Creativity and originality are the most important aspects of making music is a myth? (Article Excerpt)

[BONES]

Despite the tragically tortured wishes of no shortage of people, we are not living in a musical age defined by choice, skill, or talent, but by ignorance and abysmally low ability. We are hearing a style of music written not by choice, but by lack of ability to do otherwise.

That is a text book example of elitism, right there. Who is this guy to decide that you have to know what you're doing to create legitimate art? Most of the music that connects with me was made by people with no formal training at all. That's why I took the conscious decision that I wouldn't seek any formal training. I embraced the punk ethos and continue to do so. Consequently I have no boundaries - if it sounds good, it is good. End of story. I don't go looking for an audience or trying to second guess what an audience might want, I do what I like, what moves me. If someone else likes it, fine. If not, who cares? That's the honesty the guy is talking about in his largely rubbish article.

If 95% people want to listen to your music or 95% don't want to, this might indicate that the music is good or not. And there will always be some outliers.

You can't conflate popularity to include quality. I can use my Big Mac analogy or my Toyota Corolla one, which would you prefer?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Who cares about ability?

That is a text book example of elitism, right there. Who is this guy to decide that you have to know what you're doing to create legitimate art?

and people wonder why the world is so f**ked up right now lol

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Art, music, whatever is ultimately subjective, each of us as individuals understands and is moved differently for different reasons

Individually, yes. But statistically, there are some trends. If 95% people want to listen to your music or 95% don't want to, this might indicate that the music is good or not. And there will always be some outliers.

And personally, I'd like my music to reach wider audience rather than some geeks here on KVR.

Indeed, and the case is strengthened when 95% still seem into it after decades or centuries.

All this is evidently lost on most in this thread, though.

[Gamma-UT]

Who is this guy to decide that you have to know what you're doing to create legitimate art?

A composer who makes tutorial videos in which he pours a lot of bourbon into a shot glass and then gradually gets bladdered while he talks about composing film music. He's a curious choice for ACO given that his advice on counterpoint in John Williamsesque music (which he loves) pretty much amounts to "filling in the gaps", rather than the more conventional advice of interlocking horizontal lines that follow certain voice-leading rules.

I don't necessarily think he's wrong but, other than his love of all things Williams, he's a curious choice of role model for ACO. Though I guess he wrote down some things when setting up a forum that looked appealing to ACO, which someone like Alain Mayrand, who does far more in-depth courses on things like counterpoint, didn't. Verta's videos are quite good from a motivational perspective, if your idea of motivation includes watching someone get progressively shitfaced and ranty over the course of a couple of hours.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Who is this guy to decide that you have to know what you're doing to create legitimate art?

A composer who makes tutorial videos in which he pours a lot of bourbon into a shot glass and then gradually gets bladdered while he talks about composing film music. He's a curious choice for ACO given that his advice on counterpoint in John Williamsesque music (which he loves) pretty much amounts to "filling in the gaps", rather than the more conventional advice of interlocking horizontal lines that follow certain voice-leading rules.

I don't necessarily think he's wrong but, other than his love of all things Williams, he's a curious choice of role model for ACO. Though I guess he wrote down some things when setting up a forum that looked appealing to ACO, which someone like Alain Mayrand, who does far more in-depth courses on things like counterpoint, didn't. Verta's videos are quite good from a motivational perspective, if your idea of motivation includes watching someone get progressively shitfaced and ranty over the course of a couple of hours.

I don't see Mike as a personal role model musically, but when it comes to his analysis of what has happened with the degradation of music standards, he's right on point.

Great that you bring up Alain Mayrand, though — I really do like his work and his courses are probably the best on the web.

[Gamma-UT]

I don't see Mike as a personal role model musically, but when it comes to his analysis of what has happened with the degradation of music standards, he's right on point.

I care if what someone is saying actually makes sense or not and if the person's own abilities are worthy of envy and therefore learning from because they obviously know what they're doing.

Pick one.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I don't see Mike as a personal role model musically, but when it comes to his analysis of what has happened with the degradation of music standards, he's right on point.

I care if what someone is saying actually makes sense or not and if the person's own abilities are worthy of envy and therefore learning from because they obviously know what they're doing.

Pick one.

Okay:

What he said makes sense.

[Googly Smythe]

Creativity and originality are the most important aspects of making music is a myth?

Yes.
What's really needed is a high opinion of one's self. A gigantic ego, in other words. It's the only thing that keeps an artiste going in the face of universal criticism. Wagner is a good example.
-
Also, are you guys really comparing modern pop music to that created by the greatest composers in history? Chalk and cheese, surely. Or have I gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick?

[kelvyn]

Art, music, whatever is ultimately subjective, each of us as individuals understands and is moved differently for different reasons

Individually, yes. But statistically, there are some trends. If 95% people want to listen to your music or 95% don't want to, this might indicate that the music is good or not. And there will always be some outliers.

And personally, I'd like my music to reach wider audience rather than some geeks here on KVR.

J D Salinger once said to a young author ’Write! Don't publish.”
Joni Mitchell hated the commercial aspect of her work, the important part, the point was the creative process.
Frank Auerbach does nothing but paint, his whole live revolves around one thing... the act of creating. The moment of constantly becoming.

Art... the object, the manifestation of a creative moment has nothing to do with the other unless the other is a part of the process, the aim of it... Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Dadaism.
Art is just that what it is... What it becomes is something quite different depending on many variables that don't always have to do with the creation. I’m sure that what I created when I started making music gave me the same momentary feeling of joy that I experience now... That's what drives me and not somebody else's opinion or commercial success.

[Dirtgrain]

That's why engaging in discussion with you — a guy who makes ambient synth and minimalist electronic music — about things like whether or not certain orchestral libraries are actually worth their price tag, is largely a wasted effort.

