What's your philosophy regarding " Music theory?"

Discussion in 'Education' started by MMJ2017, Dec 10, 2019.

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Is Music theory ( how music works) worth learning in your opinion?

  1. Yes

    81.1%
  2. No

    5.7%
  3. Possibly

    9.8%
  4. Whatchoo mean? ( No such thing as how music works ) Foo.

    3.3%
  1. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    ( Yeah I guess if I was blind or couldn't see that it's 1 person playing in realtime a orchestra worth of music
    And I just thought it wAs like 10 people that worked on it for months it would lose it's impact on me )
    ( Did you listen whole thing? He did have a rough moment towards the beginning but it like 15 mins long and keeps getting better ) he improvisation so it gets crunchy at times.

    Dam man, what does it for you then? Lol
    What stuff really hits you powerfully?
     
    Last edited: Jan 6, 2020
  2. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    That actually brings up the point lager had made about " playing the wrong notes".
    This is really about a totally different category.
    The difference between playing " safe" music.
    Whether pre- composed and you perform it as written ( music in non realtime )
    Or another situation of composing in realtime .
    But never reaching for ideas in other words
    " Playing it safe "
    Staying within your limits .
    Compared to this whole other level of
    Reaching beyond your comfort zone.
    See greatness can never be achieved if a person
    Conceptually sees music in terms of " perfection"
    In other words in performance they don't allow themselves the freedom of making a mistake as they reach beyond the predictable or genric or pre rehearsed.
    Philosophically as a music performer .
    I feel it's incredibly important to reach beyond your comfort zone . To play in the moment .
    That's really fighting towards creativty and advancement . To allow yourself in front of an audience to compose as you are playing in that second. Greatest can never come from spending 6 months writing a 3 min song. Sure there are benefits to that aspect regarding art.
    But if the person never reached beyond the comfort zone in a moment if performance ( out of fear of mistake in a moment ) that's the worst that can happen by allowing yourself compose in realtime in front audience.
    But the best that can happen is tapping into pure creative flow. Channeling your personality directly through art coming up with things that you are feeling right that second expressing all your senses and emotions of that moment as you compose in realtime.
    The fear of making a small mistake can keep people in a tiny box of comfort zone.
    " Playing it safe" to the point where the music is just rehearsed and sounds dead lifeless to me.
    If you ever notice a improvisor makes a clucky mistake than a moment or so later goes next level out of the box creativity.
    So to me I don't listen to music expecting an unrealistic perfection not representative of the real world where things get messy.
    That's a small price to pay to hear a few messy mistakes even if it's just 5 seconds later on of pure channeled imagination that's so good and creative And inspires me. ( The time of flow which you just can't sit down and spend 6 months composing because it's channeling the way your feeling and experiencing as you are performing .
    Most people in life and as a music creator force themselves into a tiny box out of fear of a tiny mistake being seen by people that tiny embarrassment you night get if you reach for the stars and flub a bit .
    But think about it , in any area of life is that any way to feel alive? ( Having no instances in which your channel your pure creative self to be expressed and shared in realtime in public. Where your true self can be seen where greatness can be witnessed.)
    All because the fear of imperfection?
    Human are not perfect.
    The world is not perfect.
    If we were and if the world was it would be incredibly predictable and boring to the point of not caring at all what was happening.
    When I hear music not created as a true expression of emotion it is contrived to me it's like a movie with no plot or story .( What's the point?)
    When I hear a musician flubb with a mistake it peaks my interest ( that's unpredictable)
    I pay attention , then most the time they follow it with a flow creative connection and reach beyond their autopilot memorized patterns to express a non rehearsed feeling in the moment.
    Those moments whether in music or in life to me are where the magic lies .
    I would have every song I hear be full of tiny mistakes if it meant the performers where reaching for something and a glimmer of expression beyond the mundane was there in every song.
    I encourage anyone who reads the theory threads I share on here. Never be afraid of making mistakes.
    Because you have to reach beyond your everyday pre programmed subconscious state to pull out something expressing a real feeling in the moment.
    And the only negative side effect of doing this is a couple flubs and mistakes now and then .
    " Playing the wrong notes "
    Is the worst thing that can happen in that situation.

    Allow yourself the freedom to make mistakes.
    It's okay . That being the worst thing that can happen.
    The best thing that can happen by reaching by seeking flow, is that you will express the real things inside of you for people to see and ignite a spark of inspiration when they see you not being afraid to be yourself .
    Perfection does not exist.
    Advancement does.

