or learn how to get to the alpha level without drugs

 

Art is when you don't know beforehand what will come out. Every profession that is practiced needs a sound education.
If then talent, love and enthusiasm are added, one can become very successful.

That's why schools should always encourage the talents of the individual. Or you discover on your own that you can do this or that very well and that you enjoy it, then you will stay with it and with a lot of work and experience, you will get further and be an asset to society.

Jean Michelle Jarre, his father was a composer of film music and he learned the piano at the age of 5, Mr. Jarre really brought us new music, these people we then call pioneers. The record Oxygene sold 12 million copies. And at that time there was no internet.

A lot of musicians have a lot of records and CD's at home and listen to many other artists

Today we suffer more from stimulus and information overload of the brain. You can say back then before 1964 there was no electronic music, the devices were not yet invented, then the first Moog, the Beatles use a Moog and from 1970 it started: Keith Emerson, Stevie Wonder, Uriah Heep, Manfred Mann Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream. Pink Floyd.

Today we have Internet, CD Roms, portable devices, PC, notebooks and millions of songs. A nice quote: At that time the world was empty and today the world is full. You can also learn a lot by listening to interviews of J.M.Jarre or Klaus Schulze etc.. That means there is more knowledge today and more possibilities for the individual to make and understand music.

It is also no longer a question of money and you can also exchange worldwide.

 

There is a saying that you do it, not think about it. Now this has been said, there is no one-size-fits-all.

A large majority of the greatest film, TV and music scores are ones that stir some kind of emotion. There is also a school of thought that you cannot contrive emotion. There is yet another series of schools who will tell you the technical aspects of easily creating emotion in music.

Now that has also been said...

My opinion ONLY - Both are useful. To this day, I still believe that you have to assess anything on a job by job basis. If you have the luxury of writing completely without time constraint, it is likely a lot of natural experimentation will occur to find that 'magic' melody or emotion catching phrase. If you have 4 hours to do it it, then it is also likely you will have to narrow creativity to a time-frame and the knowledge and thought processes will set a cut-off point so it might well be more cerebral.
As yet another counter to that, I am confident some well known composers have written a great tune within a tight deadline.
Cheers

 

if you have "all" the theoretical knowledge, and you have developed all the required motoric skills to transfer it to your instrument of choice than no... in that case you are free to express yourself however you like

but if you have only a limited knowledge, than sadly yes... you are trapped inside the limits of what you know...

in 99% of cases it is a compromise since very few musicians knows "all"

it is something like the "consciousness" thing...
can you act outside your consciousness ?
- yes if you are totally unconscious

a quite philosophical quest I have to admit
than there is a question if all the knowledge is really ALL there is ?!?
than, if you spice it with let say a savant... i have a feeling this will be a very long thread
...actually, talking about savants, i think only a savant has an answer, but no words to describe it, just shapes and colors hahahahaha

 

In the end, all depends on you and what you want. For example, orchestrators (technical function) working in the film scoring business (i mean here that many composers working in the industry are minimally musically literate) have a monstrous musical culture and knowledge and know how to compose additional music and orchestrate in virtually any style, but they work in an industry that has no/little interest in new music or even creativity (in the sense of innovation). On the other hand, I have met innovative composers who are only interested in composing what academically is called new music (contemporary erudite music), and some of them are the most innovative people I've ever heard in my entire life, but they are incapable of boasting a cent with his pioneering music (many ended up becoming professors in universities, faced with the perception that they are extremely innovative individuals, but, in the end, they end up being used because they master the handling of techniques belonging to this new music and for simply not being interested/being able to create sound objects palatable for the taste of the masses). So, you must ask yourself what you really want (remembering that balance has its place in many of the situations in which we experience).

Take the case of John Coolidge Adams, much criticized by new music aficionados, that in addition to being innovative (post-minimalist), knows how to mix innovation with perennial styles. Adams has composed for different genres (vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, opera, film scoring, ballet, etc. ), and lately became a conductor. Adams is an example of a composer who walks the fine line between innovation and perpetuity. And so, I consider him an example of someone who has a lot of knowledge and manages to move between innovation and perpetuity (balance) in the field of musical creation (in my opinion, of course).

 

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I can get on board with most things everybody has said here but my all time favourite piece is still 4'33 by John Cage.

 

There again - the dear money. If you have a family to feed, for example, you have to see if the
market will buy your products. In the end, you enslave yourself voluntarily or not voluntarily.

Of course it is nice, for example J.M.Jarre, if you have enough money in your account to make experimental music.
Many musical people who have worked all their lives, realize themselves only at retirement age.

Most artists are poor and one also speaks of breadless art. One should pay the artists a basic income as culture creators.
That would promote diversity and new fresh ideas.

 

I suggest you do a little research on the field of musical cognition or even semiotics of music. The concept of a musical schema is based on schema theory (In psychology and cognitive science, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them). So, music schemata have discernible internal characteristics (such as voice leading, number of events, relative metric strength/weakness and patterns in instrumentation, orchestration, energetics, form, etc.). Musical hybridism is precisely about merging schemata. Very rarely does someone come up with something non-existent, but yes, it is possible as there are no limits to the human mind.

 

Precisely my situation, I have a young daughter and I am evaluating the options for myself at the moment, since the music business and the field of culture are in a downturn in my country!

Jean-Michel Jarre, for me, is an example of balance between innovation and perpetuity, because despite working with modernity in timbre and texture, the musical schemes he uses are quite widespread and well-known. He's a kind of "EVH of electronic music".

I agree 100% with this idea!

