Experiential discovery vs. formal training in music theory

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Hmm. One thing I can conclude from participating in a few theory trained versus innovative/explorer threads is that it never seems to be the theory guys going for the non theoreticians but vice versa. Should I take the assertions for truths, my seven years of theoretical and practical training should have made it close to physically impossible for me to make anything non-conform. Besides, together with other theory trained, no matter how much their style deviate from mine, we constitute a group of “conservative” and “traditional musicians”, and in worst case scenario an oppressing “music theory conspiracy”. Especially if I reject some revolutionary youngsters’ ideas because I think they demonstrate no reason to revolt, have no complete understanding of what they revolt against and even replaces the targets of revolution with something much less useful. But since I am the trained, I must obviously be in the wrong.

[Erisian]

But since I am the trained conditioned, I must obviously be in the wrong.

FTFY

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

A Pavlov’s dog I am.

[jancivil]

A major aspect of the word 'radical' is 'basic', ie., radical change is at the fundament of a thing. So if yer a musical radical (I may have been, it's not a very crucial thing at this point to me), you know what changes you may somehow effect. Confer Feldman and Takemitsu there.

One thing a guy I knew from Jr High said to me that struck me, this is around age 20 or when I was getting my feet under me and prepping for Big School, was 'You're no revolutionary, but a reactionary'. Now, I wasn't talkin' about revolution really (at the time I was much into Britten or Copland as anything), but he had some axe to grind there or needed somebody to say something to. But this was meaningful to me. He's probably brighter than me, ya know.

So this teenager reinventing the notation wheel over there is quite reactive, and if we put an ideological spin to it a reactionary.

I don't consider embracing Varese reactionary, and he was a revolutionary. I was, on the other hand, reacting like it was an allergy to Grout History of Western Music, but really I could have used those funds for something I could learn from. I was embracing the east, mostly Indian Classical Music. Not Columbus' India, mind.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Darn. Had no political or ethical standards involved in my journey. I just wanted control over them friggin notes. All of em. Not just some chords and "a" single melody. Choral harmonization at high school expanded my musical interests from narrow synthpop/ambient/techno deep into classical music. To me, it was mysterious music. All its voices, evolving themes, motifs, movements, entanglements, curls and curves stroke me like a hammer. Realizing that little insignificant me could actually study and learn such a thing invoked a surreal state of mind and motivation. The next 5 years after high school I just did what I was told. It took a decade after my final exams before I even got reflexive about what I had learned, including the historical and religious contexts of it.

[jancivil]

nothing political there at all

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

Okay. So preferring eastern music was not mounted on criticism of western culture, just an aesthetic choice?

[jancivil]

Yes

[jancivil]

Albeit the Grout is a sign of a certain clueless arrogance of western european high music culture and its dismissal of The Other. Furtwangler's stupid argument to nature for the supremacy of tonality.
Melodically India has so much more interest. To me the requirement to satisfy the form and harmonic function to the extent it tends to be true in western European concert music is deadening to melody.

But, you get to later than the classical period, the west gets hip to other things, Debussy at the Oriental Expo. Stravinsky's folk tunes interest...

[Erisian]

Albeit the Grout is a sign of a certain clueless arrogance of western european high music culture and its dismissal of The Other. Furtwangler's stupid argument to nature for the supremacy of tonality.
Melodically India has so much more interest. To me the requirement to satisfy the form and harmonic function to the extent it tends to be true in western European concert music is deadening to melody.

Absolutely!

[jancivil]

I saw/heard this group1977 in a bar in Cinci. this is the modern group and more accessible
https://y2u.be/UfjxtcNYKz4
originally
https://y2u.be/VnW2g6qbbrA

this was big for me, about as big as Hendrix in 1969
and Ravi Shankar in '71 in the film Monterey Pop. Mind blown.

[jancivil]

this is what L Shankar does with western music:
https://y2u.be/N2du_A8OXfw

this beats all the world afaic

[vurt]

Well, it's just a word. I didn't go around saying "I - dahnt da da dah - am going to INNOVATE"
it seems like I said a minute ago that's for someone else to gauge, I just do what I do. but the goal certainly was quite unlike wanting to trod the same ground done 8 quadrillion times already.

thats what i mean, setting out just to innovate vs innovating naturally because of an idea.

you mentioned the beatles innovations, if we take an example, the tape flanging for tomorrow never knows.
john didn't want a weird sound just to be different, he wanted a sound that suggested a specific idea!
so the engineers had to think how they could get it.

the idea is key, the idea may require straight rock n roll or weird tape manipulation.

obviously we also have accident innovation, you might misuse a machine, but it does something cool, that inspires an idea.

being different for the sake of being different, just seems like "pretending" to me.

[Hink]

if you got your start recording before digital a certain amount of innovation was part of the experience if you ask me. I had 4 tracks a stereo drum machine and a desire to keep my drum tracks in stereo , I just simply found a way. That really comes from my upbringing with my dad and stepdad both being engineers and becoming a certified machinist, it's not just with music. Sometimes I wonder how I would survive without said skill, being innovative.

In the army we called it field expediency, people around me growing up called it yankee ingenuity, for me it's basic problem solving and thinking on my feet. And for me it is a combination of formal training and discovery, the training helps a lot when one is in the throws of innovation. I honestly feel that is universal to innovation as a whole though, the more I understand in such situations the more liberating it is for me.

[vurt]

if you got your start recording before digital a certain amount of innovation was part of the experience if you ask me. I had 4 tracks a stereo drum machine and a desire to keep my drum tracks in stereo , I just simply found a way. That really comes from my upbringing with my dad and stepdad both being engineers and becoming a certified machinist, it's not just with music. Sometimes I wonder how I would survive without said skill, being innovative.

they were the worst kind of innovation though, you get all excited, can't wait to show someone what you've discovered, and they go "yeah, that's just what people do"

mine was changing the speed prerecord for different pitch fx