What are your feelings about the best way to learn, absorb and grow with music?

 

A mix of both, you can't just mindless make music in solitude, you will have talk about it with someone at some point. Unless one lives in a cave, in which case I don't think one would be participating in this pool, too many cave affairs to think about it.

 

Can I have a 'listening' option too please, and maybe even a 'thinking about' option;
and - damn - I'm gonna need an 'all of the above' option too.
Does this count as trolling

 

I said thread, not poll.
Where's your padding altar boy?
Like your worshiped decayed Esperanza Spalding says: walk your talk.
Btw, @Djord Emer said it all, so you get a dead-poll in one and first sentence/reply... not very impressive by any standards.

 

i wholeheartly miss the "i fight my way through the @MMJ2017 posts" option!

 

I'm going to do the risky thing and try an actual answer.
and any answer will be a 100% personal perspective; one that is easily mocked or contradicted by other perspectives.

I think there are several overlapping aspects involved to address your specific question...
"What are your feelings about the best way to learn, absorb and grow with music?"

• Aspect 1: Listening to music and being thrilled by that experience.
• Aspect 2: Responding to listening to music - trying to participate, join in somehow - music as active listening - even just tapping your foot is a start; try singing along; wrestle with an instrument.
  
• Aspect 3: Trying to actually make music, by monkey hear, monkey do strategy. Learn how to play lots of music from other people and try to make your own.
  
• Aspect 4: Learn any and all tricks that personally help with Aspect 3. Absolutely anything that helps - no restrictions.

Going around and around with Aspects 1-4, in a hopefully upward spiral,
satisfies me for achieving what you specified "learn, absorb, and grow" - but I would prefix your list with 'enjoy".

Personally, losing any one of the above aspects would punch a huge hole in my personal growth with music.

Beyond that are extra enjoyable optional aspects including...

• Aspect 5: allowing music theorising to develop a life of its own
• Aspect 6: talking about music

Both of these are enjoyable but optional - I could lose them both without undermining Aspects 1-4.
The converse is not true. The idea that Aspects 5,6 could be satisfying without Aspects 1-4, as a substitute for Aspects 1-4, feels almost nonsensical, and yet...

• There are music critics who talk a lot about music and convince me that they've never really listened to any. Presumably they are enjoying themselves (somehow). Spouting bull crap seems to satisfy some jerks.
  
• There are music theorists who convince me that their theorising is just a crutch - a crutch that is failing to compensate for their musical ineptitude. Presumably their psychological escape into never never land is somehow useful to them.

and lastly, weirdly, I think if I had been born deaf, I might still be interested in philosophy of music.

Lenny, I may need more help working out how fondling otters contributes; what am I missing?

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2021

Hi @Lenny Belardo II, exciting topic.

From the perspective of a sound designer:

It is best to have fun and enjoy discovering something that you have not heard before. Some sound will please you and something in a trigger. You should start with small steps, read something for example how the cutoff filter works and then understand it in practice, play a little with the controls until you notice what the control does and what it changes, then learn another control the next day , for example Resonance.

What does it do and how does Cutoff relate to Resonance. At some point, after a lot of practice, you figured it out. And so it goes on and on. Oscillator Saw with lowpass filter and later a 2nd oscillator and so on ...Don't overdo it. You should always take breaks and not overwhelm yourself.

Sometimes I refer to my search for new sounds as sound research. I sometimes try to get the best out of a virtual software synthesizer. Sometimes you want to perfect something so that you can say, it couldn't be better, this sound is perfect. In sound design, for example, you have to constantly solve problems and sometimes compromise.

You get involved in something and let yourself be carried away a little, sometimes it crystallizes, Oh that's great or an Oh that sounds pretty weird. Sound art means that you don't know beforehand what will come of it later. Sometimes you have to persevere - I started that, I want to finish it. sometimes you underestimate the amount of work and sometimes you overestimate your manpower. After you've finished a sound bank, you rest for a few days, happy about what you've done.

 

Forget the otters. They can fondle themselves, but you have encapsulated everything I have encountered on my own journey down the yellow brick road of musical discovery in one post. I presented a question with shallow intent and you have plumbed it's depths and presented a clarity of vision hitherto unknown to any creature with opposable thumbs and two functioning nostrils.

