I just want to say I appreciate your conversations my friend. Thanks for not being a boring person to speak with lol

 

You're welcome my friend.

TBH, I wrote a different thing about you and Adam Neely that if you read it, your response would be totally different.

Anyway, you are a good friend too but your ears' discernment in contradistinction to mine is 10 times or more weaker, so be well aware that don't get caught by me. If it happens, I'll consider you a delicious food. I like to taste a jazz musician.

 

This is a common belief among the people who discover the theory later in their music journeys. They think that the music of the past has been more complicated than their own time so find it worth studying very hard. They invest a lot of time on the past terminologies and styles (maybe more than a decade) and lose their connections with the present time. Just look at Adam, he looks like a fossil warmed up.

And finally everything gets horribly complicated and uncontrollable to a degree that they can't decide what to do ... I can imagine you suffering the same fate. Good luck with it.

 

*sigh* I don't understand why people think that knowing theory and having your music retain Soul, Feel or Heartfelt Playing are mutually exclusive.
I've seen a rise in people shunning theory as digital music creation became the norm; people thinking that knowing too much will make them mindless automatons, creating either quantized, cliche music, or only creating what theory "dictates." It's simply not the truth. I create music the same way that I always have, before I knew any theory. Though, as it turned out, I knew a whole lot of theory without realizing it before I ever picked up a book, as theory is just the understanding of how music works. Essentially--and don't shoot the messenger here, all you anti-theory advocates-if you know your way around a guitar, keys, flutes, etc., then you inescapably know some theory...you just don't know what it's called or how to apply it to other instances of your works.
In short? Theory is not your master--is simply a tool to ease the transfer of what you're thinking and feeling into an audible sound--it's not some form of witchcraft that robs you of the ability to convey human emotions into your works.

 

Don't know if your joking about that .
This losing connections with present time things sounds strange.
What do you mean?
Do you think that because I study music theory ,
I cannot make a modern genre?
I don't know what connections are being made there .
For clarity,
I don't intent to make a more generic version of a already generic trend in current genres.
I think you got something's ass backwards in terms of understanding the difference in a person
( In any category )
But lets stick with music.
The more understanding you have ( or less ignorance in other words )
Is the better you do.
You have much possibilities.

This other thing about everything gets horribly complicated.
I never understood this lens of looking at things.
To me reality is as complicated as it actually is .
I adapt myself and completely change myself over time to be able to handle whatever complexity reality holds .
( Whether designing and building a house )
Or music.
Music exists with a certain level of complexity in reality .
( Much less than designing a laptop from the equations to manufacturing )
But nevertheless, music has enough complexity where it takes years everyday of study to get it understood.

Lager,
If you think studying music means you can no longer do something you could have done .
It's not right ,
Its just like any other area of expertise.
The more you study the better you get.
Music is a certain complexity in reality.
Just like the English language
A baby ( has no knowledge of the language and articulating and semantics)
Can only say " goo goo gah ga"
And cannot understand or fathom a PhD level lecture .
Music is same way .
It's just that by the time you spent lot time studying music .
It's really boring to write a song that is equivilent to " goo goo gah ga"

For myself any 12 note chord is tolerable .
Dissonance is just a vibration not contained in a tonic chord like C6 CEGA or Amin6 ACEF#
My ears hear a gradient of consonance to dissonance .and very dissonant harmony just sounds more 3d .
So for example polytonality , sounds fairly vanilla to me
Ex. C Maj/ C#maj .

 

So true.

I think of it the same as how we learn the spoken language and actually express ourselves better and more articulate and exact the more we learn how the language works. ( Music theory is identical to this situation )

Can you imagine having a conversation with a person who after hearing you ask a question ,
Has to audition each word in their sentence one by one changes the order around and 5 mins later finally can speak a full sentence !? ( Crickets..)
Lol
( Clip and loop builders haha)

 

Bitwig's Micro-pitch device - It's wonderful.
I am less and less surprised to find that, whenever some specialised extra curious music facility is required,
someone (either Bitwig or a 3rd party) will have implemented something wonderful within Bitwig.

I've only had about half a dozen episodes of in-depth exploring Bitwig, and I've been hugely impressed every time.
It must be be only my stupid inertia that has (so far) prevented me from adopting it as an actual music making tool instead of being just a wonderful curiosity to explore.

What's right and wrong about Bitwig's micro pitch device?
Almost everything right in terms of being able to explore different 12 note tunings across an octave.
It can turn those 12 chromatic pitches into any flavour you want, and do so very elegantly.
BUT what's kind-of wrong... it is still geared towards only a 12 pitch device, i.e., a standard physical piano keyboard is still at the heart of the design. That's clearly a very smart compromise in a world where getting your hands on a physical keyboard that splits one octave into (for example) 17 physical keys, is not exactly practical.
Aside: it would be nice to squeeze these hardware items into my music playground;
unlikely, but they do look fascinating. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMRUm_CoW-I

But within a piano roll editor, why not? Where are my 17 keys please if I'm using 17-TET.

