Is using chord plugins and tools cheating if you do not know music theory?

[Apratim]

Nope i dont think using chord vst is cheating
Personally i dont use them and nor do i know music theory too well.(i know only the scales and some other basic stuff)
All i do is believe my ears and do some (i mean a lot)experimentation.

I just stack random notes of same length and see weather they sound good while creating chords.

And while making a melody its pure experimentation and playing that progressions again and again.

Kinda stressful process but hey it works for me....lul

[perpetual3]

"I know bugger all theory but..."

So does it totally elude you that if you did understand more you wouldn't need Captain Chord's assurance of less shite moments?

Exactly illustrating the point of knowing is better. WHOOOSH

Whatever! It must be nice to be so bloody superior that only your way of making music has any credibility. Maybe, just maybe, some people get enjoyment out of doing it whatever way makes them happy. Still, you carry on with your invalidating us inferior plebs who might just do this for a bit of fun....however we get there.

Yeah, strike out defensively, that's the ticket.
I'm not in competition with you in the least, how does your "validity" threaten me?
It's an observation, the more a person - I have zero interest in you personally - obtains knowledge the less they lean on a crutch. It's analogous to someone who talks about how their crutch makes for less stumbling, but the crutch is a choice.
Fun; ok, it's not fun to learn? The fun is gone if you have better competency. Thanks for the reveal.

He’s got a point man - your rhetoric comes off as pretty aggressive and judgmental. So, it’s natural to be defensive when someone is criticizing, condemning, or complaining about you and your choices, especially in a judgmental and aggressive way. No offense.

[jancivil]

Look, it's fine if you're not into music all that much, but replying on the music theory board kind of proudly you'll use it as a crutch is a bit obtuse.

Do a lot of people justify knowing nothing about compression but prefer to just be doing random guesses with presets in the 'Effects' or 'Production Techniques' boards? Are there even such questions, 'do you just prefer not knowing because you can't be arsed?'

[jancivil]

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-exa ... sic-theory

First a big lol to quoting some random quora dot com post

The reason everyone cites the Beatles as great untrained musicians is that they were great. But Courtney is right: the Beatles weren't exceptionally great guitarists, or drummers, or keyboard players, or even singers. They were pretty good at those things, and had flashes of greatness. They wrote brilliant songs, but they wrote plenty of clunkers too. The main reason the Beatles are so revered is because of their ability to create studio recordings.

Is that a fact... hmmm. So this main reason wasn't the songs, then. It was "mainly" the production. I wonder if you can polish a turd so well it amounts to a memorable as the Beatles kind of a thing.

Do you have your own opinion on this or is this one such a good argument in support of... what's the context, not-knowing about the mechanics of chords? you think it's going to be instructive to us all?

Their albums from Revolver onwards are greater than the sum of the material, arrangements, and performances. Those late albums are masterpieces of recording, editing, mixing, and effects, of hyperrealist timbral and spatial manipulation, and of surrealist tape editing.

Traditional instrumentalists tend to discount "playing the studio" as a form of musicianship, but they're wrong to do so.

Who are you talking to here through this other person typing at people on quora?

As if to answer the sort of straw man charge... ok, "playing the studio", per se is "a form of musicianship"; well, if it's not applied to music it seems pretty problematic rather than a slam dunk of an argument. Knowing how to double track a vocal recording for a simple example amounts to "musicianship". If you learned how to make a seamless edit you're a composer now.
What can "traditional musician" mean? Was George Martin not one?
Yeah it seems like a non-musician is desperate to me. You like this a lot do you?

We live in the recorded music era. To a good approximation, all of the music that a person hears in modern Western society is recorded. In this world, playing the studio is the most culturally significant kind of musical creativity.

Is that a fact. Why does this person need to vaunt this one activity - production in the studio - Über Alles, above other forms of musical creativity? (The reveal here is no particular reflective capacity or critical apparatus to bring to bear, and it's what we call argument by assertion.) Because they understand it better, it being "a form" not needing all that pesky musical knowledge?

"In this world" - no world has been written up here, 'the recorded music era' is not an alternate dimension. the_most_culturally_significant kind of musical creativity. So the circular nature of that, the begging the question fallacy of that would never occur to you.