Yeah, but seriously... some great thoughts in there.

 

Another great reply! I just spent a rainy afternoon running Omnisphere into a few of my hardware synths and I discovered a whole new way of melding the outside world with the inside and I just had fun. Well it was either fun or my herpes is about to flare up again.

 

the fundamental blocks are pretty well described in this course I can only recommend it

https://www.udemy.com/course/piano-keyboard-music-composition/ he has got a full Logic course and a https://www.udemy.com/course/practicing-arranging-music-with-the-piano/ too so I would start here, and yepp worth to experience the power of the music with songs like this

so I would say worth to find an artist who can inspire you...

as theoretical background: "Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination" is a good one https://www.amazon.com/Music-Brain-Ecstasy-Captures-Imagination/dp/038078209X

so +1 to Aspect 3-2-1

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2021

For today's music:
Just do it.



Brain is unnecessary.

 

Clearly, I bow to Foster-McGraw's authority and demonstrable expertise on what can be achieved without a brain.

 

@Lenny Belardo II
Objectively and truthfully, as a musician who learned to play by ear and jamming a decade before I learned to read music and before I decided to get qualifications - The right way is the one that works for the person learning it.

I cannot and will not discount any method that works no matter how simple or convoluted that enables any person to become the kind of musician that they want to become.

Training the ears is a great thing no matter how this is done. I believe jamming is important too at any stage of skillset for ears and interaction. It seems to happen less the better and older one gets for some reason but no opportunity should be missed. I think nearly every city in the world has either a jam night or an open-mic night somewhere in the city at least once a week. Maybe less with COVID, but it will probably start up again when things settle down.

I believe if a person wishes to compose and arrange, the ear will only get you so far before a person has to expand their knowledge base. Self-made pre-composed libraries and samples will only get someone so far until they are asked to score it for a larger ensemble, Big Band or Orchestra into individual parts, then they have to pass on it. If that is never their intent they can probably do it happily the other way forever - they can of course, pay someone else to score their tune.
I believe if they wish to be able to play or solo or improvise in any style over any possible chord that will come their way, at some stage, they will have to learn their scales to master this and learn how to just play using them without thinking too much.

Talking about it? This is a sideline. It can be great to discuss and share ideas but unfortunately in some places, this basic principle often gets lost in either technobabble or ego. It shouldn't but it does. The ego kills any respect and once that has gone, discussion is no longer a possibility sadly. This site sometimes is a testament to that.

Listening to music? Honestly, I do not think anyone can ever listen to too much music unless it is perpetually at a volume that makes your ears bleed because eventually, listening that way, they will not have any hearing left to listen with.


Tommy Emmanuel does not read a single note of music and that never stopped him becoming a fab musician. Dennis Chambers does not read music either and does everything by rote. Neither does Hans Zimmer read conventional notation nor did Jimi Hendrix and many more. So there is never only one way to learn anything.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 27, 2021

This totally cool if your family are ragworms.
Last I checked, none of them played a musical instrument.

 

Needless to say but, good job "brainy"...

May I add a few to all those several risky aspects?

- abstract fulfilment of one's self-awareness/unawareness - ghost-limb effect alike;
- portrayal and setting of milestones throughout ones' life stages - current and past eras' mnemonics;
- multiple layers of enjoyment and sinestia development - deepening appreciation capability;
- promotion of inner/outer questioning, curiosity, creativity, cunning, oddity, beliefs;
- taxonomics: listen, whistle, discover, study, practice, play, compile, say...

Cheers

 

Its not just one particular thing lol .

Learning and growing in music is multidimensional.
There are several totally different separate areas to work on , study , research and develop.

If anyone is telling you it is one simple pathway to, its not
Lol

Why did you set the poll up the particular way you did ?


Can you add an option ...

" multiple areas of study, research, and development "?

 

MMJ2017, you are my hero... I wish I could lay my hands on the same stuff you've been using and happily live forever in La-La-Land...

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Cheers

 

And some people think that studying music should be an option, those silly guys

 

Thanks , you too

Its really not too hard to come by lol



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