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2022

If you want an example of how money can't buy good music take a listen to the UKs entries to the Eurovision Song Contest over the last 30 or 40 years (50 years and more?). They always hire upper middle-class 'it's who you know not what you know' songwriters and producers etc. It's incredible how unimaginative they can be, truly bad songs, lyrics, music, performances, the lot.

 

This has all the elements an uncreative team of songwriters thinks will win...

 

It came last.

 

Well, a very interesting point has been touched upon here, and that is "money". So there is a new conditioning factor apart from the information we already have in our minds, that is, if we want to "escape" from that information, we must take into account that it will affect our pocket, or, that we will have to look for another job since it will be unlikely that we will be successful with what we do. And a little bit beyond money too (I think). Although sometimes we say "I make music for me", we always or almost always need someone else's approval. How many of us have projects and projects in storage?. Here in the forum I have read many situations like this, of people who have many unfinished songs, because they don't feel comfortable. Because for you your song may not be that good, but for others it is, and you are going to reconsider your song, and the other way around too, your song may sound excellent, but others may not like it.
I would say then that we have some extra conditioning factors " money" " approval".

Here also in Argentina we have these "Canto" programs with a jury that doesn't even know how to sing a chord, sing, or sing in tune. At least that video you showed Crinklebumps. It is excellent compared to what we have here. And what's even worse, is that this person who doesn't know how to sing, is a juror and judges professionals who studied all their lives.
So we also have a "Show" mounted, which claims to bet on the culture, music and singing, when the referent what least knows how to sing.

So back to the starting point.
Maybe a lot of musicians say, well I'm going to do this " it sounds weird to me" it's out of everything I hear. But you will have to think about how it will affect you financially. So we self-condition ourselves, we already program ourselves to do something that won't let us starve.
What a good point touched on here, I hadn't seen the depth of this concionant. Well then, without the need for money, perhaps there would be unimaginable things here among us.

 

Uniqueness doesn't mean inventing something non-existent but means creative individual thoughts interpreting with good skills and the inevitable foundations. Just like playing an instrument that you can't achieve without learning the techniques and theory.
You must be creative which belongs to a small portion of humans. IMO you can't learn creativity (even if some would claim the opposite).
Actually it's the combination of creativity and perfectionism that you need to have. Unfortunately it makes some skilled people never release anything because of their own dissatisfaction.
Other problem is when you have a good enough memory that destroys your satisfaction alerting you that your newly composed melody has already been "invented" before by others.
The solution is harmonization. You can take a well-known melody to a completely new territory with re-harmonization, different voicing, arrangement.
Therefore you need to learn musical theory in the as profound level as you can.

In the '80s musicians could have success with basic knowledge using a few chords on a shiny new synth and with a banally stupid lyrics. Naming one of them: Modern Talking.
Then in the '90s everyone (with mediocre talent level) had been playing arpeggio to hell on synths. It was the easiest sound creation that could satisfy your ears when you had sit in front of your keyboard until you got bored. A few years ago I went to an organ concert in a church where they played works of a contemporary composer, it was full of self-serving arpeggios, it was extremely annoying to listen to. Then I found out that the piece was written in the late '90s.

The '00 music I can't even define, it seemed a vacuum. It has helped Ed Sheeran and the likes to be the top rated musicians after that. Well, in the '10s there had started to happen weirder phenomenons, like K-Pop...

Then in recent years the trends were just going after a unique pattern of a musician's successful song, like Rihanna's ua-ua-ua shit that I can hear in imitating shitty trap (or whatever) songs in the gym's speaker.
What matters today is what Dr. Dre and his fellows dictate. Good luck for the Z generation! That shit or K-Pop, I can't decide, that makes their fans wanting to commit suicide...
Or you go back to music from the better days (decades), respecting their foundations more than willing to create something unexpectedly "fresh and trendy" for the lost and confused Z generation.

So, to answer the OP's initial question: knowledge will not make you less original or creative but it will make you sad if you don't find an audience with good taste.

And one more guru-like thought:
More you learn, more you will realize you still don't know enough.

 

everything can using rf frequencies or nano chips think twice before u think (all those dirty thoughts) mind mapping brainwashing soulrape all possible
you are not my big brother

 

This sounds like something I discovered through meditation. By blanking your mind and removing your consciousness you start to perceive things outside of the normal consciousness.

 

This topic slowly warps into "Wow guys, it turns out culture is made up!"

 

Individually we are the sum of everything that we experience from our uniquely own perspectives and which have been filtered by a rather complicated conglomeration of genetics and external stimuli. Creativity for the few in my mind is a kind of reflex which needs be performed in the moment without conscious thought. It fills in the spaces between the known and the unknown to hopefully create novel outcomes which are delightful surprises and which serve to tickle the fancy of the artist herself/himself, Positive outcomes stimulate the pleasure center of the brain and are profoundly addictive. All artists are junkies if they are worth their salt.

 

Thanks @jazzzz, for your assessment and your story. It was very exciting to read
how run down and bad it looks musically in the mainstream at the moment.

Against this only helps to no longer consume this junk. You should see that you keep away from their music for your
mental health. With us, some cars drive with open windows and sound the whole neighborhood with your annoying music.

You can only make good music, if you have previously experienced good music. Since the level of education is rapidly decreasing and
the dumbing down is increasing, these uncritical consumers will continue to listen to and buy the bulkhead of the music industry.

Let's rather take care of the people who still feel what and can think clearly and support the people who are also worth it.

Let's produce our own music and distribute, let's found our own radio stations and let's exchange about good music
and where it can be heard. Quality and love never perishes, it survives all periods of madness and confusion.

 

!!!!!!!!