpoints. In other words: Theory can be a wonderful guide to the galaxy to the untalented if he hardly knows to compose or play but really really wants to. (not unlike Salieri in Amadeus)

[ChamMusic]

Miles Davis to John McLaughlin (recording one of those records): Play the guitar like you don't know how to play the guitar.

In A Silent Way!

You have to know things to forget them.

That's it in a nutshell!

Schoenberg said that one should compose first and analyze later.

Schoenberg: "I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality."

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

You have to know things to forget them.

That's it in a nutshell!

Really?

Once these skills are assimilated they are not forgotten, even if they no longer exist as overt practices.

[jancivil]

Miles Davis to John McLaughlin (recording one of those records): Play the guitar like you don't know how to play the guitar.

In A Silent Way!

I typed that, it seemed right but fuzzy memory

[ChamMusic]

You have to know things to forget them.

That's it in a nutshell!

Really?

Once these skills are assimilated they are not forgotten, even if they no longer exist as overt practices.

I suppose 'to forget them' does come across as a bit extreme! :0)

I won't speak for Jan, but what I mean by it is pretty much what you said really: "they no longer exist as overt practices"...you just 'forget' about them in the sense that they are subconsciously part of your approach to composing...

Example:
One of my (apparently) specialist areas of composition teaching is Four-Part Bach Chorales...mainly because they constantly appear on the bloody syllabus at age 17 - 18 and above! :0)

Because of so many years spent guiding others others in how to approach these, if someone gave me a melodic line to harmonize in this style, I wouldn't even think about what I was doing consciously, I would simple do it all, (even on manuscript paper), in just a few minutes..almost by instinct...I know, (and can hear) in my head what works and what doesn't to a reasonably detailed level.

Of course, that's the initial quick copy and redrafting may well involve more conscious analysis of the mechanics if I realized that there were tweaks to be made, which there would be 90% of the time.

[jancivil]

'forget them', figure of speech
Miles saying that to McLaughlin already says it. McLaughlin literally returning himself to the point before he learned to play, on command? alrighty then


although, no way could I manage the kind of clock-is-ticking advanced part-writing in-class-for-an-examination I did at CCM today. No_way.

There is such a thing as use it or lose it, but that's _not_ what I was going for.

[jancivil]

some things are ingrained.


but some things are jus' ridiculous

[IncarnateX]

Sorry for bringing issues of art down to technicalities but as far as forgetting concerns, you would usually differ between our semantic memory: knowing "what", e.g. the scales and chords you learn, episodic memory: Knowing "where and when ", e.g. that you actually remember the situation where you was introduced to scales for the first time, and procedural memory; knowing "how to"; our achieved skills and habits from what we have learned, its embodiment. Thus, you may know your scales but have forgotten where you learned them, or you may have forgotten both your scales and where you learned them, and still be able to perform them by habit alone. It hardly makes sense to say that it is oh so good for our creativity if we forget at the level of procedural knowledge too because that equals never having learned anything in the first place. Procedural knowledge is also referred to as implicit memory in contrast to explicit memory like semantic and episodic.

[Richard deHove]

I recall a story about an artist who used mops to paint. The result was as you'd imagine: a formless mass of modern art blobs and splatters. Facing a degree of ridicule, the artist declared that using mops was only possible - and completely justified - because of his decade of formal art training.

[woggle]

I recall a story about an artist who used mops to paint. The result was as you'd imagine: a formless mass of modern art blobs and splatters. Facing a degree of ridicule, the artist declared that using mops was only possible - and completely justified - because of his decade of formal art training.

sounds like a bullshit reactionary tale from someone with little experience of visual art at all - visual artists use whatever tools or methods are appropriate - conceptual, pragmatic, whatever.

[kelvyn]

There are those whose innate sense on a creative level defies the need for formal learning whilst there are others whose creative arc starts at theory and ends in an unfettered creative freedom from what’s been learnt. It’s subjective IMO. Do we learn to forget on a semantic, episodic or procedural level or do we just do?
Every creative person sets his own level and works accordingly but it’s in this dualistic existence that the other, the outside that creates the framework that defines accomplishment and success.

[StudioDave]

Responding to the Subject:

Not theory per se but:

Ear training via Modus Novus and Modus Vetus.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss ... odus+novus

Best,

dp

[jancivil]

I think a good example of the balance is something I just did: started with line, the instrumental character is 'guitar soloist goes for the glory'.
NB: Sonny Rollins "You can't think and play at the same time." So I just have ideas, it's almost unconscious procedure, wild. So I hit upon this change, I had intent but I didn't, a couple of modulations happen. I was excited about this one. Now, however, I take a look at it in order to support it with the piano part - it's kind of just missing the bass part, Rhodes typa thing is what's loaded and in the editor - and I see, ok, a G dim. seventh obviously, and shifting that G down to F# goes with a key feature of the lines, pseudo Middle Eastern character minor second business. Then it goes somewhere else. I don't do any obvious known (corny) device, but it works

[tehlord]

I didn't actually make music for about a decade after I learned all the theory I learned so it's difficult to say.

But....

I would say that theory is very, very overrated. I don't remember a thing from what I learned.

What works, is learning to be a musician. Starting with scales, moving on to the brain/muscle connection that comes with actually reading and playing music and probably most importantly the instinctive learning of intervals, and the musical phrases they can conjure up.

Scales and interval ear training would always be my first recommendation to anybody. There's a reason they teach that first.