"To a good approximation, all" = Weasel Words. So no one 'in Western society' can have the experience of live music, or folk music, or their culture vanishes because recordings have existed and taken over absolutely.
So this quora dot com poster can't really demonstrate that as a fact even as this is all stated as if we're dealing with facts and not just their opinion.

Is there maybe a little bit of fear of people who can make music in real time that don't have this total need for production like that?*

I'm a big exponent, however of using technology and was (at least from my having read it in a magazine, oh, oh) way back when the Beatles were still a band, rather than that obvious straw man who resembles probably no one here making the pro-knowledge argument in thread very much, this being an audio plugins forum.

So one has to wonder, this is supposed to stand in for your own argument justifying what you understand better, in a thread on the music theory subforum discussing or arguing the use of knowing about chords?

How totally obtuse!
It's almost astonishing until I consider the source. (Or considering the nature of a plugins forum in a thread where people don't get why you'd want to know, just reach for a plugin.)

It's as though the Beatles knew nothing about chords then. None of the actually pretty-well considered arguments about what is knowledge can penetrate that bulletproof bubble, yeah? Stick to those guns, keep on keeping on shooting yourself in the foot.

Clearly McCartney can bloody well have his way with chords. Whether or not this pretty vacuous quora poster thinks more of some songs than others, the technique and the facility only attainable in mastery of one's materials is undeniable over a major span of time, over an era. What fatuous twaddle really. Gotta love it, reaching for this, impressed so by this quality of... I'm inclined to write 'pseudo-' in front of 'argument' here. Just keep digging that hole, man. Wow.

It's a form that's understood much better by pop listeners than "real" musicians, because we don't have the formal and analytical vocabulary to understand recordings the way we do for music theory.

This makes no sense actually: it's understood better by the people who don't have the chops to analyze it because *scare quotes* <real> musicians don't understand the *form of* studio manufactured pop as well as its audience.

But that vocabulary is starting to emerge. The Beatles are standard reference points for scholars of the recording studio the same way that Bach is for scholars of counterpoint, or Coltrane is for scholars of jazz improvisation, and for the same reasons.

And it didn't occur at any point to this individual, or to you one must suppose, that you have to have songs to take into the studio or you're just (fantasizing about) dicking about with equipment you can't really afford to use in all likelihood, because you don't have EMI's blessing or that kind of recording contract giving you access for all this time on an advance because you're a proven entity they'll profit by in a big way. Be the Beatles AND George Martin through the strength of your having read it in a magazine. But do buy the Abbey Road by Waves, all of it.

Sure, let's put that "scholarship" right beside Bach counterpoint or Coltrane's harmonic language and real-time improvisational prowess musically because someone can relate to it better. What an argument. What a perfect illustration of begging the question fallacy. Slow_clap.

Total drivel, thanks for the laughs.

[jancivil]

One could actually write a thesis for the phd in Music Theory on the harmonic content in Beatles.
What a fine example of knowing nothing of chords, The Beatles.
[confer]Somehow this part of the era of recorded music lacked teh chord helper plugins tho.[/thread].

You've cherry-picked the academic thrust of 'music theory' as though you read nothing you didn't need in order to cherry-pick for the purpose of talking - and needing outside help now for - talking such bollocks. You have things you could be learning here, but no, Dunning-Kruger Rules Ok.

Before I had taken the formal type of course at 18, I knew how chords worked, largely off of transcribing around half of Abbey Road. I didn't manage Because, it's pretty sophisticated. CF: thesis on harmony.

[jacqueslacouth]

I'm not in competition with you in the least, how does your "validity" threaten me?

Jesus....for someone who gets so much mileage out of accusing people of strawman arguments....

Fun; ok, it's not fun to learn? The fun is gone if you have better competency.

Again...never said it, never implied it, but don't let reality get in the way of your world view...

'to be so bloody superior' - I worked for what I have. It is objectively superior to your knowledge, this would be a factual matter.

Not arguing with that, congratulations on your superior knowledge of music theory to someone who admittedly knows bugger all….

it’s your superior bloody attitude that gets up my nose

[jancivil]

I'm not in competition with you in the least, how does your "validity" threaten me?

