You need music theory to use pattern recongition in this way with sound and your ears .
You need a shared description of the symbols and metaphor in order to encryption of information into shared Description to play together fluently .
If you do it personally with you own way to understand and you can't express it then that is going to restrict things in terms playing with other fluently in realtime .
( Like a spoken language which only you know )
Now plenty people have work around for not having shared information system of music .
Just don't compose with others in realtime .
( There's also an option to create motives building blocks precomposed chunks you can always add in for each chord of a key )
But it's always a weakness to not have music theory.( Shared language information system which shares compression algorithm into symbols practices )
Before I knew music theory I had to deal with it also.
Just no way around it except be a drummer or
Only play original pre composed material with others that you show them what to do .

 

I don't think that's true.
The whole point is both
Speak same sentences , but one knows what they mean the other only knows how creates the sounds but does not know the deeper level of what those sounds represent.
You see spoken language the sounds you hear is a medium.
When we play a song the thing you hear is not the music the sounds happening overtime that's not music. That's the medium in same sense that spoken English the sounds are not English .
The sound is a medium.
A film motion picture is not the shapes you see .
The shapes lines changing is the medium.
Music is the thing sounds represent.
So if a person is making sounds for which they don't know what it means .
Then the whole has been missed.
Because most us use a medium as a " means to an end "
I'm not typing this right now because of the look of the letters shapes next to each other give me a sense of beauty.
It's a medium to transmit information.
However you take that away and you lose the point.
( Form my perspective anyway )
I care about the meaning part above all else in any area of life not the medium.

I was not devastated when VHS died out because it was just a medium

 

Don't get me wrong though.
I spent close to 30 years of my life
( I started young kid )
Approaching music , with modern genres against music theory ( at least my strawman version of it at the time )
Only for about 10 years have I known music theory real well.
This has been a hard lesson for me .
It took me a long time to find out these things .
( I was developing many areas though I want bring lazy however I would take back learning engineering and mastering and would have done music theory in their place.)
Lot time and focus on the " icing of the Cake"
In terms production engineering and mastering .
Years spent on them so intense
Yet I couldn't play happy birthday in 12 keys in 100 variations composing off top of my head.
So I was hard headed to the core.
I had to internalize and come to find these things out that I don't want to be true .
I still wish reality worked different .
( I still have rest my life of study to go )
I wish it didn't work that way in terms of music theory
Shared information system of encrypting into symbols and metaphor decryption )
That is is required, I wish it wasn't even now.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

As much as I love music I believe all music is inferior to bacon.

 

nothing you have said Jacq shows you have any understanding of what my recent posts are about. You still talk of theory and language. Can you not expand your mind to postulate as to why some are born with real talent? This has nothing to do with theory.

 

What is the continuity where the changing visual pixels allow us to see 1 object the entire time ?
( Instead just changing shapes lines colors )
It's the brains ability to do complex pattern recongition which we start doing at birth.
Music works the same way except we have to learn it ( like learning a language )
We not born with language , but we are born with pattern recongition systems we can develop.
Music is one of those like sight but with sound instead.
Our brain deals with encoding of information systems with symbolic representations which encode large amounts of information compressed into tiny packet
( We can't fit lot in short term memory )
We have to encode the information.
Think memorizing the states with abbreviations.
Memorizing phone numbers breaking into 3 parts
--- --- ----
Music theory is a shared way to encode large amounts of information that we all understand to use layer on to express with music note intricate complex things than just 1 note at time .
( Just like a photo of pixels can encode the information of a whole human representation)
Or math symbols or spoken language
Computer languages physics equations .
We have many information systems we use in life.
Music is one as well .
They all share something in common.
If it's a information system only the 1 person understands it's much more limited than
Information system which others understand and you use together in community .

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

I did speak about it over and over .
I'll try a different way .
I'll ask first what you mean by talent so we can stay on track better my friend.

 

Pixels. Theory. Pattern recognition. You don't even see when you are locked in a self perpetuating feedback loop. I gave everybody the chance to talk about a new perspective on where music comes from. It's a big question. But you keep repeating your one dimensional response. I'm trying to focus on the emotion that drives us from childhood. You still think theory is that driving force?

