Hi!
As you know they are lots of Theory and Harmony rules, students being taught in the colleges or universities about the controlled writings and we're being willingly or unwillingly convinced that they're much more effective than the free writings. Some of them are easy to understand and follow and some not.

1- Do you really remember and consider them in the process of your making tracks? If yes, would you please upload one of your songs that has been composed regarding those rules? Not talking about the elementary ones but the intermediate and advanced ones.

2- If you heavily rely on your ears for compositions rather than those strict rules, is it due to the complexity of the above red-highlighted matters or what? Some of us would say those principles are being considered unknowingly but my purpose is to know how much of them is being regarded intentionally.

Please notice that I'm not talking about the advantages and disadvantages of the rules but just their remembrance and considerations or summarily their usefulness and practicality.

Really appreciated.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 2, 2016

i purely rely on my ears, which has lead to funny things a few times, a friend who plays guitar wanted to do a riff on one of my songs a few years back, so i gave him the song and 3 days later he calls me up and asks what i did at 2:35 (or something), he just couldnt figure out what i did there, so i told him to which note i changed and his response still makes me chuckle 'but how?? that's not supposed to work... how the hell... but musictheory says... how the hell....'

 

I have a Music Degree in Composition and don't quite understand what you're talking about.
Strict rules? Can you mention some, please?

When you (anyone) compose you make your own rules.
At school you might/should learn the rules which guided (and sometimes caged) composers of the past (because knowledge is freedom) but even they often broke the rules or made new ones. J. S. Bach did and so did Beethoven, just to name a couple.

As for myself I indeed studied many composers of the past and present but the only real rules I remember were those outlined by Bach 4 parts harmony and by the "trio" which followed. Apart from that, which I doubt any modern composer would stick to, what other strict rules are you referring to?

 

Let me ask these ones instead of what's the meaning of the rule:

How do you compose your musics as a taught person? How do you choose the notes with which considerations? How do you use your acquired knowledge? What's your knowledge for?

I can bet almost what you answer has been theorized in the past but we don't want to accept it and also want to experiment everything ourselves.

There's nothing left for us to play with the notes unless you answer them without talking about the note (e.g, from the sound perspective).

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 3, 2016

pink panther pondering time again....

 

I think it's more a case of fun vs boredom. For me. I'd rather be on my machines, making music "awesome fun", as I would sitting down reading countless books about how people made music more than a hundred years ago "somewhat boring" in my opinion.

More like we want to get on with composing our music, rather than spend our time pouring over history books to see if someone did it in the distant past, as it's counter-productive to getting tracks completed.
Less thinking, more producing, more finished tracks, you'll learn more that way.

 

Don't tell me. The title gave it away.

 

@foster911 to me Music is about expressing emotions. not a mental game.

drop the leftsidebrain/mental-only-attitude-hat and get comfortable using your rightside of your brain and get the creative juices flowing.

you could make a short tasklist of "areas where i need to improve" and start with the 1. on your list and :

Practice Practice Practice

 

A bit about idealism, something like a religion that if anyone wouldn't believe it, goes directly to the hell.
.
.
.
In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.

Many religious philosophies are specifically idealist. The belief that beings with knowledge (God/s, angels & spirits) preceded insentient matter seems to suggest that an experiencing subject is a necessary reality.

Several modern religious movements, for example the organizations within the New Thought Movement and the Unity Church, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theology of Christian Science includes a form of idealism: it teaches that all that truly exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that may be corrected (both conceptually and in terms of human experience) through a reorientation (spiritualization) of thought.
.
.
.

Are you still thinking about your ideas?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 3, 2016

Controlled vs Free Compositions

interesting...

The rules are on the style itself IMHO

 

Human pattern cognition is always going on for the people in the background that do free composition enough. Attributing a name and breaking down or attempting to understand why something sounds good allows it to become the controlled method of learning you mentioned. There are people who only do free compositions and dont go further, and how they get there can be a lot more of an open wider path that only doing exclusively controlled (reading and studying endlessly, never dabbling into their own experimentation). The end result is to create music right? Something that will evoke some emotion in you or give you awe or adrenaline rush or calm you etc. It seems that the majority of people in modern days use free composition, and go on to learn controlled or just keep experimenting with free composition to get different results. Sound design is also taking the forefront imo as well in the modern age, considering the technical capabilities of synths/sound design, it far less explored than musical theory in terms of the age people have spent within each field. To me theory its just library of conformed ideas from different generations with different ideas of sound. Its a great tool for setting rough guidelines but then afterwards it should be about what sounds good to you at that moment. I trying to avoid specifically using the recipe analogy because when i create music i always try to avoid creating or using the same structures in your composition with little to no variation. Its more like a Michelin star one off masterpiece for each song you make. For me personally sound design is the most prominent thing for me; then i can dabble around with groove, pattern and structure dependent on the sound, especially if it rhythmic, but again it does depend on the genre and your workflow. If its a more classically established sound then i'll look at previous works and see what worked for those people and adapt that into my own workflow, (namely jazz instruments as an example) piano/double bass/vibraphone/rhodes/jazz swing drums. I see each of these things at its roots, and at the bottom level i see parameters that make up that root. i.e. rhodes could be the temprament of the keyboard, the amps and mics used, the mic positions, the lfo/chorus effect, the velocity its played at etc, then i could look at jazz songs that used those instruments, how it it composed e.g. the rhodes could be simple at 0:43 in this song with low velocity or the song uses 3/4 timing with these specific chords, and it gave me this specific emotion or they used an arpeg to transition into the main section of the song, or maybe even perform a cover of a jazz song that doesnt even have a rhodes to see how it sounds. Its just endless parameters that you cultivate pattern recognition for, through experimentation and listening as a guideline if you dont know about that style or genre yet.