My heart is overwhelmed with joy to know that there is a place on earth where a comment like this might be posted (not trying to legitimize it; just marvel at it).

the coin pic swung it for me.
until that, i was ready to call him a hack in a scathing comment such as
"hack calls picasso charlatan, f**king kvr at its finest " or something along tbose lines.
glad i waited till the end or id look a fool

You were both too late and ahead of your time in this thread.

[vurt]

story of my life :/

[vurt]

Art, music, whatever is ultimately subjective, each of us as individuals understands and is moved differently for different reasons

Individually, yes. But statistically, there are some trends. If 95% people want to listen to your music or 95% don't want to, this might indicate that the music is good or not. And there will always be some outliers.

And personally, I'd like my music to reach wider audience rather than some geeks here on KVR.

J D Salinger once said to a young author ’Write! Don't publish.”
Joni Mitchell hated the commercial aspect of her work, the important part, the point was the creative process.
Frank Auerbach does nothing but paint, his whole live revolves around one thing... the act of creating. The moment of constantly becoming.

Art... the object, the manifestation of a creative moment has nothing to do with the other unless the other is a part of the process, the aim of it... Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Dadaism.
Art is just that what it is... What it becomes is something quite different depending on many variables that don't always have to do with the creation. I’m sure that what I created when I started making music gave me the same momentary feeling of joy that I experience now... That's what drives me and not somebody else's opinion or commercial success.

the only audience i care about pleasing is me.
if others enjoy my creations, great but it wouldnt stop me enjoying doing what i do, if no one listened.

general question to all...

who are you?

[Gamma-UT]

What he said makes sense.

It might seem to make sense but is he right?

Despite the tragically tortured wishes of no shortage of people, we are not living in a musical age defined by choice, skill, or talent, but by ignorance and abysmally low ability. We are hearing a style of music written not by choice, but by lack of ability to do otherwise. It's not as though your average, successful, working composer could write symphonically structured works, like Jerry Goldsmith did effortlessly for the Twilight Zone series, or for Star Trek the Motion Picture, and just chooses not to. He/she can't do it, period. They haven't the training, skill, experience, or interest. "I do not want what I have not got." They are not in control. It is not complicated.

That's a bold claim, Cotton. Let's see how that works out.

Does Verta honestly believe that the same schools that turned out these composers have shut up shop and that a collective dumbing down afflicts the rest? Or is he pushing an agenda that helps him ship a few courses to the people who didn't go to those schools but who think "I like Leia's Theme, I fancy doing a bit of that"?

The bizarre thing is that it has never been easier to learn the techniques that were once locked away inside expensive, exclusive tertiary education. So, the idea that supply is an issue just doesn't seem at all plausible.

Demand? That's another matter. What Verta leaves out of his rant is that the people selecting the music often aren't all that bothered about it. Yer average director, with the exclusion of people like Michael Mann, regard music as stuff to fill in the silences or beef up a fight scene and little more. Even with Michael Mann, you're going to be upset because he would more likely pick Tangerine Dream (OMFG minimalist electronic music! It's so modernist! The horror, the horror!) for its claustrophobic appeal than romantic classical. OTOH you are more likely to get the likes of James Cameron who orders the music a matter of days before the thing is going to print.

Where directors or the production management have made a conscious effort to go for more classically oriented scores they have clearly turned up. Disney, for example, has been careful to refer back to the original trilogy musically in its various Star Wars spinoffs. Armando Iannucci chose to get a very strongly Shostakovich-like score for The Death of Stalin. Christopher Willis did a bang-up job of getting the style and feel in a situation where Iannucci could so easily have opted, Kubrick-style, for the 10th Symphony. I'm guessing it was deliberate choice to not use the music of the time because of the comic-book "kinda real but not really" adaptation.

Do we really believe the likes of Hildur Guðnadóttir can't do it or that they prefer to explore texture in an environment where the pictures are there to be supported not to be dominated?

Going back to Star Wars spinoffs, are they as iconic as the first one? No. But there's a solid chunk of survivor bias in Verta's analysis. Williams, Goldsmith and others had ups and downs and they scored a tiny fraction of the films of the time. Most of the rest simply went unnoticed and mostly forgotten. And of course, because some people take a highly blinkered view of what makes a good score, they ignore the work of composers like David Shire on Pelham 123 and The Conversation.

I'd agree that a lot of film music seems stuck in a rut: big tribal drums, block strings. But it's not very different to the 1970s when everyone decided they needed to ape Lalo Schifrin and get some funky wah-wah bass in no matter how daft it sounded in the wrong context. Fashions change. Who knows, maybe you'll get your wish granted for a while with some more romantic classical with woodwind flourishes? But it won't be because of a sudden change in skill levels. It'll be what the people hiring decide.

The bizarre thing to me is how film music has somehow become this paragon of quality to some people, and it's often just because it happens to tickle their genre preferences.

[kelvyn]

Creativity is a very deep ocean where the lighter stuff has always floated to the surface. That doesn't mean that there is nothing hidden in the depths of the darkness.
Somewhere out there there’s a Raphael a Paganini a creative monster hidden by a simple lack of discovery... And of course there’s Jacob Collier.

[BONES]

A composer who makes tutorial videos in which he pours a lot of bourbon into a shot glass and then gradually gets bladdered while he talks about composing film music.

I wasn't literally asking who he was, it was rhetorical, designed to imply that he has no right to say any such thing.

Also, are you guys really comparing modern pop music to that created by the greatest composers in history? Chalk and cheese, surely. Or have I gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick?

They were the pop stars of their time. We won't know for a few centuries what people remember from this time.