 

I don't know what you mean.
1 dimensional?
I don't follow.
The emotion that drives us?
Yes human beings have emotion a pattern of chemicals signals And neurotransmitters a complex system of pattern recognition through sensory information from inside and outside the body .
Again it's pattern recognition .
This my point.
We use a word
" Emotion"
What do we mean by that word?
Is a symbol.
We pack a lot of information into this symbol so we can say the 1 word.
( This is what music theory is for vibrations per second hitting our eardrum then the brain processes using information system )
We take it for granted that we don't even realize what's happening.
What do you mean by * talent"
I'm just trying talk about natural born music talent you mentioned but I need to know what you mean by that.

 

On natural born talent .

I started right away playing drums and shortly after other instruments ( although I was only exposed to pop music genres like Rock, metal, hip-hop, etc.)

It came natural and easy both parents played multiple Instruments .

And I just used the same pattern recongition I did with like my eyes seeing patterns organizing them and prioritizing them then packing the information into a symbol or metaphor in my mind just like visual system or English language .
I started same time I was learning language .
So I just used regular everyday systems we all use but I used them applied to vibrations per second with my ears as well .
So the abstract level was the same .
In terms of information encryption and decryption.
I encoded physical movements fine motor skills
Included in the information connected with the sound it made compressed so when I mentally visualizer the symbol I could unpack a whole complex detail of uncompressed info into the short memory when I needed it in realtime. Then would compress it back to the shop for storage into the subconscious mind afterwards.
I always did visuals arts same way from drawing painting sculpting etc istarted all these very young .
I treated them the same in this respect of the overview process .

I think anyone can do this as well .
Just some people don't start out being able to abstract it out for any of the senses at first.
But I believe they are capable .
So natural talent for music, drawing painting poetry anything creative it comes down to ability to abstract metaphor .
Like to recongition that if I say " human being "
The thing I'm talking about is not a single thing or object. I'm just encoding what a human being actually is down symbolically.
Once we understand all the ways we already do this .
We can do it on purposely too.
If I look at a blank peice of paper
I can use it to create the form of human being or dog .
By tapping into this abstract system.
Music is same thing .
I'm not being 1 dimensional.
The real answer to your question is information .
The way we naturally navigate these systems
Because when we compress information down to a symbol we make a simplistic version of it.
That's easy work with.
Like I started with drums .
I would visualize a drum beat as a kid .
Then abstract it down to a symbol .
Pack the information so compressed it would
Just be 1 kick drum hit on the 1 beat .
Think 4 beats 4 bars.
Then each level unpack it .
The next level unpack it would be .

Kick......snare........kick...kick.... Snare......

Next level the hihat say

H h h h h h h h
K.....s....k.k.. s..

So each new level you start unpack more
Then slowly I'd be able figure out the placemt of the whole complex beat.


If I was drawing a human head.
I'd take the mental image of finished thing .
Abstract it to a symbol and compress it down mentally such that level 1 be a rough circle for head.
Next 2 circles eyes etc.
Each level uncompressing you fill in the detail.
More and more.
It's like building a house your fine details are last and your rough symbolic shape is first.
This gives you a way to place everything correctly each level so by time you get to the end of final details everything in the place you visualized it in the paper or to he drum beat played on drums or guitar riff or singing a Vocal line.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

You clearly have a disconnect from emotional reality. You rationalise complex views with unrelated parallels and your points of view are untarnished by the ability of humans to achieve what would normally be considered as "impossible" like my example of a 10 year old girl writing novels way beyond her years. There are musicians like this and you try to explain them with convoluted language that seems scientifically based but is in fact just your choice of words for how you wish to slew the discourse so you may maintain dominance over your post. You started the post, ergo you are in control and you and only you can be right.
I should have known that an attempt to widen the scope of the discussion on the philosophy of music would be closed down by you and swiftly returned to theory, which will soon become jazz theory and exposes your thinking as very narrow indeed. Which is a shame because you are intelligent. But intelligence is wasted if you only have knowledge of one subject.

 

Just adding a few (maybe a few too many) comments to you nice post...

The business of whether any eventual emerged talent is innate or cultivated (or both, nature versus nurture, etc) is beautifully complex. So complex that I find myself doubting all of my instincts when trying to answer it. An open question still being explored; awash with compelling arguments on all sides. But I have no doubts at all about just how extraordinary the capabilities are of a subconscious brain working without abstract models.