 

Also I play Flamenco which is associated with certain dance steps,romance lyrics, and popular melodies. This is good material to make improvisations flying trough the flow of the genre.
Good source for new free compositions but "controlled" by the genre

 

Last edited: Aug 3, 2016

This weekend me and a few friends are going to record a freeform jam session in a studio. We have nothing prepared. Nada. I only know I'll have my drumkit and they will have their instruments. We will "talk" and "discuss"...and possibly "argue" and "agree" with our instruments. It will happen in realtime, have a raw nerve and we will rely on our ears, brain, musical knowledge and experience. Basically our lives up until this point will influence the recording.
So, 1 and 2 are intertwined. They go hand in hand.

If the result will be satisfying I'll post it here, and you can then analyze it to death. Prepare Pink Panther Pondering suit.

 

Dude, your "ears" aren't any different than following some guidelines you learned yourself. When you go by ear, or you have your own "style", you are in fact following rules that define that style, whether you realize it or not. If your ears like songs in a minor scale (without you being aware of this fact), then that's probably all you're going to ever compose. Ever. So in this sense, going by ear makes you follow much more strict rules, and much less freedom.

You seem to confuse people analyzing a song for its scales/chords/notes etc, and composing that song. Of course people will analyze it with theory. You can't analyze it "by ear", what will you say? "This note combination sounds nice, I like it by ear", how will that help analyzing it for others who don't share your subjective opinion?

Music theory isn't about enforcing rules, it's about giving you knowledge of those "rules" to help expand your knowledge of it.

Just as a photographer learns certain tools of the trade: when to use flash, when to use long exposure times, how aperture works, what contrast is, or how to make HDR pictures, and so on. These things are not rules you MUST follow, they are there to help you when taking pictures. Only an amateur will say that he just takes pictures "how he feels like it". It's not because freedom is bad, it's because he has no idea what he is doing. If he knew all of that and still went with freedom, then it's fine.


I'll leave it with a simple phrase.

If you want to intentionally break the rules / have something exotic, you must learn the rules first. How do you expect to be different from something, if you don't even know that something?

 

If that was directed at me, then I'm afraid you've wasted your time. I'm not an idealist, and I am in no way, in any shape or form, religious.

 

Last edited: Aug 3, 2016

You're nonreligious, I'm against it.

I'm not into the philosophy but by the more nailing the mind on it, find some similarities between my questions and the ones in the philosophy. If you had time (just 10 minutes) please read (esp. "Thomas Kuhn" section):
Philosophy_of_science

 

I found a place to test my ideas there. Perhaps they think much more differently. I will give you a monthly report:
http://www.talkclassical.com/

Maybe they still do categorize musics as classical and non-classical. Being an alien to each other.

At least we have something in common:
Why do people from Classical world hate "popular" music?

Wow, What they have:
Composer Birthdays

BTW, there are more females there.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 4, 2016

There is no such thing as "free composition" in a group. I like your thirst for music theory knowledge Foster. While Music Theory is fact, it is still just a theory. It's only a means to a specific end, and if you stick to it for too much of your music, it will make you as boring as Yngwie. He's amazing, and I love his music, but I know I will never hear anything interesting (aside from the ridiculous speed.) You should search "playing outside guitar" on youtube. You have to attain a balance from mechanical, clinical theory skills, and then turning it on it's head man. I see you here all the time, and all your theory is correct, and I actually brush up on my thinking because of you, but you need to look outside of all that as well. If you sight read, you should go through Pink Panther Theme from Mancini. More than half that melody isn't in key, but it is because the backing chords and rhythm are vague and implied.

 

Not really Rules more like a language. Wright me a note! LOL

 

I spent half my life learning theory just to realize that it all goes out the window in realtime when you're trying to make something interesting.