    Back to that worst case of flubbing in a moment of reaching. Guess what you will learn a lot about that moment and what happened what didn't work and why and you will grow and advance.
    Can you advance by being in the comfort zone?
    Nah, playing it safe and predictable means you will play from a zombie state and create more generic version of what you could.
    Please don't take my word for it.
    Go listen to the billboard charts right this instant .
    That's what staying in the comfort zone brings you.

    Why don't you hear this type of ability in the billboard charts?
    Because they terrified of not making " perfect " music.
    They live in a box so small only the most predictable generic and boring lifeless things trickle out.
    ( They can't afford to be creative because they need to make money with songs )

    BY the way adhesive , this wasn't geared toward yourself I was just reminded of this with the above video I shared of Jacob Collier , and in it I think in the beginning there was couple flubs but then he goes into beast mode.
    That video prompted this comment lol.
    It's really important though to think about.
    ( All of us )
    Let music be at least the 1 area you can express the real you ( even if you motivation is selling music for money ) even to those people allow yourself the freedom of mistake now and then.
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2020
  3. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    And you emphasise my point nicely by describing a nice conflict that you share... (in a post I fully agree with :wink:)
    > "Greatest can never come from spending 6 months writing a 3 min song"
    But I bet you wouldn't advise Beethoven to stop spending months on his arty composition mania,
    MMJ:... "C'Mon Beety, stop poncing around, just get up on stage and knock it out!" :winker:

    but that does conflict nicely with the totally valid claims that live 'risk taking' improvisation is one the greatest aspects of music.
    and I'd agree that it's sadly neglected (or even just unknown) in many (but not all) areas of contemporary music.
    To me, it just looks totally dumb to see any aspiring musician willfully missing out on that core rewarding experience.
    (To me, that feels like someone saying "Hey man, I really love food - but I'm never going to actually put any in my mouth!")

    But I still have to genuinely respect a modern composer who has bizarrely not even bothered to learn to play an instrument because a DAW has provided an alternative outlet for their genuine creativity. (and that's not the same thing as a wannabee idiot who just lazily hopes that DAW twiddling will turn them into a music superstar)

    I have had interesting conversations with people who compose solely with notation software; some of them feel they are working in a very traditional way, just with modern tools!
    and then of course a composer would say...
    "I am improvising - just not in front of an audience, I screwed up this section of my music 46 times before I got it right!"
    and that could be working with or without an instrument.

    So, I repeat... "It's genuinely nice to feel conflicted"

    "If a game doesn't have insurmountable complexities to wrestle with, why bother playing it?"
    Hey @Thunoing Thumbs - please rate my above (semi)deepity on a deepity scale of 1 to 10 :winker:

    p.s. yes I did watch the entire Collier video - was impossible to stop watching it, brilliant finale.
    but my comments about musicianship versus music still feel appropriate.
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2020
  4. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    I think your question is rhetorical.
    Not hard to answer but impossible to answer adequately.
    There is tons of stuff in countless genres that gets to me on one level or another.
    I gave an inadequate answer to that question in another post https://audiosex.pro/posts/403933/
     
  5. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    I was just wondering what you like.
    I looked through that thread , looks good I enjoy those myself.
     
  6. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    There's something a bit uncomfortable about 'lists of favourites'. We all feel it; you could write out a list of 1,000 pieces of music and still feel like it doesn't adequately represent your tastes in music.

    That's why my comments in that post https://audiosex.pro/posts/403933/ were more about 'how and why' a piece of music grabs my attention; and I think those woffly comments were more useful than the arbitrary music examples that I chose.

    A core feature of those comments was the same distinction I made here...
    and I think this idea affects all of our music opinions, sometimes without noticing.
    For example, look at your comment here.
    I agree 100% that if you told me "it was produced by 10 people that worked on it for months"
    I would form some (pretty favourable) opinion of their musicianship.
    and that if you then told me "actually it was produced by one guy 'live' emulating a band/orchestra"
    then my opinion of the musicianship would change - it would escalate.
    That change of opinion (about the musicianship) seems valid. (like you said, the impact would be different)

    But what do I think of the music itself? should that opinion change? or should I just say
    "I don't care who produced it, or how it got produced, or how long it took to produce it;
    the music just 'is what it is' and my opinion about the music should be the same as when I knew nothing at all about the musicians.

    That's why my preferred way of hearing something new, is 'in ignorance of who produced it', and without any visual distractions; I want to just listen. There are now countless pieces of music on my hard drives that I've enjoyed but never bothered to figure out who produced them.

