Jealous about your songs?

Anyone who learns music theory well and only obeys the rules “because that’s the way it should be” forgets how the rules came to be. ALL music theory builds on what other composers have done before you. The origin of even the most rigid theories come from analysing the works of composers that broke the rules of their time, and thus created something new. It’s good to learn some theory, but learn from different parts of music history, not only one side of it. And when you really master the theory, you’ll know when to break it.

The good composers are the ones that break the rules at the right places.

:huh:

This is just like the Matrix…

“Don’t try to bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead try to realize the truth.”

“The truth?”

“There is no spoon.”

The rules can be bent. It’s all just make belief.

:rolleyes:

Dunno what this has to do with music but…
Oh what the hell :D

:guitar: ROCK ON :drummer:

~Dufey (Bending Waves)

No need to suffer from a confusion brought on by the need to be validated as musicians by those cursed with an obsessive and bullying mindset.

Music theory is not a set of rules. Music theory is a way to EXPLAIN the relationship between notes being used. You can literally create thousands of thousands of scales just based on the 12-tone system alone. Just look at music with alot of modulations. It sounds like they’re breaking all the rules, but what they’re breaking is a barrier of convention, not rules.
With different tone systems come different explanations, not as to how you’re supposed to use it (i.e. giving you a set of progressions, saying that everything which departs from that is blasphemy), but to give you an understanding and future reference so you know what is needed for such a thing to happen again, should you ever want it to. It’s like a programming language.

You might disregard your surroundings until you have something “new” at the end of it. If your intent was to create music and you made a real effort, there’s no one to say that it’s just dissonant mayhem, without at the same time airing their subjective opinion.

If someone says that something is wrong, because music theory won’t support it, they really don’t have as in-depth a knowledge of theory as they claim to.

And Parsec, I just have to slag you some.

From reading, it seems to me that you’re saying there’s a “Big Book O’ Masterin’” somewhere, and that it’s definitely not a matter of taste. Since everything that is perceived, is perceived differently, this seems to fall on thin a ground. Or do you mean that there’s one right preset for every VST effect, and everything but that preset is superfluous?

Except… you can always go beyond the boundaries of the language if you wish so. And that is the moment something special is created.

So no one can go beyond the boundaries of theory? This relies on the premise of music being formed by the use of a certain theory and nothing more. As I’ve already mentioned, there’s a wealth of theory, applicable to different tone systems, etc.

In a programming language, what boundaries are there? Ultimately, it depends on the language, doesn’t it? A person, no matter how gifted or imaginitive, can’t program something that is not inherently possible because of the language itself.

Music (I’m using it as a broad term, so it becomes synonymous with “sound”) never had to nurture a dependency on a definite language (that we, or atleast I know of), because they were subsequently developed around it, to control it’s use and to explain it (easily resolved by switching, intermerging, creating your own or forgetting about tone relationships and rhytmic spacing). It wasn’t born from a man-made theory. It gave birth to all of them.

The only boundaries (from man’s point of view) are sonic, and even they are susceptible to perception. So there is no definite theory, or way of grammar that let’s you “speak” music, that we/I know of. It’s like when you tame something from the wild, you only tame certain aspects of it, while being totally unbeknowing to the rest.

If you draw the lines, music is then, by itself or by part, a programming language. One that we create a perceptual understanding of, as we differ on amongst ourselves, because we’ve had no way of learning the one true syntax (if such a thing exists), and because we have no definite knowledge through perceiving. Above music, there’s another, greater part (reality or whatever), which has another dependency and so on.

I hope you get my point. Musical theories only serve as a guideline.

That’s the exact opposite of what I said :lol:
I think we agree, my point beeing that music does not have the
same kind of boundaries that a programming language has,
boundaries that cannot be crossed.

That is of course not completely correct, as music is ultimately
only sound and is bound by all the limitations that apply… :P

I know. I was just having a go. Sorry. :)

I’ve heard about this project aswell, but it was a couple of years ago… I think I read about it in a technical newspaper here in sweden called Ny Teknik (translated New Technology)…