#78

IMHO a common misconception with music theory is concerning “all the rules”. They are actually there to encapsulate a certain style of music, and are not really means as universal rules that would somehow distinguish good music from bad music.

Say you want to write a chorale in Bach style. If you grew up on this music, you could just use your ear, but chances are you did not. Then the rules can guide you so that the music you write will end up being a chorale and not impressionistic piano music, 2-step garage or free jazz.

Actually I personally don’t think music theory is very good for composing music, although it can help me reflect in a more structured way about what I’ve just written or is just writing.

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#79

Probably an Offtopic here, but I am having some kind of crisis around this thinking right now. Like for a long time I was thinking when creating that I don’t have to please anyone with my music etc but I started to wonder if this is not a purely egoistical thing. If my music serves only me and is only expression of my ego what worth does it have? In todays society where there is already a lot of pressure being put on being distinct/visible/special wouldn’t it be better if I go plant a tree instead of letting my ego roam? So I started to think how I can make people feel a little better while making/performing my music while still following my own creative instincts and I will see where it would take me. So I don’t think that sometimes trying things that you don’t like is bad because it can let you learn why other people like it and maybe use this knowledge. Ofcourse everbody has different approach and I don’t want to invalidate anyone opinion.

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#80

I’m surprised Ciat Lonbarde comes up so much in this thread. I have the feeling its a lot of “judging the book by its cover” and just responses to the mysterious aestetics. For example, out of all the synths at my home the Tocantes are the ones which saw most hands of (non-musician) strangers. People immediately start playing and bending the instrument to their idea of music. They don’t know whats inside but they can touch the circuit and quickly learn that way. Oh, the scale is not 12TET? Great, forced skip of music theory, start listening/feeling, add gestures to your vocabulary and use them to express emotions/tell a story.

Inscrutability for me comes from modes and lack of idempotence, not from alternative interfaces or lack of theoretical knowledge.

:raised_hand: Sure thing, I think I did! I’ve done live shows with the Plumbutter, I really feel it and I can use it as my voice. Its a very expressive instruments and would not dare to call it inscrutable. It’s not harder to master than any other synth out there if you’re able to let go of your east/west coast synth knowledge for a bit and be open for new interfaces. Key for me is to work on a patch for a longer period of time and explore the gestures within. Know how to reproduce sounds quickly and transit from one to another in useful gestures. This same applies to every other (semi) modular, I don’t think the PB is an exception.

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#81

I know I’m days late but “mastery is an academic concept” just struck me as so sad?

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#82

Could it be more a way of thinking about the relationship between an author and their performance/production/process as something un-masterable (though of course great artists come somewhere close) in comparison to the way an academic context tends to canonize certain works as examples of a historical context or moment? If mastery is indeed an academic concept, then, as a non academic, I don’t personally see this as sad, but as some type of opportunity for an endless (hopefully productive) striving toward mastery. Like the reward for good work is more work kind of thing.

#83

I think we’re of the same mind about this. I would say that everyone I’ve met with a creative passion, academic or not, considers themselves on that path with endless striving; I don’t think anyone would say they’ve reached total mastery.

I guess what I found sad was the idea that this sense of striving and growth could be relegated to just the purview of academics

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#84

Ah yes that I would agree with.

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#85

lijnenspel has mastered the Plumbutter but I don’t know if they are an academic.

When I wrote “mastery is an academic concept," I meant obtaining total objective knowledge of a thing (idea, practice, instrument, whatever) exists only as a theory.

I agree the sense of striving and growth toward mastery belongs to everyone.

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#86

universities wouldn’t exist without master plumbers

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#87

Four (what appear to be) thoughts:

A. Sometimes I want to happen to music; sometimes I want it to happen to me. Obvious and non-obvious tools are both appreciated.

B. Non-obviousness can be achieved by either the maker’s or the user’s action. Sometimes I read the manual, sometimes I don’t.

C. It seems rigid to consider a tool from only the perspective of purpose optimization. Optimization feels like a development / creation Cardinal direction, but it’s not the only one.

D. Reading this thread keeps bringing the conflation of ‘the music business’ with ‘music’ to mind, but I’m not able to verbalize the parallel I’m sensing.

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#88

As a part time academic and full time lawyer, I really appreciate the idea that the more you study a topic or try to attain mastery, the more you understand the immense and impossibly interconnected nature of everything, rendering all attempts at comprehensive knowledge into a folly…

Still worth having as a goal, of course, all while keeping a good sense of humor…

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#89

Certainty is for the young and the radical.

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#90

As a professor of music business, I sincerely hope that no one ever confuses it with “music”!

They are almost completely unrelated in many respects.