    Could be an interesting follysophical rant to figure out whether we should be evaluating art-plus-artiste as an inseparable package or evaluating artifacts as stand-alone entities.
    Would I (should I) think less of Debussy's 'Claire de Lune' if I discover that it was written by an AI program?
    Would I think 'less or more' about it if I discovered Debussy was actually an alien? (I suspect he was :))
    At some point in the future people will be faced with figuring out answers to questions like that.
     
  7. @Ad Heesive
    Both you and MMJ are deep thinkers. It's a great thing. On a positive scale for the ability want to dig as deep as you can you both get a 10/10
     
  8. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    Nah, (award declined) deep is just rational; we want deepities - that's art.

    Deepities really are a thing now.
    They can be regarded as fun (which is how I think of them)
    or they can be regarded as grubby debating devices, as used by politicians, theologians, social justice warriors, etc, etc

    Dennett's favourite example of a deepity is "Love is just a word"
    Look at the essential features of a deepity first, and then dismantle the "Love is just a word" deepity.

    [1] A deepity has two meanings (ambiguity is essential)
    [2] One meaning is true but trivial
    [3] The other meaning is false but would be 'amazing if true'
    [4] The whole thing intentionally sounds far more profound than it is
    [5] It's designed to con someone.
    You're supposed to 'buy in' to the true part then while pacified you don't notice the false part hitching a ride.
    [6] You're supposed to end up thinking "Whooa this is deep" and respecting the messenger.
    When in fact - it's just a deepity!

    Dismantling "Love is a word"
    [1] The 2 meanings are
    a) The word "Love" is a word
    b) The precious human phenonemon "Love" is really no more than just a figure of speech.

    [2] Well obviously the word 'Love' is just a word - (how could it not be?) so that's true but trivial.

    [3] There's no way the human phenomenon 'Love' can be reduced to 'just something we talk about'.
    That is obviously nonsensical but it would be very significant if it was true.

    [4] Sounds profound? - tick!

    [5] Do you feel the con? Does the truth of [2] suck you in?

    [6] Are you reeling with 'whoa this is deep?' or are you a 'deepity spotter' who can say "Bugger off, this ain't deep at all!".

    ---

    Deepities are used by all kinds of people with all kinds of bizarre motives..

    Let's play again....

    -- There's no 'I' in 'team' -- (whooaaa - man that's so deep)

    Option [1] Fall for the con. "Whooa, I'd better not be too individualistic in this crowd, I'd better behave and be a team player."

    Option [2] do the same analysis as above, expose the bullcrap, and laugh at the deepity;

    Option [3] fight fire with fire... and respond with a counter-deepity like...
    -- and there's no 'us' in 'achievement' --


    Deepities are fun.
    We should have a prize for composing good ones in music related areas,
    and a prize for spotting and deflating accidental ones wherever they pop up.
    :yes:
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2020
  9. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    I try to think critically about my human experiance for example navigating my thought and reasoning process , in terms of being susepptable to " deepitys". I believe we all have to be careful of that because we are built to believe a lot of profound meaning is in what we think or do.
    When it comes to myself and music I try to compare myself to " the best".
    For ex. When I compose I compare myself to Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner , Debussy , schoenberg.
    When i compare my ability on a particular instrument , I compare myself to who I think is the best in that area.
    It helps keep things on check .
    Working hard on music and getting results to me is a type of science .
    Putting in effort then seeing the return
    ( After all we know that there is sacrifice anytime you dedicate to 1 area so much of yourself.)
    All these keep things in perspective for me not to have ego about what I can do .
    ( Partially because I can see ahead to where I'm not yet in any given area .)
    But general navigation of my own thoughts if something seems very profound , I try look carefully to see if I'm seeing in through the wrong lens .
     
  10. Broken down 1,2 &3, no I in Team means people should be sheep. Fight fire with fire encourages aggression rather than thought. No us in achievement means people cannot work as a team to achieve. None of them are correct except in specific context.
    Deepness exists because of over-generalization. It is like if someone said 'I am a native South American' and the responder says 'Oh you are Incan are you?' - It's semantics really, but people delve deeper because they wish to understand. Cliches and sayings are just that.
    When it comes to music for me and I will only use myself in this, it works or it does not. If the statement or cliche fits and adequately emulates it, then it suffices. Music is to be played and enjoyed. Everything else associated at a technical depth is the analysis and study of it.
     