Bitwig provides beautiful facilities for exploring the pitch space in between the 12 chromatic pitches (however tuned).
To me, that is analogous to a super nice version of showing a bent note on a guitar tab,
it's still basically anchored to 12 discrete chromatic pitches.

Compare these... 12-TET 17-TET
'Maybe' in twelve-tone equal temperament (i.e., conventional tuning in Western music),
you can just regard the notes C# and Db as the same i.e., 'enharmonically equivalent' notes.
You may have very good reasons for choosing to label as one or other (C# or Db) but the pitches are the same.
So, while I'm ignoring the spelling I can just write the 12 chromatic notes as
C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C

But in 17-TET, I want these 17 pitches as my discrete chromatic notes
C, Db, C#, D, Eb, D#, E, F, Gb, F#, G, Ab, G#, A, Bb, A#, B, C
and in the above list Db is absolutely not the same pitch as C#

If I want to explore creating music using all 17 discrete pitches, then I want to visualise that 'somehow'.
A weird customised piano roll, like the one found in HEX, is the best I've seen yet.
How long before someone implements something like that in Bitwig?
I'd have to be totally unsurprised if it happened tomorrow.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

Hi Lager.

How do you go about making music? Are you simply trying out different notes until it sounds good, or do you have some kind of strategy when choosing what notes to play? I am truly looking forward to your answer, if you have something of value when it comes to making music at all, I am all ears and eager to learn.

 

An accusation: (you can handle it ) I think you may be drifting into what MMJ has referred to as 'deepity' land.
(see Dan Dennett 'deepity') A deepity walks the tight rope, balancing precariously between two meanings, but always sounding more profound than it actually is. On one reading it is true but trivial, and on another reading it is false, but would be earth-shattering if true.

So, in this case, it's "of course your best tools are your ears" how could that not be true?

BUT, now far more interesting to constructively explore how it's false and see how comfortable deepities might inhibit breaking out of a comfort zone.

Look at the context. We're discussing exploring non conventional tonalities.
So, hey, just trust my magnificent musically experienced ears - yeah right!

In conventional tuning, if you play me three notes C, C#, D, I can reliably tell whether the C# was in tune or not.
Now play me these 4 notes from a 17-TET - C, Db, C#, D.
I can tell you that there's something oddly out of tune with the Db and the C# but I can't reliably tell you what it is.
Worse still, my ears can not reliably tell you the difference between these...
C, Db, C#, D.
C, C#, Db, D.
i.e., I'm not always right about telling you whether we went up from Db to C# or down from C# to Db
So, how embarrassing is that to my mighty confident experienced musical ears?

If you met someone that said...
"Genre X is the only music that sounds good to me; everything else sounds crap, and my ears are my guide!"
You would correctly say "how dumb, how bigoted"
So, I have to question myself and ask "why does my brain think this..."
"Everything that is tuned to standard western tuning sounds ok, but 17-TET just sounds crap, and my ears are my guide!"
Am I not being dumb and bigoted? Am I not just a victim of cultural conditioning?

How to find out...
Clearly my ears are not my most reliable guide in an exercise that is designed to push my ears into new territory.
My guide in this case was 'Music Theory'. It was absolutely not enough to just explore the impressive bags of tricks that some DAWs contain, even the specialised one like HEX.
I had to read, read, read, starting with the technical paper describing the HEX Midi Sequencer http://oro.open.ac.uk/30157/
AND the many theory references found within that paper.
Without a grasp of the underlying 'music theory logic' behind something like 17-TET, this adventure would have been just pissing in the dark. And without the specialised tools like HEX, it would have been bloody hard work, much much harder.

How I described it my other post... "It was NOT an easy exploration - and ultimately (for me personally) it was not very satisfying musically, but I still really enjoyed the exploration as an aspect of music theory."

i.e., I found that my ears displayed a persistent bigoted prejudicial attitude towards stepping outside of standard western tuning. Intellectually, I could break out, but my mighty experienced musical ears are as closed-minded now as they were when I started. 17-TET still just sounds out of tune to me.

What should I say about this? Should I compose a deepity that let's me off the hook?
Absolutely not!. It's far better just to say "I failed - totally - I couldn't change my brain enough"

So, back to my bigoted comfort zone, back to composing with 12 chromatic pitches.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

Agree 100% (of course) - but - in your 'philosophy of music theory' comments, I seriously recommend that you deliberately go the extra mile (every single time) to distinguish between music knowledge and music theory.

In many of your comments, not carefully distinguishing between Music Knowledge and Music Theory, is what regularly causes more friction than it deserves, and it takes repeated exposure to thinking about the difference for it to sink in.

• Having more music knowledge is better - I personally regard that as uncontestable
• Having more understanding of music theory is better (for me, for you, and for many) but not for everyone!
• Using music theory to acquire music knowledge is brilliant but optional (even if that optionality status seems incomprehensible to music theory fans)

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

The plus of bitwig is also that it supports OSC very well. If you have an ipad or an android you can use controller app where you can customize a keyboard to have any dispositions you dream of. After that it's just a matter of configuring the way it modulates the pitch through its interaction with bitwig.