Edit- Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

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#91

I love that - and agree completely

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#92

this thread is such a thought-provoking morning read, dang.

all things are “capable of being understood by careful study or investigation,” but whether or not they seem that way is a meatier topic. so, I’m curious how much of a particular instrument’s appearance of scrutability requires observable/obvious cause + effect. especially when it relies on widespread (cultural? social? academic?) understanding of the instrument.

building off the points made about cello:
let’s say you have never seen a cello before. you’re alone with it and a bow in a room. someone else walks in who has extensive practice with a cello. they pick up the bow, run it across the strings at a certain location while placing their fingers on the cello’s neck and applying pressure. the sound is pleasing to you.

q: how many observations of this combination of gestures does it take in order for you to feel like you’ve “got it” – more than two or three times? probably not. the gestures have clear cause and effect, which emboldens your confidence.

so, you give it a whirl and you do perform your approximations of the gestures – does it sound as “pleasing” as when the other person does it? if no, then perhaps this is the beginning of understanding “virtuosity” on the instrument. either way, you walk away with a sense of what needs practiced (even if it’s not entirely correct. but also, isn’t this experience a conceptual quantization?? idk, but it’s my new favorite phrase).

does the number of observations necessary to understand gestural cause and effect change when the instrument is a synthesizer? what about a synthesizer without a keyboard interface?

is understanding that patch cables plug into patch points equivalent to understanding that a bow and finger placement are essential to the pleasing sound you heard from the cello? is there perhaps a specific ratio of observations:understanding cause and effect which pushes an instrument past one’s personal definition of scrutability?

is there simply a greater amount of personal, hands-on exploration (and internal decision-making gestures?) necessary for instruments that do not have such a straightforward operability/cause-and-effect before an individual is able to say “oh yeah, I get how it works”? if so, how much does that color their non-hands-on experience? do they tune out, feel left out?

tl;dr: community helps close the gap between an instrument appearing scrutable or not. when we share our explorations and notes, we help each other understand the relationship between cause and effect for a particular tool. this eventually helps others understand the reasons why one would decide to use that tool in that way. this informs and emboldens exploration. lines does this particularly well. I am thankful for y’all.

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#93

To paraphrase Les Savy Fav,

Knowing how the [instrument] works
is not knowing how to work the [instrument]

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#94

Which serves my point. No reason not to explain how the instrument works and let the musician know how they want to work it.

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#95

I’ve been thinking about this thread again today, for a couple of reasons:

I’m about halfway through this book. Overall, it’s an unconventional but relatively convincing view of the philosopher/mystic Parmeneides, who was Zeno’s teacher and Plato’s precursor. At least one of the book’s premises though seems to be that Western civilization (especially philosophy) has lost something in the pursuit of reason and clarity, or at least has lost sight of its own mystic roots. (The style of prose is a bit strange and sometimes frustrating, but I think intentional: the book itself, like Parmeneides’ poem, seems like a sort of initiatory journey.)

This thread is generally about fiction, but it struck me similarly: fans who pursue of all the little world-building details and every character’s motive, who treat ambiguity as incompleteness.

It’s making me rethink my approach to musical tools a bit. I appreciate analyzing how they react to different inputs and having some understanding of how they work, but when it comes down to it, the music I make with them and the process of making that music are still very much intuitive and shadowy things.

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#96

Hello @Starthief, I just wanted to say thank you for a really interesting post with somewhat beautiful timing!! I was listening to an audio book of extracts from the works of John Keats this week when this (somewhat famous) passage came up:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…

(John Keats, letter to brothers, 22 December 1817)

There are moments in Shakespeare - especially in the later works - when I get the sense of some presence which never presents itself, a kind of silently buzzing halo around the page (or stage). I find it very soothing and try to not analyze it away. As I get older, I’m getting similar feelings from Homer.

I’m reading Dante’s Divine Comedy at the moment and your phrase ‘initiatory journey’ really struck home. You got me thinking about the tempo of the poem-journey, and how Dante may be using the fact that reading / listening takes time to help express his philosophy (e.g. as Dante approaches the center of inferno, the physical space is contracting but the descriptions become longer and feel slower. Also, it takes Dante one third of Purgatory just to get to the gates. After an hour and a half of reading, we are still not in Purgatory… There is something in this, Dante using time itself as a representational medium. Definitely not ‘mystical’ but certainly not a put-together-the-pieces logic puzzle either.)

I haven’t read the book on philosophy, but it sounds interesting. I’m hoping that super dry contemporary analytic philosophy is the target because I get a deep sense of something inexpressible when I read philosophers like Spinoza, Hume, Kant (for all his tables of contents), Wittgenstein. I suspect Hegel and Heidegger belong on that list, but they are too difficult for me to understand.

Back to music. You also got me thinking about track titles. By naming a song, can artists decrease or increase the listeners interpretive possibilities, their chances of encountering something inscrutable in the music? (Just a draft question)

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#97

So far only a couple of Greeks have been mentioned, and modern scholars who have interpreted Parmeneides’ poem On Nature in a way that ignored the inconveniently mystic aspects of it. But then, some other scholars say that Kingsley’s assertions are difficult to prove. I’m taking it with a grain of salt, but as a possible source of inspiration :slight_smile:

I haven’t personally read very much philosophy. The occasional relatively lightweight article but few books by philosophers. Maybe Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop counts.

I’ve often thought about that. Sometimes I’ve worried about revealing too much with a title, or leading the listener’s interpretation too much, so I obfuscate a little more. Other times I feel like they might be the only clue, because it’s abstract instrumental music I’m making. Sometimes individual titles don’t matter to me that much but help maintain the continuity of the album. Often I’ll name a track after the process is done and I’ve listened to it a few times with fresh ears and reinterpreted it myself.

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