Jesus....for someone who gets so much mileage out of accusing people of strawman arguments...

Really: because you actually_said

Still, you carry on with your invalidating us inferior plebs

Why would I care about your 'validity', then? What is difficult for you about my placing that in that remark?
That's so desperate. You accused me of invalidating you. I'm not competing with you, I could not care less about your sense of your validity. It only follows. Take a breath, you know.

Fun; ok, it's not fun to learn? The fun is gone if you have better competency.
"Again...never said it, never implied it, but don't let reality get in the way of your world view..."
No, you just basically said leave me alone to have my fun, and so I wondered out loud.
World view? Yeah, it would save time to know and that learning this stuff is fun for me or people with the curiosity and drive to learn is the world view there.

The context vanishes, does it? You would appear to find Captain Chord preferable to trying some 'theory' (which is pretty basic stuff). It only follows. I don't get what's fun about getting shite results and needing a crutch to reduce that particularly, but that can be just me, you know?
Pretty desperate, again.

"congratulations on your superior knowledge"
- sigh. it's just an observation of the obvious which only follows you insulting me as thinking of myself, personally, as "superior"; SUPERIOR WAS YOUR WORD.

don't let reality get in the way of your world view...


Yeah, I never cared for your obnoxious attitude (a product of insecurity as is revealed here) myself. It's reality that you took strong exception and went ballistic from my pointing out, in context of the discussion of plugins vs diy, your story illustrates the problem.

[jacqueslacouth]

Hello,

Is using chord plugins and tools cheating if you do not know music theory?

Yes...you need to KNOW music theory before using chord plugins is not cheating.

But honestly, from my perspective not at all. They are just another tool that may or may not help you express yourself musically. There are always going to be those who will tell you it is cheating if you haven't invested years of formal training to get to where you want, how YOU want.

In reality, the modern world of music making is constantly helped by the use of technology that may save you time in the process. You may be more invested in experiencing the joy of getting some tune out of your head to share with others, you might just want a backing for your lyrical creations, you might just like making beats and want a bit of a tune behind it...it's all good...You do you mate and enjoy it

[jancivil]

Knock yourself out, I don't care, life is short, you're of no more moment than this, you have zero to offer this board, & you've always seemed an asshole to me.
'Ignore User' applies.

[perpetual3]

I really appreciate your analysis. Rhetorical fallacies of the Quoran argument notwithstanding, I found the claim that the condition essential to the Beatles success - their production and innovative studio techniques, rather than their musical talent - very thought provoking. I often listen to some of the early techno and electronic music I devoured in my teens and find that only a small fraction generate the same kind enthusiasm today, primarily because those few songs stimulate me musically, whereas the rest, while sounding fresh at the time, rely on now stale or common production techniques.

I feel that over reliance on fancy studio production is even more prevalent today, since the commercialization of electronic music and it’s transformation into pop. I often listen to music and, while I can definitely appreciate the production (knowing what a challenge it can be to achieve “that” sound) I often marvel at how simple and trite the music actually is, using recycled chord progressions and basic melodies.

I go back to the Beatles (and the Kinks, Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Billy Paul, Dylan, Rodriguez, I could go on and on...) and the music hits me in ways, emotionally and mentally, that modern pop’s sensational production (while stimulating in the way that special fx stimulate my senses in a film) rarely (if ever) does. I feel it helps make music incredibly catchy, yet forgettable and disposable; after the novelty of the production wears off, all the (pop) songs sound more or less the same because they are more or less the same. To answer your question, nowadays you can polish a turd, but polish wears off sooner or later.

Sure, I do find contemporary music, electronic, acoustic, or otherwise that I love as well, but it’s not pop music, like the Beatles were.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-exa ... sic-theory

First a big lol to quoting some random quora dot com post

The reason everyone cites the Beatles as great untrained musicians is that they were great. But Courtney is right: the Beatles weren't exceptionally great guitarists, or drummers, or keyboard players, or even singers. They were pretty good at those things, and had flashes of greatness. They wrote brilliant songs, but they wrote plenty of clunkers too. The main reason the Beatles are so revered is because of their ability to create studio recordings.