  11. When Goethe wrote what would evolve into the familiar adage, ‘He who knows one, knows none,’ he wished to express that the capability to understand language requires a point of comparison. It is a compelling conviction that to attempt an understanding of our own language is a wasted project if we are simultaneously confined by it, unable to step outside of it and approach it with any kind of objectivity. The intuitive truth of this observation was subsequently recognised by Max Müller, who in 1873 invoked these words when founding his ‘science of religion’, applying it to belief systems more broadly and arguing that to analyse an ideology requires an acquaintance with alternative perspectives on the world and the labour of their comparative study.

    Yet what of ideological principles that fail to make themselves known to those who internalise them? It is one thing to (uncontroversially) suggest that we cannot hope to evaluate the legitimacy of an ideology without placing amongst and against competing understandings; it is quite another to grasp that we may not always even recognise the presence of an ideology, even one in desperate need of justification, regardless of its popularity or importance. Such creeds are undoubtedly the most pernicious, given their elusiveness and subtlety in moulding our practical doctrines, and time spent attempting to exile their influence from our catalogue of thought is never time wasted.

    One tool we can reliably use in attempting to uncover the influence of unspoken ideologies in shaping our behaviour is to be always diligent in looking out for dogmatic tendencies within our thinking and justifications for our general practices. It is dogma that buttresses false ideologies under the threatening weight of truth; for such ideologies to be sustained they must either ignore or contradict those observations and reflections which demonstrate their untruth, holding fast to the principles that such observations expose as fraudulent. This is dogma: doctrines not only unquestioned but unquestionable; accepted truths made impenetrable by sociopolitical, rather than argumentative, force.

    One of the defining characteristics of dogma is therefore its allowance and reliance on self-contradiction, making this a useful red flag in our search for hidden ideologies that ought not be guiding our operations. When a contradiction in a person’s behaviour or beliefs is exposed, their reaction will indicate whether it is dogmatic in origin. Contradictions cannot, by definition, be honestly maintained, and so any continuation of their belief, or deflection of their consideration, is a trustworthy indicator of some implicit—and faulty—ideological motives at play.

    I think we can all agree on this.
     
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  12. You have just defined the governments in all the major western countries on the planet.
     
  13. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    This is why I consider myself an atheist against my will. I would like reality to work in a way that contains human souls with an afterlife to be able see the closest to me that have already died.
    Like my parents that had tragic accidents .
    But I am an atheist because all indications show that afterlives and souls are incoherent in our reality. It's not simply that we haven't found postive evidence yet, it's that the entirety of evidence about our reality shows that these concepts can only fit into a fictional category.
    The evidence of the way reality works forces me against my will into being atheist.
    ( Because I care more about the truth than what I wish to be or my opinions.)
    I use a process of differentiating each thought, idea, concept , proposition differentiating between what is real or fiction .
    The entirety of billions of pieces of evidence about our reality cohere into 1 picture.
    The way a laptop is bult to the weather patterns to a living cell to human organs , to the evolutionary psychological development of the human brain.
    All levels of reality which are demonstrable, are coherent with each other .
    ( This is oppossed to a proposition which is fiction or fantasy which cannot connect in all areas to reality. )
    Fiction is a tiny storytelling fragment which lives and dies in isolation.
    Sure, we can use our language to formulate fictional sentences .
    However the propositions , ideas , sentences, which can be formed yet also match to the way things actually work in reality are the valuble ones .
    ( Meaning and value in the universe from the perspective of an atheist.)

    I carry over this understanding into how approach the study of music.
    I care more about the way music actually works than my cariacture or a person's caricature tiny sliver of a view.
    I approach studying music as uncovering the way it works while changing any misconceptions I hold along the way .
    ( Because I love music itself the way it really works much more then " my own version " of what I think at any given time what music is.)

    He process of having a human experiance.
    Is looking through a tiny keyhole at the world through a tiny sliver .
    Through a process of differentiating between an idea and " the way thinks are"
    We can widen out little view to see a little bit clearer
    " The way things actually work".
    ( Which is always out of our range we can never full escape looking through this tiny keyhole we call subjective experiance )
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2020
  14. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    I would say that human government is a societal organization system of prioritizing several scales or levels of detail.
    From the individual all the way out to society at large there has to be some type of organization system which takes into account the information on those scale outward to a large picture .
    Such that information at all levels can be unified in order for critical descison making at a large scale of infrastructure .
    This of course is not accounting for the specific detail and idiosyncrasies or fundimental values other than simply organization enough to where a society is possible in any sense besides small bands or groups with no cohesion no overarching services in place etc.
    I believe the government system is deeply outdated and flawed however there is nothing to suggest we as s society could possibly organize these trillions of details in a flawless way ( Utopia).
    Our human brains can fathom so much but there could be limits at scales .
    When it comes down to any type government system there's no reason to think that perfection or even close is possible in a reality with trillions of detail.
    However a strictly scientific based system for government could possibly be the least flawed.
    As it stands our money system and government as it is are the same used in Greece and Rome
    Over 2000 years ago
    ( In perspective we update laptops 1 cycle per 6 to 8 months )
    It is clear we need to improve a lot , however
    Unforseen circumstances are alwAys at work when you take into accountant variables while forgetting or not knowing to account for others which impact things as a whole .
    Right now the richest people control everything else and those not in that category have little say .
    ( The system we have creates this it's not just those particular ultra elite personally that is the issue )

