arian
Sunday 19 October 2008, 11:45 AM
I know that whenever I have ever tried to write music (You can see links before reply) it definitely feels more like trying to discover (You can see links before reply) music that is already there rather than conciously composing it such that, say, the melody (You can see links before reply) flows from point A to point B by some logical plan which I have made up..., rather whatever logic (You can see links before reply) is there is external to me.
And even if I do set out with some logical plan, it is only in an attempt to impose some arbitrary rule that will force my mind and my fingers to explore realms to which they would not ordinarily venture in the hopes of discovering something new. It's not as if I know what it's going to sound like in advance.
Sometimes, (very very rarely) I can imagine some tune, or melody or just some little riff (You can see links before reply) in advance and then try to figure out how the hell to play it, but even this seems a matter of just stumbling upon it. For me at least, trying to write music is nothing at all like trying to write a series of sentences in English.
But, I wonder, my musical education consists only of what I've been willing to teach myself, which means all the fun parts and none of the difficult boring stuff. (So, that means I bang around on a loud guitar (You can see links before reply) a lot, and is an activity I highly recommend, BTW)). Perhaps if I knew more about what I was doing, all that music theory (You can see links before reply) stuff. Still, from what I've read of interviews with other musician (You can see links before reply)s and how they write, (and these are people who should know what they're doing) yet they talk of waiting around for inspiration (You can see links before reply) to strike..., I think there's a lot of people groping around searching to discover music that already exists.
It seems more like trying to find the proof (You can see links before reply) for some mathematical theorem (You can see links before reply). You're not quite sure how to get from point A to B, so you thrash (You can see links before reply) around a lot trying different things until you discover the proof, or the melody. I listen to some Bach (You can see links before reply) pieces, and some of them seem so logical, they couldn't have been played out any other way. Yet there is no way that I could have ever found them.
Once a long time ago, I wrote a computer program that had a set of rules of grammar (You can see links before reply) for what constituted a legal English sentence, and a set of words and what part of speech (You can see links before reply) each word belonged to, and various other rules. It was nothing really fancy, but served as amusement as I loaded it up with all sorts of goofy words. It would produce perfectly valid but random English sentences by the thousands. Occasionally it would spit out something weirdly profound (You can see links before reply). This is much closer to how I have to go about trying to write music. Stochastic (You can see links before reply)ly thrashing (You can see links before reply) around listening for something profoundly weird and cool to pop out. The problem with this approach to writing music is this: I don't know what the hell the rules are. But what's worse (or better?) is I don't think anyone really really knows what the rules are. Well, I haven't seen them expressed in any kind of concise and usable way...and there seem to be so many exceptions and weird cases.
There seems to be no musical analogue (You can see links before reply) to my simple English sentence generator (You can see links before reply) that would randomly spew only "musical" passages from which one could manually cull the best, luckiest, ones. Or maybe there is, and I just haven't heard of it.
(Of course I'm only talking here about the melody and harmony, the notes themselves, and not the arrangement...not about what instruments play what notes and how each insturment is used to perform each note, there seems to be far more direct control in that area.)
In any case, music is a wonder (You can see links before reply)
created by ferrouslepidoptera (You can see links before reply)
And even if I do set out with some logical plan, it is only in an attempt to impose some arbitrary rule that will force my mind and my fingers to explore realms to which they would not ordinarily venture in the hopes of discovering something new. It's not as if I know what it's going to sound like in advance.
Sometimes, (very very rarely) I can imagine some tune, or melody or just some little riff (You can see links before reply) in advance and then try to figure out how the hell to play it, but even this seems a matter of just stumbling upon it. For me at least, trying to write music is nothing at all like trying to write a series of sentences in English.
But, I wonder, my musical education consists only of what I've been willing to teach myself, which means all the fun parts and none of the difficult boring stuff. (So, that means I bang around on a loud guitar (You can see links before reply) a lot, and is an activity I highly recommend, BTW)). Perhaps if I knew more about what I was doing, all that music theory (You can see links before reply) stuff. Still, from what I've read of interviews with other musician (You can see links before reply)s and how they write, (and these are people who should know what they're doing) yet they talk of waiting around for inspiration (You can see links before reply) to strike..., I think there's a lot of people groping around searching to discover music that already exists.
It seems more like trying to find the proof (You can see links before reply) for some mathematical theorem (You can see links before reply). You're not quite sure how to get from point A to B, so you thrash (You can see links before reply) around a lot trying different things until you discover the proof, or the melody. I listen to some Bach (You can see links before reply) pieces, and some of them seem so logical, they couldn't have been played out any other way. Yet there is no way that I could have ever found them.
Once a long time ago, I wrote a computer program that had a set of rules of grammar (You can see links before reply) for what constituted a legal English sentence, and a set of words and what part of speech (You can see links before reply) each word belonged to, and various other rules. It was nothing really fancy, but served as amusement as I loaded it up with all sorts of goofy words. It would produce perfectly valid but random English sentences by the thousands. Occasionally it would spit out something weirdly profound (You can see links before reply). This is much closer to how I have to go about trying to write music. Stochastic (You can see links before reply)ly thrashing (You can see links before reply) around listening for something profoundly weird and cool to pop out. The problem with this approach to writing music is this: I don't know what the hell the rules are. But what's worse (or better?) is I don't think anyone really really knows what the rules are. Well, I haven't seen them expressed in any kind of concise and usable way...and there seem to be so many exceptions and weird cases.
There seems to be no musical analogue (You can see links before reply) to my simple English sentence generator (You can see links before reply) that would randomly spew only "musical" passages from which one could manually cull the best, luckiest, ones. Or maybe there is, and I just haven't heard of it.
(Of course I'm only talking here about the melody and harmony, the notes themselves, and not the arrangement...not about what instruments play what notes and how each insturment is used to perform each note, there seems to be far more direct control in that area.)
In any case, music is a wonder (You can see links before reply)
created by ferrouslepidoptera (You can see links before reply)