Is that a fact... hmmm. So this main reason wasn't the songs, then. It was "mainly" the production. I wonder if you can polish a turd so well it amounts to a memorable as the Beatles kind of a thing.

Do you have your own opinion on this or is this one such a good argument in support of... what's the context, not-knowing about the mechanics of chords? you think it's going to be instructive to us all?

Their albums from Revolver onwards are greater than the sum of the material, arrangements, and performances. Those late albums are masterpieces of recording, editing, mixing, and effects, of hyperrealist timbral and spatial manipulation, and of surrealist tape editing.

Traditional instrumentalists tend to discount "playing the studio" as a form of musicianship, but they're wrong to do so.

Who are you talking to here through this other person typing at people on quora?

As if to answer the sort of straw man charge... ok, "playing the studio", per se is "a form of musicianship"; well, if it's not applied to music it seems pretty problematic rather than a slam dunk of an argument. Knowing how to double track a vocal recording for a simple example amounts to "musicianship". If you learned how to make a seamless edit you're a composer now.
What can "traditional musician" mean? Was George Martin not one?
Yeah it seems like a non-musician is desperate to me. You like this a lot do you?

We live in the recorded music era. To a good approximation, all of the music that a person hears in modern Western society is recorded. In this world, playing the studio is the most culturally significant kind of musical creativity.

Is that a fact. Why does this person need to vaunt this one activity - production in the studio - Über Alles, above other forms of musical creativity? (The reveal here is no particular reflective capacity or critical apparatus to bring to bear, and it's what we call argument by assertion.) Because they understand it better, it being "a form" not needing all that pesky musical knowledge?

"In this world" - no world has been written up here, 'the recorded music era' is not an alternate dimension. the_most_culturally_significant kind of musical creativity. So the circular nature of that, the begging the question fallacy of that would never occur to you.

"To a good approximation, all" = Weasel Words. So no one on planet earth can have the experience of live music, or folk music, or their culture vanishes because recordings have existed and taken over absolutely.
So this quora dot com poster can't really demonstrate that as a fact even as this is all stated as if we're dealing with facts and not just their opinion.

Is there maybe a little bit of fear of people who can make music in real time that don't have this total need for production like that?*

I'm a big exponent, however of using technology and was (at least from my having read it in a magazine, oh, oh) way back when the Beatles were still a band, rather than that obvious straw man who resembles probably no one here making the pro-knowledge argument in thread very much, this being an audio plugins forum.

So one has to wonder, this is supposed to stand in for your own argument justifying what you understand better, in a thread on the music theory subforum discussing or arguing the use of knowing about chords?

How totally obtuse!
It's almost astonishing until I consider the source. (Or considering the nature of a plugins forum in a thread where people don't get why you'd want to know, just reach for a plugin.)

It's as though the Beatles knew nothing about chords then. None of the actually pretty-well considered arguments about what is knowledge can penetrate that bulletproof bubble, yeah? Stick to those guns, keep on keeping on shooting yourself in the foot.

Clearly McCartney can bloody well have his way with chords. Whether or not this pretty vacuous quora poster thinks more of some songs than others, the technique and the facility only attainable in mastery of one's materials is undeniable over a major span of time, over an era. What fatuous twaddle really. Gotta love it, reaching for this, impressed so by this quality of... I'm inclined to write 'pseudo-' in front of 'argument' here. Just keep digging that hole, man. Wow.

It's a form that's understood much better by pop listeners than "real" musicians, because we don't have the formal and analytical vocabulary to understand recordings the way we do for music theory.

This makes no sense actually: it's understood better by the people who don't have the chops to analyze it because *scare quotes* <real> musicians don't understand the *form of* studio manufactured pop as well as its audience.

But that vocabulary is starting to emerge. The Beatles are standard reference points for scholars of the recording studio the same way that Bach is for scholars of counterpoint, or Coltrane is for scholars of jazz improvisation, and for the same reasons.