    Imagine for a moment if you could spend 500 million dollars per day divided however you wanted each day for the rest of your life.
    What would be able to prevent you from doing anything ?
    It's hard to fathom but this is the type of ultra elite that run the world trillionares )
    If all humans except the few ultra elite burned and got rid of all our money the whole world, only 20% of the worlds money would have been destroyed .
    80% of all money would still exist in the hands of 100 people.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2020


  15. With one extra addition - They did not have the Neo-Liberal mentality added to the mix.
     
  16. Gyro Gearloose

    Gyro Gearloose Audiosexual

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    all utopie as long the club rules(at least 200 years now)...bank lobby ,oil lobby which is part from the allgod chemlobby is not there for ppl...
    since 70ies money is not backed by gold anymore...all a joke...
    but as soon as ppl will begin to shake their throne they will crash whole global economy hardcore..
    rome2.0
    [​IMG]
    ---
    pls watch this
     
  17. MMJ2017

    MMJ2017 Audiosexual

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    Yeah but it don't matter that money not backed by gold.
    Gold is just a element it has no connection to money , because money is just the rules of a particular board game ( called society )
    It's all made up.
    ( Yes for philosophical and pragmatic reasons money has been used .)
    The most important issue surrounding money is some have none or 1 dollar other have trillions of dollars .
    We would have to find some way of making it where but into the fabric if the boardgame , that you cannot get ultra elite rich .
    Maybe personally limit to 25 million per individual personally or sone type of equalization .
    Otherwise the money gets funneled to the ones that have the most .( When you have little it goes fast .when you have a lot it's easy generate more .as the contrived ruleset for the fictional money system.)
    Don't forget , money is a fictional system.
    Identical to fabricating rules for a boardgame.
    There is no scientific basis for money at all.
    It's a psychological arbitrary system.
    Any periodic elements or inventions have zero scientific connection to money in any way.

    If we are going to use money ,
    It should be with a number 1 value attached to the arbitrary ruleset boardgame.
    Which is the meet the needs of human beings.
    ( Primarily a understanding that there are those born disabled in many wAys or unfit to participate in workforce. .these people deserve to live the same quality of life and have access to goods and services on par with the mean average citizen in society . (
    This principle needs to be embedded into the money system.
    That no trillionares should be allowed to exist
    Take there money away from them and divide it amoungst the disabled and poor.

    ( Leys say you could still accumulate up to 25 million per person after that it is taken toward the people that need it.(
    NOT
    Taking money from middle class or small bussiness owner in for if taxes.( In any way )
    Taxes instead taken from those at the upper limit threshold.of say 25 million per person.
    This would instantly correct the world's problem regarding money .
    ( Note : this it just addressing the wealth and distribution of individuals I have not discussed in Any way corps or busdiness which would obviously need to be handled differently.)
    What I am describing is a theoretical model of a money system ruleset on 1 issue.
    If it was built into the rules .
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2020
  18. Lager

    Lager Guest

    MMJ's posts * (an average of 300 words for every post) =
    3300 * 250 = 825,000 words

    It's more than 783,137 words for the Bible.

    Jesus of Nazareth has over 2 billion adherents while MMJ only 3 or 4.:shalom:
     
  19. Ad Heesive

    Ad Heesive Audiosexual

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    Like numbers really matter? :rofl:
    If 7 billion people believe that gravity doesn't work on Sundays and just one little girl in Thailand believes otherwise,
    then 7 billion people are pathetically deluded, one little girl is right, and reality doesn't care at all.
     
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  20. Objectively - Let's say you are correct which you are not, theoretically the mere fact you reply whether in agreement or in opposition makes you an adherent. :rofl:

    P.S - To this day, there are still complaints how the St. James Bible translated a lot of texts inaccurately and left a lot out so as Ad Heesive said, based on that alone, the numbers are not only inconsequential, they are not actually correct.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 8, 2020
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