So, related questions are...
"just how capable is the (musical) brain without any reference to consciousness at all"
"is it meaningful / useful to compare the capabilities of the sub-conscious brain with the capabilities of the conscious brain"

Some 'off the cuff' comments about that are...

Consciousness (a metaphor)
Imagine a huge corporation, imagine the guy who's been given the job of sitting in a box at the security gate. The box has the name of the corporation on it and the guy wears a jacket with the name of the corporation on it too. He sees everyone that visits the corporation.
He ends up feeling so 'full of himself' that he deludedly thinks 'He IS the corporation'
He has no idea how insignificant he is compared to the actual corporation.

Your brain is like the corporation. Your consciousness is like the puffed up idiot at the gate.

Many more analogies are available...
Consciousness is like the frothy bit on top of a huge wave. And the frustrating part is that the froth is not only tiny and relatively insignificant but it cannot even comprehend that it is sitting atop a wave; all it sees is froth and more froth.

Bringing the above woffle back to relevance...and especially relevance to music.

A subconscious brain can and does perform truly astonishing tricks, including (in case we forget just how gobsmacking this is...) your brain generates all of your consciousness, all of your awareness, and every audio sensation you have ever experienced. Your consciousness has always been just the hapless member of the audience in this grand inner concert. And yet your conscious ego is so insultingly self-important that it deludes itself into thinking it is responsible for the entire concert. It is NOT.

Given the disparity between the awesome subconscious brain and the relatively feeble conscious component of that brain, any suggestion that the stuff consciousness is aware of (e.g., music theory) can in any way be more powerful than the stuff produced by the subconscious brain, (e.g., actual non-abstract music knowledge), is just another glaring example of a running-amok-with-deluded-arrogance behaviour that afflicts all of our conscious egos.

We 'think we know' tiny little bits of stuff because of the abstract models that consciousness can inspect (and ironically even those models were generated by subconscious processes, not by consciousness!). We overlook and dismiss and downplay all the stuff that we have no way of examining, all the stuff we cannot introspect on, like all of our actual music listening capabilities and our music making capabilities.
We can't introspect on how any of that works. Every time we try to examine it we just build another abstract model (we translate the awesome wave into yet more froth). Then because the only stuff consciousness can see is abstract, that consciousness concludes that abstract stuff equals powerful. Abstract is indeed powerful but it's a very poor shadow of the subconscious capabilities.

That's why (for example) no music theory model has ever generated, by itself, a worthwhile composition.
When exploring the space of sonic possibilities, a subconscious brain can discriminate and make choices that lead to beautiful music. Thousand upon thousands of examples of that process are what we call music culture.
Conscious abstract models of, any and all of, those processes are 'just models'.
Music theory models that consciousness can scrutinise are like maps of territories. Maps can be beautiful, maps can help you navigate.
But the day you mistake a map for the territory is the day you tell someone you have folded up California and put it into your glove compartment. It is just blind stupidity - just a normal day for our silly egos.

Music knowledge in subconscious brains must also be like maps (in some 'as yet unknown' sense), but it is also a lot closer to being the actual territory! and that is hugely significant.

If we make presumptions that we know anything at all about how capable or how limited the music knowledge and maps are in a subconscious brain, then we are just demonstrating how ignorant our conscious egos can be.

===
UPDATE EDIT...

Well clearly, that last sentence I wrote was rushed and plain wrong (and more than a bit silly given that it contradicts my own sentences in the same post). So, I'll leave it there as 'egg on face' and correct it below.

I'll just remove the 'how capable' bit and leave it as...

"If we make presumptions that we know anything at all about how limited the music knowledge and maps are in a subconscious brain, then we are just demonstrating how ignorant our conscious egos can be."

As for "how capable the music knowledge and maps are in a subconscious brain" - we do know something about that; like the stuff I wrote above; like the fact that this (and only this) is what generates beautiful music - not music theory abstractions.

The only reason I can think of for 'pretending' that our subconscious music making capabilities are limited is if you have a weird cognitive bias that is desperate to assert the superiority of music theory abstractions, and will resort to painting a straw man version of our subconscious music listening and music making capabilities.

