Jay is not downloading music from the web, but from his head

[vurt]

what duncan said

[valley]

from what i have read about the great composers...
what they did ...did not come easy..
it drove them to the brink of madness.

That's kind of where Mozart was unusual. Much of his music did come uncommonly easy to him.

[putte]

But if you can compose or play classical music. You can play anything!

.. i strongly disagree, seriously.

i rather think that most of the the trained and studied classic-students cant do anything beside the things they learned.

putte

[lanark]

from what i have read about the great composers...
what they did ...did not come easy..
it drove them to the brink of madness.

That's kind of where Mozart was unusual. Much of his music did come uncommonly easy to him.

that's a myth made by romantic writers and mainstream cinema. mozart has to work hard too.

[nutekk]

all this symphonic talk made me remember a track i did. this is 5 years old..and its as close to
orchestral as i ever got

ftp://66.230.235.78/Capo[2099konceptmix].mp3

[Sascha Franck]

I'm somewhat with you on that one, Putte.
But then, the *good* ones (whatever that means) are doing well in other styles too.
I recently had the joy (yes, joy!) of recording some classically trained cellist for some pop stuff. He's never seen or heard that stuff before and the score was, uhm, vague at best. Now, not only that he played it prima vista (which is normal for those folks) but he automatically included some small corrections here and there (during the very first try), two takes later he was like "lemme better play it that way", another two takes later we had it harmonized in 3 voices, all perfectly tuned, all perfectly vibrated and a nice little contrapunctual thing was going on as well.
All that in just half an hour (ok, maybe 45 minutes).
Now go and try that with some oh-so-innovative independent-ish guitar player...

I noticed two flaws when dealing with classically trained players:

They usually can't exactly improvise. Their skills on, say, some variations and coloratures are kickass, but never let them improvise on some funky/bluesy sorta stuff.

Very often they don't exactly "groove".
A while ago we were backing up a rather famous singer, along with some pretty big classical orchestra (they're doing that sort of stuff rather often) and they had their percussionist with them too. He almost spoiled the great experience (I've never played with full orchestra before). Fortunately the director was aware of that too (he's all into pop stuff) and so he just gave him some egg shaker parts to play (if anything at all).


However, that Bluejay dude is awsome. Maybe not exactly as an inventor, but the skills alone make me fear.

[VicDiesel]

from what i have read about the great composers...
what they did ...did not come easy..

That's the romantic notion. Vivaldi wrote 400 concertos, Scarlatti 500 sonatas, Haydn 100 symphonies, Bach 3 or 4 years worth of a cantata every week. Sure, some of it was hack work, but they had to turn out that stuff and so they did, and a lot of it is between enjoyable and brlliant.

V.

[donkey tugger]

Talking of all this shite, has anyone been watching (uk only sorry. ), that series on C4 (think it was the first one on Saturday?) where that Howard whatsisface classical bloke analyses the great pop composers of the 20th century. Top stuff, very clever man but not stuck up at all. Last week it was the Beatles, this week it's Cole Porter, should be interesting.

[Meffy]

I'll readily agree that more classically trained musicians need to learn to loosen up and improvise. Jam. Boogie. Cook. :-)

But think of Stephan Grapelli, or Edgar Meyer... they're not rare as all that. :-) Need more though.

Meffy

[Armadillo]

It's a matter of adding one's own personal interpretation to a piece, of contributing one's own feelings to its expression. That's hardly trivial.
Meffy

Why did I just know a response would have the word "feeling" in it.
Would you please define "feelings"?
Music is all mathematical. Tempo/divisions - math.
Notes = frequencies/ timbre - math.
Harmonies - adding notes (frequencies) - math
dynamics - volume increase/decrease - math

Take e.g. the word "groove" - a "feelings" based word. No, it's about how soon or late you are on a certain bar and tempochanges - math.

So, what are all these properties that can be defined as "feelings". I might be missing something here, but "feelings" is just so vague.

I understand your play analogy but IMO that can not be applied to music. Actors have many more properties... real feelings. You can't play some notation "happily" or "jealously" or "excitedly". Unless you change the notes/harmony/dynamics/tempo etc. And then you are changing the symphony, right?

[donkey tugger]

Why did I just know a response would have the word "feeling" in it.
Would you please define "feelings"?

Shurely some mistake? Therin lies the rub maths man; you can't define it! Tis what sets music apart from maths. Solve that bugger and tha'll be a rich man.

[Meffy]

So, what are all these properties that can be defined as "feelings". I might be missing something here, but "feelings" is just so vague.

*sigh* I'm sorry you find it vague. That is the nature of music, or haven't you noticed? If I knew how to define "feeling" in a series of mathematical relationships, I'd be either the greatest genius in the history of music, or the destroyer of music.

Surely you understand what feeling is. When you hear a rigid, soulless performance you might feel disappointment, a lack of emotional engagement, boredom. (I'm not talking about Kraftwerk here.) When you hear a performance imbued with deep feeling and interpreted with skill and sensitivity, you might be spellbound, intrigued, impressed, carried away.

Don't you hear a big difference between a performance with feeling and a mechanistic one? If you don't, then regrettably, I doubt we're going to find much common ground. :-)

And if that's the case then yes, you are missing something. The very heart and soul of art.

Meffy

[peter_neo]

I hope he doesn't burn out, but them child prodigies tend to end up nowhere........

I haven't heard of a child who was richer than Bill Gates because he got out of college quikcer than the most of us.

Dont get me wrong that kid got skills, but people tend to over exaggerate things especially when they're trying to replace something (classic music composers).

[redhanded97]

This whole thread sounds like a great example of chaos theory - complexity versus generalisation.

What makes a great performance could be analysed and documented very objectively down to the last detail, but the effort required to do so is incredibly significant, consequently it is easier to generalise and talk about "feelings".

As to the discussion about composer versus performer. I believe they are both worthy of respect. My personal preference is for the person who put the music into form, but as a very average performer I have enormous respect for people who can play their instrument well at the same time as "interpreting" sheet music.

[peter_neo]

Srsly, I mean any deadbeat person can learn how to read notes and scales. Its how you interpret them and use them that makes you special. Any child can pick up an instrument and start playing with it. They might play as good, but its still playing.