Experiential discovery vs. formal training in music theory

[Synthack]

Anyone know if Savant knows Theory for the music he makes?

https://savantofficial.bandcamp.com/alb ... t-complete


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyXMhf0NbOU

He seems like he would fit in here.

[vurt]

"scenes" are for kids
confer Groucho on 'any club that would have me...'

tbf, i was 15
at least at my beginning (it had started a couple of years previous) and didn't really adopt the scene fully, as i was still at the time in the other cult, death metal. my image was mostly metal
although, i would opt for plain black t-shirt for raves, rather than some horrific images of mutilation and such that many metal shirts depicted.
thought that might be a bit freaky for someone off their melon on lsd.

i was very considerate too

and yes, like all cults, both did entice you with drugs and stuff.

[BertKoor]

Ok so i've been watching a few videos and learning a ton. I have to say that I appreciate this stuff, it's been teaching me a whole ton.

So just to be clear I'm not anti-theory. I am very open to it, and maybe I was a bit harsh earlier.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH036NNMYMw

Btw ixi is amazing and i'm so glad she made this stuff.

This is a good analysis indeed. Nice find! I only find her lipstick a thad too dissonant.

It basically shows that music theory is mostly about providing a vocabulary to describe what's happening, not at all about prescribing what should be happening.

Perhaps one should know the rules in order to break them effectively.



More on topic, me thinks eg the guy playing piano in Radiohead (could be Thom Yorke or another) composes as if he never was taught how to play. Unusual but interesting results of a free spirit. I could never pull that off.

[jancivil]

at the time in the other cult, death metal. my image was mostly metal
plain black t-shirt for raves, rather than some horrific images of mutilation and such that many metal shirts depicted.
thought that might be a bit freaky for someone off their melon on lsd.

i was very considerate too

A Kellogg's Corn Flakes box can be a bit freaky on LSD
[that chicken might] leap right off the box atcha

[vurt]

exactly! so go plain black seemed best

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

"an intent to be weird or innovative"
I began 'writing' in earnest because I had ideas of my own, strong opinions and a (nascent) whole worldview by this time. It wasn't about classical music and I was not feeling jazz improv or ii-V-I cycles and lines going round in clrcles (and frankly I can't swing, as they say in the trade). I however had as strong a grasp of late romantic harmony as anybody, including the post-bop harmony. So 'innovate' seems like a fatuous thing to claim to do (let others say it if it's true somehow) but I was about having my own voice, or I wouldn't have gone there.

This^. Makes sense to me too: If I feel I have a voice why would I even care if it is innovative? It would be like submitting to a norm forced upon you from outside, as if music is all about competetion and dependent on people's recognition. I rather take for granted that if music is something more dear to you than yet a commodity to be consumed or exploited, you often end up expressing something more or less unique by intuition because it comes from your own debths and not public demands. Or at least I hope there are many such drops in the boundless sea of cannibalistic consumerism.

[jancivil]

very well said

I would like to be very clear about intuition and the whole really non-verbal aspect of music. I'm recognizing now I learned a hell of a lot about part-writing knowing no terms or doing any exercises, listening intently. So when it comes time for book-larnin', one is prepared.
It's not dissimilar than being prepared to one day create one's own via playing extant music

The notions some promote here that it's great we have ways to "make music" now for people that cannot play at all. "That cannot play" today is one thing, that haven't ever played or done the due diligence and got some craft together is quite another. This is some bullshit, it's not replacable by your fantastic personal aura or whatever leads one to think deluded things wholly against reality.

[N__K]

I'd say that self-delusion is sometimes the only way to survive, psychologically. Not in the sense of "Fake till you make it", but more like "Faith manages" (if there's one phrase to remember from Babylon 5, that'd be it).

In other words, not like going to the ocean in a boat glued with water-soluble glue while believing that it'll somehow miraculously last - but more like having the faith that building a sea-worthy boat is personally possible in some way, and keeping at it; testing prototypes in controlled conditions and learning from each one that sinks.

Another thing is forgiving oneself after failures in attaining goals, especially when comparing to successes of others (of which one usually sees only the surface and not the pains behind them). Keeping at it while bypassing fears of impossible is essential in achieving long-term objectives, but on a bad day, it's like looking at a castle far in the distance and thinking that one will never get there. Which is true, in a sense - as the existing castles are only ever mirages from realities of others, and instead of getting there, it's more like one actually needs to imagine and build one's own castle.


All of that was intentionally figurative. I gotta go back to building some prototypes

[jancivil]

The genuine study of music in good faith I'd think would tend to disabuse one of this kind of notion, that actual events in spacetime, concrete accomplishments that pretty much every conscious being at least reckonizes as reality are "mirages".

If you've heard JS Bach and Stravinsky, I've heard them, we compare notes and pretty much recognize we're on the same page, yeah? The works exist. It didn't hurt me to recognize I do not have this. I came up with strategies for improvement. What I didn't do was kid myself about the reality of it. It doesn't hurt me to admit I'm not Stravinsky, nor does it make me strive less. It inspires me to do my damnedest.

I imagined some wonderful music this one day when I was I think 14 (the first time I got definitely high off of weed). I had a sudden flash of myself as a composer one day. Nota Bene: there was no evidence of it, I had yet to build the thing. It was like a mirage. I had to work a number of years to even begin to approach doing that. Imagining is great, what it isn't is building. Not even a castle in the sand.

[vurt]

babylon 5 is a big pile of shit


rip john vulich

[vurt]

apologies, it's a quote from "spaced" and john was "one of us" for a while

[vurt]

I imagined some wonderful music this one day when I was I think 14 (the first time I got definitely high off of weed). There was no evidence of it. I didn't pretend I had built the thing. I had to work a number of years to even approach doing it. Imagining is great, what it isn't is building. Not even a castle in the sand.

i build when im definitely high

[N__K]

I prefer the castles in the sky. Either the ones to which one gets via pirate airships, or the ones reached by listening to Belgian dance tunes.

(I'll be darned if anyone here gets both of those references)

[jancivil]

sure, a lot of people prefer a fantasy to working

[donkey tugger]

One thing that I don't think has been touched upon (apologies if it has...) is how much you miss by not learning to play, by being excluded from improvising and jamming.

So many great ideas can come from it, you pick up new techniques and styles, learn when to play and when not to etc.. even if it's just playing over something you recorded yourself.

As I've said before, I'm not against piano roll note entry, or indeed reliance on theory over 'practice', but just concentrating on it to exclusion of actually playing removes such a great deal of what's spontaneous and enjoyable about music.