 

That's true , what I mean in that case is knowing it in a practical way like how it sounds and how to 7se it . I guess I just take it for granted because I've gotten the theory part in my subconscious to o where I focus on the pragmatic part mostly in real life. ( Playing it hearing it knowing it )
When I'm here at audiosex
I'm sharing the information component in the sense of understanding and naming things.
( Like people still developing that area )
But in real life I just hear all the diatonic and non Diatonic substitutions for subdominant in a key
As one category with flavors .
Say in the KEY of C major

Subdominant
ii Dmin7
IV Fmaj7

IVmin :Fmin6_Bb7_Abmaj7_Dmin7b5_Dbmaj7

#IVdim7
F#ACD#

F7_Ab7_B7_D7


So all the above is 1 category in C major
That category is Subdominant
You have the diatonic substiutions as well as the non Diatonic substitutions.
But no matter what you select it works the same just different flavor.

And what I mean by a chord symbol is it's notes
In all octaves of a Instrument.


( I hear 2 more categories as well
Tonic
Dominant
And just like with the subdominant

They each have diatonic substiutions as well as non Diatonic substitutions.
However no matter which chord you choose it is going sound the same except it's own flavor .

( That's just simple tonal music language as well)

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

I'm not a user of OSC (yet) so, I'm just speculatively fleshing out what your suggestion might mean.
(for me and for anyone else reading this)

Using 19-TET as an arbitrary example...

Take a peek at these pages
https://academo.org/demos/19-tet-keyboard/
http://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=prod_axis-49

With something like TouchOSC running on a tablet, am I right to I assume I could make my own versions of either that 19-TET keyboard layout, or a soft version of that AXiS controller, then use it to control BitWig's audio rendering of whatever Midi I'm throwing at it?

If so, then that's attractive, from a 'live-controller access to 19-TET' perspective, but I still wouldn't have any nice visualisation for any recorded 19-TET compositions. So, HEX still seems like the only thing giving me that (so far)

Incidentally, the academo keyboard web page shown above can be saved and used offline OK. (nice toy)

 

In theory yes, all points above are correct. You can do any type of keyboards with touchOSC. But it would be for Midi only, then there's also the setup to think about in Bitwig. With their modulation system it shouldn't be too hard to send specific midi modulation command attached to certain pitches only so that it modulates the micro pitch modulator when hit, in the pitch direction you need.
For the visualization part you're also right. Only hex can give you that so far.

 

Now that you've led me down this path... unsurprisingly, I'm bumping into stuff that I've obviously been missing for a while.
e.g., for that hardware AXiS controller, I just found this already implemented software equivalent that uses OSC http://www.sky-light.jp/hex/hexoscfull.html
and this app for android looks neat too http://www.tuningbell.com/isokeys

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

Those seem to have potential.
You did see the onscreen bitwig keyboard ?



You can't see it on the screenshot, it goes too fast but it shows the pitch modulation you accomplish in the sequencer when you use its midi editor pitch modulation features.

Like so :

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2020

I do not think you are bigoted. You have a different viewpoint to me in some places and similar in others.
To stringed instruments such as the violin and double bass, a C# and a Db is a different note. To even-tempered instruments, they are not.
There are entire articles on tuning every instrument to a different frequency other than 440 cycles and the effect it generates which alludes to your western tuning idea. It's neither wrong nor right, only different. It is also a discussion that is incredibly lengthy. All the same, I trust my ears because so far, they have not let me down.
I am neither offended nor do I find you bigoted. Opinionated perhaps but isn't everyone? I could prove a lot of what I said, but then again, so can you.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 5, 2020

pal, he is not joking, he is in that shape.
you are pretending to get into a conversation with an online word generator, a very cheap one.

also, when he refers to "people" he means himself. some other weird affliction forbids him to talk in first person. it is what it is..

 

It kind of shows MMJ's methods have not been so effective till now that one of his radical devotees and zealots still has this question in mind.

 

I does tend to look like you are using someone's question to validate your own point of view rather than seeing the question for the question's sake? Just observing.

THE QUESTION:
"How do you go about making music? Are you simply trying out different notes until it sounds good, or do you have some kind of strategy when choosing what notes to play? I am truly looking forward to your answer, if you have something of value when it comes to making music at all, I am all ears and eager to learn."

THE ANSWER:
Should have been something like:
"When I compose/ write music I....I also look at....I also consider...."


This would be more impartial.

I hate to say it because I have NOTHING against you whatsoever, but it does look like a reason to personally attack someone else the way you answered. You really could have answered simply how YOU approach music which is truly all the question asked.
Have you considered that this may be why the moderator seems to come down hard on you?
It does look personal? Up to you, take it or leave it. It's ok not to agree with anyone but on any forum when you seem to attack anyone, whether indirectly or not, moderators tend to be picky about that.