Claims like "music theory will provide you with the ability to see more possibilities" are true.
Claims like "ONLY music theory will provide you with the ability to see more possibilities" are just simply bollox.
We have no idea how our subconscious music making skills 'sees the possibilities' and have no grounds at all for asserting that our subconscious skills are in way limited in this regard. We have bucket loads of counter evidence to suggest that our subconscious music making skills can see much further and with much clearer aesthetic focus than any amount of theorising has ever accomplished.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

I don't understand where this is coming from my friend.
You saying these things I don't know why.
And I don't really follow what you mean by what you are saying other than angry.

I tried to explain that.
Our ear detect vibrations per second.
Our eyes detect vibrations per second
( This rough explanation trying get to point here)
Our brain process the information our eyes sees such that we don't process only the lines or shapes we process into larger things like a human being .)
We people born with ability like music and art or writing.
They tapping into these systems like with visual but using it with hearing or abstract mental vision.
( With art you picture it on the paper then draw it )
So my whole point before it that the way humans work normally in areas we think mundayne. If you apply the same process with different mental process or hearing system it comes out like natural talent.)
But the exciting thing is what we normally do in everyday life. We can tapp into and apy to our hearing or to draw and get amazingling good .
That's what I was trying to express to you .
( With all art you have to have something to say combined with all this )
For myself I experianced tragedy from the start of life and regularly so I had something to say with all art .
( It was a therapy mechanism )

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

Take a " human being "
So right now we have a symbolic representation in the form of a phrase .
If you keep unpacking it more and more you get all the way to the living cell.
( Can go further to quantum mechanics too)
But at the level of the cell is a chemical system which sends revives " information" about the cell receptors using chemicals.
If we zoom out to tissue and organs now the information works different with cells differentiating taking on jobs differently using the nervous system for information blood flow for information. As you zoom out to look at all levels of the human you have these different layers of systems using information in different ways into 1 self contained community of trillions of cells.
But it does not stop there at the physical .
When you enter into the human thought process this emergent level is entirely information based abstract symbols .
What if you continue to expand outward?
Leaving the human into the environment?
The earth the solar system the Galaxy the universe at every level every scale it's information systems.
We did not always know this of course.
It has taken the study of each separate level for a long time .
From the quantum level to the classical level information systems is the only way to describe each level . ( Yes each scale works different too )
But this was a slow discovery about reality .
Let's zoom out to the abstract like mathematics ?information system. Physics? Same
What about music ? Information system.
We could have found it all worked differently than this .
This is significant.
Because it's the key to unlocking any goal in mind.
Yes emotion and motivation important for music .
But to understand the information means you can treat music as you would anything in reality
( Learn and discover experiment,)
And as other arts you can translate emotions through music once you know how it's all connected.
( There is a way music works )
As is the way anything works .

 

Theory is useful but is absolutely NOT REQUIRED to make wonderful,expressive,beautiful,sublime,touching,exquisite MUSIC

 

Can you show example of what you mean ?
And what you mean by " theory"?
Do you mean the information about how music works?
Or do you mean things that people say or written about how music works?
When I say music theory .
I just mean the information system of how music works.
I don't mean that some at a blackboard guy saying
" So and so invented this musical term in 1678 after a hunting accident ......"

 

I already did

 

Do you realise how arrogant,condescending,myopic,insular,and elitist you come across in text?Maybe you suffer from a lack of insight?If so then you have my sympathy,if not and your posting style is deliberate then please simply press your ignore button and ignore all posts from me in future please.Your subjectivity is not fact or truth ,merely opinion expressed abrasively.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

You wonder why I am angry? I made a huge effort to introduce a fresh element into this conversation. Others applauded my comment, yet you revert back to your pet topic of theory, theory, theory. You have nothing to contribute unless it is notes, scales or time signatures. You are an emotionless contributor. You stand at a chalkboard hammering your lessons into us while refusing to allow any deviation from your original post. (No talking in class and definitely no back chat to the teacher) And we are all aware of how you guard your posts with "if you can get more responses, start your own" You are a control freak. You hate me asking people to contribute to an alternative discourse that is not of your making. Because you do not wish to engage in speculative discussions about why some are born with a gift like Mozart, because you do not have a definitive answer, you dismiss it and reinforce your belief that nothing, absolutely nothing can be achieved without a thorough comprehension of theory. Your voluminous threads are so lengthy because of the large number of responses from people disagreeing with you. Time to give it away pal. We're tired of the repetition.