And it didn't occur at any point to this individual, or to you one must suppose, that you have to have songs to take into the studio or you're just (fantasizing about) dicking about with equipment you can't really afford to use in all likelihood, because you don't have EMI's blessing or that kind of recording contract giving you access for all this time on an advance because you're a proven entity they'll profit by in a big way. Be the Beatles AND George Martin through the strength of your having read it in a magazine. But do buy the Abbey Road by Waves, all of it.

Sure, let's put that "scholarship" right beside Bach counterpoint or Coltrane's harmonic language and real-time improvisational prowess musically because someone can relate to it better. What an argument. What a perfect illustration of begging the question fallacy. Slow_clap.

Total drivel, thanks for the laughs.

[Forgotten]

I found the claim that the condition essential to the Beatles success - their production and innovative studio techniques, rather than their musical talent - very thought provoking.

I think the article is naive and forgets many of the other factors that made the Beatles popular. To pin their success on what they did in the studio is frankly, quite bizarre.

Firstly, their early songs were recorded in exactly the same way as other songs of the time and earlier - they simply set up as they would when playing live, and recorded the performance until they got a passable take.

Secondly, they had a good manager who understood the importance of marketing. He took a good live band with a strong following, dressed them to appeal to a wider audience, and (allegedly) got them into the singles charts by sending a small army of teenagers to record stores whose sales were known to be used in compiling the weekly charts. That's how a lot of bands make it - good marketing, whether they are talented or not.

Both of the above could apply to any number of bands, and George Martin was far from the first producer to create popular music with innovative studio techniques. Joe Meek was churning out hits on the other side of London using far more obscure studio techniques than anyone else at the time, and Phil Spector created studio only acts even earlier than either of them.

The importance of the Beatles can't be underestimated, but to pin their success on studio techniques is a hard argument to support. They were already an established act by the time they started experimenting in the studio, and despite suggesting that they could no longer tour because of the complexity of their studio songs (they fessed up years later that it was really that they hated touring and were looking for an excuse), they could still play most of their studio output live when they chose to do so.

[ghettosynth]

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-exa ... sic-theory

First a big lol to quoting some random quora dot com post

Well, if we're relying on fallacy then don't mind me while I enjoy the thoughts of the guy with the bonafides.

[perpetual3]

I found the claim that the condition essential to the Beatles success - their production and innovative studio techniques, rather than their musical talent - very thought provoking.

I think the article is naive and forgets many of the other factors that made the Beatles popular. To pin their success on what they did in the studio is frankly, quite bizarre.

Firstly, their early songs were recorded in exactly the same way as other songs of the time and earlier - they simply set up as they would when playing live, and recorded the performance until they got a passable take.

Secondly, they had a good manager who understood the importance of marketing. He took a good live band with a strong following, dressed them to appeal to a wider audience, and (allegedly) got them into the singles charts by sending a small army of teenagers to record stores whose sales were known to be used in compiling the weekly charts. That's how a lot of bands make it - good marketing, whether they are talented or not.

Both of the above could apply to any number of bands, and George Martin was far from the first producer to create popular music with innovative studio techniques. Joe Meek was churning out hits on the other side of London using far more obscure studio techniques than anyone else at the time, and Phil Spector created studio only acts even earlier than either of them.

The importance of the Beatles can't be underestimated, but to pin their success on studio techniques is a hard argument to support. They were already an established act by the time they started experimenting in the studio, and despite suggesting that they could no longer tour because of the complexity of their studio songs (they fessed up years later that it was really that they hated touring and were looking for an excuse), they could still play most of their studio output live when they chose to do so.

Yes, I agree, hence why I prefaced my comment by stating the Quoran’s rhetorical fallacies notwithstanding. I found it thought provoking in the context of my own reflections upon the use of novel production in “early” techno and electronic music and lack of staying power due to weak musicality, it’s commercialization and the amplification of new production over musicality in the modern pop.

You mention some really important points about marketing that certainly further weaken the Quoran’s argument.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

He took a good live band with a strong following, dressed them to appeal to a wider audience

It was the trousers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB0MxBMMKHM

[ghettosynth]

He took a good live band with a strong following, dressed them to appeal to a wider audience

It was the trousers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB0MxBMMKHM

Definitely the trousers.